Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in Crisis

Based on extensive analysis of real-time, authentic crisis encounters  collected in the UK and US, Crisis Talk: Negotiating with Individuals in  Crisis sheds light on the relatively hidden world of communication  between people in crisis and the professionals whose job it is to help  them.

The crisis situations explored in this book involve police  hostage and crisis negotiators and emergency dispatchers interacting  with individuals in crisis who threaten suicide or self-harm. The  practitioners face various communicative challenges in these encounters,  including managing strong emotions, resistance, hostility, and  unresponsiveness. Using conversation analysis, Crisis Talk presents  evidence on how practitioners deal with the interactional challenge of  negotiating with people in crisis and how what they say shapes outcomes.  Each chapter includes recommendations based on the detailed analysis of  numerous cases of actual negotiation.

Crisis Talk shows readers  how every turn taken by negotiators can exacerbate or solve the  communicative challenges created by crisis situations, making it a  unique and invaluable text for academics in psychology, sociology,  linguistic sciences, and related fields, as well as for practitioners  engaging in crisis negotiation training or fieldwork.