5    Causes of and Solutions to Family Conflict Talks    12
5.1    Causes of Family Conflict Talks    12
5.2    Solutions to Family Conflict Talks    13
6    Conclusion    14
6.1    Major Finding of the Study    14
6.2    Limitation of the present study    15
6.3    Suggestions for Future Research    15
References    16
Study of Family Conflict Talks in Empire from the Perspective of Politeness Principle and Face Theory
1    Introduction
1.1    Research Background
The present study aims to analyze the family conflict talks in the American TV Series Empire based on the Politeness Principle and Face Theory with a view to providing a theoretical explanation for characteristics and causes of conflicts among family members. It is hoped that the analysis could offer new insights into the resolution of family conflicts in particular and the maintenance of a harmonious society in general.
Conflict talk, as a common yet complicated phenomenon, has been extensively studied by researchers from various fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. Their findings help to understand the features and causes of conflicts in human communication and to provide corresponding solutions to these conflicts. Although many researchers have studied conflict talks in a lot of subjects, the studies on conflict talks in linguistics are insufficient. So, it is necessary to do further studies on it in linguistics.
Previous research didn’t attempt to investigate the categorization of conflict talk or their respective features, but instead took a very general approach to the phenomenon as a whole. Therefore, it is highly desirable to study specific types of conflict talk in order to explore their unique features. Family Conflict Talk, as an important type of conflict talk, hasn’t received its due academic attention. The present study focuses on this particular type of conflict talk for the purpose of exploring its unique characteristics, causes and solutions.
1.2    Organization of the Paper
This paper is pided into 6 parts. The first part is an introduction of the study including background, objectives and significance of the study and organization of the paper. The second part is the literature review of definitions of the terms and Empire and previous studies of American TV Series from the Perspective of PP and FT and their limitations. The third part is a specific analysis of Family Conflict Talks from the Perspective of Violating Politeness Principle in Empire. The forth part is an analysis of Family Conflict Talks from the Perspective of Violating Face Theory in Empire. The fifth part is Causes of and Solutions to Family Conflict Talks. The sixth part is the conclusion.
2    Literature Review
2.1    Definition of Key Terms in the Study
2.1.1    Definition of Family Conflict Talk
Conflict talk has been extensively studied by researchers from various fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology and linguistics. Zhao Yingling (2004) analyzed the particular mode of conflict talks in Chinese and explained the sociological basis of conflict talk. She revealed the structure of conflict talk through the observation, description and explanation of it. Although she deepened the study of conflict talk, she just only focused on the conflict talk in Chinese and neglected English. Family conflict talk, one of the most important types of conflict talks, refers to the hostile communicative behavior between couples or between parents and children.
In the paper, Discourse Analysis of Conflict Talk between Family Members, Zhang Qiongfang pointed out　that “study on conflict talk between family members can be linked with the construction of a harmonious society”. (Zhang, 2009, P2) 美剧《嘻哈帝国》中家庭冲突话语的研究(2):http://www.youerw.com/yingyu/lunwen_48077.html