Managing conﬂict talk in language classrooms Kara S. Panolong Benguet State University, Philippines ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Psycholinguistics Language education Teacher-student talk 1. Introduction Understanding the nature of conﬂict has interest language re- searchers’ take especially in the ﬁeld of sociolinguistics, pragmatics and on the methodologies of conversation analysis and discourse analysis. In language discourse, this study is termed as conﬂict talk. In a conﬂict talk, participants oppose the utterances, actions or selves of one another in successive turns (Zhao, 2004). It is the oppositional positions (Stewart & Maxwell, 2010) among participants. It has taken terms such as dispute (Corsaro & Rizzo, 1988), disagreement (Pomerantz, 1984), argument (Thornborrow, 2007), adversative episode (Eisenberg & Garvey, 1981) and oppositional exchanges (Goodwin & Goodwin, 1987). Conﬂict talk is emergent in any discourse thus the relativity and differences in the fea- tures of the talk present and its possible resolution. A conﬂict talk starts through an initial disagreement expressed in terms of preferences (Leung, 2005) but does not occur in all contexts. Furthermore, conﬂict talk, once it begins can follow a bewildering array of trajectories since it is a cooperative endeavor achieved by two or more participants which may be affected by different factors (Leung, 2005). Conﬂict talk occurs due to speciﬁc rhetoric features, communicative styles, ironic and sarcastic speech modality (Kallmeyer & Keim, 1996), verbal communication styles and thinking patterns (Chen & Starosta, 1997-8), gender and instructions received before negotiation (Giv on, 1997) and limits of the language in the case of English (Cohen, 2001). As conﬂicts arise in many settings even in institutions and classrooms, the global educator has a responsibility to manage conﬂicts. Global educators not only prepare the students for a global age but also in showing the rest to prepare citizens to embrace multiple loyalties to communities, nations, and the planet (Merryﬁeld, 2002). In the ﬁeld then of language education, teachers do not only study language itself but the surrounding factors and aspects that affect the language and its management. In early researches, Grimshaw (1990) compiled studies of conﬂict talk in a sociolinguistic point of view. Studies such as Corsaro and Rizzo (1988) looked at conﬂict talk among children in the United States and Italy and termed it as disputes. The disputes in the school setting, speciﬁcally in the play area were seen to be similar between these two countries and the possibility of universals may also be true in conﬂict talk. Meanwhile, Eder (1985) focused on adolescent children; all females in a cafeteria setting and found out those new lan- guage skills are acquired in early adolescence and that different peer groups expose adolescents to different conﬂict styles. Goodwin and Goodwin (1987) investigated conﬂict talk in the street where youngsters exhibit behavior to construct an appropriate response. Further, Vuchi- nich (1984) studied how conﬂict talk is terminated in family dinner conversations of children with their parents. Studies on adult conﬂict talk were also pursued in narratives (Labov, 1980), legal proceedings (Phi- lips, 1990), and union meetings (O’Donnell, 1990). Features of silence as a component of talk in literature and plays (Basso, 1970; Tannen, 1985, pp. 93–111) were also investigated. These earlier studies became the starting point of further studies in conﬂict talk. Hasund and Strenstrom (1997) conﬁrmed the study of Eder (1985) who compared the verbal disputes between adolescent females in two corpora. They found out that certain types of conﬂict talk are linked to social class. Furthermore, communicative practices, including those associated with conﬂict talk, language(s) spoken by a speech community, as well as the members’ paralinguistic practices and functional practices emerge as a result of the sociocultural factors operating upon and within the community over time (Thornborrow, 2014). Also, Leung (2005) made a comprehensive review of researches of discourse analysis of conﬂict talk, its conceptualization, mechanisms and factors by which conﬂict talk can be initiated, main- tained or escalated, and terminated. The researcher calls for a method- ological issue of the missing data and detailed analyses of conﬂict talk in a variety of contexts. In researches on pragmatics, conﬂict talk was found to have a dual orientation in which speakers negotiate their own agenda while simultaneously orienting towards the viewpoint of the partner E-mail address: k.panolong@bsu.edu.ph. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Social Sciences & Humanities Open journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ssaho https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100012 Received 16 July 2019; Received in revised form 17 December 2019; Accepted 19 December 2019 Available online 4 February 2020 2590-2911/© 2020 The Author. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc- nd/4.0/). Social Sciences & Humanities Open 2 (2020) 100012