摘 要

在婚姻中，夫妻双方常常会因为各种琐事而爆发冲突性话语。本文将基于维索尔伦提出的语言顺应论，以美剧《致命女人》中三对夫妇的争吵话语作为语料，研究冲突性话语，并比较分析美国夫妇在冲突性话语中的权势变化，进而尝试评估哪一种权势模式更有利于解决婚姻中的冲突性话语。本文共分为五个部分，前两章主要是文献综述和理论建构，服务于后两章分析冲突性话语和权势变化。在分析部分，文章运用了案例分析和对比研究的方法，阐释了冲突性话语产生的原因，夫妻双方采取的言语策略差异，进而导致冲突话语走向差异。第五部分得出结论。研究发现，当夫妻双方有一人故意违反交际语境中必须和语言选择相互顺应的三个要素，包括物理维度、心理维度、社交维度时，冲突性话语就产生了；同时还发现，社会背景极大地影响了婚姻中男女双方的地位，决定谁更有话语权，进而影响夫妻双方的言语策略选择；最后，哪一种权势模式更有利于冲突的解决是一个取舍的问题。

关键词：顺应论；冲突性话语；《致命女人》；权势变化。

Abstract

Conflict talk is a ubiquitous and unavoidable phenomenon in daily communication within marriages about various trivial matters. Based on the Adaptation Theory by Verschueren, this paper will select the dialogues of the three couples in the American TV series Why Women Kill, as the corpus to study conflict talk in marriage and make a comparative analysis about the power changes of American women in the conflict talk within the marriages, further measuring which power pattern in marriage is more conducive to the resolution of the conflict talk. This paper is divided into five parts. The first two chapters are mainly literature review and theoretical construction, which serve for the analysis of conflict talk and power change in the next two chapters. In the analysis part, the paper uses the method of case analysis and comparative study to explain the causes, strategies, and conflict trends of conflict talk in the three marriages. The last part concludes. It is found that conflict talk occur between husband and wife in that one of them deliberately breach contextual correlates of adaptability including mental, physical and social contexts. Social background affects the status of man and woman, further deciding who holds the stronger discourse power; and it is a matter of choice that which mode is more conducive.

Key Words :the Adaptation Theory; Conflict talk; Why Women Kill；power change.

Contents

中文摘要 2

Abstract 3

1.Introduction 5

1.1 An Introduction to Why Women Kill 5

1.2 Research Significance 5

1.3 Literature Review 5

1.4 Research Methodology 6

2. Theoretical Construction 6

2.1 Conflict Talk 6

2.2 The Adaptation Theory 7

2.3 Analysis Mode 8

3.Analysis on Conflict talk in Why Women Kill 8

3.1 Failure to Adapt to the Mental Context 8

3.2 Failure to Adapt to the Physical Context 10

3.3 Failure to Adapt to the Social Context 13

4.Analysis of the Power Changes of American Women in the Conflict talk within the Marriages 13

4.1 Three Power Patterns of Speeches in Conflict talk Caused by Different Social Backgrounds 14

4.2 Comparison of the Discourse Strategies of the Three Couples in Conflict talk 15

5.Conclusion 16

References 17

Acknowledgement 19

Analysis of Conflict talk in Marriages Based on the Adaptation Theory: Taking Why Women Kill as an Example

1.Introduction

1.1 An Introduction to Why Women Kill

Why Women Kill is a worldwide popular crime comedy series released in 2019 and produced by David Grossman, Lucy Liu, Mark Webb, and David Warren. It tells the story of how three women who live in the 1960s, 1980s and 2019 deal with infidelity in marriages. This TV series not only skillfully shows the process of women decision when the men cheat in the marriages in three different eras, but also is filled with a large amount of conflict talk of couples, which is convenient for comparative study along with the changes of the times.

1.2 Research Significance

It can not be denied that conflict can still occur around us for various reasons at any time in any place, and verbal conflict is its most common manifestation. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the harmonious life has become the beautiful vision which all people chase after. Husband and wife in life always quarrel because of all kinds of trivial matters, seriously affecting the harmony of life. By comparing and analyzing causes and the change of power mode in conflict talk between husband and wife in different periods, it is helpful for modern couples to understand more clearly how conflict talk in marriage comes to an end from the beginning to the climax, further to facilitate them to deal with a conflict of words rationally for preserving comfortable atmosphere at home.

1.3 Literature Review

The complex language phenomenon of conflict talk usually come into being when the opinions, positions, interests of the two sides in the communication diverge. Many scholars have been carrying out lots of researches since 1970s on how it develops in different fields for multifarious objects. For instance, by comparing couples conflict talk in supermarkets, cafes and other different outdoor situations, Zimmerman(1975)^[1] concludes that men are more likely to use the strategy of interruption to manipulate direction in dialogues. In addition, Vuchinich (1990) ^[2], O 'donnell (1990)^[3], Phillips (1990) ^[4], and Du, l. (2006) ^[5] respectively discuss the characteristics of conflict talk by targeting at different groups containing families at home, colleagues in the workplaces, two parties of trials in the court, and communicators in the network chat room, tremendously expanding the scopes of researches for this theme. As for the domestic studies, Liu(2012)^[14] takes the American TV series Black List as the example to analyze the conflict talk between police and gangster. Based on the face theory of Brown and Levinson's, Qiu(2019)^[15] uses Emergency Room as the corpus to explore the response strategies of conflict between doctors and patients. Zhang(2019)^[16] tries to use the evidence-based strategy to research the conflict talk between teachers and students in the current college English classroom based on the elaboration of its basic connotation and the practical work. Nonetheless, According to the data in Chaoxing, the topic index of conflict talk in marriages based on the Adaptation Theory approaches zero in the past 30 years，indicating that rare studies focus on the theme and few of papers apply the Theory of Adaptation to analyze the conflict talk in marriage.

1.4 Research Methodology

At first, the discourses in the film Why Women Kill are relatively categorized and the typical materials are selected. Then how conflict talk occur within marriages from the perspective of the Adaptation Theory is thoroughly observed, described and generalized. Finally which power mode is more conducive to the resolution of conflict talk is pointed out. By comparing the consequences of the conflict talk from three different periods, find out how the power changes of American women within the marriages from 1960s up to now. List the distinction of social background to figure out how the couples choose the discourse strategy, finally deciding the trend of the conflict talk.

2. Theoretical Construction

2.1 Conflict Talk

There is no unified answer to what conflict talk is in the linguistic community，and there are many types from different perspectives. Pomerantz(1984)^[6] asserts that conflict talk is used for disagreement, and Eisenberg amp; Garvey(1981)^[7] the adversative episode , and Boggs (1978)^[8] the contracting routine , and Schiffrin, (1985)^[9] opposition argument, and so on. These scholars endeavor to elucidate it abundantly in plentiful dimensions. As for the domestic study, Cao and He(2013)^[17] hold the opinion that the salient feature of conflict talk is interactivity. Wang(2020)^[18] claims that conflict talk refers to the negative or argumentative speech in the process of verbal communication, whose behavior nature not only indirectly or directly threatens the face of both sides of the communication, but also may cause the contradiction or misunderstanding of both sides in the communication.

It can be seen that although there is no consistent definition, scholars at home and abroad are trying to explain and perfect the concept from the aspects of the characteristics, subject and essence of conflict talk, providing tremendous convenience for our study.

2.2 The Adaptation Theory

Linguistic adaptation theory is a pragmatic theory founded by Jef Verschueren, a famous Belgian linguist. Jef Verschueren^[10] asserts that, in order to meet the needs of interpersonal communication, language is characterized by three characteristics: variability, negotiation and adaptability. That is to say, language use is a process of constant choices driven by inner(language structure) and outer factors such as communicative intention. But the language selection range is unstable uncertain(variability), which determines that speakers need to negotiate and consult with each other(negotiability). Simultaneously, the characteristic of adaptability enables people to have the capability of figuring out negotiable language and strategies from a series of uncertain possibilities, in order to satisfy communication expectation. It can be seen that variability and negotiability are the basis which provide the substantial contents for adaptability as the direct reflection of the ideographic and selecting function of language.

Jef Verschueren^[10] further described and explained the phenomenon of language use from the following four aspects based on adaptability:

2.2.1 Contextual Correlates of Adaptability

Communication context must choose to adapt to each other and the language of all the elements respectively including the physical, social and psychological dimensions. The physical context includes all of the communicative object, subject, topic and the space-time dimension and so on.The language choice of both parties in the dialogue is also influenced by the social context, including social customs, institutions, principles and rules. In addition,Verschueren^[10]thought that the psychological context of both communicative parties such as emotion, desire, motivation, purpose, belief, etc could assert great influence on the conversation progress.

2.2.2 Structural Objects of Adaptability

This includes the language structure at any organizational level and the principles that govern the organization of the structure. For one thing, the language structures are composed of morphemes, words, phrases and so on. For another, the principles contain the word order, grammar, pronunciation and those that can determine if speech can be understood smoothly.

2.2.3 The Dynamics of Adaptability

The dynamics of adaptability is the key dimension that connects the other three aspects. It requires the communicative parties to coordinate the communicative principles and strategies in the process of language selection and seriously take the contextual correlates of adaptability and structural objects of adaptability into consideration in order to propel the conversation. Positive dynamic selection of language is the core of linguistic adaptation theory. otherwise, negative choices can lead to terrible conversations.

2.2.4 Salience of Adaptability

Wang(2019)^[12]demonstrated that salience of the adaptation process is concerned with different degrees of consciousness in the process of making language choices. The speaker chooses how to conform to and highlight the other person's awareness based on their social status, conscious preferences, etc. This tests the speaker's level of consciousness.

Therefore, according to the dynamics of adaptability, both sides in dialogues will make proper choices as the utterance goes on in order to approach the goals of communication. Nevertheless, when the conflict talk occur, it means both speakers or one of them deliberately break the contextual correlates of adaptability. As a result, the first part in this paper will carefully select the discourse materials from every episode in the TV series Why Women Kill to analyze the conflict talk from the perspectives of disobedience to physical, mental and social context.

2.3 Analysis Mode

This paper plans to discuss two main topics. On the one hand, from the perspective of the Adaptation Theory, this paper analyzes the conflict talk in Why Women Kill and summarizes the causes. On the other hand, the author explores the social status of the three couples and the mode of their discourse power, and then compares the choice of speech strategies, and finally draws a conclusion.

3.Analysis on Conflict talk in Why Women Kill

3.1 Failure to Adapt to the Mental Context

Human being is complicated creature with complex emotions. Speakers must take the psychological circumstance of each other in account in order to have a smooth and effective conversation. Verschueren^[10]pointed out that language selection should conform to the psychological context of both communicative parties, such as: emotion, desire, motivation, purpose, belief, etc.

3.1.1 Failure to Adapt to the Affection Need

To a large extent, a couple is a social relationship formed by love and marriage. As early as in 1943, Maslow^[11], a famous American psychologist, put forward the "hierarchical needs theory", believing that human beings have five basic needs: physiological needs, security needs, social needs, respect needs and self-actualization needs. so failure to emotional appeal is the main cause of conflict between the couple.

(1)Karl: Where did u get this?

Simone : Does it matter?who is he?

Karl : Darling, if I could just...