Mediators’ Recontextualization Strategies In Conflict Narrative Discourse

As a public management system,public security mediation,which is used to resolve contradictions and disputes at the grass-roots level,is unique in our country.How the police mediators in public security mediation employ language skills to mitigate the conflict on the basis of law before it may escalate into any formal litigation has been an important issue in the research on public security mediation.This paper is a critical discourse analysis of the recontextualization strategies used by mediators in six successfully mediated public security cases collected in city N(including police interview recording,transcribed mediation talk and mediation agreement).Drawing on the narrative framework advanced by Labov(2013)and recontextualization strategies outlined by van Leeuwen(2008),it investigates how mediators use two strategies,including substitution and addition,in the conflict narrative discourse of public security mediation.The analysis shows that in public security mediation,mediator’s recontextualization strategies have been mainly used in the following four narrative stages of disputes:presentation of the aggressor and victim,evaluation of the injury suffered by each party,assessment of blame attribution and discussion of the compensation.In the process of presenting the aggressor and victim,the substitution strategy(substituting daily language with legal language)and addition strategy(adding criticism to the advantaged party)have been mainly used.When evaluating the injury of the party concerned,mediators have adopted the pattern of addition(adding the evaluation of the injury of the advantaged party)and substitution(substitution of legal language for daily language).In the assessment of responsibility attribution,the substitution strategy(substitution of the cause of conflict as a result of misunderstanding)and addition strategy(addition of sympathy towards the advantaged party)have been used;Lastly,the addition strategy(addition of criticism towards the claimed compensation and addition of record of medical treatment cost)has been integrated into discussing the compensation of the parties.In the process of employing those recontextualization strategies,mediators want to achieve four pragmatic purposes: warning and reminding,understating the severity of conflict,lowering expectations and comforting.In addition,moral and legal principles both have been observed in the recontextualization process,among which moral principles include respecting the common interests and independent decision-making right of the opposing parties and promoting the development of harmonious relations,indicating the Confucian value in Chinese traditional culture,and legal principles include legitimacy,justice,openness,voluntariness,timeliness and education.The combined use of both principles enables mediators to display their legal and moral stances,which is consistent with the unique features of the Chinese mediation system,a combination of ration and emotion.This study indicates that we should not only pay attention to the system and personnel quality,but also attach more importance to the use of language skills in public security mediation.It is anticipated that this study can provide references for public security mediation in terms of language use,so that mediators can use appropriate language strategies to persuade the parties and bring more successful and effective mediation.