Article In:
Journal of Language and Politics: Online-First Articles

Capturing power in diplomatic language use

The case of a closed-door mediatory negotiation and its aftermath during the breakup of the former Yugoslavia

 | University of Hamburg | HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics | Hellenic American University
 | Dalian University of Foreign Languages | HUN-REN Hungarian Research Centre for Linguistics | University of Maribor
 | University of Maribor
 | University of Maribor
 | University of Maribor
 | University of Maribor
 | University of Maribor
In this study we capture power dynamics in diplomacy from a pragmatic angle, by examining a closed-door diplomatic mediatory negotiation and its aftermath. We first analyse the transcript of a mediation session between representatives of Slovenia and Croatia and a European Economic Community (EEC) delegation during the breakup of Yugoslavia. While the EEC representatives officially acted as mediators, they had earlier secretly agreed with the Yugoslav side to keep Yugoslavia intact. Second, we examine the transcript of a meeting between Slovenian politicians shortly after the mediation session. Studying these two datasets helps us to capture how power manifests itself in the mediatory negotiation studied, and how it is judged by the powerless afterwards. Focusing on language behaviour in the two datasets provides insight into the presence of power in a diplomatic situation where it should in theory not be played out. We use speech acts to analyse our data.
Keywords: diplomatic mediation, negotiation, power, speech acts, Yugoslavia
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Review of literature
  • 3.Data and methodology
    • 3.1Historical background
    • 3.2Data
    • 3.3Methodology
  • 4.Results and discussion
    • 4.1First dataset
      • 4.1.1Tells and Opines
      • 4.1.2Requests
      • 4.1.3Willings
      • 4.1.4Summary of our analysis of dataset one
    • 4.2Second dataset
      • 4.2.1Opines
      • 4.2.2Tells
      • 4.2.3Justify-s
      • 4.2.4Requests (for information)
      • 4.2.5Summary of our analysis of dataset two
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
This content is being prepared for publication; it may be subject to changes.
References (65)
References
Astor, Hilary. 2005. “Some contemporary theories of power in mediation: A primer for the puzzled practitioner.” Australian Dispute Resolution Journal 161: 30–39.Google Scholar
. 2007. “Mediator neutrality: Making sense of theory and practice.” Social & Legal Studies 16 (1): 221–239. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Awwad, Mona. 2023. “The failure of diplomatic mediations in the Syrian conflict — A comparative analysis.” Queios. [URL]. DOI logo
Ayyad, Ahmad. 2012. “Uncovering ideology in translation: A case study of Arabic and Hebrew translations of the ‘Roadmap Plan’.” Journal of Language and Politics 11 (2): 250–272. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Beardsley, Kyle, David Cunningham, and Peter White. 2018. “Mediation, peacekeeping, and the severity of civil war.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 63 (7): 1682–1709. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbé, Esther, Anna Herranz-Surrallés, and Michał Natorski. 2015. “Contending metaphors of the European Union as a global actor.” Journal of Language and Politics 14 (1): 18–40. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bendazzoli, Claudio. 2023. “Breaching protocol and flouting norms on the European Parliament floor: Reactions from a micro- and macro-context perspective in 22 languages.” Contrastive Pragmatics 4 (1): 64–87. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bercovitch, Jacob. (ed.) 2009. International Conflict Mediation: New Approaches and Findings. London: RoutledgeGoogle Scholar
Bercovitch, Jacob, and Jeffrey Rubin (eds.) 1994. Mediation in International Relations: Multiple Approaches to Conflict Management. Basingstoke: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Bercovitch, Jabob, and Scott Gartner. 2007. “Is there method in the madness of mediation? Some lessons for mediators from quantitative studies of mediation.” International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations 32 (4): 329–354. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blakemore, Scott. 2019. “Faith-based diplomacy and interfaith dialogue.” Brill Research Perspectives in Diplomacy and Foreign Policy 3 (2): 1–124. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Juliane House, and Gabriele Kasper. 1989. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar
Ciftci, Hilal. 2022. “Mediation as a diplomatic tool in Ottoman capitulations.” Codrul Cosminului 28 (1): 29–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Raymond. 1997. Negotiating across Cultures: International Communication in an Interdependent World (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace PressGoogle Scholar
Daniel Z. Kadar and Juliane House. 2022. “Offensiveness and (de)escalation in mediatised rites of aggression”, Language & Communication 871: 123–134. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
de Lange, Deborah. 2010. “Examples of diplomatic behavior: Backroom-bargaining and negotiations.” In Deborah Lange (ed.), Power and Influence. London: Palgrave. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dunmire, Patricia. 2012. “Political discourse analysis: Exploring the language of politics and the politics of language.” Language and Linguistics Compass 6 (11): 735–751. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Edmondson, Willis, and Juliane House. 1981. Let’s Talk and Talk About It: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Munich: Urban & Schwarzenberg.Google Scholar
Edmondson, Willis, House, Juliane, and Daniel Z. Kadar. 2023. Expressions, Speech Acts and Discourse: A Pedagogic Interactional Grammar of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fairclough, Norman. 1989. Language and Power. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Friedman, Elie. 2017. “Evasion strategies in international documents: when ‘constructive ambiguity’ leads to oppositional interpretation.” Critical Discourse Studies 14 (4): 385–401. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Friedman, Elie, Zohar Kampf, and Meital Balmas. 2017. “Exploring message targeting at home and abroad: The role of political and media considerations in the rhetorical dynamics of conflict resolution.” International Journal of Communication 111: 1597–1617.Google Scholar
Gaffney, Imelda. 2022. “Impartiality and neutrality in mediation.” Journal of Mediation and Applied Conflict Analysis 8 (1): 59–71.Google Scholar
Gilboa, Eytan. 2001. “Diplomacy in the media age: Three models of uses and effects.” Diplomacy and Statecraft 12 (2): 1–28. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Glaurdic, Josip. 2013. “The owl of Minerva flies only at dusk? British diplomacy on the eve of Yugoslav wars.” East European Politics & Societies 27 (3): 545–563. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Goffman, E. 1979. “Footing.” Semiotica 251: 1–29. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grant, Leigh, Ifat Maoz, and Boaz Keysar. 2023. “Lingua franca as a hidden barrier to conflict resolution.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 67 (5): 979–1006. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Gürkan, Emrah. 2015. “Mediating boundaries: Mediterranean go-betweens and cross-confessional diplomacy in Constantinople, 1560–1600.” Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2–3): 107–128. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Habermas, Juergen. 1979. Communication and the Evolution of Society. T. McCarthy (trans.) New York: Beacon.Google Scholar
House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2021. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2023. Speech acts and interaction in second language pragmatics: A position paper. Language Teaching. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
House, Juliane, and Dániel Z. Kádár, Fengguang Liu, and Yulong Song. 2022. Aggression in diplomatic notes — a pragmatic analysis of a Chinese-American conflict in times of colonisation. Text & Talk 43 (6). 755–776. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jacobs, Scott. 2002. “Maintaining neutrality in dispute mediation: Managing disagreement while managing not to disagree.” Journal of Pragmatics 34 (10/11): 1403–1426. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., and Michael Haugh. 2013. Understanding Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kádár, Dániel Z., Juliane House, Tadej Todorović, Tomaž Onič, David Hazemali, Katja Plemenitaš, and Donathan Brown. 2024. “The language of diplomatic mediation — A case study of an emergency meeting in the wake of the Yugoslav Wars.” Submitted to Language and Communication 961: 54–66. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kampf, Zohar. 2015. “Political discourse analysis.” In Karen Tracy (ed.), The International Encyclopaedia of Language and Social Interaction. New York: Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Kissine, Mikhail. 2013. From Utterances to Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Levinson, Stephen. 2017. “Speech acts.” In Yan Huang (Ed.), Oxford Handbook of Pragmatics, pp. 199–216. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lyddon, Peter. 1996. The Fall and Rise of Coercive Diplomacy in the Balkans. Doctoral dissertation, United States Army Command and General Staff College, Kansas.
Maley, Yon. 1995. “From adjudication to mediation: Third party discourse in conflict resolution.” Journal of Pragmatics 23 (1): 93–110. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Maver, Ales. 2022. Zapleteni zemljepis demokratizacije. Prehodi v demokracijo v srednji in vzhodni Evropi ob koncu 20. Stoletja. Studia Historica Slovenia 22 (3): 791–822. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Murau, Daniela. 2012. “Strategic maneuvering in diplomatic mediation.” Journal of Argumentation in Context 1 (3): 331–377. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Osojnik, Janez. 2022. “Predlog Socialistične stranke Slovenije oktobra 1990 za izvedbo plebiscita o samostojnosti Republike Slovenije in odzivi nanj v Sloveniji.” Studia Historica Slovenica 22 (2): 463–502. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pérez-González, Luis. 2012. “Translation, interpreting and the genealogy of conflict.” Journal of Language and Politics 11 (2): 169–184. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ran, Yongping, and Linsen Zhao. 2018. “Building mutual affection-based face in conflict mediation: A Chinese relationship management model.” Journal of Pragmatics 1291: 185–198. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ran, Yongping, Linsen Zhao, and Dániel Z. Kádár. 2020. The rite of reintegrative shaming in Chinese public dispute mediation. Pragmatics 30 (1): 40–63. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Repe, Bozo. 2002. Jutri je nov dan. Slovenci in razpad Jugoslavije. Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga.Google Scholar
. 2004. Viri o demokratizaciji in osamosvojitvi Slovenije (III. del: osamosvojitev in mednarodno priznanje). Viri 19. Ljubljana: Arhivsko društvo Slovenije.Google Scholar
Rodríguez, Juan. 2012. “The interplay of greetings and promises: Political encounters between the Warao and the new indigenous leadership in the Orinoco Delta, Venezuela.” Pragmatics 22 (1): 167–187.Google Scholar
Rojo, Luisa. 2017. “Language and power”. In Ofelia Garcia, Nelson Flores, and Massimiliano Spotti (Eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Language and Society, pp. 77–101. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Santora, Kimberley. 2013. Exploring Self-Orientation in Personal Narratives of Mental Health among a Latino Clinical Sample. PhD thesis, Northeastern University, Massachusetts. DOI logo
Shire, Mohammed. 2020. “Dialoguing and negotiating with Al-Shabaab: the role of clan elders as insider-partial mediators.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 15 (1): 1–22. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Siniver, Asaf. 2006. “Power, impartiality and timing: Three hypotheses on third party mediation in the Middle East.” Political Studies 54 (4): 806–826. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2022. “The power to blame as a source of leverage: International mediation and ‘Dead Cat Diplomacy’.” The Hague Journal of Diplomacy 171: 1–32. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Smith, Dan. 1997. “Language and discourse in conflict and conflict resolution.” Current Issues in Language and Society 4 (3): 190–214. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Svensson, Isak, and Mathilda Lindgen. 2013. “Peace from the inside: Exploring the role of the insider-partial mediator.” International Interactions: Empirical and Theoretical Research in International Relations 39 (5): 698–722. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rosoux, Valérie. 2022. “How not to mediate conflict.” International Affairs 98 (5): 1717–1735. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thornborrow, Johanna. 2002. Power Talk: Language and Interaction in Institutional Discourse. London: Longman.Google Scholar
Tome, Vicente. 1992. “Maintaining credibility as a partial mediator: United States mediation in Southern Africa, 1981–1988” Negotiation Journal 81: 273–289. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Touval, Saadia. 1985. “The context of mediation.” Negotiation Journal 11: 373–378. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Van Gelder, Maartje, and Tijana Krstić. 2015. “Introduction: Cross-confessional diplomacy and diplomatic intermediaries in the early modern Mediterranean.” Journal of Early Modern History 19 (2–3): 93–105. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vanderveken, Daniel. 1990. Meaning and Speech Acts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wallensteen, Peter, and Isak Svensson. 2014. “Talking peace: International mediation in armed conflicts.” Journal of Peace Research 51 (2): 315–327. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Wehr, Paul, and John Lederach. 1991. “Mediating conflict in central America.” Journal of Peace Research 21 (1): 85–98. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Zartman, William. (ed.) 2007. Peacemaking in International Conflict: Methods & Techniques (Revised edition). Washington DC: United States Institute of Peace Press.Google Scholar