Stokoe Sikveland 2019 JoS Backstage.pdf (451.98 kB)
The backstage work negotiators do when communicating with persons in crisis
journal contribution
posted on 2019-05-02, 10:09 authored by Elizabeth Stokoe, Rein SikvelandWhen a person in crisis threatens suicide, police negotiators engage them in a conversation to
prevent death. Working in small teams, the primary negotiator’s role is to talk directly to the
person in crisis. A secondary negotiator, working ‘behind the scenes’, supports the ongoing
negotiation. Using 31 hours of audio-recorded British negotiations, we uncover the backstage
work of secondary negotiators. We use conversation analysis to identify the sequential
position, linguistic form and action of the secondary negotiator’s interventions on (i) the
delivery (e.g., ‘sound angry’) and (ii) next actions (e.g., ‘say please’, ‘try asking them to
move’) of the primary negotiator, and how the primary incorporates them into the
negotiation. Our analysis shows that, while some suggestions were effective, others disrupted
the flow of the negotiation as well as the alignment between primary negotiator and person in
crisis. The paper augments current sociolinguistic understandings of the high-stakes language
activity of crisis negotiation and highlights the importance of attending to linguistic features
of interaction when training negotiators to work better as a team.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Published in
Journal of SociolinguisticsVolume
24Issue
2Pages
185-208Citation
STOKOE, E. and SIKVELAND, R.O., 2019. The backstage work negotiators do when communicating with persons in crisis. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 24(2), pp. 185-208.Publisher
© WileyVersion
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Publisher statement
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: STOKOE, E. and SIKVELAND, R.O., 2019. The backstage work negotiators do when communicating with persons in crisis. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4(2), pp. 185-208, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12347. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions.Acceptance date
2019-05-01Publication date
2019-06-19Copyright date
2020ISSN
1467-9841Publisher version
Language
- en