ACTIVE LISTENING IN THE ONLINE LEGAL MEDIATION

Abstract

The present article is dedicated to the study of legal mediation of conflicts in the Court of Justice of Rio de Janeiro (TJRJ), examining the concrete experience of mediation from the theoretical-methodological tool of Conversation Analysis, in transcripts of real talking-interaction data, as an interdisciplinary research locus. This article studies the practice of active listening in online legal mediation, with the central aim of analyzing it from the perspective of talking-in-interaction how mediators construct the interactional meanings of active listening as a communication tool on the opening speech, and how the participants put it into practice during the mediation sessions. The analysis shows the different trajectories of action in the mediator’s construction of the meaning of active listening, with the use of the technical term “active listening” or with the formulation of behavioral expectations, as well as presents different listening behaviors, depending on the presence/absence of the conflict element, in which the functioning (or not) of the non-interruption rule in online legal mediation was noted.

Keywords
Mediation; mediator’s opening statement; online dispute resolution (ODR); talk-in-interaction; conversation analysis