Using identities-in-talk as a persuasive strategy
The case of police crisis negotiations with Mohamed Merah, a self-proclaimed Mujahedin
Despite the fact that much has been written on crisis negotiations, very little literature actually looks at the turn by turn identity work that is employed to do persuasion. Taking a social constructionist approach to identity, and using transcripts of negotiations between police negotiators and Merah, a self-proclaimed Mujahedin, this paper reveals the identity work that is strategically deployed in an attempt to persuade Merah to surrender peacefully. Findings indicate that, on the one hand, the police do identity work that negates the relevance of the default identities Mujahedin/Kafir, and on the other hand they do identity work that makes relevant alternative identities that make a peaceful solution more likely.
References
Agne, Robert, and Karen Tracey
2001 “
Bible Babble: Naming the Interactional Trouble at Waco.”
Discourse Studies 3 (3): 269–294.
Agne, Robert
2007 “
Reframing Practices in Moral Conflict: Interaction Problems in the Negotiation Standoff at Waco.”
Discourse and Society 18 (5): 549–578.
Antaki, Charles, and Sue Widdicombe
1998 “
Identity as an Achievement and as a Tool.” In
Identities in Talk, ed. by
Charles Antaki, and
Sue Widdicombe, 1–15. London: Sage.
Burr, Viviane
1995 An Introduction to Social Construction. New York: Routledge.
Cialdini, Robert
1984 Influence: How and Why People Agree on Things. New York: William Morrow.
Day, Dennis
1998 “
Being Ascribed and Resisting Membership in an Ethnic Group.” In
Identities in Talk, ed. by
Charles Antaki, and
Sue Widdicombe, 151–170. London: Sage.
Donohue, William, and Anthony Roberto
1993 “
Relational Development as Negotiated Order in Hostage Negotiation.”
Human Communication Research 20 (2): 175–198.
Donohue, William, and Anthony Roberto
1996 “
An Empirical Examination of Three Models of Integrative and Distributive Bargaining.”
The International Journal of Conflict Management 7 (3): 209–229.
Edwards, Derek
1998 “
The Relevant Thing about Her. Social Identity Categories in Use.” In
Identities in Talk, ed. by
Charles Antaki, and
Sue Widdicombe, 15–33. London: Sage.
Fisher, Roger, William Ury, and Bruce Patton
1991 Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement without Giving in. (2nd ed.). New York: Penguin Books.
Greenstone, James
2004 “
Communicating Effectively for Successful Hostage Negotiations and Crisis Intervention.”
Journal of Police Crisis Negotiation 4 (2): 43–52.
Hammer, Mitchell
2007 Saving Lives: the SAFE Model for Resolving Hostage and Crisis Incidents. Westport: Greenwood Publishing.
Heritage, John
1990/1 “
Intention, Meaning and Strategy: Observations on Constraints on Interaction Analysis.”
Research on Language and Social Interaction 24: 311–332.
Hopper, Robert
2005 “
A Cognitive Agnostic in Conversation Analysis: When Do Strategies Affect Spoken Interaction?” In
Conversation and Cognition, ed. by
Hedwige te Molder, and
Jonathan Potter, 134–158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Huntington, Samuel
1993 “
The Clash of Civilizations.”
Foreign Affairs 72 (3): 22–49.
Jayyusi, Lena
1984 Categorization and the Moral Order. Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
Leudar, Ivan, and Jiri Nekvapil
2000 “
Presentations of Romanies in the Czech Media: On Category Work in Television Debates.”
Discourse and Society 11 (4): 487–513.
Miller, Laurence
2005 “
Hostage Negotiation: Psychological Principles and Practices.”
International Journal of Emergency Mental Health 7 (4): 277–298.
Moerman, Michael
1988 Talking Culture: Ethnography and Conversation Analysis. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Mullins, Wayne
2002 “
Advanced Communication Techniques for Hostage Negotiators.”
Journal of Police Crisis Negotiations: An International Journal 2 (1): 63–81.
Noesner, Gary, and Mike Webster
1997 “
Crisis Intervention: Using Active Listening Skills in Negotiations.”
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 55 (8): 43–52.
Richards, Keith
2006 “
Being the Teacher: Identity and Classroom Conversation.”
Applied Linguistics 27 (1): 51–77.
Rogan, Randall, and Mitchell Hammer
Royce, Terry
2005 “
The Negotiator and the Bomber: An Interactive Analysis of the Critical Role of Active Listening in Crisis Negotiation.”
Negotiation Journal 21 (1): 5–27.
Royce, Terry
2009 “
Critical Incidents: Staging and Process in Crisis Negotiations.”
Journal of Police Intelligence and Counter Terrorism 4 (2): 25–41.
Sacks, Harvey
1972 “
An Initial Investigation of the Usability of Conversational Data for Doing Sociology.” In
Studies in Social Interaction, ed. by
David Sudnow, 31–74. New York: Free Press.
Sacks, Harvey
1992 Lectures on Conversation. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Slatkin, Arthur
2010 Communication in Crisis and Hostage Situations. Springfield Illinois: Charles Thomas.
Taylor, Paul, and Sally Thomas
2008 “
Linguistic Style Matching and Negotiation Outcome.”
Negotiation and Conflict Management Research 1 (3): 263–281.
Van De Mieroop, Dorien, Kris Bruyninckx, Kathy Leysen, and Wendy Vanwesenbeeck
2007 “
Implicit and Explicit Identity Constructions in the Life Story of one of Hitler's Elite Soldiers.”
Discourse Studies 9 (3): 385–405.
Vecchi, Gregory
2009 “
Conflict and Crisis Communication: The Behavioral Influence Stairway Model and Suicide Intervention.”
Annals of American Psychotherapy 12 (2): 32–39.
Widdicombe, Sue
1998 “
Identity as an Analyst’s and Participant’s Resource.” In
Identities in Talk, ed. by
Charles Antaki, and
Sue Widdicombe, 191–206. London: Sage.
Cited by
Cited by 1 other publications
Zhao, Xin & Yansheng Mao
2023.
The Identity Lies in the Words of Crowd-Funders: Help-Seekers’ Identity Construction in Chinese Online Medical Crowd-Funding Discourses.
Health Communication 38:2
► pp. 363 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 20 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.