This article examines how mediators contribute to formulating a particular type of interactivity by bringing to the forefront institutionally appropriate identities of participants. 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. The study shows that mediators act as designers to construct mediation as a collaborative activity. They invoke identities as an exercise in articulating what is possible in this interaction and exerting control over interactants. Mediators are not just doing what is appropriate for this institutional context; their actions are an act of constructing identities out of what is available there. Participants can act in different ways (e.g., as an ex-husband and an ex-wife). However, relative to the institutional agenda of the meeting, they are encouraged to perform in the capacity of parents and to be collaborators.
This study examines 18 transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation center in the western United States to explore argumentation in the context of mediation activity. The mediation sessions involve divorced or divorcing couples attempting to create or repair a plan for child custody arrangements. The study takes a conversational argument approach and investigates what is the relationship between interaction and reasoning, how disagreement is managed, and how the mediator’s contributions construct an institutionally preferred form of interactivity. The analysis shows that the mediation activity is accomplished through various dialogue activities. The article makes two claims. Firstly, argument and reasoning are constituted through interaction that imposes various constraints on what contributions are appropriate in mediation talk. Secondly, dialogue activities that mediators initiate can be considered as strategic moves that they make to achieve the institutional goal of the meeting.
The study explores verbal conflict in an institutional context and examines how the election debate format and the moderators’ actions contribute to the emergence of confrontation between themselves and the debaters, what communicative practices the debaters use to resist an institutionally preferred form of interactivity, and how the moderators manage this situation. The findings show that conflict arises around face concerns and violations of the institutional order. The debaters make a number of moves to challenge the moderators and the debate format, such as addressing questions to the moderators, criticizing the moderators, disagreeing with them, refusing to respond to their questions, explicitly questioning the rules of the debate, and aligning with other candidates. The moderators manage conflict by giving the floor to another candidate, minimally acknowledging a candidate’s move, providing an account for their action, agreeing with a candidate, indicating a violation of institutional rules, and not responding to a candidate’s move.
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.
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