“Theories of responsibility”: The social construction of intentions in mediation

Abstract

Drawing on Anscombe's (1960) description of intention as a language game, this article explores the negotiation of “theories of responsibility” (O'Barr & Conley, 1985) in informal legal narratives. Using examples of conversation drawn from a mediation session, I show how intentions, as discursive formations, are central not only to both narrative structure and interaction sequences but to the politics of subject position in discourse as well; the management of subject position is discussed in terms of critical coherence points—locations in the discourse from which intentions are conjointly constructed and contested.