The Discourse Analysis of Social Factors Influencing Interest Contention in Business Dispute Settlement: A Perspective of Discourse Information Theory

Abstract

Interest contention which reflects the nature of business dispute settlement is one of the vital issues to explore in the studies of business dispute and it structures the whole process of business dispute settlement from mediation, negotiation to arbitration and litigation. Under the influence of various factors, litigants with differing interest orientations and interest demands could make good use of a number of information resources for the purpose of communicating, defending and fighting for the interests of their own. Contexts are a socially based mental model dynamically constructed by participants about “the for-them-relevant properties” of communicative situation (van Dijk, 2008). The social factors in the context influences the distribution of discourse information resources in the interest contention in business dispute settlement. In view of this, the present study focuses on the discourse analysis of social factors influencing the interest contention in business dispute settlement at the stage of litigation from the perspective of Discourse Information Theory (DIT) (Du, 2007, 2013, 2015). It can be found that any conflicting party’s lawyer could take advantage of both different social identities and social relationships to attack the counterparty’s loopholes or shortcomings and gain more interests for his own party in the interest contention in business dispute settlement.