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C.N. Candlin & Yon Maley (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia), "Framing the Dispute", International Journal for the Semiotics of Law / Revue Internationale de Sémiotique Juridique Vol. VIII no.19 [1994], 75-98. Mediation in Western societies has emerged as a mode of dispute resolution alternative or additional to adjudication and formal court systems. This paper is concerned with non-curial but court-annexed mediation and the discourse which defines and is defined by it. We focus on one aspect of mediator discourse: the strategic use of formulations and framings, or reframings. Formulations and reframing are common strategies in courtroom examinations, counselling and therapy. As they are borrowed and moved from one institutional context to another, these intertextual elements undergo a transforming process and take on an altered semiotic value in the service of helping the parties reach settlement. We show how the mediator's use of formulations, either as a gist or upshot of a previous contribution, attempts to reframe the parties' perception of events or of each other. All formulations alter meaning simultaneously in experiential (referential), interpersonal and textual, dimensions; using Halliday's (1985) notion of rhetorical thrust, we show how the dominant thrust of framing and reframing in mediation is to neutralise and generalise.

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