Mother-Daughter Conflict Talk : Communication processes ignited by accusations

Sammanfattning: The relationship between mothers and daughter is known to be characterized by a high degree of both connection and conflict. This is reflected in their communication style, as previous studies have found that accusations, metamessages and misinterpretations are common elements in mother-daughter conversations. As relationship outcomes seem to be directly related to conversation styles, there is a need to widen the understanding of conflict-talk between mothers and daughters. This essay aims to extend the knowledge on conversational processes and practices that involves conflict talk between mothers and daughters. The study is executed by conducting a qualitative micro-analysis of two naturally occurring conversations from The Santa Barbara Corpus. Both are ignited by an accusation by a mother against her daughter and in the presence of others. The main conclusion of the analysis is that third-party involvement using humor to rekey the argument into a more playful stance, can have a mitigating effect on the argumentative stance, when it is effective.