Förhandlares kommunikativa kompetens

Sammanfattning: The subject of this study is language use in negotiations and the communicative competence of professional negotiators. The aim of the study is to make explicit the communicative competence through analysis of language use in four areas: levels of action, topical structure, meta-communication, and coherence. Negotiation ability has been identified and studied within a theoretical framework of linguistic pragmatics, outlined by participant perspective orientated and functional pragmatics, and by a socio-pragmatic perspective on joint action. Linguistic data have been analysed as parts of an activity type, a concept concerned with the connection between language use and the overall activity of which language forms a part.The data consist of a role play, dealing with an interstate diplomatic issue of monetary compensation after an environmental incident. The role play was performed by five different groups, with a total of twenty participants: ten Swedish and ten Russian negotiators. Two of the role plays were performed by well-experienced negotiators, and three role plays by participants without such experience. Three main variables have been used for comparison: experience, participant nationality and the assigned position of the negotiation. The data have been analysed both with quantitative and qualitative methods.Results show that competence is generally indicated by the special ways professional negotiators use communicative projects, create phase structures, and organize topics in local turns-of-talk and globally in the talk. Competence is also indicated by meta-communication, which is used for constructing participant roles and authority, as well as global coherence, all of which contribute to a formal level of interactive style. The interplay of power is performed within a frame of good relations, which is maintained in interaction. Professional negotiators seem to be aware of the importance of creating a common ground in interaction. What aspects contribute to the construction of a common ground can be based on a general premise that awareness and experience combine to create the main rationale for a person to act in a correct way. The results entail a professional network practice over-arching linguistic and cultural systems, where general norms of the activity type of negotiation are combined with specific institutional norms. Negotiators’ national background has however not appeared significant.