Psycho-Social Context Negotiation in Young Sheldon Family Conflict Discourse: An Adaptation Theory Analysis

Conflict discourse is a common and complex linguistic phenomenon in interpersonal communication. As a typical type of conflict discourse, family conflict discourse not only has the general characteristics of conflict discourse but also presents unique interaction rules due to the particularity of kinship relations. Young Sheldon provides a high-quality corpus for the analysis of family conflict discourse with its diverse character identities and authentic daily interaction scenarios, making the relevant discourse analysis highly representative and referential. Existing studies mostly focus on the static description of strategies in family conflict discourse, yet they fail to further explore how family members dynamically adapt to each other’s psychological and social worlds through discourse choices during conflict interactions, nor do they fully reveal the actual process of relational negotiation behind such discursive practices. Based on the psychological world and social world of contextual factors in Verschueren’s Adaptation Theory, this paper conducts a micro-level dynamic analysis of family conflict discourse in Young Sheldon in four stages: triggering, escalation, intervention/transformation, and outcome. It attempts to break through the limitations of static analysis in previous studies, and also provides specific theoretical references and practical insights for understanding discursive interaction in daily family communication.

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