Analysis On Conversation Structures Of Arbitration Of Labor Disputes And Study On Pragmatic Strategies

Currently, research on institutional talk about arbitration of disputes is rarely concerned.This paper analyzed ten transcriptions of employment tribunal conversation, which wererecorded from arbitration tribunal court hearings and transcribed by the author.Firstly, the paper described how employment tribunal conversation established andallocated turns, and we offered3rules of “turn-taking”, based on the “turn-taking” system putforward by Sacks. Observing the macrostructure of employment tribunal conversation, we foundit had procedural openings, endings and transitions. Meanwhile, describing the interactionalstructures of employment tribunal conversation, we classified them and pointed out the commoninteractional structure and the typical one according to the statistics. Besides, comparing to theinteractional structures of “teacher&student” conversation in class produced by BirminghamSchool, of “doctor&patient” communication studied by Lin Guodong (2009), and of courtroomconversation studied by Liao Meizhen (2003), we drew a conclusion that the interactionalstructures of employment tribunal conversation were almost the same with the ones studied byLiao Meizhen (2003), the ones studied by Birmingham School and Lin Guodong (2009),however, were not suitable for analyzing.Secondly, the paper studied the pragmatic strategies employed by arbitrator, plaintiff anddefendant, according to the “Goal-intention Principle” brought up by Qian Guanlian. We foundthat arbitrators employed the strategy of repeated questioning and of interruption to clarify thedispute and require both parties to speak out the truth; while the plaintiffs applied the strategiesof informing indirectly, avoiding offering information directly and of vagueness to emphasizetheir rights have been offended, whereas the defendants applied the strategies of shiftingresponsibility and of repeated questioning to support they don’t break the rules.