A Pragmatic Analysis of Deliberate Offensive Utterances in Interpersonal Conflicts

This paper probes into the deliberate offensive utterances in conflict interaction between husband and wife with equal social status from a pragmatic perspective. The utterances are found confrontational and aggressive and their offensiveness is realized by linguistic devices of blaming, ridiculing, threatening and abusing; some negative pragmatic forces are implied in interaction.This study has verified the rapportchallenge orientation of deliberate offensive utterances in interpersonal conflict, thus supports the rapport management framework proposed by SpencerOatey\9\.