Discourse Analysis of Emotion in Face-to-Face Group Decision and Negotiation

Abstract

This article explores the potential of interaction, conversation and discourse analyses of functions and manifestation of emotion in group decision and negotiation (GDN). It uses authentic data representing different kinds of GDN activities and aims to increase the understanding of the role of emotion not only in face-to-face interaction but also in artificial intelligence models of GDN. The study concludes that although emotion is a subjective psycho-somatic experience it can be fruitfully and reliably studied by diverse interaction, conversation and discourse analysis methods and thus shows and explores its intersubjective realization in GDN. The paper finds that specific linguistic manifestations of emotional dominance (flattery, sarcasm, ridicule, aggression etc.) function as strategic means for negotiation on different levels of awareness—from lexical choices to tones of voice and paralinguistic expressions. The study suggests that dialog management models of communicative acts need to be defined not only in terms of pragmatic meaning and intention but also in terms of emotion, i.e., emotions have more prominent influence on illocutionary force than acknowledged (Allwood in Linguistic communication as action and cooperation. Gothenburg Monographs in Linguistics 2. Department of Linguistics, University of Göteborg, 1976; Allwood in Collaboration, cooperation, and conflict in dialog systems. Proceedings of the IjCAI-97 workshop on collaboration, cooperation and conflict in dialog systems, Nagoya, 1997; Bell in Linguistic adaptation in spoken human–computer dialogs. Doctoral thesis, Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, Stockholm, 2003). Furthermore, the paper suggests that discursive mechanisms such as Reciprocal Adaptation realize as Interactive Alignment or/and Complex Cognitive Processing the emotion aspects of which have different effects on Problem Reframing and Problem Solution, i.e., the type of activity interlocutors involved in predicts the functionality of Emotive Reciprocal Adaptation. It finds, for instance, that in plea bargains, Interactive Alignment realizes Complex Theory of Mind (ToM)-based Reasoning in all stages of the activity. In informal empathy exchanges, such reasoning is manifested in the later phases of the process. Based on empirical analysis of face-to-face GDN data, the paper presents a new version of a model of dynamic re-interpretation and re-contextualization of negotiation, MEND (Modeling Emotion in Negotiation and Decision making), according to which emotions contribute to the changes of goals and strategies during negotiation. In the MEND model, emotion is a process that regulates Interactive Alignment and the ToM models, which interactants build of each other’s goals, states, tactics, and strategies. The operationalization of the model relates adjacent turns and utterances to updates of ToM strategies, transactive and interactive goals, tactics, and interpretations of emotion, either on primary or on appraisal and coping level. It uses a typical example of an emotion, which requires adoption of other’s goals, namely, empathy. The traditional idea of win–win, win–lose, and lose–lose negotiation types is put into perspective where these processes are seen as dynamic re-conditioning of negotiation by changes of ToM models driven by emotions. Besides being a cognitive and neural process, emotion is a joint interactive effort in which speakers reciprocally communicate and reformulate the legitimacy of their experiences, values, and attitudes.