| Conflict discourse widely exists in daily interpersonal communication.It occurs as people have different opinions,purposes and demands in the progress of communication.It is the utterance produced in conflicts including different speech acts such as disputes,arguments,quarrels and even violent conflicts.As a common and complicated phenomenon in social interaction,conflict discourse has both productive effects and destructive consequences.It is essential to avoid conflicts and communicate with others harmoniously,especially in public places with strangers.Thus,conflict discourse merits a focus of study.Previous studies on conflict discourse mainly focus on the context of family,such as the relationships between husband and wife,mothers and daughters-in-law or parents and children.Few researches on conflict discourse are found to occur among strangers.Thus,this thesis intends to make a pragmatic analysis on conflict discourse in public transportation places where people are in stranger relationships.Based on the speech act theory and the face theory,42 cases of conflicts are collected and analyzed in this research.They are naturally occurred and videoed in the latest five years,which are searched in 9 different websites.The study employs interlocutors’ speech acts,intonation(pitch)and body movements in specific contexts to discuss conflict discourse in public transportation places.The research questions are as follows:(1)What are classifications of conflict discourses for strangers in public transportation places?(2)What factors are salient in escalating conflicts in public transportation places?(3)What pragmatic strategies can be applied to degrade conflicts in public transportation places?The results show that conflict discourse can be classified into assertives,directives,expressives in public transportation places.And commissives and declaratives are rarely discovered in collected videos clips data in the research.For the salient factors to escalate conflicts,it is found that directives and expressives appear the most frequently in verbal factors like cursing language use.And “face” issues,the emotional changes like pitch,body movement and the desire to control the power of arguments,etc,are the main non-verbal factors in escalating conflicts.Finally,according to the analyses of salient factors of escalating conflicts,the appropriate strategies are provided to help lessen the conflicts.That is firstly to avoid using aggressive words,secondly to make no response to the words escalating conflicts;thirdly to control the pitch of volume of utterances;fourthly to behave oneself or hold one’s body movements,.The study hopes to provide readers knowledge to manage conflict discourse constructively and healthily so as to construct a more harmonious society. |
