Communication and mediation: A structurational model

Abstract

Community mediation is generally seen as a successful alternative to the court system for civil cases. Communication research on mediation has focused on description of mediator techniques and their association with successful outcomes. However, little is understood about why or how mediation works. This exploratory study attempts to answer these questions by using structuration and dialectics to create a model of mediation. This model privileges discursive structural development and charts disputant and mediator structures used over time in order to identify processes of stability and change from destructive to constructive conflict. In order to better recognize disputant relationships and the fundamental content of the dispute, disputant relational contradictions are identified and examined over time. It is assumed that mediation systems which demonstrate a shift from destructive to constructive conflict will result in an agreement that is mutually constructed and demonstrate systemic changes that will be carried with disputants after they leave mediation. In order to identify conflict structures, a coding schema is developed using descriptions of behaviors and attitudes of destructive and constructive conflict. After coding the interaction in two mediation transcripts, the conflict structures are charted across time in order to see changes over the course of the mediation and to call attention to particular sections of discourse that are distinct. These distinctions may be seen as patterns of structures or in a shift from destructive to constructive conflict structures. Structural sets are identified that shift disputants from blame and denial to joint responsibility and a set that shows stagnation in mediation\u27s development due to a focus on detail. Discursive patterns show that mediator summaries and reframing are especially significant in perpetuating or minimizing particular disputant conflict structures. Attention to disputant contradictions reveals close intertwining of more than one contradiction in a dispute. Most of the contradictions were resolved through selection of one pole of the contradiction rather than through integration. It is noted that the resolution of the primary contradiction between disputants corresponds with what may prove to be an unrecognized intermediary phase in mediation