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. (shrink)

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 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. (shrink)

This study examines topics that participants discuss in the course of mediation sessions in order to understand how these topics indicate whether a mediation session is on-task or off-task. An existing collection of eighteen transcripts from audio recordings of mediation sessions at a mediation centre in the western United States serves as a source of interactional data. On-task topics are those that contribute to the institutional goal of a mediation session. They are centred on the primary reason for attending a (...) mediation session, necessary conditions and ways to resolve the dispute, factors that can hinder this process, a technical side of this process, and information about involved parties that is relevant to the process. Topics that mediators treat as off-task are those that do not contribute to achieving the institutional goal of interaction. They revolve around the parties’ negative behaviour, financial issues, court process, parties’ interests and private matters. Although mediators have a general idea about what is appropriate to discuss in the course of a session, what is on-task or off-task is negotiated and constructed in the situation. The findings enrich our knowledge of institutional talk, argumentation and communication design. First, the analysis of topics shows how mediators and clients enact institutions through their talk, how institutional mediation talk is, and the tension between the interaction order and the institutional order. Second, topics contribute to shaping disagreement space, and mediators control what can become arguable by introducing institutionally appropriate topics and terminating off-task ones. Third, topics serve as interactional material for creating a specific type of interactivity. (shrink)