戀愛言談:告白中的說服、拒絕、與接受之策略研究

Abstract

本研究將告白視為告白者與被告白者間互動且共同建構的說服過程。本論文以微觀的角度探討告白者與被告白者如何利用說服、拒絕、和接受策略達成溝通目的，也以宏觀的視角檢視告白的言談結構，進而觀察告白者與被告白者間會話互動和共同建構等現象，本論文旨在彰顯語言在戀愛關係中所扮演的重要角色，並提倡在語言學中建立戀愛言談 (Romantic Discourse) 為一研究領域。 說服 (Persuasion)，早在古典希臘哲學時期已被尊為修辭學的精髓和溝通的核心 (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008)；在告白的情境之中，告白者的溝通目的為說服心儀對象與之建立戀愛關係，而對於被告白者來說，主要的目標則是拒絕或接受告白者的說服；因此，告白亦是一種說服溝通的形式，在溝通過程當中，談話者採用語言或非語言策略進而影響對方的看法及行為。 本研究以質化和量化的方式分析及檢視語料，也由於告白是透過告白者與被告白者間合作及共同建構而成的言談，我們參考會話分析和溝通研究的理論來深入觀察談話者在戀愛說服 (Romantic Persuasion) 中的會話互動。根據從真人實境戀愛告白節目《非常完美》所蒐集到二十小時的語料，我們提出說服、拒絕、及接受策略的三個理論模型，其中，我們將這些策略分為 (1) 獎勵式策略、(2) 處罰式策略、(3) 利他式策略、(4) 說理式策略，以進一步反映及討論告白情境中的策略使用與模式。研究結果發現，會話者傾向訴諸正向的理性及感性策略如獎勵式策略或說理式策略等方式以期在告白中達到說服、拒絕、或接受等溝通目的。 本論文也提出了告白的整體結構以展現告白言談中會話的特質。研究結果顯示，告白言談主要可分為四個階段：(1) 場景鋪陳、(2) 印象建立和情感告白、(3) 討論與協商、(4) 決議確立；在這個言談結構之中，每一個階段都有不同的溝通目的，會話者的角色也會隨之而有所調整與改變。 透過提出告白中的說服、拒絕、和接受策略的理論模型，以及告白的整體言談結構，本研究深入地描繪了告白語境中的會話及言談特質；除此之外，我們期待能藉著本論文的研究結果，來顯示語言在人類戀愛關係發展中的重要性，使語言學界能夠更重視伴侶的言談，進而使戀愛言談相關研究在未來能蓬勃發展。

The study examines romantic confession as an interactive and co-constructed process of persuasion between romantic confessor and confessee. Specifically, we explore on a micro level the persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies devised by confessor and confessee to achieve communicative purposes. Furthermore, the study investigates on a macro level the discourse structure of romantic confession to demonstrate further the effects of conversational interaction and co-construction between romantic confessor and confessee. It is the goal of the current study to provide new insights on the important role language plays in romantic relationships and suggest the establishment of Romantic Discourse as a field of study in linguistics research. Persuasion, a topic of study that can be traced back to its classical tradition in Greek philology, has long been recognized as the essence of rhetoric and is found to lie at the heart of communication (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008). In the context of romantic confession, the confessor’s intention and goal of communication are to persuade his/her romantic interest into establishing a relationship with him/her. And as for the confessee, the objective is to either reject or accept the persuasion initiated by the confessor. Thus, romantic confession can also be viewed as a form of deliberate persuasive communication in which the interlocutors adopt verbal and nonverbal strategies to influence each other’s views and behaviors. As romantic confession is a collaborative and co-constructed discourse between confessor and confessee, the present study analyzes and examines the data both qualitatively and quantitatively with concepts drawn from Conversation Analysis (CA) and communication studies to probe into the conversational interaction between interlocutors in the process of romantic persuasion. Based on the twenty-hour discourse data collected from the popular reality dating TV show, Perfect Dating, we propose models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies, in which communicative strategies are categorized into (1) reward-based strategies, (2) punishment-based strategies, (3) altruism-based strategies, and (4) rationale-based strategies to represent and discuss the patterns of strategy use in the context of romantic confession. We find that interlocutors in our data prefer using rationally or emotionally appealing strategies such as reward-based or rationale-based strategies to persuade, reject, or accept in romantic confessions. Our study also develops a general structure of romantic confession to further reveal the characteristics of the conversational romantic confession discourse. To be more specific, four stages are identified in the discourse of romantic confession: (1) setting the scene, (2) making impressions & confessing feelings, (3) discussion & negotiation, and (4) coming to a decision. The roles of the interlocutors are found to shift between these stages and each of these stages serves different purposes in the discourse of romantic confession. Through proposing models of persuasive, refusal, and acceptance strategies to study romantic confession on a micro level as well as developing the general structure of romantic confession discourse on a macro level, our study aims to illustrate the context-specific characteristics in romantic confession. In addition, by providing insightful analyses and findings in our study, we seek to demonstrate the crucial role language plays in the development of romantic relationships. It is our goal to direct attention to the discourse between (potential) romantic partners in the field of linguistics and propose the importance for a line of research to contribute to the study of romantic discourse.