1887
Volume 6, Issue 2
  • ISSN 2213-1272
  • E-ISSN: 2213-1280
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Abstract

Abstract

The analysis of conflict in family discourse has often been characterised by ethnographic approaches and/or fine-grained analysis of unique conflict episodes. This article, by contrast, uses a c.175,000-word spoken corpus of Irish family discourse, in conjunction with a corpus pragmatic approach, to explore specific linguistic aspects of conflict discourse. Conflict episodes are identified and analysed in the corpus using a range of linguistic “hooks” (Rühlemann 2010) that have been previously associated with prefacing disagreement such as the marker , mitigators () or the counterargument strategy . The analysis reveals that the family members most frequently use the strategy in conflict episodes which facilitates immediate disagreement. This strategy is often accompanied by a range of mitigators, predominantly in turn final position, some of which have not been previously identified as indexing conflict sequences.

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2018-11-26
2024-12-13
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