Disaffiliation and discord in ordinary Chinese (Mandarin) social interaction

The following dissertation considers the practices involved in disaffiliation and discord in ordinary conversation. Although human interaction is biased towards affiliation, disaffiliation and discord do occur sometimes, and rather little research has focused on the systematic description of the dynamics of disaffiliation. The analysis of this dissertation is based on the data collected from mainland China by myself, consisting 10 hours of in-person interaction between family and friends. This dissertation explores (1) some of the practices employed by the interactants when they display their disaffiliative status, ranging from implicit to explicit disaffiliative expression, and (2) the dynamics of disaffiliation, how it emerges and can escalate into a rather explicit conflict, and how social cohesion is disturbed by explicit disaffiliation.