Practices of topic and dialogue activity management in dispute mediation

Abstract

This study examines the mediator practices to bring the interaction back on track when the participants of dispute mediation go off-task. An existing collection of 18 transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation center in the western United States serves as a source of interactional data. First, the study examines the moves mediators make to perform interventions to bring the current state of activity more in line with mediation activity. Second, it accounts for the variety of interventions mediators perform by using the concepts of face and facework. The article discusses what the findings mean in terms of mediation, the interaction order, and the institutional order.

The facilitator’s communicative actions to construct meetings in a semi-informal educational context

“…Communication design takes place when there is an intervention into an activity "through the invention of techniques, devices, and procedures that aim to redesign interactivity and thus shape possibilities for communication" (Aakhus 2007, 112). Design work, in this respect, can be observed in different forms such as making interventions in health campaigns (Harrison 2014), creating a learning space (Thompson, Steier, and Ostrenko 2014), crafting interaction in public deliberation (Sprain et al 2014), status meetings (Barbour and Gill 2014), presidential debates (Vasilyeva 2016), and managing disagreement in dispute resolution settings (Aakhus 2003;Vasilyeva 2015Vasilyeva , 2017Harrison 2014).…”

“…The sitting arrangements (i.e., leaders sitting at a large table in the middle of the room while other attendees sitting in the chairs lining the walls), in their turn, were made in accordance with different roles of attendees and with the aim of facilitating the hierarchical flow of information. Among other aspects of design that can facilitate interaction are identity construction and face concerns management (Vasilyeva 2015(Vasilyeva , 2017. This can be seen, for instance, in the work of mediators.…”

“…This can be seen, for instance, in the work of mediators. Mediators manage interaction between the disputants by promoting institutionally appropriate identities (e.g., parents and collaborators in custody mediation) (Vasilyeva 2015) and constructing their interventions in a way that would keep the disputants in the frame of mediation activity without threatening their face (Vasilyeva 2017).…”

The Role of References in Custody Mediation

“…A longer version of this episode and its detailed analysis appear in Vasilyeva (2017) to illustrate a session-centered type of interventions mediators perform to terminate an inappropriate topic.…”

“…Research on mediation demonstrates that mediators use a variety of techniques 1 to manage interaction in the course of the session and help disputants deal with their conflict. For example, they accomplish that by formulating parties' complaints (Stokoe & Sikveland, 2016), using linguistic devices to temporize the dispute, redirect the discussion, and relativize facts (Aakhus, 2003), controlling where in the course of interaction disputants report their position (Garcia, 2000), using requesting directives (Donohue, 1991), employing metaphors (Greco Morasso, 2011), advancing institutionally appropriate participants' identities and dialogue activities and discouraging institutionally dispreferred ones (Vasilyeva, 2012b;2015b), selecting vocabulary items that aim to create communion between disputants (Muraru, 2012), and constructing their interventions in a way that would keep disputants in the frame of the mediation activity without threatening their image (e.g., by providing an account for terminating an institutionally inappropriate activity or topic) (Vasilyeva, 2017).…”