A Study On Persuasive Speech Acts For The Elderly In Mediation Conversation

Since the Speech Act Theory was put forward,scholars at home and abroad have done more detailed research on kinds of speech acts,but there are few persuasive speech acts targeted at specific groups.With the acceleration of the aging process of China’s population,and there are more and more disputes involving the elderly.Mediation has become an important way to deal with disputes involving the elderly.Among the various types of speech acts of mediation discourse,persuasion is a very important speech act,and the persuasion speech act for the elderly should attract more attention from the academic circle.This thesis is based on the conversation in the mediation program “Turn for Love”,integrates speech act theory and conversational analysis,and constructs an analysis framework of persuasion targeted to the elderly.The research method combining bottom-up and top-down,qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis is used to describe and analyze the corpus,aiming at achieving the following research purposes: 1)to describe the conversation structure of persuasion for the elderly,and summarize the turn design and lexical choice in the process of single-turn persuasion;2)to describe and summarize the verbal and nonverbal response,made by the elderly to the persuasion;3)to describe the phenomenon of overlapping and interruption and conversation repair in the process of multi-turn persuasion;4)to analyze the factors influencing persuasion targeted to the elderly and the influence they make on the language form of“persuasion” chosen by the persuader,and then provides conversational practice guidance for persuasion to the elderly.This study finds that the turn design and lexical choice in the single turn of persuasion targeted to the elderly have certain linguistic characteristics.There are four combination modes of turn structure,namely,complete turn structure,“central language+auxiliary language”,“central language” and the most frequently used“preparatory discourse+central language”.In terms of lexical choice,when persuading the elderly,the mediator will choose appropriate address words to express the familiarity and respect for the elderly,and use modal particles to ease the persuasion tone or emphasize the persuasion content.In terms of multiple turns,this thesis finds that when persuading the elderly,the persuader will use interruptions and repair to promote the smooth realization of persuasion in the process of turn-taking,and describes and summarizes eight kinds of sequential organizational structures of persuading the elderly,such as “core sequence(non-preferred)+core sequence’(nonpreferred)”,“core sequence(non-preferred)+core sequence’(preferred)”,“going-in-frontof-an-action+pre-sequence+core sequence”.When persuaded,the elderly have three verbal and non-verbal responses: “acceptance of persuasion”,“refusal to accept persuasion” and “ignorance”.The personal factors of the elderly(physiological function,cognitive ability,psychological factors and social factors)and the interpersonal factors of the elderly(power and intimacy)have an important impact on the persuader’s choice of the above language means.This study has improved the conversational mode of speech acts of persuasion for the elderly,analyzed the deep asymmetrical factors of the conversational structure of persuasion for the elderly,and provided discourse guidance for persuading the elderly,so it has certain theoretical and practical significance.