An Attitudinal Analysis of Disputants’ Intentionality in Family Mediation

Family disputes involving emotions and ethics, are distinguished from other disputes in terms of complexity and peculiarity. In family mediation, disputants’ discourse is crucial for presenting facts and opinions while expressing attitudes and intentions, but to date it has not received due scrutiny in linguistics. Based on the Attitude System and the Intentionality Theory, this study explores disputants’ discourse in family mediation, with an aim to reveal how attitudinal resources are employed to manifest disputants’ intentionality. It is found that disputants use various resources of Affect, Judgement and Appreciation to demonstrate their attitudes and manifest their intentionality. Their intention in discourse may reflect their prior intention either directly by explicit appraisal lexis or indirectly by implicit appraisal clauses or rhetorical devices.