ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to examine the discursive construction of identities and conflict management strategies in parent–child conflict narratives written by Chinese university students. The parent–child relationship is one of the most difficult yet intriguing areas of study for researchers from different fields, including communication, sociolinguistics, psychology and sociology. Research on conflict management has explored wide range of relationships and has categorized conflict management strategies based on cultural context types. In the analysis of conflict strategies, the dual concern theory was used as the framework. The strategies the students would like to use in future conflict situations also consisted of six different strategies, but the majority of them belonged to the articulating and integrating strategies. In articulating strategy, students were capable of managing their emotions and were not afraid of saying out loud what they truly felt and thought. Linguistic features, including verbal transitivity processes, were scrutinized to further examine distinct features of the conflict strategies shown in the students' papers.
