Argumentative and other communicative strategies of the mediation practice

338 Pages·2009·2.64 MB·English

Argumentative and other communicative strategies of
the mediation practice

A dissertation presented by
Sara Greco Morasso

Supervised by
Prof. Eddo Rigotti

Submitted to the
Faculty of Communication Sciences
University of Lugano

for the degree of
Ph.D. in Communication Sciences

December 2008
Board

Supervisor:
Prof. Eddo Rigotti

Board members (external reviewers):
Prof. Frans H. van Eemeren (University of Amsterdam)
Prof. Anne-Nelly Perret-Clermont (University of Neuchâtel)

The present research has been conducted at the Università della Svizzera italiana

Officially submitted to the Faculty of Communication sciences, Università della
Svizzera italiana, in December 2008

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Abstract
The success mediation is experiencing in several societal domains (Sander 1979;
Moffitt and Bordone 2005) is mainly bound to the possibility that this practice offers to
find a win-win solution that truly meets the parties’ interests (Princen 1992a; Menkel-
Meadow 2005).
This possibility is exclusively supported by communicative instruments and,
specifically, by means of argumentation. In mediation, in fact, the parties are competent
and responsible for the decision on the conflict, while the mediator not only intervenes
as a third neutral, but he/she is also not held and not authorized to advance proper
standpoints or arguments in favour of a specific outcome (van Eemeren et al. 1993):
what he/she is in charge of doing is to stimulate parties to discuss reasonably, to
motivate them to find a solution of the conflict, and to keep trace of their zones of
agreement.
Indeed, what the mediator properly does is helping the parties’ assumption of an
argumentative attitude; in fact, in successful mediation, two conflicting individuals,
entrenched in an escalating spiral of hostility, become co-arguers, able to tackle their
differences of opinion by means of reasonable discussion.
A relevant question becomes, thus, understanding how mediators can help and
foster such a radical change in the parties’ attitude and how this actually contributes to
the happy fulfilment of the mediation goal, namely to the resolution of the conflict.

In order to answer this question, the present dissertation has been organized
along two main research focuses.
First, a comprehensive ontological framework of mediation conceived of as an
interaction scheme (Rigotti and Rocci 2006) has been reconstructed. This framework
allows considering all relevant factors and their relations in the context of the mediation
script from its origin, namely some form of conflict (Yarn 1999), to its short-term and
long-term outcomes. Its elicitation has required a conceptual analysis of mediation based
on a reasoned interdisciplinary synthesis of different scientific approaches (see among
others Wall, Stark and Standifer 2001; Herrman, Hollett and Gale 2006).
Second, using this framework as a term of comparison, an argumentative
analysis of mediation has been proposed, based on empirical evidence of a corpus of
successful cases. The analysis shows how mediation encompasses a macro-text of
argumentative discussions that allows the fulfilment of the pragmatic goal of conflict
resolution. The mediator’s argumentative activity emerges, in particular, in relation to a
wise management of the topical potential (van Eemeren and Houtlosser 2002).
Mediators have a determinant influence in setting up the parties’ discussion, in particular
in relation to the creation of an “argumentative space” based on a sound confrontation
stage and to the analysis of the parties’ conflict and of the relationships it jeopardizes (in
the opening stage). As the discussion proceeds, parties progressively manage it
themselves, by assuming an argumentative attitude.
A key to explain the parties’ change is constituted by the consideration of their
interests. Some moves allowing to evoke interests, like presupposition accommodation
(Greco 2003; Cigada 2008), have emerged in the analysis. In this way, the present
research explains how, through argumentative means, mediators manage to focus on
interests rather than on the parties’ claimed positions (Fisher, Ury and Patton 1991), not
rarely discovering that these interests are not incompatible but even mutually inclusive.
These outcomes represent actual advances in the theoretical understanding of
mediation and in the investigation of the role played in this practice by argumentative
processes. They also provide a basis to design aware conflict resolution interventions.

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“Quello quello cos’è, mamma?”

Questa, Giacomo, è la tesi della mamma.
Non è colorata come il libro della fattoria; non ci sono le
mucche che tornano dal pascolo e la rana (cra cra) nello
stagno e il cavallo grigio nascosto dietro l’albero.
Ma è stata scritta per te ed è dedicata a te…

Acknowledgements

A dissertation is never a soliloquy…My sincere thanks thus go to all those persons who
helped me in developing this research both at the scientific and at the personal level.

First of all, I am indebted to the colleagues whom I have been working with at the
Institute for linguistics and semiotics at USI in these years, for their argumentative and
friendly support. I would like to start with my supervisor, Eddo Rigotti; thanks also to
Andrea Rocci and to my post-doc and PhD colleagues: Sabrina Mazzali-Lurati, Sabine
Christopher-Guerra, Rudi Palmieri, Radouan Jelassi, Camilla Palmieri, Joëlle
Stoudmann and (in more recent times) Agatha Filimon, Marcio Monteiro, Gergana
Zlatkova, Antonio Bova and our “special guest” from Kazakhstan, Lyazzat Kimanova.

This research has also been growing in dialogue with other colleagues from the
Università della Svizzera italiana and with scholars from many other countries. At USI, I
would like to mention in particular Maria Caiata-Zufferey, Martin Eppler, Marco Maggi,
Johanna Miecznikowski, Mauro Martinoni and Stefano Tardini. I am indebted to
scholars of the Amsterdam school of argumentation, with whom I have regularly had
challenging discussions, especially on the occasion of the Amsterdam-Lugano colloquia.
A special thought goes to Peter Houtlosser (I hope to have accomplished, in this
dissertation, the scientific challenge you proposed to me…). I would also like to thank
my colleagues at the Institute for Psychology and education at the University of
Neuchâtel for their interest in interdisciplinary confrontation and for having welcomed
me in their research group. Moreover, I am indebted to all the Argumentum colleagues,
to Marcelo Dascal from Tel Aviv University and to Sarah Bigi, Sara Cigada and the
other friends of the Department of foreign languages and literatures at the Catholic
University of Milan.

My dissertation has very much benefited from advice by several professional mediators,
in particular in Ticino. My thanks go to Marianne Galli-Widmer, whose experience and
passion have been so important to me, and to the other colleagues of the Comitee of the
Associazione Ticinese per la Mediazione and of the professional mediation course I have
participated in.

I am grateful to the staff of the library of the Biblioteca Universitaria di Lugano who
helped me in some difficult investigations about books and documents. We have a small
library but… great librarians.

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Many many thanks go to my “original” family, the Greco(s), including my parents, my
brother, the grandparents plus zia Nice and all the others. They raised me in a fruitfully
argumentative environment. Many thanks also to the “acquired” family, the Morasso(s).
Nonna Marcella and nonno Fausto deserve a very special mention because they have
been looking after Giacomo while I was in the process of concluding this dissertation.

I would also like to cordially thank several friends who have been very important to me
and helped me in this work maybe more than they can imagine. I shall not list their
names, because of space reasons; yet I hope that each of them will feel personally
quoted.

Last but not least, the two most important mentions. First, a strong thankful hug to
Giacomo. Some naive observers might think that you have slowed down the process of
writing… on the opposite, mama knows that you made it possible (in different senses).
Finally, infinite thanks to Carlo, who has always supported me before and after
becoming my husband, and who eventually managed to become a PhD (in medicinal
chemistry) before me (he won our race, actually). This dissertation is at least half your
merit.
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Table of contents

1 Introduction................................................................................................................9
1.1 From disputants to co-arguers: a change of attitude..........................................9
1.2 Whether and how argumentation supports the pragmatic goals of mediation.15
1.3 Structure of the dissertation.............................................................................17
2 Mediation and its social role....................................................................................22
2.1 From conflict to conflict resolution practices..................................................22
2.2 A concise history of formal and informal practices of mediation...................25
2.3 1976: the “Big Bang” of Alternative Dispute Resolution practices................30
2.4 Mediation and other ADR practices: the special “thirdness” of the mediator.32
2.5 Different contexts of application of mediation................................................40
2.6 Scientific and professional approaches to the study of mediation...................56
2.6.1 Disciplinary perspectives........................................................................56
2.6.2 Towards the birth of a unitary research and teaching field.....................58
2.6.3 Professional careers: how to become a mediator....................................60
3 Approaches to the conceptual analysis of mediation...............................................65
3.1 The precept-based approach: collections of practice-guiding tools.................66
3.1.1 Strategies that define mediator profiles...................................................71
3.1.2 Framing and reframing strategies............................................................75
3.2 The theoretical and methodological reflection................................................80
3.2.1 The scenario perspective.........................................................................81
3.2.2 The script perspective............................................................................100
4 Towards an ontological framework of mediation..................................................110
4.1 The parties’ relationship: reconstruction of a model of context....................112
4.2 Conflict: the starting point of any mediation practice...................................122
4.2.1 Defining conflict....................................................................................122
4.2.2 Overview of different scientific approaches to conflict........................124
4.2.3 Semantic analysis of conflict and related terms....................................129
4.2.4 The degeneration of disagreement into a proper interpersonal conflict138
4.2.5 Towards a new “conflict mapping guide”.............................................145
4.3 Proposal of a comprehensive ontology..........................................................149
5 Argumentative analysis: objectives, theoretical instruments and methods............154
5.1 Objectives of the argumentative analysis......................................................154
5.2 Theoretical instruments.................................................................................155
5.2.1 Preliminary remarks on the nature of argumentation............................156
5.2.2 The model of a critical discussion as a grid for the analysis.................160
5.2.3 The notion of strategic manoeuvring as an instrument to understand the
mediator’s contribution to argumentation..............................................................162
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5.2.4 The Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT): analysis of the inferential
structure of arguments...........................................................................................164
5.2.5 Argumentation as a communicative interaction...................................174
5.3 Methodology.................................................................................................177
5.3.1 The analysis of argumentative interactions: proper features, advantages
and limitations.......................................................................................................177
5.3.2 Preliminary remarks on the confidential nature of the mediation
intervention...........................................................................................................181
5.3.3 Rationale for the selection of an empirical corpus...............................184
5.3.4 Conventional procedures for the transcription of oral data..................192
5.4 Design of the argumentative analysis...........................................................194
6 Results of the argumentative analysis: responses to the research questions and
exceeding evidence........................................................................................................197
6.1 How argumentation supports a mediation process.......................................197
6.1.1 Empirical analysis of the ontological structure of a mediation process198
6.1.2 A macro-text of argumentative discussions..........................................204
6.1.3 Some responses and some refinements of the research questions........241
6.2 Proper features of the mediator’s argumentative contribution in mediation 246
6.2.1 Manoeuvring strategically with the topical potential in the confrontation
and opening stages................................................................................................247
6.2.2 Mediators’ meta-argumentation...........................................................258
6.2.3 The role of context in the argumentative discussion............................274
7 Conclusive remarks and openings.........................................................................292
7.1 Answering the research questions.................................................................292
7.2 Structure and dynamics of mediation...........................................................294
7.2.1 Conflict resolution and conflict prevention..........................................296
7.3 Argumentative strategies in mediation.........................................................297
7.4 Meeting on the ground of interests...............................................................302
7.5 A methodological path to study argumentation in interaction schemes.......303
7.6 Professional fall-outs of the research............................................................304
References.....................................................................................................................306
Annex: List of interviewed professionals......................................................................335

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