Conversational Conflicts as Gestalten

In the present paper, we begin with a clarification of the theoretical-methodological background and a definition of conflictual conversations. Following this, we attempt to demonstrate how, leaving aside specific content and the particular interlocutors involved, these dialogical activities are organized in recursive Gestalten and are easily identifiable -both on the macrostructural level -and on the microstructural level, i.e. on the level of conversational sequences and turns which are made up of linguistic and rhetorical meta-communicative choices. These are identifiable as strategies which together help to build and fuel the conversational conflict. In order to analyse the conversational structure of conflicts, we have studied a corpus of 50 natural, ordinary conversations which we can label broadly as “familiar” since the interlocutors are all bound by important ties of affection.