Argumentative Talk in Divorce Mediation Sessions

Increasingly, mediation is used as an alternative to institutionalized forms of conflict resolution in which settlements are imposed by judges, arbitrators, or other neutral adjudicators. To assess the equity and effectiveness of the various types of mediation, it is first necessary to explain how mediators and disputants manage their interactions. In this paper the authors analyze the management of arguments in sessions recorded at a divorce mediation agency. They find that the disputants do not always rely on mediators to initiate exits from their arguments. Instead they initiate exits on their own, often closing their argumentative exchanges without the mediators'assistance. The practices used to exit arguments in the sessions are prevalent in ordinary conversation, but their use here exhibits an orientation to conventions associated with mediation. This limits both the duration of arguments and the intensity of verbal conflict. Their findings raise important questions about the interactional organization of mediation sessions; they discuss these questions in light of previous research on verbal conflict in mediation hearings organized to preclude argument