A Pragmatic Approach to the Structural Organisation of Business Negotiations: Students

A DISCOURSE ANALYSIS APPROACH TO THE EPISODIC STRUCTURE OF SALES NEGOTIATIONS: OBSERVATIONS ON BUSINESS ENGLISH STUDENTS’ MENTAL PATTERNS OF DISCOURSE TRANSACTIONS.

Victoria Guillén Nieto University of Alicante

Abstract – Drawing on the assumption that the business negotiation is a specific type of spoken genre, this piece of qualitative research focuses on the mental patterns or scripts that a sample of European Business English students, who have not been trained in negotiating skills, have regarding the discourse structure of sales negotiations, i.e., the presence or absence of a particular ritualistic behaviour as well as the occurrence or non-occurrence of typified procedures and patterns, by comparing different versions of the same negotiation. The methodology used draws on Discourse Analysis. The main research questions are: Do the students sampled share the same script of a sales negotiation? Can we perceive any relevant differences in students’ expectations about the discourse transactions of a sales negotiation? If so, what are the reasons that may serve as an explanation to such differing views and performances? To what extent does the script upon which students base their expectations concerning the episodic structure of a sales negotiation resemble that of the proposed ideal model of negotiation? The data are sixteen videotaped open role-played negotiations.

Introduction

Over the last twenty years, Pragmatics has made Linguistics describe a marked turn from the motorway of syntax to the crossroads of discourse analysis, that is, to the study of the structure and function of language beyond the level of the sentence. One of the major concerns of discourse analysts is to describe and explain how spoken discourse is structured and how speakers’ conversational contributions are connected. This pragmatic approach to language use has generously contributed to the development of linguistic research into the field of English for Specific Purposes, encouraging researchers to consider business discourse as a specific type of social interaction and business speech events as specific genres. (Vid. Mulholland: 1991; Charles: 1996; Steuten: 1996; White: 1998, etc.).

To illustrate this line of research, let us consider, for example, the investigation carried out by Steuten (1996) who analysed the internal structure and cohesion in business conversations, i.e. telephone calls at a Dutch Hotel, by means of a hierarchical model of business conversations called DEMO (Dynamic Essential Modelling of Organisations), which focuses on the transaction concept to understand the sequences of communicative actions in business conversations.

Many linguists agree on the fact that speech events can be grouped into: (a) written genres such as poetry, narrative, report-writing, letter writing, etc.; and (b) spoken genres like the telephone call, the interview, the negotiation, etc. The underlying assumption of this

1 perception is that each genre is typified by a specific framework in such a way that particular instances of the same speech event will share the same broad pattern but may show differing aspects concerning the general framework.

Using a technological metaphor, genres seem to be, in general terms, recorded in the different files making up the speaker’s communicative competence mental database; such pre-existing knowledge structures in memory have been labelled: dynamic schemata or scripts1. By scripts we mean “a dynamic background knowledge structure stored in memory involving event sequences”. (Yule 1996: 86). The concept of a script is simply a way of recognising some expected sequence of actions in an event. For example, we have scripts (schemata stored in memory files) for what normally happens in all kinds of speech events, from the general ones, such as “going shopping” or “going to the doctor’s surgery”, to the specific ones, e.g. “the employment interview”, “the telephone call”, “the business meeting”, “the sales negotiation”, etc. “Each time speakers are involved in social interaction and they come across the signals of a particular genre, they seem to behave as if they were computer users because they select and activate a particular file from their memory stock and begin to work only with that file, setting out their expectations about what may (and may not) happen, what can (and cannot) be said, who can (and cannot) be there, etc.” (Guillén Nieto, in press).

Therefore, this sense of generic expectations will affect the production, reception and understanding of the activities of the particular instance of speech genre. The generic sense of a negotiation acts, in Mulholland’s words: “as a familiar framework for participants and so provides them with the comfort of a ritual, within which they can address the peculiar needs of any particular negotiating instance” (Mulholland, 1991: 41). However attention must be drawn towards the fact that scripts are not universal but culturally based. (Vid., Yule 1996: 87; Giménez 2001).

To sum up, to see the negotiation generically will enable us to study the principles underlying its discourse framework better. Therefore, the main research questions of this study are: Do the students share the same episodic structure of a sales negotiation when they negotiate using English as the lingua-franca? Can we perceive any relevant differences in students’ expectations about the discourse transactions of a sales negotiation? If so, what are the reasons that may serve as an explanation to such differing views and performances? And to what extent does the script upon which the students sampled base their expectations concerning the episodic structure of a sales negotiation resemble that of the proposed ideal model of negotiation?

Drawing on the assumption that negotiations are a specific type of spoken genre, the aim of this piece of research is twofold: (a) to analyse the scripts that a sample of European Business English students, who have not been trained in negotiating skills, have regarding the discourse structure of sales negotiations, i.e. the presence or absence of a particular ritualistic behaviour as well as the occurrence or non-occurrence of typified procedures and patterns, by comparing different versions of the same negotiation. And (b) to bring students

1 The notion of a script was first introduced by R. Schank and R. Abelson at the Fourth International Conference on Artificial Intelligence (Schank & Abelson 1975). At about this time, a paper by M. Minsky (1975) emerged advocating a strategy for expectation-driven information processing in which particular situations are interpreted in terms of generalised expectations.

2 to the point of awareness at which the necessity of acquiring certain discourse structures and resources is evident.

Methodology

The structure of an interaction draws our attention to pre-existing knowledge in memory that allows us to recognise and understand the part language plays in conversation, that is, the way it is organised through the syntagmatic axis to convey meaning. (Guillén Nieto in press). As regards the analysis of discourse structure, the methodology used in this paper draws on the descriptive discourse analysis model developed within Discourse Analysis over the last three decades: the Sinclair-Coulthard model (1975), and its later revisions by Burton (1981) and Francis and Hunston (1992: 123-161), as well as on the collaborative model of negotiating developed by The Harvard Negotiating Project2 (Fisher: 1981; 1991). In keeping with the structural emphasis of the Birmingham tradition, I suggest a hierarchical structural model for the analysis of sales negotiations. This consists of a series of ranks or levels that are nested into one another. The rank scale I put forward is shown is Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: The discourse structure of business negotiations.

Business negotiation (Rank or level 1) ↕ Transaction (Rank or level 2) ↕ Exchange (Rank or level 3) ↕ Move (Rank or level 4) ↕ Act (Rank or level 5)

The above rank scale, which is clearly inspired by Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), shows how each rank or level is instrumental in creating and organising the others. This layered pattern is created though embedding. The nature of the embedding (symbolized by ↕ in Fig. 1) ranges from the acts and moves3 determining exchanges, to the exchanges shaping the discourse transactions produced during the negotiation activity, to the whole business interaction involved in a business negotiation.

According to Francis and Hunston (1992: 141), whose research on the discourse analysis of conversation is based on Sinclair and Coulthard (1975), the interaction can be described as “an unordered series of transactions”, and they explain that this does not mean that interactions do not display order but that this order cannot perhaps be characterised in linguistic terms. However, I tend to think that the interaction involved in a business negotiation can certainly be described as an ordered sequence of thematic episodes linguistically realised by topic-oriented discourse transactions. Following the research

2 3 To avoid double labelling and for the sake of economy and consistency, I follow Burton’s (1981) explanation and classification of moves: framing, focusing, opening, supporting, challenging , etc.

3 carried out by The Harvard Negotiating Project4, skilful and successful negotiators should ideally pursue the following layered pattern of discourse transactions when negotiating:

Fig. 2: Discourse transactions in business negotiations

Relationship building. ↓↑ Agreeing procedure. ↓↑ Exchanging information. ↓↑ Questioning. ↓↑ Options. ↓↑ Bidding. ↓↑ Bargaining. ↓↑ Settling and concluding. ↓↑ Final greetings.

As one can see from Fig. 2, the structural organisation of the discourse transactions of a business negotiation is topic-oriented. In other words, transactions are essentially topic units governed by two mechanisms: prospection (symbolized by ↓ in Fig. 2) and encapsulation5 (symbolized by ↑ in Fig. 2). By means of the former, each discourse transaction sets out expectations about the next one; and according to the latter, to understand the meaning of each transaction one needs to retrieve the preceding one. These transactions seem to perform a well defined discourse function within the overall negotiating procedure providing cohesion, coherence and relevance to its discourse organisation, as well as facilitating the information flow and closure. In what follows, I shall briefly define and explain the specific discourse function of each of the proposed topic-oriented transactions.

At the beginning, speakers may start with some ritualistic exchanges the main purpose of which is to establish rapport and a good atmosphere which will create a friendly climate for the whole negotiation. This is, in fact, the purpose of the preliminary transaction that has been called Relationship building. During this transaction, it is important to keep the conversation moving and to show interest in what the other side has to say6. In fact, what

4 The research carried out by The Harvard Negotiating Project is based on a collaborative approach to negotiating rather than on a confrontational one. In a collaborative approach, negotiators assume that it is possible to pursue your own interests while maintaining good human relations with people whose interest conflict with yours. O’Connor et. al. (1992) and Cora García (2000) draw on the collaborative approach to negotiating in their respective studies. 5 In Sinclair (1992: 83-86) prospection and encapsulation mechanisms are used to explain the structure of the exchange. In the present study, their use is expanded and applied to the structural nature of the discourse transaction. 6 Coulthard has suggested (1981:14) that greetings and leave-takings should not be seen as part of the structure of a particular interaction, but rather markers of the beginning and end of situations during which interaction occurs. However, I agree with Francis and Hunston (1992:140), when they state that “to see opening and closing transactions as part of a situation but not as part of an interaction would be to skip a rank, which is

4 happens in this preliminary transaction may have important implications for the participants’ motivation and attitude in a negotiating activity, which in turn will influence the fluency with which the speech event may unfold. (Hayes, 1991: 71-72).

Once rapport has been established, it is important to state the objectives clearly and to agree on them with the other party in order to create a climate of cooperation. These exchanges will realise the first in a series of medial transactions, that is, Transaction 2: Agreeing procedure. And it is equally convenient to begin with a clear opening statement that will enable the other party to understand the background and interest of his. Therefore, speakers usually begin with a short account of the company’s history and activities or move on to stating each side’s interests. These are the typical exchanges of which Transaction 3 is made up: Exchanging information.

Transaction 3 may lead to another series of exchanges in which the seller will often ask questions to get more information about the customer’s needs and the emphasis placed on different factors. These exchanges will give shape to Transaction 4: Questioning.

Having exchanged information and clarified positions, it is important for negotiators to generate ideas and options before making decisions. This creative process will give rise to transaction 5: Options.

Once options have been evaluated, negotiators should put forward proposals and bids. These exchanges will realise transaction 6: Bidding. If new offers are made in response to the other side’s proposals and the time has come to make concessions linked to conditions, these will be the typical exchanges of transaction 7: Bargaining.

After this, it is advisable for negotiators to summarise what agreements have already been reached and what responsibilities have already been assigned. Besides, it is essential to identify any areas which have not yet been agreed on and any further action which needs to be taken. Likewise, any points that need to be dealt with at the next meeting should be summarised and a date for a new appointment fixed. These exchanges will realise the first of two terminal transactions, that is, transaction 8: Settling and Concluding. Finally, when the negotiation has come to an end, negotiators will exhibit a ritualistic behaviour again by exchanging final greetings in transaction 9: Final Greetings.

Nevertheless, it must be noted that the particular realisations of this broad pattern may differ considerably every time speakers engage in a sales negotiation because one of the special properties of spoken discourse is that it is self-monitored. This means that negotiators have the power to select or change their own discourse route when they interact according to a wide variety of factors such as: (a) their negotiating styles, whether collaborative or confrontational; (b) their personal relationship; (c) the external circumstances in which the speech event is embedded, etc. All this would not be possible, if it were not for the fact that spoken interaction permits a certain degree of flexibility, since it is not a mechanical process in which participants exhibit a robot-like behaviour, but rather a creative one in which speakers are allowed to skip transactions, go backwards and forwards along their own discourse route (Perhaps we could now move on to discuss…, Let us now look at the different options we have…, We will look at that first and then we will come back to…), or even interrupt interaction (May I say something?), bearing in mind that the capacity to improvise does not mean that they are free to say or do anything they please, because inconsistent with the fundamental principles of rank-scale analysis”.

5 each spoken genre will impose its own limitations, otherwise it could not be recognised as such.

Consequently, the fact that interactive discourse has the property of being self-monitored has led me to go a stage further and put forward a distinction between preferred and dispreferred structures for business negotiations. In my view, a preferred structure reveals an ordered topic-oriented sequence of discourse transactions. In this type of structure, the discourse functions of cohesion, coherence, information flow, relevance and closure are ensured by the fact that each topic unit or transaction prospects the next one and encapsulates the preceding one. By contrast, a dispreferred structure discloses an unordered, topic-oriented, sequence of discourse transactions in which discourse may sometimes lack the necessary cohesion and coherence to be interpreted adequately; information may not flow fluently but rather get stuck or tumble out; and irrelevant topics may arise in the course of conversation.

So the question I would like to raise now is why do the participants in negotiations often flout the preferred structure or pattern? The answer to this question is not simple. There are different approaches to negotiating which are determined, to a large extent, by the business situation -for example, one will approach a one-off situation such as buying or selling a house in a different way to negotiating a joint-venture or a cooperation agreement, etc.- and by significant cultural differences. I will call this intended breach skilful flouting because it reveals participants’ strategic competence in negotiating. By contrast, lack of strategic competence in negotiating skills may give rise to another type of unintended infringement which I shall refer to as unskilful flouting.

The Data Used

The bulk of the data was collected in 1999-2000. A survey was carried out to find out how much the students who had taken the subject Business English, one of the third-year options of the English Studies Curriculum at the University of Alicante in Spain, already knew about business negotiations before they received specific training in negotiating skills. The survey was carried out among a sample of thirty two students who had only a broad idea of the purpose of the investigation so that they would behave as spontaneously as possible.

There were sixteen Spanish students and sixteen Erasmus students, namely German and French; their ages ranged from 20 to 25 and their English level from intermediate to proficiency.

The survey was conducted by means of a questionnaire given to the students to complete and an open role-played negotiation that students agreed to perform and gave me permission to videotape. I shall now move on to consider the open role-played negotiation in further detail.

Since none of the students sampled were native English speakers, English, universally acknowledged as the international language of commerce, was used as the lingua-franca to achieve their communicative and interactive purposes in the sales negotiation they were asked to perform. This consisted of an open role-play concerning the sale of a house. Students were firstly divided into two groups: sellers and buyers. Thanks to the students’ permission and collaboration, a total of sixteen versions of the same role-

6 played negotiation were videotaped and carefully transcribed for the purpose of this study. These were organised as follows: four negotiations between Spanish students, four between Erasmus students and eight between Spanish and Erasmus students.

Sellers were given role-card A:

ROLE-CARD A: imagine that you want to sell your house. You put the following property for sale classified ad in last week’s Costa Blanca News:

Aguas de Busot. Semi-detached house in El balcón de Aguas housing estate with views over the sea and the pinewoods. 10 minutes from El Campello, 20 minutes from Alicante or Benidorm. 1st floor: lounge/dining-room with open fire, spac. Kitchen, 15m2 conservatory, 15m2 inner patio. 2nd floor: 2 double-bedrms, includ. Balcony. 1 bathrm with skylight. Also double boxrm and 2-car garage. All mod. Cons. Ideal for retired couple or for those who love a healthy life in the countryside. For only 12.000,000pts. Payment facilities.

Payment: the house has a mortgage loan of 5,000,000 pts. 4,500,000 pts of which remain to be repaid to the bank. If the client subrogates to your mortgage loan, you will be willing to give him/her a discount of 1,000,000 pts. If the client prefers to pay cash, you will be prepared to give him/her a discount of 500, 000 pts. But this discount is subject to the commission that you will be charged by the bank for anticipated cancellation.

Location: the Doctor’s surgery is next door to your house. The Sports Centre is a 1 minute walk away. This includes an Olympic swimming-pool. The village has some basic shops, bars and a Social Centre. The house is fully furnished. If the client wants the house with furniture, you will be prepared to negotiate this and offer him/her reasonable prices for the pieces of furniture (sofas, tables, chairs, electric household furniture, beds, mattresses, etc.).

Buyers were given role-card B:

ROLE-CARD B: Imagine that you want a house in the countryside because you are fed up with the noise and hustle on the coast. You are very fond of cycling and jogging. You have seen this advertisement in Costa Blanca News:

Aguas de Busot. Semi-detached house in El balcón de Aguas housing estate with views over the sea and the pinewoods. 10 minutes from El Campello, 20 minutes from Alicante or Benidorm. 1st floor: lounge/dining-room with open fire, spac. Kitchen, 15m2 conservatory, 15m2 inner patio. 2nd floor: 2 double-bedrms, includ. Balcony. 1 bathrm with skylight. Also double boxrm and 2-car garage. All mod. Cons. Ideal for retired couple or for those who love a healthy life in the countryside. For only 12,000,000pts. Payment facilities.

You just have 4,000,000 pts cash. You like the house but you would like a discount of 3,000,000 pts. A toilet and another bedrm.

Results

Students’ performance in the open role-played negotiations reveals a broadly defined pre- existing knowledge structure stored in memory concerning the episodic structure of sales negotiations. Several discourse transactions have been identified: (a) Relationship building, (b) Exchanging information, (c) Questioning, (d) Options, (e) Bidding, (f) Bargaining, (g) Settling and concluding, and (h) Final greetings. For all the students sampled, it is

7 absolutely clear that the preliminary transaction in negotiating should be Relationship building; this is, as has already been suggested, a transitional boundary transaction, the main purpose of which is twofold: (a) to mark the limit between non-interaction and interaction; and (b) to create a nice atmosphere and establish rapport between negotiators. Nevertheless, this socialising function is reduced to a mere exchange of greetings in the vast majority of the negotiations sampled. And it is also evident that in all cases, students skip the Agreeing Procedure (Transaction 2 in the proposed model) and move on to Exchanging information (Transaction 3). Similarly, they seem to share the belief that at the end of the negotiating activity there must be two types of transactions: Settling and concluding and Final greetings. The former is often, but not always, projected by the conclusion of Bidding and Bargaining transactions; and the latter appears at the end of the negotiation as a transitional boundary transaction, this time marking the transition between interaction and non interaction, that is, closing the speech event.

However, the mental pattern or script upon which the students sampled base their shared beliefs and expectations seems to differ once the Exchanging information transaction has come to an end. (Table 2 –included at the end of the paper- shows the different discourse routes taken by the participants throughout the sixteen negotiations). This is partly due to the fact that the individual realisations of the broad pattern may differ considerably every time speakers engage in a sales negotiation, because one of the special properties of spoken discourse is, as has been stated before, that it is self-monitored, which means that interlocutors are allowed to select or change their own discourse route when they interact. However, the data reveal, as will be explained below, an unskilful, rather than skilful, flouting throughout the sixteen negotiations.

So the question is: To what extent does the script upon which students base their expectations concerning the episodic structure of a sales negotiation resemble that of the proposed ideal model of negotiation? If so, what are the reasons that may serve as an explanation to such differing views and performances? The investigation reveals that at a very general level there are broad similarities between the ordered sequence of transactions put forward in the collaborative negotiating model and the episodic structure upon which students base their shared beliefs and expectations about how the discourse of a sales negotiation should be structured. However, the study also shows some relevant differences concerning the occurrence and non-occurrence of certain discourse transactions, as well as their sequencing pattern and function when comparing students’ actual sequences of transactions with the one described in the negotiating model. Now, I shall move on to look at the findings obtained in each discourse transaction in further detail.

Relationship building

The data show that students expect a sales negotiation to comprise, as has already been argued, a preliminary transaction, the main functions of which are: (a) to mark the limit between non-interaction and interaction, and (b) to establish rapport. Rapport can be established in a number of ways. The seller might stand up to greet the buyer, shake hands, use his/her name and offer welcoming remarks in a tone of voice that puts him/her at ease. The seller may show a friendly attitude by exhibiting an attentive behaviour and may break the ice by talking about non-task issues such as the weather or the journey. In only one of the sixteen negotiations sampled (Negotiation 3), is some time spent in establishing rapport in the preliminary transaction called: Relationship building. To illustrate this, let us consider

8 Example 17, taken from Negotiation 5: the participants are a German male student (seller) and a German female student (buyer) and they are using English as the lingua-franca for this business interaction that has been carefully and literally transcribed. Their negotiating activity will help us to illustrate a standard behaviour when compared to the rest of the sample.

Example 1

Line act e.s. move e.s. exch. ex. tr. 1 B: (knocks at the door sum h Framing Contact Summon 1 1 (Pr) and opens it) 2 S: Hello! ack h Acknowledging Perception 3 B: Hello! gr h Opening I Greet (Incomplete) 2 4 S: Mr. X…/ gr h Supporting R (Shaking hands h Opening I Greet 3 and smiling) 5 B: Oh, hello. re-gr pre- h Supporting R 6 Please to meet you. h (smiling). 7 S: Please, sit down. d h Opening I Request 4 8 (They both sit down) be h Supporting R

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (pr): type of transaction –preliminary-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: sum (summons); re-sum (reply to summons); gr (greeting); re-gr (reply to greeting); idy (identifying yourself); d (directive); be (behaving).

Example 1 illustrates the sequence of ritualistic exchanges that speakers typically exhibit at the preliminary transaction in the negotiations sampled: the first exchange (Summon) will serve to attract the seller’s attention and engage him in the interaction. Once contact has been established between the seller and the buyer, there will be an exchange of greetings (Greet) accompanied by complex gestures that involve shaking hands, smiling, eye-contact. Finally, sellers will request buyers to take a seat (Request) and both of them will sit down. There will not be any attempt to break the ice by making reference to non-task topics such as the weather, the journey, etc. A meaningful pause will mark the end of this transaction (Silent stress).

Agreeing procedure.

The discourse function of this opening transaction in a series of medial transactions is to state the objectives clearly and to agree on them with the other party so as to create a climate

7 Drawing on Sinclair and Coulthard’s spoken discourse model (1975) and on other model versions and variations provided by Burton (1981) and Francis and Hunston (1992), I propose a rank scale for the discourse analysis of the sales negotiation transactions in which I will specify the following discourse units: type and number of transaction (tr); number of exchanges of which the transaction is made up (ex); type of exchanges involved in each transaction (exch.); element of structure of the exchange (e.s.) ; type of move contained in each element of structure (move); element of structure of the move (e.s.); and type of act contained in each move. At the end of the article, a summary of the acts found in the sample is included.

9 of cooperation. Significantly, the data reveal that this transaction was skipped in all the negotiations examined. More specifically, meta-communicative speech acts that could have fostered a collaborative negotiating style were absent in all the negotiations sampled: (a) getting agreement on procedure (Can we agree on the overall procedure?); (b) stating principal objectives (I would like to deal with…; Something else I’d like to look at is…); (c) checking agreement and acceptance of objectives (Is that OK with you?, Does that fit in with your objectives?), (d) suggesting (What about if we look at …?; How about…?).

Exchanging information.

The data show that throughout the sixteen negotiations students choose Exchanging information as Transaction 2. After a significant pause, it is relevant to point out that the buyer, rather than the seller, is usually the one who takes the initiative to state his/her negotiating interests unambiguously and enquire about the house for sale. Likewise, the seller may want to know more about his/her potential customer. Example 2, taken from Negotiation 5, illustrates how after a meaningful pause, the buyer will typically take the initiative to start off a new transaction, the main function of which is to exchange information about the house for sale. The beginning of this new topic unit is highlighted with the use of markers (Okay) with a high fall intonation, followed by silent stress, and a high key tone at the beginning of the buyer’s speech turn (I’ve seen your advertisement in Costa Blanca News). (Vid. Coulthard, 1992: 35-49).

Example 2

Line act e.s move e.s. exch ex tr Pause (…) 1 B: Okay. m+ss pre-h Opening I Elicit 1 2(M) 2 Well, I’ve seen your m pre-h 3 advertisement in i pre-h 4 Costa Blanca News 5 and I’m very interested in i pre-h 6 a house nearby (smiles) 7/ I’ve got a few questions 8 about the whole subject. ms pre-h 9 Er… m pre-h 10 First of all, 11 I’m not really...used to 12 this region here. com pre-h 13 So what er can you say me 14 about Alicante? 15 What does it offer? And.../ m- el h 16 S: (Smiles)... m pre-h Challenging/Opening R/I Clarify 17 First of all, 18 so you’ve been here before m-el h 19 or is this your first time 20 you’re coming here? 21 B: No, no. rep. h Supporting R 22 S: So...I see...er... 23 The region of Alicante is i h 24 one of the er...most...er... 25 with the infrastructure is 26 highly developed region... 27 So you’ve got everything com post-hh 28 you want for your er comfort 29 living here. (…).

10 act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Medial-. h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation: R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: m (marker); m+ss (marker plus silent stress); i (informative); ms (metastatement); com (comment); m-el (multiple elicitation); rep (reply).

In Example 3, taken from Negotiation 6, the seller is a German male student and the buyer is a Spanish female student. After having exchanged very little information, the buyer rushes to bid, consequently missing out Questioning and Options transactions. However, the seller reveals a certain sense of a preferred structure, that is, the existence of a mental pattern that favours an ordered layered topic sequence of discourse transactions, when he, probably feeling that the Exchanging information transaction has been rather short, challenges the buyer holding up the progress of the topic of bidding by requesting more information.

Example 3

Line act e.s move e.s. exch ex tr

1B: Yes. m pre-h Opening I Inform 1 2 (M) 2 I’ve seen in i h 3Costa Blanca News 4an advertisement in 5 which you er…sell a 6 flat a house/ 7 S: A house, yes. ack h Supporting R 8 B: The house is in Aguas i pre-h 9 de Busot. Do do you el h Opening I Elicit 2 10 remember the 11 advertisement that you/ el 12 S: Yes, sure, sure. rep h Supporting R 13 B: Uhuh. / I would like ack pre-h Opening I Elicit 3 3 (M) 14 to know er the payment el h 15 facilities/ 16 S: Uhmmm. Yes but first ack pre-h Challenging/ R Elicit 4 2(M) 17 of all so you are el h Opening 18 interested in in buying 19 er in buying this house / 20 or are you interested 21 In buying a house 22 in Germany? / 23 B: No, I’m interested in rep h Supporting 24 I’m interested in this 25 house because it is com post-h 26 In Aguas de Busot 27 and I like the place / (…)

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Medial-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: m (marker); el (elicitation); m (marker); i (informative); rep (reply); ack (acknowledgement); com (comment).

11 Questioning

Only in six out of the sixteen negotiations sampled does the Exchanging information transaction project Questioning as the next preferred transaction. However, in this medial transaction, it will not be the seller who asks questions to get more information about the buyer’s needs and wants, but rather the customer who will go on enquiring about the house. Therefore, it is evident that there is considerable overlapping between the discourse functions of these two medial transactions as regards the way the students sampled use them; in fact, Questioning seems to lose its primary discourse function and turn into a mere expansion of Exchanging Information. This is clearly shown in Example 4, taken from Negotiation 5. The beginning of this new topic unit is highlighted by the use of a paralinguistic marker (Er) with a high fall intonation, followed by a pause (silent stress), and a high key tone at the beginning of the buyer’s speech turn (How old is it?) (Vid., Coulthard, 1992: 35-49).

Example 4

1 B: Er... m+ss pre-h Opening I Elicit 1 3 (M) 2 How old is it? el h 3S: Er... 4 It’s a a a five rep h Supporting R years now. So er it’s er 5 a high standard living... com post-h 6 As I know I should say 7 er... (smiles) 8 Germans are always 9looking for good 10 quality / The quality of the 11 house is good... 12 B: That’s the reason i h Opening I Inform 13 why I’m here. 14 (Smiling). 15 S: (Laughs). ack h Supporting

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Medial-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: m+ss (marker plus silent stress); el (elicitation); m (marker); i (informative); com (comment); rep (reply); ack (acknowledgement).

Options

In only three out of the sixteen negotiations does the Questioning transaction prospect the generation of Options as the next preferred transaction. Nevertheless, once again the transaction seems to be deprived of its original discourse function by means of which

12 negotiators are invited to generate options before making any decisions, and is reduced to a mere discussion concerning the facilities of the house on sale. This is clearly shown in Example 5, taken form Negotiation 5. The beginning of this new topic unit is highlighted with the use of a high key tone at the beginning of the buyer’s speech turn (Does it have central heating?).

Example 5

Line act e.s move e.s exch ex tr

1 B: Does it have el h Opening I Elicit 1 4 (M) 2 central heating? 3 S: Er... 4 No, in fact not. rep h Supporting R 5 There are er these electric i post-h 6 heatings for the the rooms 7 and there’s a fireplace... 8 B: It won’t be cold up com pre-h Opening I Elicit 2 9 in the rooms, I imagine. 10 So er... 11 If a house has a obj h 12 good quality, for me it 13 should have central heating, 14 especially if I want to com post-h 15 spend the winter there / 16 like in Germany / 17 S: But the winter c-obj h Challenging R 18 in Germany 19 is really different from 20 the winter 21 / in Spain. 22B: Yes, I know ack pre-h Re-opening I Elicit 3 23 but the obj h 24 last week in January we’ve 25 been here and it has been 26 pretty cold so I imagine com post-h 27 without a central heating.../ 28 S: You have heating. c-obj h Challenging R 29 B: Electricity? el h Opening I Clarify 4 30 S: Yeah. rep h Supporting R 31 But you see, m pre-h Opening I Inform 5 32the cost of central heating i h 33 won’t be a problem to the 34 cost of electric heating 35 because you’ll only need 36 it for a several days 37 in the year and electric 38 heating not very very 39 often. I know central com post-h 40 heating in Germany is 41 absolutely indispensable (…)

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Medial-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: el (elicitation); i (informative); com (comment); ack (acknowledgement); obj (objection); c-obj (counter objection); rep (reply); m (marker); com (comment).

13 Bidding and Bargaining

In the vast majority of the sampled negotiations there is considerable overlapping between Bidding and Bargaining discourse transactions. They are often prospected after either Questioning or Options. Broadly speaking, we may say that Sellers will not put forward proposals and bids concerning payment facilities, unless Buyers state that the price is too high. This is clearly shown in Example 6, taken from Negotiation 5. The beginning of this new transaction is indicated by the use of a paralinguistic marker (Er) with a high fall intonation, followed by a pause (silent stress), and a high key tone at the beginning of the buyer’s speech turn (The price sound too expensive for me?).

Example 6

1 B: It sounds good to me. ack pre-h Opening I Elicit 1 5 (M) 2 So what else? m pre-h 3 Er... m+ss pre-h 4 The price sounds too 5 expensive for me? barg h 6 S: Yes, but you you ack pre-h Challenging R Inform 7 can’t only go by the price obj h 8 because er...sometimes the 9 house the offer the quality com post-h 10 differs a lot. So when you com post-h 11 compare some apartments 12 to others, prices seem too 13 high or too low but you’ve 14 got to relate to the quality. 15 The house I’m selling now is j post-h 16 er...really new / 17 always looking for good j post-h 17 quality / The quality of the j post-h 18 house is good... 19 B: That’s the reason i h Opening I 2 20 why I’m here. 21 (Smiling). b-com post-h 22 S: (Laughs). b-feed-back h Supporting R

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Medial-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: ack (acknowledgement); m (marker); m+ss (marker plus silent stress); barg (bargain); obj (objection); com (comment); i (informative).

Settling and concluding

In all the negotiations surveyed, Bidding and Bargaining transactions prospect Settling and Concluding as the next preferred transaction. At this stage of the negotiation it is important to summarise what agreements have already been reached, as well as to identify any areas

14 which have not yet been agreed on and any further action which needs to be taken. The data reveal that throughout the sampled negotiations students always tend to postpone the negotiating activity until they have seen the house for sale. Therefore, in most cases making an appointment and expressing a wish to discuss the matter with their bank summarise the speech acts usually carried out by speakers during this transaction. This is illustrated in Example 7, taken from Negotiation 5. The beginning of this new topic unit is marked by the high fall intonation in Yeah, and a high key tone in Is there any possibility of seeing it (…)?

Example 7

1 B: Yeah. ack pre-h Opening I Elicit 1 6 (T) 2 Is there any possibility el h 3 of seeing it maybe so 4 that I get sure that it’s com post-h 5 really worth its price 6 (smiling). 7 S: (Smiling) 8 Yes, sure. rep h Supporting R 9 I wouldn’t be saying com post-h 10 something that couldn’t 11 be proved. 12 Yes, okay. acct post-h 13 B:Yeah. ack pre-h Opening I Elicit 2 14 Right now? m-el h 15 Or do you have 16 another meeting? 17 S: Er... 18 I should.. 19 I’d propose that we sug Challenging/Opening R/I Elicit 3 20 we meet another day...? 21 B: Okay... acct h Supporting 22 S: I propose that we sug h Opening I Elicit 4 23 could do it 24 during the week-end, 25 if you like or 26 Monday, Tuesday? 27 B: Saturday, Saturday. acct h Supporting R 28 It sounds good to me. com post-h 29 S: Okay. acct pre-h Opening I 30 So let’s say 31 we’ll do it Saturday set h 32 morning and we meet 33 here at eleven o´clock. 34 I’ll be here in the acct post-h 35 office. So er... 36 at eleven o’clock set post-h 37 and then in the office 38 we’ll go to Aguas de 39 Busot and see the house (...)

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Terminal-.h: head; pre-h: pre-head; post-h: post-head; I: initiation; R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: ack (acknowledgement); el (elicitation); com (comment); rep (reply); acct (accept); m-el (multiple elicitation); sug (suggestion); i (inform); set (settle).

15 Final Greetings

Final greetings are projected by the Settling and Concluding transaction. Again, we observe a particular ritualistic behaviour in which negotiators exchange greetings accompanied by complex gestures with which the limit between interaction and non interaction is marked and so the negotiation activity is closed. This is shown in Example 8, taken from Negotiation 5. The beginning of this topic unit is usually signalled by a ritualistic behaviour that involves complex gestures and movements such as smiling, hand-shaking, standing up, walking towards the door, seeing the customer out, etc.

Example 8

1B: (Laughs and stands up 2 to shake hands) 3 Anyway, thank you. gr h Opening I Greet 1 7(T) 4 S: (Shaking hands) 5 We’ll see next week. re-gr h Supporting R

Keys: act: type of speech act involved; e.s.: element of structure of the act; move: type of moved involved; e.s.: element of structure of the move; exch: type of exchange involved; ex.: number of the exchange; tr: transaction; (m): type of transaction –Terminal-. h: head; I: initiation: R: response; numbers serve to identify exchanges and transactions. Acts: gr (greeting): re-greeting (reply to greeting).

Summary and Conclusions

This paper has explored the mental patterns or scripts that a sample of European Business English students, who have not been trained in negotiating skills, have regarding the discourse structure of a sales negotiation. The methodology used draws on the descriptive discourse analysis model of the Birmingham School, as well as on the collaborative negotiating model developed by The Harvard negotiating Project to describe and explain the preferred episodic structure followed by experienced and skilful participants in negotiations. Nevertheless, this study moves on to put forward a hierarchical discourse model for the analysis of business negotiations in which they are examined within the scope of a layered topic-oriented structure of discourse transactions linked to one another by means of two discourse devices: (a) prospection, and (b) encapsulation. Besides, the research carried out has also allowed me to establish the following dichotomies for the discourse structure of sales negotiations: (a) preferred and dispreferred structures, and (b) skilful and unskilful floutings.

The investigation reveals that at a very general level there are broad similarities in the students’ mental patterns or schemata concerning the episodic structure of a sales negotiation. This has enabled us to identify the presence of a free sequence of discourse transactions in the negotiations sampled, which is clearly shown in Table 2: (a) Relationship building, (b) Exchanging information, (c) Questioning, (d) Options, (e) Bidding, (f)

16 Bargaining, (g) Settling and concluding, (h) Final greetings. In the negotiations examined, the appearance of all or some of these discourse transactions, whatever their sequencing may be, has made it possible for me to recognise students’ interactions as particular realisations of a specific genre: the sales negotiation.

The study also shows relevant differences when comparing students’ dispreferred sequences of transactions with the preferred sequence described in the proposed negotiating model. In principle, the reason that might help me to explain such discrepancies with regard to the ideal model could be that spoken discourse is self-monitored; this property will allow participants in interaction to have the power to decide the way they would like to handle spoken interaction, bearing in mind a wide range of contextual factors such as: (a) different approaches to negotiating determined, to a large extent, by the purpose of the negotiation, i.e. the sale of a house or a joint venture; (b) the external circumstances in which the negotiation is embedded; (c) different negotiating styles, whether collaborative or confrontational; (d) cultural differences which may be reflected in the emphasis placed on particular stages of the negotiation, etc.

However true this may be, in my view, the discrepancies found in the data are mainly due to the fact that the sampled students have not been trained in negotiating skills and so, their scripts of the business negotiation are indeed very schematic concerning its discourse structure, and they are really unaware of the existence of an episodic topic-oriented layered structure. It is quite significant that the Agreeing procedure transaction, in which a high degree of meta-language is needed to signpost the route of the negotiation and create an atmosphere of collaboration, was not performed in any of the negotiations. This is the reason why I have come to the conclusion that the dispreferred structure shown in the negotiations sampled is due to an unskilful, rather than, skilful, flouting. Another relevant finding will help us to clarify this. As can be seen from Table 2: Discourse routes, the more time negotiators spend in seeking or giving information in the medial transactions before bidding and bargaining, the more fluent the progression of the discourse negotiation will be, since they will have bothered to find out the details they need to be ready to negotiate. By contrast, when participants hurry to bargain, the flow of the discourse seems to get stuck; the reason for this is that the negotiators lack information and so, they must go back along their route to previous medial stages to seek for further details.

It is clear that although students’ linguistic competence in English allows them to use it as the lingua-franca in international negotiations, they all need to improve their communicative competence in English, as regards: (a) negotiating styles, (b) the knowledge of preferred and dispreferred sequences of discourse transactions, (c) the use of organisational language to signpost the route of the negotiation, (d) the use of English to establish rapport, and (e) negotiating strategies. (Vid., Mills 1991; Kozicki 1993).

In conclusion, as a result of the schematic mental patterns students have regarding the episodic structure of business negotiations, they give the wrong impression of themselves as abrupt, impulsive, and perhaps somewhat rude, and unconsciously favour a confrontational negotiating style rather than the collaborative one proposed by The Harvard Negotiating Project. Students should be brought to the point of awareness at which the necessity of acquiring certain discourse structures and resources is evident; as these are of immediate relevance, students will see how they could have put them to good use in the videotaped negotiations and will retain them all the more easily because they are rooted in a meaningful context. (Guillén Nieto in press).

17 TABLE 1 DISCOURSE ROUTES

Neg Rel. 2.Agree. 3.Exchang. 4.Question. 5.Options 6.Bid. 7.Barg. 8.Set. F. . Con. G. 2 3 4/7 5 6/8 9 10 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 3 1 2 3/7 8 4 5 6/9 10 4 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 5 1 2 4 5 3 7 6/8 9 6 1 2 4 3/5 6 7 8 7 1 2 4/7 3/6 5/8 9 10 11 8 1 2 3/6 4 5/7 8 9 1 2 3 4/7 5/8 6/9 10 11 10 1 2 6 3 4 5/7 8 9 11 1 2 4/6 3/5/7 8 9 12 1 2 5 4 3/6 7 8 13 1 2/5 3 4/6 7 8 14 1 2 3 4 5 6 15 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 16 1 2 3 4 5 6

Numbers: they indicate the order in which transactions are sequenced in each sales negotiation. Neg..: Negotiation. Rel.: Relationship building. Agree.: Agreeing procedure. Exchang.: Exchanging information. Question.: Questioning. Options: Options. Bid.: Bidding. Barg.: Bargaining. Set. Con.: Settling and concluding. F. G..: Final greetings.

Summary of the Acts

a) Label: Marker. Symbol (m). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of verbal and non- verbal items like “Well”, “Alright”, “Good”, “OK”. Its function is to mark boundaries in the discourse and to indicate that the speaker would like to begin the conversation or would like to introduce a topic.

b) Label: Summons. Symbol (sum). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of verbal and non-verbal items. For example, the use of the name of another participant, or mechanical devices like door bells, telephone bells, knocks at the door. Its function is to engage another participant in a conversation or to attract his/her attention, to mark a boundary in the discourse, and to indicate that the producer of the item has a topic to introduce once s/he has gained the perception/attention of the hearer. It realises the head of an opening move in a summon exchange.

c) Label: Reply-Summons. Symbol (re-sum). Realisation and definition: realised by the items used to answer a telephone (“hello”, “the giving of one’s number, etc) or the door (opening it, calling “come in”, etc. or by “yes”, “ what?” and other indications of attention (both verbal and non-verbal) given upon hearing one’s name called. Realises the head of a supporting move in a Summon exchange.

d) Label: Silent Stress (…). Realisation and definition: realised by a meaningful pause and other non- verbal items. It functions to highlight the Marker or Summons when they act as the head of a Boundary Exchange.

18 e) Label: Greeting. Symbol (gr). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of verbal and non- verbal items which form the first-pair parts of the adjacency pairs used in the rituals of greeting and leave-taking: “hello”, “Hi”, “Good morning”, “How are you?”, “How do you do?”, “Pleased to meet you, “Good-bye”, etc., which are normally accompanied by complex gestures that involve hand- shaking, smiling, eye-contact, and head-bending. They realise the head of an opening move in a Greet exchange. Its function is self-explanatory. f) Label: Reply-Greeting. Symbol (re-gr). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of items which form the second-pair parts of the adjacency pairs used in the rituals of greeting and leave- taking: “Hello”, “Hi”, “Good morning”, “I’m very well, thank you. And you?”, “Pleased to meet you too”, “Good-bye”. which are normally accompanied by complex gestures that involve hand-shaking,, smiling, eye-contact, and head-bending. They realise the head of a supporting move in a Greet exchange. Its function is self-explanatory. g) Label: Identifying yourself. Symbol (idy). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of verbal and non-verbal items such as: Let me introduce my colleague…He/She is our Sales Manager; I’d like you to meet…; This is …Sales Manager of…, etc. Its function is to introduce other people present before the conversation actually begins. h) Label: Directive. Symbol (d). Realisation and definition: realised by a closed class of verbal and non- verbal items such as a polite command (please sit down), request will you please come this way, a statement (perhaps, you would like to take a seat, etc). Its function is to request a non-linguistic response from the other participant, namely to invite her/him to sit down. i) Label: Behave (be). Realisation and definition: realised by action. Its function is to provide a non- verbal response to a preceding d, whether this involves compliance, non-compliance, or defiance. j) Label: Metastatement (ms). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question or command which refers to a future event in the ongoing talk, or a request for speaker’s rights;its function is to make clear the structure of the immediately following discourse, and to indicate the speaker’s wish for an extended turn. k) Label: Informative (i). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement whose sole function is to provide information. l) Label: Elicitation (el). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a question. Its function is to request a linguistic response. m) Label: Multiple elicitation (m-el). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by multiple questions. Its function is to request a linguistic response. n) Label: Comment (com). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item, and functions to expand, justify, provide additional information to a preceding Informative or Comment. o) Label: Accept (acct). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a closed class of items “Yes”, OK”, Uhuh”, “I will”, “No” (Where the preceding utterance was negative). Its function is to indicate that the speaker has heard and understood the previous utterance and is compliant). p) Label: Reply (rep). Realisation and definition: realised by a statement, question, moodless item and non-verbal surrogates such as nods. Its function is to provide a linguistic response appropriate to a preceding elicitation. q) Label: React (re). Realisation and definition: realised by a non-linguistic action. Its function is to provide an appropriate non-linguistic response to a preceding directive. r) Label: Acknowledge (ack). Realisation and definition: realised by “Yes”, “OK”, “Uhuh” and expressive particles. Its function is to show that an Informative has been understood, and its significance appreciated.

19 s) Label: Objection (obj). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Iits function is to make objections to a previous bid.

t) Label: Counter-Objection (c-obj). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Iits function is to make objections to a previous objection.

u) Label: Suggestion (sug). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Its function is to make a proposal.

v) Label: Bid (bid). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Its function is to make an offer.

w) Label: Bargain (barg). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Its function is to bargain a previous bid by means of a counter-offer.

x) Label: Settle (set). Realisation and definition: realised verbally by a statement, question, command or moodless item. Its function is to come to an agreement.

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