Motivation

This section introduces the motivation behind studying romantic confessions as well as the reason for analyzing the data from the perspective of persuasion, refusal, and acceptance.

1.2.1 Why Romantic Confession?

Romantic love and relationship are essential to the life of human beings.

Throughout history, related topics have received much scholarly attention in various disciplines. It is generally agreed by researchers that the formation of romantic relationship serves important biological, psychological, evolutionary, and social purposes to humanity. In the fields of sociology, psychology, communication, and

relationship studies, many researches have been conducted to examine topics such as dating attitude and behavior (Alksnis, Desmarais, and Wood, 1996; Holmberg and MacKenzie, 2002; Bartoli and Clark, 2006; Gao, 2001; Ferng and Yen, 2007; Laner and Ventrone, 2000; Marston, Hecht, and Robers, 1987; Yen, Liu, and Cheng, 2009), relationship development and maintenance (Afifi and Lucas, 2008; Cupach and Spitzberg, 2008; Derlega, Winstead, and Greene, 2008; Knee and Bush, 2008; Graziano and Bruce, 2008; Guerrero and Mongeau, 2008; Metts and Mikucki, 2008; Perlman, 2008; Seki, Matsumoto, and Imahori, 2002; Stafford and Canary, 1991; Wenzel and Kashdan, 2008), and the influence of media on romantic relationships (Ferris et al., 2007; Holmes, 2007). These studies, although not designed specifically to examine the effects of language and communication on romantic relationships, have pointed out the important roles language and communication play on building, maintaining, and improving the romantic life of human beings.

Among all the types of conversations between romantic partners, romantic confession, as one of the earliest persuasions/conversations that allows a romantic relationship to be established, is extra crucial in Asian dating culture. When dating, Asian daters tend to establish an exclusive romantic relationship with a person first before engaging in the “actual” process of dating or sexual activities¹. As pointed out in

1 It should be noted that hookups and one night stands are not discussed in our study. We consider

Ferng and Yen’s (2007) study on the attitude and experience of dating and sexual

behaviors among Taiwanese university students, the majority of the participants in their study have indicated that they would be more comfortable to go out on a date with someone after knowing or befriending that person for two to six months. Furthermore, intimate behaviors such as kissing, caressing upper and lower parts of the body, and having sex are generally considered as behaviors that are unacceptable before a romantic relationship has been established (Ferng and Yen, 2007). As a result, romantic confession is crucial because it allows the possible achievement of two important goals at the initial stage of a romantic relationship – confessing one’s romantic interest and willingness to commit to another person and formulating a romantic relationship.

Without this conversation between potential partners, further romantic development for the two to advance as a couple would be quite unlikely to happen in Asian dating cultures.

Past researches in the field of relationship initiation have also supported the view that conversation and communication are crucial in the developing stages of romantic relationships. In order for acquaintances or friends to move on to the next level and become lovers, they would need to rely on communication and self-disclosure to deepen the bond and make that friends-to-lovers transition (Guerrero and Mongeau, 2008;

hookup are different and should not be discussed as similar concepts (Bogle, 2008; Glenn and Marquardt,

Derlega, Winstead, and Greene; 2008). As a result, studies on romantic confession, a conversation that allows one to not only disclose his or her feelings towards another person but also propose romantic relationship establishment, will provide us with further insights into the dynamics between language, love, and romantic relationship and how romantic relationships are formed through persuasion and negotiation. For this reason, the focus of our study is the discourse of romantic confession.

1.2.2 Why Persuasion, Refusal, and Acceptance?

Persuasion, a topic of study that can be traced back to its classical tradition in Greek philology, has long been recognized as the essence of rhetoric and is found to lie at the heart of communication (Burke, 1969; Hartelius and Browning, 2008). According

to Burke (1969: 72), “Wherever there is persuasion, there is rhetoric. And wherever there is meaning, there is persuasion.” These words illustrate the pervasiveness of

persuasion in both deliberate persuasive communication as well as everyday conversation. Many studies have also been conducted to examine the verbal and nonverbal strategies used by interlocutors in persuasion and propose models to illustrate the characteristic of persuasions in different situational contexts (See Chapter 2 for further review on this topic).

In the context of romantic confession, since the main goals for a confessor to

the establishment a romantic relationship, it can be seen that a romantic confession is a process of persuasion in which the confessor is trying to convince the confessee to form

a romantic relationship with him/her while the confessee is attempting to reject or accept the confessor’s offer. Thus, throughout the discourse of romantic confession, the

confessors’ utterances are in fact specific strategies devised in order to convince the confessees to take the offer of becoming romantically involved, whereas the confessees’

utterances are strategies adopted to co-construct and direct the confession into an ending in which the decision of relationship establishment will be made.

In the field of conversation analysis and communication studies, researches of persuasive strategies and refusal strategies are often conducted to investigate human behaviors and verbal interactions in different contexts (Beebe, Takahashi, and Uliss-Weltz, 1990; Chen and Zhang, 1995; Dillard, Segrin, and Harden, 1989; Harper and Hirokawa, 1988; Kitzinger and Frith, 1999; Liao, 1994; Marwell and Schmitt, 1967;

Newton and Burgoon, 1990; Schenck‐Hamlin Wiseman, and Georgacarakos., 1982;

Takahashi and Beebe, 1987; Yang, 2008). These studies provided us further views on how communicative functions (i.e., persuasion, refusal, and acceptance) are achieved through strategic planning. Nonetheless, these researches often remained on a semantic or pragmatic level and concentrated on either persuasion or refusal. Although examples of strategies were given, the contexts in which these strategies were used were not

analyzed in detail. Furthermore, these studies had focused primarily on the person who conducted the persuasion or refusal, so the effects of interaction and co-construction between interlocutors were not examined (See Chapter 2 for more details). In order to bridge research gaps and to provide a thorough analysis on the discourse of romantic confession, it is the goal of the current study to examine the role of both interlocutors from the perspective of persuasion, refusal, and acceptance. We aim to inspect how confessors and confessees adopt strategies to achieve communicative purposes as well as study the effect of interaction and co-construction on a discourse level in romantic confessions.