Firth1994

Firth1994
BibType	ARTICLE
Key	Firth1994
Author(s)	Alan Firth
Title	“Accounts” in negotiation discourse: a single case analysis
Editor(s)
Tag(s)	EMCA, Conversation Analysis, Negotiations, Case Study, Accounts
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Year	1994
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Journal	Journal of Pragmatics
Volume	23
Number	2
Pages	199–226
URL	Link
DOI	10.1016/0378-2166(94)00003-W
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Howpublished
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Abstract

The pragmatic and discursive functions of accounts have been the subject of considerable scholarly attention in recent decades. In their seminal paper,Scott and Lyman (1968)define ‘accounts’ in a retroactive sense, as “statements made to explain unanticipated or untoward behaviour”, and it is overridingly in this regard that accounts have been approached in the literature. However, by attending to the way accounts are interactionally deployed in a single commodity negotiation, it is shown that accounts may also be used in a proactive, creative sense. Accounts, it will be argued, do substantially more than ‘explain’ behaviour and ‘repair’ fractured social interaction. By providing a vocabulary of (organizational) motives, by revealing putative ‘facts’ pertaining to market conditions, and by justifying actions, accounts establish a basis from which organizationally relevant action may be identified, challenged, and discussed. Furthermore, it will be shown that ‘accounting’ is not only a unilateral act but may, at significant junctures in the negotiation, be undertaken multilaterally. This can be seen in the way negotiators ‘share’ the activity of accounting as a method of intimating agreement. In sum, accounts provide mutually accessible (discourse) resources that allow negotiators to undertake their work effectively, i.e., to reach substantive agreement.

This paper is based on chapter 5 of my doctoral dissertation (Firth ,1991). Versions of the paper have been presented at the Rasmus Rask Linguistics Colloquium at Odense University, at the Sociolinguistics Seminar, Indiana University, as a guest lecture at the University of Oregon, and at the 4th International Pragmatics Association Conference, Kobe, Japan. I benefited greatly from the discussions and questions during these presentations. In particular, thanks to Jack Bilmes, Douglas Maynard, Jacob Mey, Gail Jefferson and an anonymous reviewer for detailed comments on an earlier version of the paper. I am also grateful to Gail Jefferson for her invaluable assistance with the transcript. I alone take responsibility for the paper's shortcomings.

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