The violation of speech behavior norms as the reason for conflicts in student communication

The article is devoted to the research of speech conflicts in student communication which start because of the speech behavior norms violation. The task is to detect the reasons of such conflicts and to typify them. The material of the research is audiotapes with 186 conflict episodes in the spontaneous speech of Tomsk students. Conflicts related to the violation of speech behavior norms make up 16 % of the overall number of episodes. Speech conflicts, the reason of which is the lack of emotional empathy from communicative partners, are most frequent. It means that the positive emotional condition of one communicative side is not supported by the other side; or the speaking person expects empathy in a hard situation in life and does not get it. We may consider the reaction on whining, which means permanent bothering and complaining from the communicative partner, as a similar kind of speech conflict. Unwillingness to support communication is also a common reason for speech conflicts in student environment. Ignoring of the interlocutor, violation of the etiquette norm, which means that speech communication should prevail over every other kind of activities when a guest comes, are also considered as unfriendly behavior. In some episodes of student communication the reasons for speech conflicts are connected with the violation of the partner respect principle. For example, a speech conflict might start, if the communicative partner becomes an object of jokes. Disrespect to the communicative partner can also be detected when the role expectations of communicative partners are violated. In such case, the speech behavior of people who sees themselves as senior by their status becomes the reason of the conflict. Conflicts caused by slander have also been found. Slander is always expressed as an opened verbalized disapproval of people around with an implied demonstration of one's own superiority to them. Student discourse has speech conflicts the reason of which is the violation of the private sphere. Examples of such conflicts include interrupting others' talk and disclosing intimate information and complaining about the closest people to non-close ones. The ignoring of speech etiquette formulas can be the reason of speech conflict. In episodes when students have a conflict of this kind, they disagree about the estimation of the significance of the traditional markers of etiquette behavior. The group of the represented speech conflicts should be distinguished from conflicts which are similar by appearance, but different by content. In such episodes one communicative partner perceives the interlocutor's speech behavior as deviant, though the other partner does not understand it and does not mean it. Communicative partners' insufficient knowledge of ethics, undeveloped empathy, inability to control negative emotions and aggressive reaction to deviations from normal behavior promote the development of conflicts.

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