THEORIES OF RESPONSIBILITY - THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF INTENTIONS INMEDIATION

Drawing on Anscombe's (1960) description of intention as a language ga me, this article explores the negotiation of ''theories of responsibil ity'' (O'Barr & Conley, 1985) in informal legal narratives. Using exam ples of conversation drawn from a mediation session, I show how intent ions, as discursive formations, are central not only to both narrative structure and interaction sequences but to the politics of subject po sition in discourse as well; the management of subject position is dis cussed in terms of critical coherence points-locations in the discours e from which intentions are conjointly constructed and contested.