Dr Alan Firth http://afirth.blogspot.com/ http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ecls/staff/profile/alan.firth presents

Mediators' methods for managing emotionality: Circumventing, curtailing and containing conflict in child-contact conciliation.

Where: Meeting Room (#208), Level 2, Joyce Ackroyd Building (#37).

When: 2:00-3:00pm, Wednesday the 23rd of March

Abstract:

This presentation will show some of the key findings from the now completed Economic & Social Research Council project 'Opening Closed Doors' (Alan Firth, Liz Trinder and Chris Jenks), which used Conversation Analytic (CA) methodology to explicate how CAFCAS-appointed mediators interact with parents in dispute over their children's visitation arrangements. In this presentation, I show how mediators adeptly and adroitly deploy a variety of discursive devices and talk-based resources in attempts to 'manage' the parents' latent (though often visible) emotionality during mediation meetings, in ways that promote mutually agreeable and workable conflict-resolution.

This talk will be of interest to anyone interested in talk-in-interaction, 'professional' competence, institutional forms of interaction, mediation, and conflict resolution. It will also demonstrate how Conversation Analysts undertake the work of uncovering systematic minutiae underpinning social conduct.

SJC Seminar: What: Mediators' methods for managing emotionality: Circumventing, curtailing and containing conflict in child-contact conciliation