Yu2019

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Yu2019
BibType ARTICLE
Key Yu2019
Author(s) Guodong Yu, Yaxin Wu, Paul Drew
Title Couples bickering: Disaffiliation and discord in Chinese conversation
Editor(s)
Tag(s) EMCA, argument, bickering, communicative/linguistic practices, couples, disaffiliation, Mandarin, mitigation
Publisher
Year 2019
Language English
City
Month
Journal Discourse Studies
Volume 21
Number 4
Pages 458–480
URL Link
DOI 10.1177/1461445619842739
ISBN
Organization
Institution
School
Type
Edition
Series
Howpublished
Book title
Chapter

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Abstract

This is an investigation into conflict and discord in conversations between couples (heterosexual partners) in ordinary households in mainland China. Based on a corpus of face-to-face and telephone conversations in Mandarin, our analysis shows that participants’ arguments are ‘kept under control’ through a variety of communicative (linguistic) practices that in a variety of ways mitigate or reduce the force of their arguments. Prominent among those mitigating practices are repair initiation through repetition, type-nonconforming responses, and turn-ending double particles. The result of employing these and other practices is that the couples in our data ‘bicker’ – they argue in such a way that the interactions do not result in breakdown (walkouts, shouting matches and the like), or otherwise in irreversible breakdown. The communicative practices reported here are mobilised so as to suppress, reduce or moderate the hostility that a complaint for instance might otherwise generate. Our analysis contributes to our understanding of disaffiliation and argument in ordinary interaction, especially in Chinese (Mandarin) domestic interactions.

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