Turning the Tide in Request Negotiations: The Role of Accounts and Reasonableness

• In Event: 40810 - Conversation Analysis and Ethnomethodology: Navigating Knowledge, credibility, and Accountability in Talk

Abstract

When seeking to get others to do things, interactants may encounter problems securing cooperation. Using conversation analysis, this paper examines how people navigate this problem within everyday negotiations, with a focus on what forms of talk are associated with transforming initial resistance into at least possible willingness (e.g., in achieving a “turning point”). In cases where requesters pursue compliance in the face of resistance, they may do so either by applying pressure or by identifying vulnerabilities in the requestee’s basis for resistance. We show that when requestees provide an account for resistance, this enables requesters to identify vulnerabilities, thereby facilitating a turning point. By contrast, when no account is provided, requesters are limited to applying pressure, reducing the likelihood that a turning point will be achieved. Even when requestees do yield to pressure, they tend to do so only after protracted and disaffiliative negotiations. Overall, the paper extends research on the management of everyday cooperation and underscores the centrality of reason-giving to the outcome of fraught negotiation sequences.

Authors

• Giovanni Rossi, University of California-Los Angeles

• Tanya Stivers, International Society for CA

• Andrew Chalfoun, University of California-Los Angeles