Power Play via Speech Acts in Workplace Meeting Negotiations: Authority, Influence and Resistance

Workplace meeting negotiations are crucial communicative spaces where organizational actors exchange information, negotiate solutions, and make decisions. Drawing on Speech Act Theory and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this qualitative study investigates how speech acts function as mechanisms of authority, influence, and resistance. Data comprise five transcribed, naturally occurring meeting negotiations between representatives from a Malaysian Company (MC) and an Iranian Company (IC) addressing operational issues. Utterances were analyzed across four stage (speech act coding, functional interpretation, CDA, and cross-case comparison) using Searle taxonomy and Fairclough framework. Findings reveal that authority was enacted through directives and declaratives (commands, warnings, decisions), while influence relied on assertives and commissives (explanations, commitments). Resistance emerged through assertives and expressives, utilizing hedging, humor, and indirect disagreement to challenge authority without disrupting harmony. Ultimately, the study demonstrates that power in negotiations is not fixed but continuously constructed, negotiated, and contested. By integrating Speech Act Theory and CDA, this research contributes to workplace discourse literature, providing a comprehensive understanding of how linguistic actions shape authority, influence, and resistance during organizational decision-making.