This study investigates family conflict talk in a computer-mediated environment from a language-in-interaction focus. It is based
on two different data sets of six WhatsApp groups that feature arguing British families, and of six WhatsApp groups that feature
arguing Spanish families. It looks at the different linguistic strategies that participants deploy when taking up opposing stances
on a given issue. Through a detailed discourse analysis of the conflict-based episodes in English and Spanish, the results not
only show a differentiated linguistic process in the way(s) in which the study participants managed conflict, but also suggest
that smartphone-mediated interpersonal conflict needs to be understood as an attempt to inhabit legitimate subject positions in
and through discourse.
2002 “Speakers’ Footing in a Collaborative Writing Task: A Resource for Addressing Disagreement While Avoiding Conflict.” Research on Language and Social Interaction 351: 481–514.
Boxer, Diana
2011The Lost Art of the Good Schmooze: Building Rapport and Defusing Conflict in Everyday Talk. New York: Praeger Publications.
Brenneis, Donald
1988 “Language and Disputing.” Annual Review of Anthropology 171: 221–237.
Brenneis, Donald, and Laura Lein
1977 “ ‘You Fruithead’: A Sociolinguistic Approach to Children’s Dispute Settlement.” In Child Discourse, edited by Susan Ervin-Tripp and Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, 49–65. New York: Academic Press.
Burleson, Brant
2003 “The Experience and Effects of Emotional Support: What the Study of Cultural and Gender Differences Can Tell Us about Close Relationships, Emotion, and Interpersonal Communication.” Personal Relationships 101: 1–23.
Butler, Judith
1993Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of ‘Sex’. New York: Routledge.
Church, Amelia
2016Preference Organisation and Peer Disputes: How Young Children Resolve Conflict. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cox, Andrew
2005 “What Are Communities of Practice? A Comparative Review of Four Seminal Works.” Journal of Information Science 31(6): 527–540.
Diego Vallejo, Raúl de, and Carlos Guillén Gestoso
2008Mediación: Proceso, Tácticas y Técnicas. Madrid: Pirámide.
Eisenberg, Ann, and Catherine Garvey
1981 “Children’s Use of Verbal Strategies in Resolving Conflicts.” Discourse Processes 4(2): 149–170.
2002 “A Cognitive Approach to Topic Management in Verbal Duels on American Talkshows.” Studies in English Language and Linguistics 41: 145–170.
García-Gómez, Antonio
2007Habla Conflictiva como Acción Social. Discurso y Cognición. Oviedo: Septem Ediciones.
García-Gómez, Antonio
2012 “Perceptions of Assertiveness among Women: Triggering and Managing Conflict in Reality Television.” Discourse & Communication 6(4): 379–399.
Giles, Howard, Justine Coupland, and Nikolas Coupland
1991Contexts of Accommodation. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Goodwin, Marjorie H.
1990He-said-she-said: Talk as Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Grimshaw, Allen D.
1990Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations in Conversations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hamelink, Cees
2011Media and Conflict: Escalating Evil. London: Paradigm.
Holt, Jennifer, and Cynthia DeVore
2005 “Culture, Gender, Organizational Role, and Styles of Conflict Resolution: A Meta-analysis.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 29(2): 165–196.
Hutchby, Ian
1996Confrontation Talk: Arguments, Asymmetries, and Power on Talk Radio. Matwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Hutchby, Ian
2001 “ ‘Witnessing’: The Use of First-hand Knowledge in Legitimating Lay Opinions on Talk Radio.” Discourse Studies 3(4): 481–497.
Janicki, Karol
2015Language and Conflict. Selected Issues. London: Palgrave.
Karney, Benjamin, and Bradbury, Thomas
2000 “Attributions in Marriage: State or Trait? A Growth Curve Analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 781: 295–309.
Kress, Gunther
2010Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London & New York: Routledge.
Lee, Daniel
1997 “Frame Conflicts and Competing Construals in Family Argument.” Journal of Pragmatics 271: 339–360.
Leung, Alicia
2008 “Interpersonal Conflict and Resolution Strategies: An Examination of Hong Kong Employees.” Team Performance Management: An International Journal 14(3–4): 165–178.
Lorenzo-Duz, Nuria
2008 “Real Disorder in the Court: An Investigation of Conflict Talk in US Television Courtroom Shows.” Media, Culture and Society 30(1): 81–107.
Maíz-Arévalo, Carmen
2018 “Emotional Self-presentation on WhatsApp: Analysis of the Profile Status.” Russian Journal of Linguistics 22(1): 144–160.
Maynard, Douglas
1985 “How Children Start Arguments.” Language in Society 141: 1–29.
Merriam, Sharon
2009Qualitative Case Study Research Qualitative research: a guide to design and implementation. Retrieved from: [URL].
Mitchell-Kernan, Claudia
1972 “Signifying and Marking: Two African-American Speech Acts.” In Directions in Sociolinguistics: The Ethnography of Communication, edited by John Gumperz and Dell Hymes, 161–179. New York: Holt.
Pérez-Sabater, Carmen
2015 “Discovering Language Variation in WhatsApp Text Interactions.” Onomázein: Revista Semestral de Lingüística, Filología y Traducción 31(1): 113–126.
Pomerantz, Anita
1984 “Agreeing and Disagreeing with Assessments: Some Features of Preferred/Dispreferred Turn Shapes”. In Structures of Social Action, edited by Maxwell Atkinson and John Heritage, 152–163. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pomerantz, Anita, and Jenny Mandelbaum
2005 “A Conversation Analytic Approach to Relationships.” In Handbook of Language and Social Interaction, edited by Kristine Fitch and Robert Sanders, 149–171. Mahwah, NJ: Laurence Erlbaum.
Sánchez-Moya, Alfonso, and Olga Cruz-Moya
2015 “WhatsApp, Textese, and Moral Panics: Discourse Features and Habits across Two Generations.” Procedia – Social and Behavioural Sciences 1731: 300–306.
Sanderson, Catherine, and Kim Karetsky
2002 “Intimacy Goals and Strategies of Conflict Resolution in Dating Relationships: A Mediational Analysis.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 19(3): 317–337.
Schiffrin, Deborah
1984 “Jewish Argument as Sociability.” Language in Society 131: 311–335.
Simmel, Georg
1955 [1908]Conflict and The Web of Group Affiliations. New York: Free Press.
Solomon, Denise, and Jennifer Theiss
2013Interpersonal Communication. Putting Theory into Practice. New York: Routledge.
Sulaiman, Ainin, and Muzamil Naqshbandi
2014Social Media: Dynamism, Issues and Challenges. Singapore: Partridge Publishing.
Tsui, Amy
1994English Conversation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2012 “Mobile Learning with Twitter to Improve Linguistic Competence at Secondary Schools.” The New Educational Review 29(3): 134–147.
Vuchinich, Samuel
1990 “The Sequential Organization of Closing in Verbal Family Conflict”. In Conflict talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations in Conversations, edited by Allen Grimshaw, 118–138. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Yus, Francisco
2017 “Contextual Constraints and Non-propositional Effects in WhatsApp Communication.” Journal of Pragmatics 1141: 66–86.
2021. Online disagreement in WhatsApp groups: A comparative study of Spanish family members and work colleagues. Discourse & Communication 15:5 ► pp. 542 ff.
García-Gómez, Antonio
2022. Learning through WhatsApp: students’ beliefs, L2 pragmatic development and interpersonal relationships. Computer Assisted Language Learning 35:5-6 ► pp. 1310 ff.
Kohne, Julian, Jon D. Elhai & Christian Montag
2023. A Practical Guide to WhatsApp Data in Social Science Research. In Digital Phenotyping and Mobile Sensing [Studies in Neuroscience, Psychology and Behavioral Economics, ], ► pp. 171 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 28 november 2023. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.