How Reflection Works in Transformative Dialogue/Mediation: A Preliminary Investigation

Angela Cora Garcia; Erik Cleven

doi:10.18778/1733-8077.20.2.05

Authors

Angela Cora Garcia Bentley University, USA https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1052-5364
Erik Cleven Saint Anselm College, USA https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9546-5668

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/1733-8077.20.2.05

Keywords:

Transformative Dialogue, Transformative Mediation, Reflection, Qualitative Analysis, Conversation Analysis, Remote Interaction, Technologically-Mediated Interaction, Conflict Resolution, Dispute Resolution, United States

Abstract

Transformative dialogue and mediation (TD/M) is an approach to conflict resolution used in mediation and inter-group dialogues about social justice and race, political polarization, and ethnopolitical conflict. TD/M practitioners believe their approach supports the agency of participants and helps them interact with greater confidence, self-awareness, and understanding of the perspectives of others. However, previous research on TD/M has not yet addressed how it achieves those outcomes. This pilot study works to fill that gap by investigating how reflection, the most commonly used TD/M technique, is utilized in a facilitated meeting of the steering committee of a non-profit organization. We conduct a qualitative sequential analysis of a video-recorded interaction to investigate how TD/M reflection is done. We show how the TD/M facilitator of the meeting reflects participants’ statements with the techniques of mirroring, substituting, and omitting and how the participants respond to those reflections with agreement or repair. The results of the analysis are discussed in terms of their implications for understanding how TD/M facilitation works.

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Author Biographies

Angela Cora Garcia, Bentley University, USA

Angela Cora Garcia is a professor in the Department of Natural and Applied Sciences at Bentley University. Her main areas of research are conversation analytic studies of mediation sessions, emergency service calls to the police, air traffic communication, and political speeches and interviews. She is the author of a textbook on conversation analysis, An Introduction to Interaction: Understanding Talk in the Workplace and Everyday Life (Bloomsbury Academic Press, 2023), and a conversation analytic study of mediation, How Mediation Works: Resolving Conflict through Talk (Cambridge University Press, 2019).

Erik Cleven, Saint Anselm College, USA

Erik Cleven is a professor in the Department of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, NH. He is also a fellow and a former board member of the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation. His research focuses on dialogue and conflict, and he is the co-editor with Judith A. Saul of a forthcoming volume to be published by Rowman and Littlefield entitled Co-Creating Conversations: Transformative Dialogue in Communities and Organizations.

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