How Mediation Works
Resolving Conflict Through Talk
Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics Series

Using conversation analysis to study the interaction between mediators and disputants, this study shows how mediation is used to resolve conflict in small claims and divorce mediation sessions. Angela Garcia explores the techniques mediators use to help disputants tell their stories, make and respond to complaints and accusations, and come up with ideas for resolving the dispute. By analyzing these techniques in their interactional context, she shows how they impact the experience and responses of disputants, and demonstrates that mediator techniques can empower disputants, maximize disputant autonomy, and display mediator's neutrality while in some cases, the organization of talk in mediation may work against these goals. This book is the first to use conversation analysis to study how mediation works and how mediators can best help disputants. This book is no. 34 in the Studies in Interactional Sociolinguistics series. In some copies, it has mistakenly been printed as no. 33.

1. Introduction – approaches to mediation; 2. The interactional organization of mediation; 3. Minimizing and managing argumentative talk in mediation; 4. Disputants' opening statements and persuasive arguments in mediation; 5. Mediator representation of disputants' positions; 6. Soliciting proposals for resolution of the dispute; 7. Producing ideas for resolution of the dispute; 8. Mediator teamwork; 9. Autonomy, empowerment, and neutrality in divorce and small claims mediation.

Angela Cora Garcia is a Professor of Sociology at Bentley University, Massachusetts. She conducts conversation analytic research on mediation, emergency phone calls to the police, computer mediated communication, air traffic communication, and political interviews and speeches. She is author of An Introduction to Interaction: Understanding Talk in Formal and Informal Settings (2013).