Preparing to talk REVISION FINAL IR version.pdf (657 kB)
Preparing to talk: Behind-the-scenes planning between negotiators for subsequent communication with persons in crisis
journal contribution
posted on 2022-01-24, 11:22 authored by Elizabeth Stokoe, Rein Ove Sikveland, Magnus HamannMagnus HamannPolice negotiators work in small units or teams. In a crisis negotiation, one of the team
becomes the ‘primary’ negotiator and talks with the person in crisis. However, because
the person in crisis may refuse to participate, and because several negotiators are co?present, there are multiple opportunities for negotiators to talk between themselves,
‘behind-the-scenes’. We used conversation analysis to analyse these interstitial
sequences in a corpus of audio-recorded UK suicide crisis negotiations. Our analysis
focused on how negotiators talk about what, when, and how to communicate to people
in crisis. We found that negotiators evaluated different communication technologies and
modalities (e.g., telephone versus face-to-face) and physical locations (e.g., standing on
the ground versus on a roof) in terms of their affordances for future interactions and
impact on previous ones. Second, negotiators (re)formulated what and how to
communicate with persons in crisis and evaluated hypothetical consequences. Third,
they evaluated their progress in terms of specific (in)effective words and phrases. The
analysis shows how negotiators, in contrast to individual post hoc reflection, come to
share live scrutiny of their negotiation practice. Overall, the paper augments what we
know about the low frequency but high-stakes activity of crisis negotiation.
History
School
- Social Sciences and Humanities
Department
- Communication and Media
Published in
Journal of PragmaticsVolume
191Pages
113 - 127Publisher
ElsevierVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© ElsevierPublisher statement
This paper was accepted for publication in the journal Journal of Pragmatics and the definitive published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.01.018.Acceptance date
2022-01-21Publication date
2022-02-22Copyright date
2022ISSN
0378-2166Publisher version
Language
- en