Conflict is everywhere. You watch the news and most of it is about conflict of different sorts; from the senate to the streets. Actually, there is conflict in anything that we see on T.V; be it advertisements, movies, and sitcoms. It only tells us that conflict is a part of reality and we have to learn to deal with it. But not all are good at dealing with conflict; there are different ways on how people respond to it.

Face Negotiation Theory explains the different reasons why people get into conflict, how they react to the conflict and how they resolve it. To give illustrations of the aforementioned, I choose to use two episodes from sitcoms as examples. The first one is an episode from How I Met your Mother and the next from Modern Family.

The Chain of Screaming

In this episode, Marshall is faced with how to deal with Arthur; his fuming boss who would scream at his employees when they haven’t done things right. Now, Marshall failed to finish the “The Ninja Report” he needed to pass to Arthur, as a result, Arthur screamed at him and got so angry that Marshall was very embarrassed. Because of this, Marshall suddenly cried like a baby in front of Arthur and thus lost his face—he failed in his goal and Arthur embarrassed him in the office.

Marshall  must the Ninja Report to Arthur the next day so he is problematic as to how to face him. He confided his problem with his friends Ted, Robin, Barney and his wife, Lily. Each of them suggested as to how Marshall should face Arthur. Robin suggested that Marshall scare Arthur with a gun so that Arthur will no longer bully him. Clearly, Robin wants Marshall to dominate over Arthur. This is to win the competition. Robin also suggested passive aggression where the showing of the gun is the indirect solution of the problem. Ted disagreed with Robin and proposed to use face assertion as a method. He suggested that Marshall impresses Arthur with an eloquent speech about human dignity. This is to present his side in an honorable manner. Yet the group disagreed with him since it’s hard to pull off an impromptu eloquent speech. And so Marshall‘s wife Lily advice Marshall to be constructive and positive when dealing with a person like Arthur. This is integrating where Lily wanted Marshall to present solutions to Arthur about the problem.  And again, the group disagreed with Lily since she seemed to treat Arthur like a child from her kindergarten class. The last member of the group Barney suggested something different, to ignore the screaming or bullying of Arthur. He gave an example about his then colleague who was also screamed by Arthur in front of the other employees. That person was Garry Baulman. He couldn’t take Arthur’s attitude and so fought back, spoke against Arthur, and tried to pee on the conference table to insult Arthur. That is also a form of domination. Barney gave Baulman as an example because when he quit his job, he went through unpleasant things and died.

Did Marshall follow any of his friends' advice? No, he didn’t. He was insulted and he couldn’t take it so went to Arthur’s office and dominated over him by shouting at Arthur. And so he was fired.

Dance, Dance Revelation 

Modern Family is a sitcom that revolves around three families who are always tangled with conflicts. In this episode, the conflict is between the couple cam and Mitchell versus a mom, Jay versus Phil, and Claire versus Gloria.

Cam and Mitchell versus a mom

Cam and Mitchell are a gay couple who adopted the Vietnamese baby, Lily. They were in a park and a mom approached them about Lily biting her son. Confident that Lily does not bite kids, the gay couple did not believe the mom and blamed another kid. The mom believed them but when they got in the car, Lily bit Cam proving the mom’s accusation. To save their face, they drove the car and flee.

Jay versus Phil

Phil is Jay’s son-in-law but he never seemed to like him. In this episode, they took the kids ( Manny and Luke) to the mall to buy necessities for their school dance. The conflict began when Phil, who was driving, allowed another driver take their spot in the parking lot. For Jay, Phil should have fought for the spot. He felt like they lost their face because the spot was taken from them and their face must be restored but for Phil, it’s just a parking space and there are still many spots so there’s nothing wrong at being nice. And this attitude of Phil is face giving. Phil gave the spot to the other guy and it’s no big deal for him.Jay wouldn’t let this pass and continued irritating Phil with it. Phil run out of patience and walked out. He then avoided the conflict. Later, Jay resolved the conflict by explaining the reason of his attitude towards Phil. He apologized and through that he gave face to Phil.

Claire versus Gloria

Gloria is Jay’s second wife and Claire is his daughter from his first wife. The two are of the same age but Gloria is a sizzling sexy Latina. They were co-chairman for the school’s dance but Claire did not want Gloria’s participation but Gloria insisted. Claire feels like everything is about Gloria and so she must have the school dance as her thing and maintain the other moms’ admiration for her. During the school dance, Claire bursts out and shouts at Gloria. To resolve the conflict, Gloria approached Claire. They both expressed their emotions and the true reasons why they acted as such in the school dance.

These examples from How I meet your Mother and Modern Family are realistic in such a manner that they really happen in a real context. So when we are also involved in a conflict, we can choose to be Marshall and try to dominate  or be Jay and Gloria who resolved the conflict in a good way.