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NEGOTIATION AND POWER IN DIALOGIC INTERACTION
 AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E. F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)

Series IV – CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY

Advisory Editorial Board

Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.)

Sheila Embleton (Toronto); John E. Joseph (Edinburgh)
Manfred Krifka (Berlin); Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin)
E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.); Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)

Volume 214

Edda Weigand and Marcelo Dascal (eds)

Negotiation and Power in Dialogic Interaction

NEGOTIATION AND POWER
IN DIALOGIC INTERACTION

Edited by

EDDA WEIGAND
University of Münster
MARCELO DASCAL
Tel Aviv University

JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY

AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
8

National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed

Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Negotiation and power in dialogic interaction / edited by Edda Weigand and Marcelo Dascal.
p. cm. -- (Current issues in linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 214)
Papers presented at the International Conference on Pragmatics and Negotiation held June 13–16,
1999, Tel Aviv, Israel and Jerusalem, Palestine.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Dialogue analysis. 2. Negotiation. 3. Power (Social sciences). 4. Social interaction. I. Weigand,
Edda. II. Dascal, Marcelo. III. International Conference on Pragmatics and Negotiation : 1999 : Tel
Aviv, Israel and Jerusalem). IV. Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistics science.
Series IV, Current issues in linguistics theory ; v. 214.
P95.455.N44 2001
401’41--dc21 2001025185
ISBN 90 272 3721 2 (Eur.) / 1 58811 047 0 (US)
© 2001 – John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
means, without written permission from the publisher.
John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 36224 • 1020 ME Amsterdam • The Netherlands
John Benjamins North America • P.O.Box 27519 • Philadelphia PA 19118-0519 • USA
<TARGET
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Table of contents

Foreword vii
Edda Weigand and Marcelo Dascal

P I
Negotiation, Mediation and Power
Reputation and refutation: Negotiating merit 3
Marcelo Dascal
The mediator as power broker 19
Bruce Fraser
“We are different than the Americans and the Japanese!”: A critical
discourse analysis of decision-making in European Union meetings
about employment policies 39
Ruth Wodak and Gilbert Weiss
Games of power 63
Edda Weigand
The grammar of bargaining 77
Franz Hundsnurscher
Negotiation in business meetings 91
Monika Dannerer
Interlocutionary scenarios as negotiation of diatextual power 107
Giuseppe Mininni
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vi TABLE OF CONTENTS

P II
Means of Negotiation
Addresser, addressee and target: Negotiating roles through ironic
criticism 125
Elda Weizman
Negotiation of irony in dialogue 139
Andreea Ghita
A case of negotiation: The argumentative concession in Latin 149
Mirka Maraldi and Anna Orlandini
Silence as a tool for the negotiation of sense in multi-party
conversations 167
Michela Cortini
P III
Objects of Negotiation
The negotiation of affect in natural conversation 183
Martina Drescher
Implicit communication in political interviews: Negotiating the agenda 197
Gerda Lauerbach
Negotiation of topics in professional e-mail-communication 215
Annely Rothkegel
Negotiation and identity 225
Robert Maier
The negotiation of relevance 239
Frank Liedtke
Unspoken assertions: Values and the shape of discourse 253
Barbara A. Emmel
Negotiating social relationships: Fontane’s gossip: The rhetoric of
discreet indiscretion in L’Adultera 267
Ernest W.B. Hess-Lüttich
General index 289
List of contributors 293
<TARGET "for" DOCINFO

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Foreword

Edda Weigand and Marcelo Dascal

The topic of negotiation has turned out to be of crucial interdisciplinary

interest for our understanding of what we are doing in language use. Are we
exchanging meanings defined in advance and presupposing equal understand-
ing on the basis of a rule-governed system, or are we negotiating meaning
and understanding in the framework of an open dialogic universe? Can we
cope with dialogue by only doubling the speaker side or must we, on the
contrary, be prepared to admit that we are always different human beings
interacting and negotiating our positions? This seems to be one of the central
methodological questions to be addressed by modern linguistics and related
disciplines at the beginning of the new millennium. Thus negotiation, on the
one hand, can be taken as the name of a specific dialogue type or action
game of bargaining. On the other hand, it represents a methodological
concept for describing and explaining dialogic interaction which replaces the
orthodox view of pattern transference.
The papers collected in this volume deal with both versions of the
concept of negotiation. Interlocutors engage in negotiations about every aspect
of their interaction such as topics, social relationships, emotion, identity, etc.,
and they use different means such as irony, silence, concessive construc-
tions, etc. Negotiation or bargaining as complex action game implies the
concept of effective or persuasive action which is intrinsically related to the
use of some sort of power. Complex action games of negotiation, therefore,
often require a mediator whose role is to ensure fair interaction.
This volume contains a selection of papers presented at the International
Conference on Pragmatics and Negotiation at Tel Aviv University and the
</TARGET "for">

viii FOREWORD

Hebrew University of Jerusalem in June, 1999. A part of the conference

devoted to ‘Negotiation as a Dialogic Concept’ was co-sponsored by the
International Association for Dialogue Analysis (IADA). In Tel Aviv, a few
hundred papers were presented dealing with a variety of topics and aspects
of negotiation. The dialogic aspect was taken as our key concept to guide the
present selection.
We would like to express our thanks to Larissa Wunderlich, Jörn
Bollow and Giuseppina Giordano for their help in formatting the papers and
thus in negotiating the formal details with the authors.

Münster/Tel Aviv, September 2000

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P I

Negotiation, Mediation and Power

<TARGET "das" DOCINFO

AUTHOR "Marcelo Dascal"

TITLE "Reputation and refutation"

SUBJECT "Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Volume 214"

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Reputation and refutation

Negotiating merit*

Marcelo Dascal
Tel Aviv University

Reputation, reputation, reputation!

O! I have lost my reputation,
I have lost the immortal part of myself,
And what remains is bestial.
(Shakespeare, Othello)
A name made great is a name destroyed.
(Hillel the Sage)
D’abord les ouvrages donnent de la
réputation à l’ouvrier, ensuite l’ouvrier
aux ouvrages.
(Montesquieu)

1. Introduction

Many of modern society’s institutions are meritocratic: their hierarchies and

reward systems are based on the assessment of the merit of individuals and their
work. It is commonly assumed that such an assessment is objective and that
it is based essentially on the intrinsic quality of the individual’s productions.
Criticism — and, as far as scientific theories are concerned, refutation — are
considered to be key tools in the objective evaluation of a person’s work.
Reputation, on the other hand, is usually considered to be either the deserved

* Opening keynote lecture at the PRAGMA99 International Conference on “Pragmatics and

Negotiation”, held at Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, June 13–16, 1999.
4 MARCELO DASCAL

result of the objective value of the person’s work, or else the result of social
processes of public relations and, as such, irrelevant for the determination of
a person’s true merit. In this lecture, I will focus on the evaluation of
intellectual merit, and will argue that, de facto, merit is negotiated in a way
that includes both refutation and reputation, which are in fact the two
extremes of a continuum, rather than belonging to strictly separated catego-
rial domains. I will also argue that this is also how things should be de jure.
My lecture will be a variation on the three quotes above — each
representing insights that would deserve a fuller elaboration than I can
provide here.

2. Reputation and refutation as distinct domains of meaning

Reputation and refutation — words that differ just by one phoneme. And
yet, they lead to quite distinct domains of meaning, to quite separate modes
of reality, to widely different orders of discourse. Whereas reputation is a
property attributed to the worker, it is his works that constitute the proper
object of refutation. Whereas the former denotes the appreciation of a person
by others, the latter denotes the appreciation of a thesis or theory by refer-
ence to the world or to the facts. Whereas the one refers to the public image
of someone, which may be produced by sheer advertising, the other is
concerned with verifying whether such an image corresponds to the truth.
Reputation feeds on subjective impressions and gossip, whereas for refutation
only the facts and solid arguments count. The former would thus belong to
the lowest kind of knowledge, the one Spinoza dubs ‘knowledge by hearsay’,
whereas the latter would belong to the highest, which he labels ‘scientia’.
The discursive ‘regime’ having at its focus reputation is oriented
primarily towards who says something and towards what is said of her. The
discursive ‘regime’ to which refutation belongs considers such factors as
‘external’ and without importance, for its main concern is the content of
what is said and its truth-value. The former regards saying; the latter, being;
the one pertains to intersubjectivity, the other, to objectivity; the one, to
appearance, the other, to reality; the one, to ‘ethos’, the other, to ‘logos’.
Logic textbooks anoint this categorial difference between the two
domains and the two notions. They posit that every argument that appeals to
the reputation — positive or negative — of a person holding a thesis is
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 5

fallacious, for it cannot, as a matter of principle, be relevant for the truth or

falsity of the thesis (except, of course, when the thesis is about its holder).
Such fallacies have resounding Latin names, such as ad hominem and ad
verecundiam. Rhetoric textbooks, while accepting the categorial distinction
between logical validity and persuasive power, acknowledge that the appeal
to reputation is one of the most powerful means of persuasion. One of the
three traditional types of rhetorical discourse — the epidictic — is entirely
devoted to reputation, either to establish it (laudation) or to destroy it
(vituperation). But the loci communes having to do with reputation are also
considered legitimate in the more ‘serious’ types of discourse, the delibera-
tive and the judicial. Among the factors most frequently listed in these loci
(nationality, profession, social class, education, friends, wealth, luck, cour-
age, etc.), the value of the works of the person being blamed or praised is
only secondary.
The strict separation between the two domains — reputation and refuta-
tion — provides a clear epistemological advantage, for it is supposed to
purge criticism — which is essential for the progress of knowledge — from
any personal component. Critics can thus fight a ruthless battle aiming at
refuting hypotheses proposed by no matter what savant, regardless of his
reputation, and without fear of hurting him. On the other hand, renowned
persons need not to inhibit their creativity in order to protect their reputation.
They know they can propose innovative and daring hypotheses and submit
them to public criticism, without fear of having their reputation stained by an
eventual refutation.
The protection of a person’s reputation — i.e. of the person — is
certainly in accordance with the ethical principle of minimizing suffering.
But it has no room in the search for truth, where refutation should reign
without extraneous interferences. It is therefore required — by a certain ideal
of a wertfrei science for example — that these two spheres of normativity be
kept apart, on the grounds that any intervention of ethical considerations in
epistemological evaluation would necessarily distort the latter. The absolute
separation between the ‘battle of ideas’ and the ‘battle of egos’, between
truth-value and the well-being of individuals is, in fact, an indispensable
6 MARCELO DASCAL

condition for any epistemology (such as that of Popper),1 which makes of

the refutability of a proposition the criterion of its scientificity, and of the
resilience of a theory that faces ‘serious’ attempts of refutation, the supreme
test of its veracity. From this point of view, the only reputation that might
count is the one deriving entirely from the success of the works submitted to
such a test. And even such an ‘objectively deserved’ reputation should not
replace nor influence the outcome of a direct and objective test of each new
production of the same author, which is the only way of determining the
production’s real value. On this view, pace Montesquieu, a worker can never
grant reputation to her work.

3. Relations between reputation and refutation

But is the separation between reputation and refutation, or between the two
conceptual spheres represented by these notions, as categorical and as neat
as we have depicted it so far? Do the relations between these two spheres in
fact reduce to the determination of the former by the latter, and to the total
exclusion of any influence in the opposite direction? Furthermore, should this
be the case, from a normative point of view?
In ordinary life, we observe in fact a mixture of these two spheres,
rather than a strict separation. In almost all our decisions, we rely upon
reputation — whether in the choice of a doctor, a carpenter, a teacher, or any
other expert. It is the recommendations of our friends, colleagues, clients, or
other experts that allow us to choose. In so far as we are not ourselves
experts in medicine or carpentry, we are not able to judge by ourselves the
‘objective’ value of those who are recommended to us. For the most part,
then, it is their reputation that guides our choice. We may think that those
who recommend these experts ground their judgment on a direct evaluation,
to which they are qualified by virtue of being themselves experts. However,

1. Popper (1968, 1969, 1972, and elsewhere) considers refutation to be a purely logical
operation that takes place in a World III, inhabited by ideas. The knowing subject, i.e., the
person that defends or refutes a theory, is entirely excluded from this world. Along with his
interests, efforts, achievements, failures, reputation, pain, and joy, he belongs to World II of
psycho-social realities, which has nothing to do, according to Popper, with the objectivity or
validity of scientific knowledge. For a critique of this position, see Dascal (1997).
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 7

quite often they themselves rely on recommendations they have received

from others, i.e. on reputations.
Consider, for instance, academic life. Reputation plays in it a consider-
able role:
– In order to be promoted to the rank of Full Professor in a university,
one must enjoy an international reputation.
– This international reputation must be confirmed by experts who have,
themselves, a confirmed reputation.
– The candidate must have published in professional journals and publish-
ing houses of a recognized reputation.
– Journal editors and publishers submit the manuscripts they receive to the
evaluation of reputed experts.
– Research grants are obtained if committees of reputed experts decide
favorably; often these committees’ decisions take into account the
success of the candidate in obtaining previous grants, i.e. the candidate’s
reputation as a recognized researcher.
– Research grants allow one to grant fellowships and research opportunities
to one’s students, which in turn increases the researcher’s reputation.
– Similarly, a professor having a reputation as a good teacher attracts stu-
dents to his courses, which in turn increases the professor’s reputation.
There are, of course, ways to measure the reputation of academics. For
example: citation indexes, number of publications, course evaluations by
students, total amount of research funding obtained, number of invitations to
scientific conferences and the ‘quality’ of such invitations. But these mea-
sures are far from being absolute, precise, or even agreed upon. A small
number of publications, for example, can be turned into an argument in favor
of a candidate, on the grounds that they appear in highly prestigious journals,
whereas brows are raised suspiciously in the presence of a large number of
publications by a colleague, on the grounds that they are likely to be
repetitious, careless, superficial, etc.
In general, the non-measurable aspects of a reputation prevail over the
measurable ones. For example, those who have published a small article that
is considered revolutionary in a given field; those that are very active in the
congress-track, where they are always invited to give the main lecture, all
expenses covered and respectable fees paid. There are also individuals who
have achieved such an authoritative status in their fields that they can act as
8 MARCELO DASCAL

‘makers’ or ‘unmakers’ of careers. Their evaluations need not enter into

details nor provide arguments — a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ suffices.

4. Negotiating merit

So, it is not the number of good reference letters in a file that counts, but
their ‘quality’ — measured by the standing or reputation of the recommend-
ers, by the first-hand familiarity they demonstrate with the candidate’s work,
by the strength of the support expressed (which should not, however, be so
strong as to disqualify the letter as ‘invited’ rather than ‘objective’), and so
on. The determination of this ‘quality’, as well as sometimes the pragmatic
interpretation of the reference letters, is no easy matter.
As a Dean, I have been a participant-observer in this ‘recommendations
game’. My skills as a pragmaticist have helped me in this job. So did my
acquaintance with traditional rhetoric, for some of these letters are true gems
of the epidictic genre. Some of them deserve indeed a place of honor in
pragmatic textbooks, next to Grice’s famous example of a recommendation
letter that flouts the maxim of relevance, thereby exploiting the full power of
conversational implicature. Imagine, for instance, a very supportive letter,
written by a scholar of worldwide reputation, who relies himself on his
reputation as conferring weight upon his evaluations, and who does not
hesitate to make use of this fact. Recommenders can appeal to their reputa-
tions more or less implicitly as in the example mentioned or in the case
(discussed by Roland Barthes) of the famous art critic that remarks I cannot
understand this painting at all! (but, Barthes asks, is it the fault of the
painting or of the critic?). It can also be done quite explicitly, as in reference
letters that contain sentences such as I am not really an expert in this field, but
(…) (an evaluation nevertheless follows) or I am familiar with recent work in
this area and this book is one of the best three books on the subject I have read
in the last ten years.
In the committees engaged in the process of academic evaluation, the
‘intrinsic merit’ of a candidate or a research project is thus in fact negotiated,
in the light of a meta-negotiation regarding the merit of referees, journals,
academic institutions, theoretical frameworks — and both negotiations are
influenced by both intra-academic and extra-academic ‘political’ consider-
ations. The aim, of course, is to achieve an ‘objective’ decision, based on as
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 9

precise as possible a comparison between the relative weight of the reference

letters and other evidence available. But what about those that refuse to
provide an evaluation and those who are not even consulted? What about the
possibility that the nomination of the committee and its selection of experts
renders this careful weighing exercise altogether superfluous?
The mechanisms of evaluation in the academic world depend thus
strongly on an interplay of reputations. It would seem that in Academia,
where refutation — i.e., the intrinsic evaluation of results — should count
most, it counts in fact less than reputation, which seems to carry the game.
This would mean that, ultimately, academic life is ruled by logically ques-
tionable arguments. It is the authority of recommenders (argument ad
verecundiam) that determines the reputation which, in its turn (argument ad
hominem), has a decisive influence on the evaluation of a person’s projects,
her theories, the evaluation (by others) of her students’ work, and — of
course — her own academic career.
Furthermore, this game of reputations relies on a network of connections,
i.e. on a chain of recommendations that seems to hardly reach back to the
evaluation of the work itself. It is a network that seems to turn idle as far as its
declared objective is concerned, for its true aim seems to be the preservation
and transmission of certain structures of domination rather than the veritable
evaluation of candidates, research projects, etc. This is the conclusion towards
which lead, for example, Bourdieu’s sociological analyses of academic life.2
Such a conclusion might easily lead to a reductionist thesis of the type
defended by Foucault (1977), according to which the very notion of ‘intrinsic
value’ of a work — be it in science, art, philosophy or whatever — is nothing
but an illusion, since truth and value are ‘things of this world’ and as such
do not escape social constraints, i.e. power politics. On this view, truth is to
be understood in terms of a discursive practice, a ‘régime de vérité’, i.e.
a system of ordered procedures for the production, regulation, distribution, and
operation of statements. ‘Truth’ is [thus] linked in a circular relation with
systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to effects of power which
it induces and which extends it. (Foucault 1977: 133)

2. Bourdieu (1984a,
b) shows, with abundant examples, how academic power is maintained and
transmitted by means of devices such as the formation of evaluation committees for prizes,
promotions, nominations, etc. These devices enhance and preserve the ‘symbolic capital’ (i.e.
the reputation) ‘owned’ by certain individuals.
10 MARCELO DASCAL

And reputation, I would add, is a key component in the operation of these

systems.3
I find it difficult, however, to accept such a reductionistic and relativis-
tic conclusion. For one thing, it cannot explain the fact that the academic
system of evaluation yields, with some consistency, results that seem to
conform to its purported aims. Some theories, which prove more resilient to
serious attempts of refutation, are sometimes accepted, in spite of the lack of
reputation of their authors or their mentors. And sometimes defenders of
refuted theories lose power and reputation, or do not acquire power and
reputation at all (depending on the stage in their careers). Of course Foucault
and his followers would simply reply that refutation, just like truth, is itself
part of a historically and socially given discursive regime. Leaving aside this
objection, and continuing to take refutation and reputation as representatives
of two different conceptual spheres, I would rather highlight the fact that
both play a role in the negotiation of merit. Just as an important discovery
(or its refutation) is unlikely to yield recognition and reputation in the
absence of good public relations, so too a reputation sustained merely by
public relations is unlikely to survive in the long run.
What is beyond doubt, in any case, is that reputation has a key role in
such a process of negotiation. Given its value (which is economical as well
as academic or artistic), there must be social mechanisms to protect it. And
given the fact that, as we have seen, reputations are largely promoted or
demoted discursively, it seems obvious that pragmatics should contribute its
share to the study of such mechanisms. It could discharge this task, for example,
by expanding a bit the field of application of the theory of politeness, as well
as elaborating upon its ethical, epistemological, and metaphysical foundations.

3. In Chapter X of his Leviathan, that bears the title “Of Power, Worth, Dignity, Honour, and
Worthiness”, Hobbes (1994) places reputation among the types of power he calls “instrumental”
(as opposed to “original” or “natural”). He defines the power of a person as his “present means
to obtain a future apparent good”. To rally around oneself a large number of persons in order
to obtain this future good is, therefore, to increase one’s power. It follows that “reputation of
power is power, because it dreweth with it the adherence of those that need protection”.
Likewise, a reputation for “popularity” (a word that refers, in this context, to patriotism), for
“prudence in the conduct of peace and war”, and for having whatever quality that “maketh a
man beloved or feared of many”. Knowledge or science, on the other hand, “are small power,
because … science is of that nature, as none can under-stand it to be, but such as in a good
measure have attained it”. Still, in academic politics at least, a scientific reputation can yield
quite a lot of power.
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 11

5. Politeness of reputation and refutation

A person’s reputation or renown belongs — along with her prestige, celebri-

ty, honor, etc. — to the family of phenomena that should be studied by a
theory of politeness, because these are undoubtedly important components of
the ‘face’ of a person, which the mechanisms of politeness are designed to
protect. A speech act — or any other act — that hurts a person’s reputation,
certainly also hurts his ‘face’, even if it is not immediately perceived as
‘impolite’. The refusal to accept a personal check of a client or the refusal to
follow an expert’s opinion one has asked for amount to a lack of confidence
vis-à-vis these persons, which questions their financial or professional
reputation. Similarly, the refutation of a scientist’s theory calls into question
her reputation. In terms of the standard theory of politeness (due to Brown
& Levinson 1987), such acts are FTAs (Face Threatening Acts), if — as
suggested above — we view reputation as a significant component of ‘face’.
How does the politeness of reputation and refutation work and what are
its effects? The theory of politeness distinguishes between a positive and a
negative face. The former consists in the basic want of a person to be
approved by others. The latter, in the basic want of not having one’s
freedom of action and the implementation of one’s desires blocked by
external impositions. An act of refutation constitutes a threat to both. On
the one hand, it expresses a disagreement, which is naturally interpreted as
a disapproval, that hurts the person’s need of approval. On the other hand,
by hurting the person’s reputation, it is likely to limit her freedom of action.
Since it is impossible to eliminate the refutation’s threatening character,
which derives from its essentially conflictual nature, all one can do once
one engages in a refutation is to try to minimise its threatening appearance.
For that purpose one can employ, say, one of the strategies suggested by
Brown & Levinson:
– Do not perform the FTA on record.
– Perform the FTA along with a corrective action comprising an element
of positive politeness [protecting the positive face] and/or an element of
negative politeness [protecting the negative face].
The first strategy would consist in refuting implicitly, e.g. without presenting
the refutation as a decisive proof against the thesis examined, or even
without presenting it as a critique of that thesis. The second strategy, if
12 MARCELO DASCAL

employing a negative politeness device, would consist in presenting the

refutation as not having serious consequences for the career or for the
prestige of the attacked person. And, if employing a positive politeness
device, it might present the attempted refutation as a sign of the value
attributed to the criticized work (the very fact that one criticizes it means that
one admires it, that one views it as important enough to deserve attention and
criticism). In both cases, an alternative might be to resort to the radical distinc-
tion between refutation and reputation, arguing that both approval and disap-
proval have to do only with the person’s ideas, not with her reputation. However
implausible, this possible use of the radical distinction between the two spheres
of refutation and reputation as a way of minimizing the FTA character of the
former might have been instrumental in giving birth to that distinction.
The ensemble of these strategies can eventually reduce the threatening
effect of a refutation, and thereby protect somewhat reputations while
permitting the performance of refutations. However, to try to protect a
reputation too much against a refutation may be dangerous from the point of
view of critical epistemology, since one risks thereby to reduce the episte-
mological thrust of the refutation. For the typical pragmatic mechanisms
designed for face-protection have the effect of dissimulating the contradic-
tions (say, between a theory and ‘the facts’) that refutation seeks to disclose,
instead of highlighting them. The efficacy of these mechanisms depends
upon their ambivalence, which leaves always open the possibility of a less
stringent pragmatic interpretation of the act of refutation, thus allowing for
circumventing the need to abandon the refuted theory.
What this brief exercise in the application to our problem of certain
notions of the theory of politeness reveals, is that it is difficult to reconcile
the humane needs underlying the defense of reputation with the epistemo-
logical needs underlying the practice of refutation. But, at the same time, this
exercise suggests that this conflict, like most conflicts, is actually solved, in
each context, through a sort of ‘negotiation’ that takes into account both
conflicting needs. In the same way that one accommodates the need to
perform an FTA (e.g., a directive to get someone to do something) with the
need to protect the other’s face (e.g., by issuing a polite request), the critical
drive’s potentially damaging human effects are usually mitigated by a
remarkably elaborate praxis of ‘conflict management’, where the weight of
reputation and the need to protect it play no lesser a role than the weight of
refutation and the need to achieve truth.
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 13

6. Ethics, epistemology and metaphysics of merit

In practice, then, these two types of consideration, although stemming from

different needs, are weighed in the same ‘balance’, that cannot operate in a
mechanical or algorithmic way, but rather requires, in every single context,
the exercise of judgment (Dascal 1996). This is clearly the case in the appeal
made to ‘experts’ in courtrooms. Expert opinion may be requested by the
judge or by any of the parts. The professional reputation of the experts will
certainly have an important weight in the court’s decision. Nevertheless, the
court is not bound to accept the advice of any of these experts, even though
such an advice cannot be completely overlooked (Bourcier & de Bonis 1999).
In the same vein, ad hominem and ad verecundiam arguments, condemned as
fallacious by logical textbooks, may turn out to be relevant and therefore
acceptable under certain conditions. Therefore, instead of ruling them out in
toto, what has to be done is to examine their conditions of acceptability and
relevance, and to grant them, in each case, the weight they deserve.4
The ‘balance’ just evoked operates at the interface between epistemology
and ethics, between logos and ethos (Dascal 1995). But the issues raised here
comprise also a metaphysical aspect that should not be overlooked. It is well-
known that a strict separation between subjectivity (or intersubjectivity) and
objectivity is far from being universally accepted, after the fall of positivism.
The distinction between the reputation or face of a person and the essence of
that person is no less problematic — as Shakespeare’s Othello was well aware
of. One’s life is devoted, to a large extent, to building (not necessarily self-
consciously, and often through full identification with one’s work) a reputa-
tion for oneself, which becomes an integral part of the self. Reputation is thus
not a surface phenomenon, an appearance or a piece of clothing that one can
strip at will. A metaphysics of the person cannot take for granted the alleged
gap between an ‘inner’ essence and an ‘outer’ image, but must rather investi-
gate carefully how these various layers interact in the composition of the self.

4. Walton (1998) shows that, in many cases, ad hominem arguments are not fallacious, provided
they are evaluated in the context where they are employed and taking into account their aims.
In general, an argument of this kind addresses a person’s credibility. Since credibility has a non
negligible weight in the acceptance of an allegation, of a testimony, or of an argument, its
critical examination through ad hominem arguments is often pertinent for the decision whether
to accept the person’s testimony or not. See also Walton (1997) and Dascal (1999).
14 MARCELO DASCAL

In the light of the de facto interaction of reputation and refutation in the

negotiation of merit, and of the need to satisfy simultaneously the legitimate
epistemological, ethical, pragmatic, and metaphysical requirements discussed,
it seems to me that we must resolutely move now to the normative level and
ask for a system of norms capable not only of describing but also of guiding
the process of negotiation of merit. Should we remain faithful to norms that
view refutation (and its cognates) as the sole legitimate criterion of merit,
thereby excluding reputation (and its cognates) as completely spurious?
Should we content ourselves with unmasking the power games played under
the cover of reputation and refutation, thereby rejecting the very notion of
‘intrinsic’ or ‘real’ merit, while continuing to play the game earnestly? I
would rather think that, between these two options, it is possible to be
realistic enough so as to acknowledge the role of reputation and similar
factors, beside that of refutation, without falling into cynicism. We, pragmat-
icists, know quite well how communicative maxims, although frequently
flouted, serve nevertheless as regulative principles without which mutual
understanding could hardly arise.
Here is, in outline, what such an alternative ensemble of norms might
look like:
– An effort must be made to evaluate works according to their ‘intrinsic
value’. Criticism and refutation are central in such an evaluation.
– However, criticism and refutation must take into account the hermeneu-
tic difficulties inherent to the interpretation of works and, accordingly,
to the determination of their value.
– The above proviso requires the application of a communicative-episte-
mological Principle of Charity. The critic occupies an asymmetrical
position vis-à-vis the creator of a work or the defender of a thesis. As
a result, the former is obliged to make an effort to understand the work
or thesis and to criticize it in a honest and relevant way. The critic
should strive to ‘put herself in the place of the other’, of the criticized,
in order to perform her critical task appropriately.
– Criticism must take into account reputations. The more an author is
reputed, the more careful must be the critique and the eventual rejection
of his position, and the more careful the examination of the alleged
refutations of this position. A reputation may have a weight comparable
to that of an ‘accepted’ or ‘confirmed’ theory. Reputation thus has a
prudential value. Epistemology should incorporate this ethical dimension.
 REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 15

– On the other hand, reputation imposes upon the one who has it an
increased responsibility. The public’s presumption that her reputation
has a weight or value in the evaluation of her work must be internalized
as serious auto-criticism, which justifies that presumption.
– This epistemological-ethical notion of ‘intellectual honesty’, along with
the metaphysical idea my work is me, justify in turn the need to protect
reputations, giving rise to a legitimate ‘politeness of reputation and
refutation’.
– The principles above cannot be translated into an algorithm. They
require the case-by-case, context-by-context weighing of non-quantif-
iable reasons through the exercise of judgment.
The principles here sketched are closer to those one can discern in Montes-
quieu than to those that inspire Hillel the Sage or Popper. Hillel, like Popper,
stresses the absolute priority of the work’s value over any other concern,
including the respect and preservation of the author’s reputation. They thus
recommend unconditional obedience to the first principle in our list. For Hillel,
one must perform one’s work having in mind only its intrinsic value, without
caring at all for one’s reputation. Reputation ensues “naturally” from the value
of one’s works. Any effort to maintain a reputation introduces necessarily an
element that is alien to the value of the work, resulting in a reduction of that
value and, ultimately, in the destruction of the reputation one wanted to
preserve or increase. As soon as someone worries about the effect his work
will have upon his reputation, he becomes the servant of two opposed
masters, a sure recipe for the ruin of any reputation he might justly deserve.
Montesquieu, in turn, can be interpreted as acknowledging some value
to a reputation acquired thanks to the value of one’s work.5 The reputation’s
value shouldn’t be ignored: among other things, it impinges on the value of

5. Montesquieu’s observation depicts a sort of mathematical function that governs the relation-
ship between one’s achievements and one’s reputation in the course of one’s career. I have
used this quotation as a motto of a study of the 17th century controversy between Arnauld and
Malebranche on the nature of ideas (Dascal 1990). For Malebranche, debate was a battle of
reputations, rather than a way to clarify which of two opposed theories was true. He points out,
in summarizing the controversy in question, that, whereas at its beginning the reputation of the
“grand Arnauld” made the scales lean towards the latter, as his own reputation grew (partly due
to his courageous resistance to Arnauld’s criticism), he managed to neutralize the effect of
Arnauld’s reputation, and finally to win the debate (according to him). Malebranche thus was
fully aware of the existence of “Montesquieu’s law”, and even tried to take advantage of it.
16 MARCELO DASCAL

the author’s ensuing works. The principles above, except for the first,
attempt to express and explain the value assigned to reputation. Reputation,
due to its social influence, carries a greater responsibility toward any work
one produces. The internalization of such a responsibility — i.e., one’s
awareness of one’s reputation — does not divert one from the task of
producing the best work one is capable of. On the contrary, it contributes to
the achievement of such a task. If sometimes auto-criticism prevents us from
publishing some work, it is certainly for the best.

7. Concluding remarks

The opposition reputation/refutation, therefore, is irreconcilable only if one

conceives of these two notions as belonging to entirely separated domains.
What we have explored here is the possibility of viewing such a dichotomy
as one more idealization that does not correspond to what in fact happens in
intellectual life. Instead, it reflects — as many other idealizations — certain
metaphysical, ethical, and epistemological presuppositions, i.e. a certain
‘ideology’. I have tried to suggest an alternative ideology, which is opposed
to the reduction of one of the domains to the other. It is an alternative that
admits the close interaction between the two domains, while preserving a
distance between them, without transforming this distance into a categorial
gap. The principles that articulate this alternative, and both describe and
guide the negotiation of merit, permit — I think — to avoid the relativism
inherent in a socio-political reduction as well as the absolutism inherent in
the adoption of pure logical criteria, both equally dogmatic (Dascal 1997).

References

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984a. Homo Academicus. Paris: Editions de Minuit.

Bourdieu, Pierre. 1984b. Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste. Trans. by
Richard Nice. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bourcier, Dominique & Monique de Bonis. 1999. Paradoxes de l’expertise (Savoir ou
juger). Le Plessis: Robinson.
Brown, Penelope & Stephen C. Levinson. 1987. Politeness: Some universals in language
usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
</TARGET "das">

REPUTATION AND REFUTATION 17

Dascal, Marcelo. 1990. “The Controversy about Ideas and the Ideas about Controversy”.
Scientific and Philosophical Controversies ed. by Fernando Gil, 61–100. Lisbon:
Fragmentos.
Dascal, Marcelo. 1995. “Strategies of Dispute and Ethics: Du tort and La Place
d’Autruy”. Proceedings of the VI. Internationaler Leibniz-Kongress, Hannover, vol.
I, 108–116. Hannover: Leibniz Gesellschaft.
Dascal, Marcelo. 1996. “La balanza de la razón”. La Racionalidad: Su poder y sus límites
ed. by Oscar Nudler, 363–381. Buenos Aires: Paidós.
Dascal, Marcelo. 1997. “Critique without critics?” Science in Context 10.39–62.
Dascal, Marcelo. 1999. “L’ethos dans l’argumentation: une approche pragma-rhétorique”.
L’image de soi dans le discours: la construction de l’ethos ed. by Ruth Amossy,
61–73. Lausanne: Delachaux et Niestlé.
Foucault, Michel. 1977 [1980]. “Vérité et pouvoir”. L’Arc 70. Trans. “Truth and Power”.
Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings
1972–1977 ed. by Colin Gordon, 109–133. New York: Pantheon Books.
Hobbes, Thomas. 1994. Leviathan ed. by Edwin Curley. Indianapolis: Hackett.
Popper, Karl. R. 1968. The Logic of Scientific Discovery. London: Hutchinson.
Popper, Karl. R. 31969. Conjectures and Refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge.
London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Popper, Karl. R. 1972. Objective Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Walton, Douglas. 1997. Appeal to Expert Opinion: Arguments from authority. University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Walton, Douglas. 1998. Ad Hominem Arguments. Tuscaloosa, Ala.: The University of
Alabama Press.
<TARGET "fra" DOCINFO

AUTHOR "Bruce Fraser"

TITLE "The mediator as power broker"

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The mediator as power broker

Bruce Fraser
Boston University

There once was a poor devout man, his old blind mother, and his barren wife.
After many years of prayer, God inquired of him what one thing he truly
desired. He went home to discuss the matter with his mother and his wife.
They could not agree on a single request: his mother wanted her sight back;
his wife wanted a son; and he wanted a job so he could support his family.
The poor man left the house and consulted with a mediator, telling him of
his dilemma: “My mother wants eyesight, my wife wants a son, and I, I would
like a bit of money so we can eat everyday. What shall I ask? Whose needs
come first?”
The mediator thought for a moment, then he answered: “You must not
choose for any one of your family alone, but for the good of all. Say, ‘Oh
Lord, I ask nothing for myself; my wife asks nothing for herself; but my
mother is blind, and her desire is, before she dies, to see her grandson eating
milk and rice from a golden bowl’.”
(Adapted from the folk tale: Wisdom of the Mediator — Trinidad)

1. Introduction

I will be concerned in this paper with how language is used in the exercise
of power by mediators in performing their work as neutrals. The paper
should be viewed as a work in discourse analysis, where the emphasis is on
a conceptual rather than a linguistic analysis; that is, I am looking at the
sorts of things a mediator does with language in pursuing a settlement
between disputing parties.
This type of paper is particularly appropriate at this time. Mediation,
while certainly not new, is poorly understood, although it is being pushed
from many quarters as a means of resolving disputes that heretofore were
20 BRUCE FRASER

relegated to the courts such as divorces disputes, medical malpractice dis-

putes, and community disputes. At the same time, linguists are beginning to
explore the discourse of mediation, as reflected in the papers presented at
Pragma 99 in Israel. By discussing one aspect of the mediator’s task, their
exercise of power, I hope to provide insight which will provide a richer
framework for a more detailed linguistic analysis.
I will begin by providing a brief overview of dispute resolution. Next I
will address the following questions: What is mediation and how is it struc-
tured? Following this, I will explore the power resources mediators have
available to them and illustrate how they might use this power and to what
purposes.1

2. Overview of conflict resolution2

There are three major approaches to conflict resolution. The first, the non-
settlement approach, consists of ways for simply ending the dispute, perhaps
only temporarily. Here we find several tactics: one party choosing to take
what the other offers, to ‘lump it’, and move forward (e.g., a landlord
accepting a sum much less than the damage to his apartment rather than go
to court and fight a long battle); one party opting to avoid the confrontation
(e.g., staying in the library studying rather than going to your room and
arguing with your roommate about who gets to use the only easy chair); one
party selecting a tactic that will postpone the dispute until a more propitious
time (e.g., a father telling his son that they will discuss whether he should be
permitted to attend a party that would bring him home very late in the
morning when they both have had a chance to sleep on it); or some combi-
nation of these. Indeed, in some disputes, particularly where the parties know
one another quite well, it is often preferable to just let the dispute rest,
undiscussed, until it dies of natural causes or is of only marginal importance.

1. I am specifically not addressing here topics such as the difference between powerful and
powerless language, how mediator power distributes across gender or race, the function of
mediation as an empowering tool for the disenfranchised, or the potential ethical dilemma of
a mediator in the face of a power imbalance.
2. Note that I am using conflict and dispute interchangeably and resolution, management and
settlement interchangeably although there are some who would make distinctions between the terms.
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 21

The second approach consists of non-verbal approaches to resolution.

The most obvious tactic here is physical confrontation, either coercion (e.g.,
when the UN finally interceded in East Timor forcing the Indonesian
government to grant freedom to the Timorese) or actual hostilities (e.g.,
when the UN interceded in Iran with combat troops). There are also a variety
of other non-verbal tactics designed at resolution such as psychological
harassment (e.g., giving one or both parties the silent treatment until they
behave in accordance with group norms), appeal to the supernatural (e.g., the
use of voodoo or sorcery, whether or not it is truly effective), a strike,
picketing, or threat of this, when a contract settlement cannot be reached
(e.g., the Teamsters striking UPS two years ago that brought the company to
heel very quickly), a boycott or threat of a boycott (e.g., when activists
argued for a boycott of Nike sports products that were made by ‘slave labor’
in China), civil disobedience (e.g., when Rosa Parks sat in the front of the
bus in 1964 in Alabama), and of course demonstrations (e.g., when the
teachers in Boston demonstrated at the State House protesting the cutback in
funding for bilingual education).
The third category consists of verbal approaches to settlement of the
dispute. Not frequent in Western society but used elsewhere, are verbal
contests between the disputants such as verbal duels between the parties,
sometime only symbolic in nature (cf. Nader 1980). There is also the ‘guilt
trip’, whereby one party heaps such ‘shame’ on the other’s head that they
give in rather than suffer more verbal abuse. But the most well-known and
the focus of our attention is settlement-directed, fact-oriented talk, where the
dispute may be either personal, institutional, international, it may be a
dispute which involves practical matter, policy issue, contractual terms, legal
statutes, and, importantly, the dispute may be a real dispute or only a
contrived matter.
These talk-oriented approaches ran the gamut from negotiation (bargain-
ing), conciliation, and mediation (Moore 1996; Kolb 1997), which are
voluntary approaches in which the parties alone involved determine the
outcome, to quasi-decision-making approaches such as factfinding and
grievance mediation where the parties are encouraged by a third party to
settle their disputes, to decision-making approaches such as grievance
arbitration, where a third party decides for the parties the resolution of the
dispute, and finally to adjudication by a court where a judge or a jury is the
22 BRUCE FRASER

decision maker.3 Since my interest here is mediation, let us now turn there.

3. Mediation

In order to understand mediation, we first have to lay the groundwork by

considering negotiation, a process in which two or more parties “voluntarily
join in a temporary relationship designed to educate one another about their
needs and interests, to exchange specific resources, or to resolve one or more
intangible issues such as the form their relationship will take in the future
…” (Moore 1996: 6). Negotiation is part of being alive, everyone is familiar
with it and, like it or not, everyone engages in it daily. It may be formal or
informal, and the issues range from the most trivial to the most critical: who
has the right to drive a truck in the sandbox, the selection of which restaurant
you and your spouse will go to this evening for dinner, the legitimacy of the
ticket being written out by the police officer, the negotiation of a hockey
player’s salary, the merger of two mega-companies, and the ruptured peace
agreement in Northern Ireland are all disputes in which negotiation may occur.
Significantly, the purpose of negotiation is not necessarily to reach
agreement. Agreement is only a means to an end, that of satisfying your
interests. Rather, the purpose of negotiation is to explore whether you can
satisfy your interests better through a negotiated agreement than you can by
other alternatives such as by letting the dispute take its course or by taking
the dispute to court. Negotiation almost always entails a power asymmetry:
“… absolute weak parties do not negotiate, they surrender. And, absolutely
strong parties do not negotiate, they conquer” (Nicolaidis 1999: 103). For
better or worse, negotiation is an exercise of power, or lack thereof, tem-
pered by a party’s decision whether to exercise the power they have. But its
success depends critically on parties who believe they will satisfy their
interest better by working together, perhaps even failing to exercise some of
the power they have, than by operating apart.
In negotiating, power is neither good nor bad — it exists and plays a
critical role in influencing the outcome of the negotiation. Yet the accurate

3. There are many texts on the various types of dispute resolution processes. For a good
concise presentation, see Goldberg et al. (1985).
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 23

appraisal and exercise of power is the key to successful negotiation. Of

course in current American society, people will talk openly about their desire
for achievement, for recognition, for wealth, but not for power. It is unseem-
ly to crave power.
Mediation is a form of negotiation, where two or more disputing parties
engage in negotiation with the presence of a neutral third party, a mediator,
who assists them in their effort to arrive at a settlement. And, like negotia-
tion, it is not for every dispute. The parties choose mediation because they
want to settle, they want the privacy of a confidential mediation process, and
they see this process as a way of resolving their dispute more quickly and on
their own terms, than would be possible by going to court, the principal’s
office, a discipline board, grievance process, or some other alternative.4
There is usually not a winner and loser, but each side perceives a partial win
for itself. After all, if there were going to be a clear winner, the parties
presumably wouldn’t take the time to engage in mediation.
Like negotiation, mediation is present in everyone’s life, ranging from
the informal to formal process, the trivial to the critical dispute. A fight
between two school children mediated by a student mediator, a law suit
alleging damages for slander, a community dispute over fence boundaries, a
divorcing couple who cannot decide on anything, a claim for insurance
money for an injury sustained at a party, a misunderstanding over a stock
transaction, a next-agreement between the school board and the teacher’s
union, or a boundary dispute between neighboring states are but a few of the
myriad of disputes amenable to mediation.
A mediation session is voluntary, informal, and may take only an hour
or last several days, depending on the number of issues, their complexity,
and the tenacity of the parties. It is different from negotiation in that the
mediator controls the agenda, controls the interaction, and controls the flow
of information which goes through the mediator rather than directly from
party to party. A mediation has a set of rules, usually imposed by the
mediator, which normally include the rules by which the parties will conduct
themselves (e.g., refrain from interrupting the other party, abstain from harsh,
insulting, angry, or threatening comments, make only truthful statements),

4. I will not consider disputes which involve criminal issues, although these are often resolved
by negotiation or mediation through plea bargaining.
24 BRUCE FRASER

rules by which the mediation session will proceed (e.g., joint sessions
followed by caucus with each of the parties, followed by joint session,
followed by other caucuses, etc.), and rules of confidentiality that surround
the mediation (e.g., mediators pledge not to divulge what a party says to
them in a caucus when the other side is not present, and all pledge to say
nothing about what occurs to anyone, unless this is agreed to by all parties
ahead of time).5
Mediators are typically trained neutrals, knowledgeable but not neces-
sarily expert in the facts of the dispute. It has been said that a successful
mediator is part investigator, part therapist, part entertainer, part inventor,
and part salesperson.6 While mediators do not have the power to impose a
settlement on the parties, since it is the stakeholders who ultimately decide
upon the details of a settlement if one occurs, they do have considerable
power to ‘encourage’ the parties to settle. The test of a successful mediation is
the mutual, informed satisfaction of the parties, whatever that turns out to be.7
There are several styles of mediation (and negotiation, as well) that a party
can adopt, the one selected being dependent on the disputant’s personality,
interests, relative power.8 Suffice it to say that in a given mediation, no one
operates from one approach only. At one extreme, there is the confronta-
tional (win or else) style, whereby one party states their position at the outset
and expects the other to acquiesce without much protest. This is analogous
to the schoolyard bully coercing candy from a classmate. Such negotiations are
usually short lived, once the powerless party sees the handwriting on the wall.

5. There may be several joint meetings and many caucuses in a given mediation. The purpose
of the caucus is to permit the mediator to talk candidly with each party without the other
overhearing.
6. Although there are some states and some forums which require training and credential-
ization to serve as a mediator, this is the exception rather than the rule although this is
changing. Essentially, a person is a mediator if the disputing parties find him/her acceptable to
serve as their mediator.
7. There is an ethical question surrounding an outcome which seems to unfairly favor one
party at the expense of the other. While I do not have time to address this issue, I think most
mediators take the position that as long as both parties are fully aware of the settlement and its
implications, they have fulfilled their responsibility.
8. I hasten to point out that there is no theory of mediation (or for that matter, of negotiation),
just a set of practices which are more of less successful as a function of the particular
mediation: the issues in dispute, the parties, and the skill of the mediator.
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 25

More familiar is the competitive (win-lose), distributive, or zero-sum

game style of bargaining, which is practiced by most negotiators. Underlying
this approach is the assumption that resources (money, time, land, etc.) are
finite, and that by granting a point to the other party necessarily deletes the
equivalent amount from that available to you. Parties often adopt this ap-
proach to negotiating when the stakes are high, the resources appear to be
limited, there is a lack of trust and the quality future relationship is inconse-
quential, and the real interests of the parties are only marginally interdepen-
dent. This is the typical style adopted in contract negotiation in the U.S. and,
unfortunately, has been exported to other countries.
Less familiar but gaining in popularity, although it is not new with its
roots extending at least back to biblical times, is the collaborative (win-win)
style, where the interests (substantive, procedural, and psychological) not the
stated positions of the disputing parties are the issue. There is a separating of
the people from the issues, and the assumption is that the resources are not
fixed but can be expanded by creative problem-solving.

4. Mediation power

Let us now turn to power, which I will define as the capacity of one party to
produce an intended effect on another.9 In every mediation there are at least
three parties, the two disputing parties and the mediator, and there are two
types of power: that possessed by the parties relative to each other and that
possessed by the mediator relative to the parties.10 As we will see below,
they are partially but not completely overlapping.
A party’s power should be thought of not as an absolute value, but as
relative to the others involved, it is not fixed, it is not static, but is subject to
change as the mediation progresses. Moreover, for potential power to be
effective, the other party must be aware of it: a party must make their power
manifest and show that they are ready to exercise it. Someone who is a black

9. See Fisher (1991), Fisher & Ury (1981), and Mastrofski (1992) form some views on power
in dispute resolution.
10. I am not considering the linguistic manifestation of power, for example, treated in Brown
& Levinson (1987) and Thomas (1985).
26 BRUCE FRASER

belt in karate but who keeps this a secret has no physical power over a Mr.
Milktoast, who is not aware of the other’s relative physical power.
Let us consider the sources of power in mediation which the disputing
parties may possess and may decide to use in an effort to persuade the other
to yield on a point. There are three distinct sources of power that the parties
can rely on. The first is personal power: power conferred by age (especially
in Asian countries), power conferred by a higher social status, expertise in
the relevant content areas, and financial resources. Additional power comes
from having skill in those aspects of language use crucial to negotiating such
as listening ability and articulateness as well as proficiency in logical
analysis, control of emotions, and creativity in problem-solving, and the
power that is derived from knowing the other party’s biases, values, habits,
and hopes as well as the power that comes from a good rapport with the
other side, where there is a solid basis of trust.
The second source is positional power: power derived from the institu-
tional or peer-determined authority invested in one party but not the other, or
the power stemming from being morally correct in the position taken, or of
having the law, practice, tradition, or ritual on your side. Other aspects of
positional power include having the responsibility to obtain some result,
thereby having the ability to draw on resources, and power which arises from
indifference to the outcome of the issue, thereby being able to influence the
other party if they do care about the final result.
The third power source is potential power: power of one party to inflict
damage or injury to the other party. This power arises where one party is
aware of a piece of non-public but embarrassing information about the other,
where one party has strong relevant connections outside of the mediation
which can be drawn upon for support, or where one party is willing to take
a reasonable position and not budge or is willing to take risks or incur costs
not agreeable to the other side.
The power one disputing party holds over another is primarily a
function of who they are and what resources they came to the mediation
with. In contrast, a mediator’s power over the parties is more a function of
their role as mediator. Whereas a party’s power is typically seen as the
ability to influence the other on a specific point (e.g., take a reduced price
because the other side had been convincing that there are serious defects in
the current product), the mediator’s power is the power to control the
process. Mediators do not just take proposals and shuttle back and forth
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 27

between the parties, but play a very active role wielding their power as they
see fit to guide the parties through the process to a settlement.
Since the parties have selected this specific mediator to assist them, they
essentially have subjugated themselves to whatever process is imposed on
them. By virtue of the confidence invested in the process, the mediator is
given the authority to establish the ground rules which govern the mediation
session, to determine when someone violates a rule, and to impose a sanc-
tion. The mediator is given the right to decide when the session is over,
whether the parties have been successful or not, to decide when the parties
should caucus and when they should meet in joint session, to decide what
the topic of discussion should be and who should do the talking. And the
mediator has been given the power to call into question a party’s assessment
of the situation. Effectively, the parties have given to the mediator the power
to threaten and coerce them, subject only to their getting up and leaving the
mediation session. But leaving a mediation session under protest is unlikely,
since they are there in mediation because the alternatives are, for one reason
or another, less desirable.
What forms does this exercise of mediator power take? Let us examine
some examples.11 In one instance, a meeting was called between Rosemary
and Ellen, two co-workers who had found that they were unable to work
together any more, and their supervisor, who assumed the role of mediator.
The supervisor starts out by establishing the ground rules for the discussion
and effectively persuades them to engage in mediation.
(1) Rosemary: We finally agreed on something and what we agreed on is
we don’t want to work together.
Ellen: We don’t need to talk about this. We’re just letting you know
that it’s over with this team.
Supervisor: Rosemary I need to talk about it. I value both of you tre-
mendously and I need you both in my department and I need you both
working for me and if you’d bear me out I’d really appreciate it, if you
let me hear the whole situation, well tell me a little bit about what’s
going on. Ok folks. I really want you to bear with me. I really would

11. The examples which follow have been taken from video-taped mediations, scripted and
unscripted, and from my own mediation practice. They have, however, been edited and
sometimes simplified for the sake of exposition.
28 BRUCE FRASER

like to talk to you both, hear what the situation is and then talk to you
together again. Ellen, can I talk to Rosemary for a few seconds?
(After conversations with both, they return for a joint meeting.)
Supervisor: Well I heard you both and what you perceive to be the
issues. I’d like to see if we can resolve them before they get any more
serious. Would you agree to do that?
Rosemary: I’ll agree to listen.
Supervisor: Ok.
Ellen: Yeah. I’ll agree to that much.
Supervisor: And will you listen to where Ellen is coming from and hear
it in a in a way that is open? What I will ask you to do is not interrupt
each other and allow her to do it in a way so that she can really hear
what you are saying.
Rosemary: That will be a challenge.
Ellen: Ok. Well lets try it.
Closely related is the need to keep the parties on task, to keep them focusing
on the issues before them and not some peripheral points that may need
working out, but at some later time. Again, the mediator can exert his power
by gently ‘scolding’ the errant party. For example, in a divorce mediation
where the husband and wife were squabbling over the last issue, Where their
only child was going to live?, and the wife was complaining that her
husband was not involved with their daughter’s care:
(2) Wife: All you have to do is ask him how much insulin she has to
take. How it’s given to her. How often. What kind of food she has to
eat. He doesn’t know any of those things. He has no idea of any of
those things. He hasn’t taken an interest in her medical condition at
all. It’s been five years since she got diabetes.
Husband: You’re exaggerating a little, aren’t you Karen?
Wife: Exaggerating? Like hell I am! Do you even know what she is
suffering from? Do you know the long-term effects of her disease?
Do you? You didn’t …
Mediator (interrupting): Slow down. We’re not running medical tests
here. I’m just trying to help you figure out how you can make your
move to your new home that meets your career needs and Tom’s
fathering needs. Let’s start back at the beginning and you, Karen, tell
us what you feel would be a fair arrangement, not what you ideally
want, but what you think would be fair.
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 29

With several more of the “Let’s return to the task at hand” admonitions, the
parties were able to work out an arrangement that was not ideal for either of
them but was satisfactory. A similar exchange resulted in “mediator” interced-
ing to restore order occurred in the mediation between Rosemary and Ellen:
(3) Rosemary: I don’t work until 9 or 10 or 11 every night like you. It’s
not in my contract. I have a life, unlike you. You’re an alcoholic, I
mean workaholic.
Ellen: Where do you get off saying that. I don’t work till 9:00, 10:00,
11:00 every night either, Rosemary!
Mediator: Hold on Ellen. Ellen, Ellen if you would, please, please
don’t interrupt. Let Rosemary finish telling her perception of the situa-
tion. Please let her continue.
It is sometimes the case that after several hours of mediating, one or both
parties may need some “encouragement” to remain and continue with the
process. For example, after several hours of a highly charged mediation
session, both the School Board and the Teacher’s Union would not move an
inch on their positions on salary. The Board was offering a 3% increase in
wages for each of two years, and the teachers were holding firm at 3¼%.
The mediator brought the parties together.
(4) Mediator: Well, I’ve tried every way I know how to convince one of
you to move or to find some compromise, but neither of you has
budged. Pursuant to our ground rules which provided I could go pub-
lic with the mediation progress at my discretion, I am now considering
going to the public, to the news media, to report the lack of progress.
I will have to tell them that negotiations have broken down over
$2,600, the cost of ¼% difference per year. I will explain that in spite
of the sizable School Department surplus arising from reduced Health
Insurance costs, and in spite of the Union’s willingness to give up the
dental plan, which costs the Board $4,200 per year, the School Board
refuses to move.
The parties went back to their respective rooms, discussed the situation, and
agreed to meet the next week after they had consulted with their constituents.
In a divorce mediation which had lasted several sessions, the mediator,
sensing a crisis point, said:
30 BRUCE FRASER

(5) Mediator: People, you came in here to try to mediate a divorce settle-
ment rather than go to court for a trial which is scheduled tomorrow,
with lawyers, witnesses and a drawn-out process. The whole nine
yards. I let you vent at the outset, even tolerated some name-calling in
an effort to let you get off steam before we got down to business.
And we have made some limited progress. But you have taken no
constructive steps towards an agreement for the last two hours. You
seem content to bicker, have me interrupt you, and in spite of my
advice, begin bickering again. Even when I caucused separately with
you, I heard nothing but vituperation.
So here’s what I’m going to do. We’re going to start with the
custody issue and we’re going to discuss the interests of you, Martha,
and those of you Harry. And if I hear any comments off-topic, any
name-calling, any snide remarks, the mediation is over. And, I will
report to the judge tomorrow morning before the trial why there was
so little progress.
Now, are you willing to try again?
Another use of power is to emphasize to a party that the responsibility is
theirs and if they will not accept it, the mediator does not feel the necessity
to continue with the mediation efforts. In the following excerpt, during a
caucus, Johnson clearly enjoyed power of resources over Roberts:
(6) Mediator: Come on Mr. Johnson, you’ve got to engage in this process,
not just sit there and wait for the settlement to come to you. There has
to be some movement on your part. It can’t be all one way. You’ve
got to reach each other. You just can’t sit there and say, I want it all.
… You’ve got to help us resolve this.
Johnson: The hell I have to move. I can sit here for as long as I want
and finally Roberts will come to me. Just wait and see. I know I’m right.
Mediator: You may be right, Mr. Johnson, but with that attitude and your
failure to assume your due responsibility, we’re not going to get any-
where. I’m going to resign. I’m going to tell Smith that your attitude
was such that I don’t believe continued mediation will be profitable.
The reality check, usually done in a caucus rather than in a joint session, is
another means of the mediator exercising power. In the following example,
the president of a high tech company involved in mediating a contract
dispute with a distributor was getting impatient and, in spite of the advice of
counsel, expressed himself to the mediator as follows:
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 31

(7) President: I’m sick and tired of their stalling around. What do they
want? Do they want us to give in completely? Hell, I think we ought
to go home and let the whole thing play out as it will. I’m sick of
this. Mediation just isn’t the way to go for us.
The mediator responded:
Mediator: That might very well be the best suggestion. Go home, take
some time to think over your position, and then go to court. It often is
the best way, especially when you don’t think you can make any more
progress through mediation. By the way, have you considered the
legal costs of going to court?
Thereafter the attorney, the president, and the mediator talked about the high
cost of litigation which would include a delay while discovery occurred, a
three week trial, adverse publicity, and the cost of about $100,000. The
president, hearing that, decided to continue with the mediation.
A mediator is frequently asked by one or both of the parties to give his
professional opinion about the outcome of the issues in dispute. This is, of
course, more important where there are, for example, legal arguments which
could play a role in subsequent court adjudication than for mediation over a
salary increase for a bargaining unit. In one case involving a breach of
contract issue, the mediator was requested privately by one party, A, to give
his professional opinion on how the dispute would come out if it were to go
to court. The mediator did so, and the opinion favored A over B, whereupon
A, sensing victory, wanted to increase its demand. The mediator refused to
permit A to do this, suggesting that such a move was not appropriate, that A
was misusing the information, and the whole deal would collapse if A took
such steps. Again, the mediator exercised control over the parties.
Another way the mediator can exercise his power of being experienced
with the issues involves reducing the expectations of one side. In the example
below, the Company and the Union were mediating a pending discharge of
an alcoholic in hopes that an accommodation could be reached.12 The
Company was adamant that the discharge stand, while the Union, convinced
that the discharged employee had reformed, wanted her reinstated. In this

12. This was done in grievance mediation, where a dispute headed for arbitration is subjected
to a mediator for one last effort as finding a mutually agreement settlement.
32 BRUCE FRASER

case, the Union had far higher expectations for instatement than were
warranted, given her DWI conviction and habitual insobriety, but they were
not seeing the reality. In caucus, the following interchange occurred:
(8) Union Representative: Look. We’ve got a good case for taking her
back to work immediately. She was an outstanding worker until she
starting drinking, she had numerous awards for efficiency and produc-
tivity, and she has no other discipline on her record. What’s more, she
is now sober and has been for some time.
Mediator: How long has she been sober? Completely without drinking?
Union Representative (to grievant): How long have you been without
a drink?
Grievant: 5 or 6 days.
Mediator: And are you going to AA? Getting other help to stay sober?
Grievant: I go to AA once in a while, maybe once a week. When I
have time.
Mediator (to Union, voice rising): And you want the company to take
her back after being absent 67 days and drunk most of the time. You
expect the company to reinstate her when she’s been sober a mere 6
days and isn’t getting any systematic and consistent help? Would you
take her back under these conditions?
The Union then went into caucus and subsequently proposed a long period
of sobriety prior to the Company taking her back, to which the Company
immediately agreed.
There are times when the mediator uses the power associated with the
position to assume the role of therapist, drawing out a party on the details of
an issue where they otherwise might remain silent. In the following ex-
change, the story was told, but would probably have been left had the
mediator not prodded.
(9) Distraught Woman: It creates a lot of tension for me. My life is prob-
lematical right at this moment and this is just one additional burden
that I don’t think I need to need to have. It’s ridiculous.
Mediator: Could you say a little more about that?
Distraught Woman: About what?
Facilitator: How your life is problematical what other conflicts you have.
On the other hand, there are times when the mediator feels the need to take
his/her own initiative to investigate the circumstances lying behind an issue,
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 33

perhaps because the parties’ accounts differed significantly. This happened

in one case in grievance mediation where the Union was seeking the
reinstatement of a discharged employee. The company, BC, contended that
it had found a number of tools in the grievant’s truck which were allegedly
stolen from an affiliate company where the employee had worked before
coming to work for BC, and this certainly was sufficient grounds for
termination. The Union countered that the tools had been excessed and had
been given to him by his supervisor where he had formerly worked. Neither
party had called the supervisor to check on the accuracy of the story and
neither party wanted to call, for obvious reasons. The mediator got the
number from the discharged employee, called, and found out that he was
telling the truth. He then told this to the company, which rescinded the
termination.
Related to this is when the mediator feels the need “to level the playing
field”, when the mediator finds one party is beating up on the other. Consid-
er the following example where Jones and Jenkins, neighbors and friends
before the present issue arose, have come to mediation over a dispute about
where a fence between their property can be placed. The following inter-
change took place:
(10) Jones: I don’t know what the law is on this, but I know what I will
settle for and what you are suggesting just won’t cut it.
Jenkins: Well, in this case we’re in luck. In my practice as a real
estate attorney, I’ve been involved with these disputes for nearly 10
years now and have a good idea of what the law says on this point
and the degree to which you can expect to prevail. So we don’t have
to operate in the dark.
Mediator (before Jones can respond): Well, I don’t think we have to
rely on only your experience. I’ve mediated these types of disputes
for many years and before that, as a judge I sat in many cases
involving property issue, so I think we will have considerable
expertise to draw upon.
By expressing the nature of his expertise and experience, the mediator both
reassured Jones that he need not fear operating in the dark while giving
notice to Jenkins that he could not expect to run roughshod over Jones and
that he should consider any proposal in light of the mediator’s expertise. The
mediator can also move the issue from one of right and wrong to one of
34 BRUCE FRASER

interests, for example, Put aside the question of right and wrong for a little
while, let’s talk about what you really want to get out of this, or placing the
sticking point to the background and focusing on what may be the basis of
a settlement, for example, Let us put this issue of preventable accident aside
and see if we can get a resolution without considering this factual question.
Sometimes the role of the mediators is not to deal with the substantive
matters surrounding the dispute but rather to deal with one or both of the
parties in a sensitive, sympathetic way. For example:
(11) Mediator: Ok. What does your current work day look like?
Dan: Right now?
Mediator: Yeah.
Dan: I’m starting at 2:00 am and often times I’m getting out at four in
the afternoon.
Russ: I’m there at 6:00 am and often not home till seven or eight at
night.
Dan: Right. But within your work day is a is a business lunch, there’s
a couple of hours on the golf course followed by beers and dinner.
Mediator: Isn’t it time for you guys to begin to think about how you
might organize your business so that you enjoy life a little bit more?
And, at times, the mediator, if he has a good rapport with a party, may appeal
to their relationship in order to convince the party to convince them to take
an unwanted step. This occurred on Day 11 in the Camp David meeting
between Israeli Prime Minister Begin and President Sadat of Egypt, and
President Carter. That morning, Carter received news that Sadat had ordered
a helicopter to take him from Camp David. As Carter recalled, “It was a
terrible moment. Now, even my hopes for a harmonious departure were
gone”. He sought out Sadat, argued strongly against his leaving, reporting
that “I told Sadat that he simply had to stick with me for another day or two
— after which, if circumstances did not improve, all of us simultaneously
would take the action he was now planning”. Sadat relented after hearing
Carter promise that he would not try to push for anything less than a full
agreement, all terms of which must be implemented to consider the other
parts valid. Sadat then told Carter, “I will stick with you to the end” (Schel-
lenberg 1996: 180). The Camp David accords were finalized shortly thereafter.
Related is when the mediator uses the trust between the parties and
himself to explore the details of a trade-off but without a risk to either party.
 THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 35

For example, it often starts out like this: I have an idea. What do you think?
or If they did X, could you do Y? This is the core of much mediation deal-
making. But while ostensibly it reveals nothing about the opponent’s
confidential position, in fact it is fraught with implications starting with the
reasonable presumption that the mediator is not there to waste time, and
therefore not only that Y is seen as important by the other side and that X
may now be on the table for the first time as a real possibility, but that by
implication, Z may be less firmly desired by the opposing party than had
been thought.
Power used to influence more than control may occur when the mediator
is privy to information from one side and has been granted the authority
from that side to use it in pursuit of a settlement. An example of this
occurred during the mediation of the contract dispute discussed earlier
between Vision, the high tech company and Servo, its distributor in Chile.
The company manufactured computer peripherals and the contract with Servo
had expired and Vision was trying to convince the distributor to buy 10%
more units over the next two years in a follow on contract. It privately
acknowledged to the Mediator that although it had initially bargained to have
its own product distribution rights in Chile as well as selling its product to
distributors there, it now found it could not implement the distribution rights
and they were of no value to Vision. However, they didn’t want the Media-
tor to volunteer this fact to Servo. Later in a mediation caucus with Servo
representatives, the following dialogue occurred:
(12) Mediator: You have stated all along that you wanted sole distribution
rights in Chile, right?
Servo Representative: Correct. We want only us to distribute Vision
products in Chile. It’s the only way we can make a profit. Don’t you
see?
Mediator: I understand, I think. Well, what if I could get Vision Tech
to relinquish its right to distribute in Chile. Would you agree to pur-
chase 10% more units in each of the two years?
(Servo Conference)
Servo Representative: No, we can’t afford to buy that many in this
economy. But we can agree to buy 5% outright and 5% on consignment.
And there are times when the mediator will state that he is bringing in a
third party, an expert, whose knowledge or expertise on an issue should
36 BRUCE FRASER

assist all in reaching a settlement. This may be done as in an attempt to

actually shed some light on the issue, or may be done as a warning to one
party that its position is likely to be seriously weakened after the contribu-
tion of the third party.

5. Conclusion

I have briefly touched on some examples of power that a mediator possesses

and may exercise by virtue of his position as the person selected by the
parties to assist them. The power that I have discussed is what we might call
“guiding power”, designed to facilitate the mediation session and is not what
we might call “coercive power” designed to influence a party to move in a
particular concessive direction.
In closing, I should point out that there is an increasing interest and
concomitant debate of how “coercive” a role a mediator should play in a given
mediation in using the power of the mediator to redress an obvious and
significant power imbalance. Most would argue that to the extent mediators
have such power, they ethically cannot use it to influence a settlement. They
must remain neutral to the issue in dispute; they are facilitators, not advo-
cates or judges. This does not mean, however, that the mediator cannot assist
the less experienced party in identifying their interests, in articulating their
position, in determining what facts must be gathered for an informed
decision, and in playing out the proposed settlement to see the consequences
for all concerned. Clearly, when, if ever, to use power to redress a power
imbalance is not an easy question to answer, and in fact, the answer will
depend on factors such as the nature of the dispute, whether the parties are
represented by advocates, the type of dispute (labor, community, securities),
as well as the experience of the parties and the skill of the mediator.

References

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University Press.
</TARGET "fra">

THE MEDIATOR AS POWER BROKER 37

Fisher, Roger. 1991. “Negotiating Power: Getting and using influence”. Negotiation
Theory and Practice ed. by J. William Breslin & Jeffrey Z. Rubin, 127–140.
Cambridge: PON Books.
Fisher, Roger & William Ury. 1981. Getting to Yes: Negotiating agreement without giving
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Boston: Little, Brown and Company.
Mastrofski, Jennifer. 1992. “Power Imbalance Within the Setting of Special Education
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Kolb, Deborah M. 1997. When talk works: Profiles of mediators. San Francisco: Jossey-
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Moore, Christopher W. 1996. The Mediation Process: Practical strategies for resolving
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Nader, Laura. 1978. The Disputing Process: Law in 10 societies. New York: Columbia
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Nicolaidis, Kalypso. 1999. “Power and Negotiation: When should lambs negotiate with
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Kolb et al., 102–119. Cambridge: PON.
Schellenberg, James A. 1996. Conflict Resolution: Theory, research and practice. Albany:
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<TARGET "wod" DOCINFO

AUTHOR "Ruth Wodak and Gilbert Weiss"

TITLE "“We are different than the Americans and the Japanese!”"

SUBJECT "Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, Volume 214"

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“We are different than the Americans

and the Japanese!”
A critical discourse analysis of decision-making in
European Union meetings about employment policies

Ruth Wodak and Gilbert Weiss

University of Vienna

1. The construction of Europe’s identity

The European Union (EU) consists of 15 member states with very different
cultural backgrounds and histories and national identities. Nevertheless, the
EU has to achieve consensus, inspite of all these factors, lobbying, interest
groups and political ideologies of the parties involved. The EU is in search
of a new identity which transpasses the national boundaries. In our paper, we
would like to trace and reconstruct the process from conflict to consensus in
the writing of a policy paper on new European employment policies which
should be different from the employment policies up to now but also
different from those in the USA and Japan. Let us look at one of the
sequences in a taperecorded meeting of the Competitiveness Advisory Group
which demonstrates how the delegates from different member states brain-
storm on Europe’s positive characteristics.
(1) M3: Dans les points forts, Président, d’abord l’effort d’ajustement
structurelle de beaucoup d’entreprises, avec la recherche d’économie
d’échelle et les fusions, les regroupements, le redressement de la
rentabilité de beaucoup de sociétés, un climat social finalement les
40 RUTH WODAK AND GILBERT WEISS

dernières années quand même relativement stable, un peu de, de

grandes grèves et des conflits sociaux, l’évolution favorable de la
balance extérieur de l’Union Européenne, les effets favorables de
l’ouverture du marchés des capitaux, et l’approximité de marchés
émergeants, je pense à l’Europe Central et l’Europe de l’Est, tout ça
est positif. Et mon dernier point c’était, mais vous l’avez déjà
mentionné, le niveau élevé de l’éducation et de la formation profes-
sionel dans la plupart des pays Européens. Ça sont des atouts.
Paye (chairperson): Merci, M9
M9: I think, another strong point ehm, which we’re just beginning to
see, is, in the context of a global market place. Ehm, Europe’s histori-
cal positioning around the world. And the fact that uniquely in terms
of the main blocks of economic activity, the United States, Europe and
Japan, ehm, we in Europe are best positioned to cover the world with
cultural and commercial links. And if I can turn to my left, you take
Spain, I mean, Spain has rediscovered an Hispanic market which
extends not just throughout most of Latin America but also of course
in the United States. Ehm, and we’re beginning to find in other parts
of the world that we have links, which are old links, which have been
dormant and which can come forth, and in terms of, you know Europe
in a global market place, that inheritance is very very strong. But we
got to capitalize it, and use it.
Paye: Just, a, a sentence adding to that point. European is more inter-
national than, than other ones, and …
M9: Exact, and it’s very much easier as a European to develop
commercial partnerships outside your domestic country than it is for
Americans, or Japanese. And that’s partly because of our inheritance
and history.
M4: … maybe, our diversity …
M9: … that too …
M3: Diversity is a richness, not a weakness, to a large extent.
M9: There are two layers to it: I mean, the, the, there is the diversity
and that in one sense or another we cover the globe, eh, but there is
also the, the history and the way in which we have operated, w, we do
have a more global view of the world than the Americans, far more so.
M3: Exact, it is the long-term favor of fall-out of our colonial past.
Yeah, after 30 years of independence of all our former colonies we
can say that now, today. Without being accused of neo-, neo-colonial-
ism. Yeah.
 “WE ARE DIFFERENT THAN AMERICANS AND JAPANESE!” 41

F1: In a more friendly way, in our entrepreneurship. Our ancestors

went out, sailing, to do business.
M6: Well, American multinationals have done well but, I mean you, I
mean the, the, the, many sectors, I’m not saying your sector, but I
mean, one cannot forget that …
M9: I, I, I’m not xxx the Americans, in that sense, and eh, all I’m
saying is that ehm, they do have a blind spot. And their blind spot is
often their ability to make partnerships outside their domestic base.
Ehm, and they have significant blind spots within Europe, in, Europe
is Europe is Europe, except there is an English speaking bit in the
UK, and the, they ha, they have difficulty in sensing the differences
between countries, and it, it’s much tougher for them. Where as we
have something which we haven’t used for a long time, but is, is, is
coming forward here, and, I, I, I do take the Hispanic point is very
strong as you know and me too well, in eh, in all sorts of businesses,
telecommunications, financial services, you name it, it’s eh, they’ve
found a new market.
Paye: All right, that, you, do, do you see any other eh, strong eh,
points, or should we move to the next session?
This sequence is one of the few where spontaneous discussion occurs. It is
like a brainstorming session where everybody contributes to the characteris-
tics of a new European identity, one which stands in contrast to the USA and
Japan. One might have the impression that the members of the committee try
to convince each other that specific European aspects are actually to be
viewed as positive and not negative. This sequence also functions to empha-
size group solidarity. Without analyzing this sequence in a detailed way, we
would just like to point out two main linguistic strategies employed here:
legitimation and difference. All the characteristics mentioned in this short
dialogue point to Europe’s traditions in justice and welfare, education and
professional expertise. Specifically, Europe’s internationalism is mentioned,
its tradition in contacting other parts of the world (colonialism!), in contrast to
the USA which does not have such a tradition. Some other characteristics are
added on during this brainstorming session: diversity and knowledge. Specifi-
cally, the debate about ‘diversity’ (Essed 1998) is of interest here. Diversity
is defined in a positive way, as richness of cultures and traditions and
languages, not as something negative which often happens in racist discourse
on immigration (Wodak & Sedlak 2000). All the positive characteristics
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 Off to the woods went the bunny rabbit gentleman and his
animal friends. They built a little fire and then opened the boxes of
marshmallow candies. Uncle Wiggily made some long, sharp-pointed
sticks for the children and then they began to roast the sweet chunks
of sticky candy. All of a sudden Susie Littletail held her marshmallow
too close to the blaze, and it caught fire. “Oh, Uncle Wiggily!” cried
Susie. “What shall I do? My candy is on fire!” Uncle Wiggily twinkled
his pink nose and said: “Be calm, my child!”
 “Fire! Fire!” cried Billie Wagtail, the goat boy. “Call out the fire
engines! I’ll be the chief!” Billie took some bark from a white birch
tree and made himself a trumpet, so he could shout at the other
animal boys. Uncle Wiggily ran quickly to a spring near by, and,
scooping up a lot of water in his tall silk hat, he poured it on Susie’s
blazing, smoking marshmallow. “Now the fire is out!” said the
bunny. Some of the animal girls almost fainted, but the boys found
empty tin cans and brought them full of water.
 The water from Uncle Wiggily’s tall silk hat soon put out the fire
in Susie’s marshmallow, and everything was nice again. Uncle
Wiggily and the other animal boys and girls were just going to roast
more candies when, all of a sudden, Nannie Wagtail, the goat girl, sat
down in a pile of sticky marshmallows which Billie Bushytail left on
top of a flat stump. “Oh, Uncle Wiggily! Uncle Wiggily!” bleated
Nannie. “I’m stuck fast! Oh, has a bear got me?” The bunny laughed.
“You are only stuck on the sticky candies,” he said. “I’ll pull you
loose!”
 “Now, all together! Pull!” cried Uncle Wiggily, when they had
taken hold of Nannie, the goat girl. “Pull hard, everybody!” said the
bunny rabbit gentleman, “and we’ll soon have Nannie loose from the
sticky marshmallows. You shouldn’t have left them there, Billie.” The
squirrel boy said he was sorry. Then, with laughter and shouts, they
all pulled, one, two, three! Nannie slowly came loose from where she
was stuck on the stump. Over in the woods, the bad old fox tramp
heard the noise. “I must see what that is,” he said.
 All of a sudden, just as Uncle Wiggily and the animal boys and
girls were going to start roasting marshmallows again, right through
the bushes jumped the bad old fuzzy tramp fox. Susie’s candy-fire
had been put out, Nannie had been pulled loose from the stump, and
here was new trouble. “How dare you roast marshmallows in my
woods?” growled the fox. “We didn’t know these were your woods,”
spoke Uncle Wiggily, politely. “Well, they are!” grumbled the fox.
“And, just for that, I’m going to bite a lot of souse off your ears.”
 Uncle Wiggily was brave. As soon as the fox jumped through the
bushes the bunny rabbit began to think of a way to save himself and
the animal boys and girls. Uncle Wiggily whispered to Billie Wagtail
and Jackie Bow Wow to put a lot of the sticky marshmallow candies
on a flat stump behind the fox. Then the bunny rabbit said to the
fuzzy chap: “Wouldn’t you like to roast a marshmallow before you
bite my souse?” The fox growled and said: “Well, I s’pose I might as
well! Candy goes well with souse. I’ll roast one.” The fox began to do
this.
 When Uncle Wiggily saw that the pile of sticky candies was in
readiness on the flat stump behind the fuzzy fox, the bunny rabbit
made a low and polite bow with his tall silk hat and said: “Won’t you
please be seated, Mr. Fox, while you are roasting your candy? It may
take some little time, and perhaps you will get tired. Sit down, I pray
you.” The fox growled and said: “Well, I s’pose I might!” So he got
ready to sit down. Billie and Jackie laughed so hard, but in whispers,
they could hardly stand up. “Wait till he sits down,” said Billie.
 “Oh, wow! Double wow and some feather pillows!” howled the
fox, as he felt himself caught by the sticky candies. “What has
happened?” Uncle Wiggily, first having told the animal children to
run along toward their homes, blew a kiss to the fuzzy fox, who was
caught fast. “Lots has happened,” said the bunny rabbit. “You
thought you would catch me, but you are caught yourself! It will be a
good while before you can pull yourself loose, Mr. Fox!” The fox
growled and grumbled, but he could not get away. So Uncle Wiggily
was saved.
 TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Page Changed Changed to

from
Chapter [omitted] Uncle Wiggily’s Fishing Trip
Heading Or The Good Luck He Had
With the Clothes Hook

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and

variations in spelling.
2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings
as printed.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UNCLE WIGGILY'S
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