Constructing Authority in Family Conflict Talk: A Cross-cultural Discourse Study of Friends and Home with Kids

Department of Languages Science and Technology, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

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Abstract

This study investigates how authority is constructed and resisted in family conflict talk in the Chinese sitcom Home with Kids and the American sitcom Friends. Focusing on domestic conflicts among parents, children, and family-like household members, it adopts a cross-cultural discourse analytic approach to control for institutional setting. Chinese data come from subtitle-based transcripts of Home with Kids (Season 1), cross-checked against selected episodes, and English data from online transcripts of Friends (Seasons 1–3). Conflict scenes are located through keyword searches (e.g., have to, must, not allowed, rules, my place and Mandarin equivalents) and filtered using operational definitions of “conflict event” and “authority talk.” Each conflict is coded for setting, relationship configuration, conflict trigger, authority resources, and response types. The analysis shows that both series use roles, rules, moral evaluations, and boundary claims to enact authority, but Home with Kids foregrounds parental responsibility and educational goals, whereas Friends highlights personal boundaries and autonomy.