Argumentation (2021) 35:321–338

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10503-020-09530-2

ORIGINAL RESEARCH

Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis

Communication: The Case of the 2017 United Airlines’
Passenger Dragging‑Off Incident

Jieyun Feng1 · Fan Zhao1,2 · Aiqing Feng1

Published online: 2 July 2020

© Springer Nature B.V. 2020

Abstract
Within the research framework of pragma-dialectics, this study analysed and
assessed strategic manoeuvring by dissociation in corporate crisis communica-
tion, exemplified by the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-off Incident. As
shown from the analysis of the public statements issued on its official website and
Twitter, United Airlines adopted dissociation using the lexical item “volunteer” in
the different stages of argumentation: bringing forward a standpoint, maintaining
a standpoint and mitigating a standpoint. In so doing, the corporation strategically
manoeuvred the topical potential and the presentational devices to meet the demands
of its primary audience, i.e. the international general public. Whereas employing
dissociation of the notion “volunteer” seemed to be reasonable and served the cor-
poration’s interests best, its argumentative effectiveness was called into question
based upon the general rules for critical discussion and the institutional context.

Keywords Strategic manoeuvring · Dissociation · Pragma-dialectics · Corporate

crisis communication · The United Airlines’ passenger dragging-off incident

1 Introduction

With the acceleration of globalization and advancement of information technol-

ogy, the risk of corporations falling into crisis and losing control during a crisis is
becoming larger than ever. In particular, the phenomenal growth of global social
media such as Twitter and Facebook empowers and enables the international general
public to access and react to the corporate crisis. Under such a new backdrop, it is

* Fan Zhao
181564413@qq.com
1
University of International Business and Economics, No.10, Huixin Dongjie, Chaoyang District,
Beijing, China
2
Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, No.182 Nanhu Avenue, East Lake High‑tech
Development Zone, Wuhan, China

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 322 J. Feng et al.

becoming more challenging for corporate crisis practitioners to manage, let alone
control information flow during the handling of the crisis.
Corporate crisis communication research deserves attention from both academics
and practitioners alike. When a corporation is involved in a reputational crisis, what
and how the corporation says to its important stakeholders are of vital importance
to its public image and to its sustainable development. Admittedly, if a corporate
crisis is not properly handled, it will negatively affect the corporation’s financial per-
formance, including its stock price, and cause damage to the reputational assets of
a corporation that have taken many years to build up. Correspondingly, the corpo-
ration’ consumers and shareholders might be negatively impacted, who might lose
confidence in the corporation’s products and service.
The present study, within the research framework of pragma-dialectics, will ana-
lyse and assess strategic manoeuvring by dissociation in corporate crisis communi-
cation, exemplified by the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-off Incident.
We will first analyse the institutional context in which corporate crisis communi-
cation takes place; we will then investigate what is the prototypical dissociation
employed in the United Airlines’ official statements in the different stages of argu-
mentation; how the airline strategically manoeuvred dissociation in its official state-
ments to convince its primary audience. Finally, we will evaluate its argumentative
reasonableness and effectiveness.

2 Studies on Corporate Crisis Communication

Corporate crisis communication is essentially a form of argumentation. Based

upon van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004: 1), argumentation is defined as “a ver-
bal, social, and rational activity which aims at convincing a reasonable critic of the
acceptability of a standpoint by putting forward a constellation of propositions justi-
fying or refuting the proposition expressed in the standpoint”. Specifically, corporate
crisis communication is a verbal activity that takes place by means of language use
(van Eemeren and Grootendorst 2004: 2) in oral or written form, such as speeches
in press conference, official statements on website or social media and interviews by
broadcast. It is also a social activity because it is directed at certain social groups. In
this globalized and interconnected world, the primary audience of corporate crisis
communication is often directed at the international public, who basically include
the consumers and stockholders across the national borders. Corporate crisis com-
munication is a rational activity as well, as both the crisis communication manag-
ers and the audience act or react based on their reasoning or own considerations.
Crisis managers usually employ argumentation in which a number of positions are
put forward to justify the stances in favour of the corporation and refute any harmful
viewpoints.
In the literature, three strands of research in corporate communication have
been identified and differentiated, namely, management perspective, rhetori-
cal perspective and combination of the two perspectives (Shi 2008). While the
management scholars mainly focus on examining the organization itself, which
aims to solve the problems during crisis management (Guth 1995; Jing and Liu

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 323

2008; Li 2018), most of the researchers in the rhetorical studies mainly address
how the language and the various semiotic resources are effectively employed to
address the crisis and redeem the corporation’s damaged image. To enrich the
first and second lines of inquiry, Coombs (2007) combined the two perspectives
of management and rhetorical studies and developed the Situational Crisis Com-
munication Theory (SCCT), which consisted of four strategies, denying, dimin-
ishing, rebuilding and bolstering, to address the crisis in different situations. In
particular, it pointed out that the crisis managers should adopt the responsive
strategies to maximally protect the institutional reputations.
It is indicated from the literature review that management studies generally
take a macro and organization perspective, paying little attention to actual lan-
guage use; while rhetorical research in general carefully examines language use,
but its focus is mainly on how the use of rhetorical devices could achieve the
maximum effectiveness. In contrast, the pragma-dialectical approach to corpo-
rate crisis communication has its own advantages, in that it not only examines
the actual language use but also embraces a much broader perspective than a
traditional rhetorical approach by examining the linguistic persuasiveness, the
argumentative reasonableness and the institutional preconditions in which the
discourses are inherently situated (Wu 2019).
To fill in the research gap concerning a pragma-dialectical perspective for
examining corporate crisis communication, this study will investigate the stra-
tegic manoeuvring by dissociation in the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Drag-
ging-Off Incident. Although van Eemeren (2010: 143) did not include corporate
crisis communication in the eight domains of communicative activities he iden-
tified (with promotional commercial commutation being discussed as one of the
categories), we consider proper crisis communication is of vital importance to a
corporation’s survival and development. Only if a corporation can get through a
crisis successfully and redeem its damaged image, corporate crisis managers are
able to consider and plan for promotional communication, e.g., investing in how
to promote their products and service and enhance their positive public image.
We consider that the pragma-dialect approach not only offers a rich vocabulary
for describing the corporate crisis communication (in this case, the United Air-
line’s Passenger Dragging-Off Incident), it also offers a normative framework
for making an evaluation over the use of dissociation beyond persuasiveness.
There are two main considerations for selecting dissociation as our research
focus. First, according to van Rees (2009) and Waisanen (2011), dissociation
is an important and powerful argumentation technique in pragma-dialectics;
research in this regard needs further investigation. Second and more specifically,
as for the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-Off Incident, much con-
troversy arose centring upon the use of some lexical terms including the impro-
priate use of “volunteer” that United Airlines employed in its official corporate
statements. Global netizens accused the airline of forcibly removing the cus-
tomer and coined new words such as “voluntold” and “volubeating” to satirize
the corporation’s misuse of language.

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 324 J. Feng et al.

3 Studies on Dissociation

Dissociation was first introduced by Perelman and Olbrechts Tyteca in 1969 and
has drawn much attention in argumentation studies ever since (van Rees 2006,
2009; Rubinelli 2007; Ritivoi 2008).
By definition, dissociation is the division of a unified concept into two terms
(Term I and Term II) to resolve an incompatibility (van Rees 2009). Van Rees
(2009:9) indicated that dissociation is an argumentative technique in which, in
order to resolve a contradiction or incompatibility, a unitary concept expressed by
a single term is split up into two new concepts unequally valued, one subsumed
under a new term, the other subsumed either under the original term. Similarly,
Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca (1969, quoted from van Rees 2009: 4) consid-
ered that in resorting to dissociation, arguers attempt to split up a notion which is
originally or habitually deemed as a whole by the audience into two new notions.
One of the two notions that are distinguished after splitting up a notion is to be
considered as “apparent” or “superficial”, while the other one is to be considered
as “real” or “crucial”.
Similarly, with regards to the types of dissociation, van Eemeren (2019) indi-
cated that there could be at least two possibilities for the change in meaning of
the original term after dissociation: it could either be decreased or be enriched
in content. Specially, he classified two categories when giving a definition to
the dissociation: the first category: the broad original meaning and the specific
new meaning; and the second category: specific original meaning and broad new
meaning. In addition, Wu (2019) distinguished four types of dissociation that are
instrumental in bringing forward the standpoints of the arguer.
Dissociation has been mainly addressed from two theoretical perspectives, rhe-
torical perspective and pragma-dialectical perspective (van Rees 2009). Most of
the research on dissociation adopts a rhetorical perspective, studying how dis-
sociation is used as a linguistic means to enhance the effectiveness and persua-
siveness of the discourse (e.g., Schiappa 1985; Zarefsky et al. 1984). Schiappa
(1985) emphasized that dissociation serves as a “powerful linguistic device” in
a study entitled Dissociation in the Arguments of Rhetorical Theory. Zarefsky
et al. (1984) illustrated the rhetorical functions of dissociation by examining a
public speech of the former U.S. president Ronald Reagan in terms of the federal
national budget cut. By dissociating the “truly needy” from “apparently needy”,
Ronald Reagan was able to argue against the objections to budget cuts, highlight-
ing what is “truly needy” and obscuring the opposing viewpoints.
In contrast to the rhetorical approach’s emphasis on linguistic effectiveness,
pragma-dialectics adopts a broader view of dissociation. Van Rees was a pioneer
in this field, as her monograph (2009) entitled Dissociation in argumentative
discussions: A pragma-dialectical perspective conducted a systematic pragma-
dialectical study of dissociation as an argumentative technique. In particular,
this study indicated the possible indicators of dissociation and elucidated its
main functions. First, it rightly pointed out that, as sometimes only one or two
clues will be found in the discourse, context must be taken into consideration to

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 325

identify dissociation. Therefore, there are no exact indicators but possible clues
to identify dissociation. Second, this study emphasized that dissociation enhances
both the dialectical reasonableness and rhetorical effectiveness of an argumen-
tation, thus accomplishing the goal of strategic manoeuvring. Van Rees’ study
was appreciated by Rubinelli (2007), who highly acknowledged her contribution
in constructing “the role of dissociation in argumentation on a firmer foundation
than it has ever been” (2007: 489).

4 Research Framework

4.1 Research Aim and Research Questions

This study aims to study the employment of dissociation in the United Airlines’
Passenger Dragging-Off Incident. To achieve the major research aim, four ques-
tions are formulated as follows:

1. What are the general institutional preconditions of corporate crisis communica-

tion as a communicative activity type?
2. What are the prototypical dissociations employed in United Airlines’ official
statements in the different stages during the Passenger Dragging-Off Incident?
3. How did United Airlines strategically manoeuvre dissociations in its official state-
ments to convince its primary audience of its standpoints?
4. How should the employment of dissociation by United Airlines be evaluated in
terms of its argumentative reasonableness and effectiveness?

The four research questions are designed out of the following considerations.
Given that corporate crisis communication is situated in certain institutions, specific
institutional preconditions need to be taken into account to obtain a holistic under-
standing of the contextual factors. Following the analysis, this study will focus on
the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-Off Incident by discussing the dis-
sociation strategies used by United Airlines in the various stages of a critical dis-
cussion, how the corporation strategically manoeuvred dissociations to convince its
primary audience of its standpoints, the argumentative reasonableness and effective-
ness of the use of dissociation, based upon the general rules for critical discussion
and the institutional preconditions for corporate crisis communication.
In this study, we identify United Airlines as an arguer in the critical discussion
concerning the handling of the crisis, in that the corporation bears the responsi-
bility of communicating the whole event to the public, such as providing updates
to the public, finding out the causes and making compensation arrangements for
the victims. In the meantime, we consider the international general public as the
main audience, as the Internet provides access to people worldwide to view the
public statements released by United Airlines and to leave comments on the cor-
porate website or on social media.

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 326 J. Feng et al.

4.2 Analytical Framework

This study adopts a pragma-dialectic approach to study dissociation. In the pragma-

dialectical approach, the use of dissociation often aims at resolving differences in
opinion. Etymologically speaking, “pragma” refers to the (complex) speech act of
argumentation that the arguers perform in a critical discussion of conflict-resolution;
“dialectics” concerns making the assessment of the reasonableness and effectiveness
of the speech acts based upon the tradition of Western classical argumentation and
the general rules of critical discussion.
This research consists of four interlocked components: institutional preconditions,
reconstruction of argumentative discourse, analysis of strategic manoeuvring and
critical evaluation, which are considered important for studying dissociation from a
pragma-dialectic perspective. First, contextualization research has become a recent
trend in pragma-dialectics (van Eemeren and Wu 2017), as argumentations always
occur in certain institutional contexts, constrained and empowered by a number of
institutional factors. Second, van Eemeren and Grootendorst (2004) pointed out that
reconstruction is to reveal as clearly as possible, without paying attention to any
sidetracks or detours, which route is followed in attempting to resolve the difference
of opinion. In addition, van Rees (2009) postulated that there are three moves in the
confrontation stage, namely, bringing forward a standpoint, bringing forward criti-
cism against a standpoint, maintaining or withdrawing a standpoint. Third, strategic
manoeuvring reflects the arguer’s tactics in terms of “audience demand”, “topical
potential” and “presentational devices” (van Eemeren, 2010: 93). Last, critical eval-
uation of argumentative moves mainly involves using the ten general rules, which
embody the two core principles of rational argumentation: the principle of validity
of the question (which helps to reasonably resolve the differences in opinion) and
the principle of intersubjectivity (both parties can accept the rules and principles).
Violating these rules will lead to deviation from argumentative reasonableness and
committing fallacies.

4.3 Case Study of the United Airlines’ Dragging‑Off Incident

On April 9, 2017, aviation security officers at the Chicago O’Hare International Air-
port of the United States forcibly removed passenger Dr. David Dao from United
Express Flight 3411 of United Airlines, after Dao refused to leave the aircraft. In
this incident, the security officers were called upon because the airline staffs were
unable to gain Dr. Dao’s cooperation to depart the plane voluntarily. Then Dr. Dao
was physically removed from his seat. After being forcibly removed from the air-
craft, Dr. Dao ran back onto the airplane, and the security officers removed him a
second time. He was injured and later taken to a local hospital.
To examine the United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-Off Incident, we collected
and analysed the primary data and the secondary data. The primary data concerned
five public statements of United Airlines in response to the crisis incident, namely,
two official statements on the social media site Twitter (on April 9, April 10), three

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 327

official statements (April 11, April 13, and April 27, 2017) and one review report
(April 27) on the corporate website. The final official statement and the United
Express Flight 3411 Review and Action Report showed that the company had
reached an agreement with Doctor David Dao and this outcome was generally con-
sidered an end to the incident-handling.
In addition to the primary data, this study also collected and used secondary data,
which consisted of Rules 21 “Refusal of Transport” Rule and 25 “Denied Board-
ing Compensation” in the Contract of Carriage stipulated by United Airlines. United
Airlines requires that each passenger signs the Contract of Carriage before pur-
chasing an air travel ticket. Although this part of the data was not the focus of this
research, it provided the researchers a strong and reliable reference for the analysis
(for more details regarding the data collection, please refer to Table 1).

5 Institutional Preconditions for Corporate Crisis Communication

To make a fair evaluation of strategic manoeuvring in the United Airlines’ Passenger

Dragging-Off Incident, it is necessary to first characterize this argumentative activ-
ity type of corporate crisis communication. As there are no formal rules and regula-
tions in this field, we summarize the five points based upon the conventions and the
best practices from the literature.

1. Corporations in crisis should engage with the media to “meet the needs of the
media and remain accessible” (Veil et al. 2011), because the media, especially the
social media and the corporate official websites, provide important channels for
the various stakeholders to keep informed about the crises and to decide whether
they still have trust in the corporation. It should be kept in mind that the corpora-
tion’s engagement with the media will exert much influence upon the opinions
of its audience.
2. Corporations should respond as quickly as possible (Shi 2008). To protect the
corporate key interests, e.g., reputational assets and financial market performance,
corporations involved in crises often need to take actions and deliver informa-
tion first and fast. They often take preferential stances and attempt to direct the
information in their own favour.
3. Corporate crisis managers should address the concerns of the international general
public (Wu 2019). With the access to and popular use of social media worldwide,
the primary audience of corporate public releases on social media is often the
international general public in that the Internet empowers them substantially and
connects people worldwide. The international public has become an influential
force in the eyes of corporations, as public opinions can have much impact on
stock prices and the corporation’s public image at large.
4. Corporations bear the responsibility of finding out the causes of the crisis and
keeping the stakeholders informed of the event. Stakeholders involved in crisis
request more information or thorough investigation to know the causes of the
crisis and attribute the responsibilities. Based on the Attribution Theory (Coombs

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 328

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Table 1  Data collection: the 2017 United Airlines’ passenger dragging-off incident
Data Source Platform Statement Time Period

Primary data Social Media United Airlines’ twitter Official Statement I: United CEO response to April 10, 2017 Start of CCC(Corporate
United Express Flight 3411 Crisis Communica-
tion)
Account Official Statement II: United CEO response April 10, 2017 During the CCC​
to United Express Flight 3411
Company’s Website United Airlines’ official website Official Statement III: Statement from United April 11, 2017 During the CCC​
Airlines CEO, Oscar Munoz, on United
Express flight 3411
Official Statement IV: Statement on Press April 13, 2017 During the CCC​
Conference
Review and Action Report April 27, 2017 During the CCC​
Official Statement V: News release April 27, 2017 End of the CCC​
Secondary data Company’s Website Contract of Carriage Document: Rule 21 & Release time unknown Before the CCC​
Rule 25
J. Feng et al.

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 329

2007) and conventional practices, stakeholders tend to blame the corporation for
the crisis if no proper response is made to claim responsibility.
5. Corporations often use industry-specific terminology in their official statements
(Wang and Chu 2010). While the corporations intend to clarify or justify the cor-
porations’ (mis)behaviours, the terminology that the corporations adopt may be
difficult for the general public to understand, which can lead to misunderstanding,
or even intensify anger and frustration.

6 Dissociation of “Volunteer” in the Different Stages

of Argumentation

In the official statements, we found that the arguer, United Airlines, dissoci-
ated between the two notional contents of the word “volunteer”, the broad lexi-
cal meaning (Term 1) and the narrow industry meaning (Term 2) and it slides
between them purposefully. The broad meaning of VOLUNTEER (noun) refers
to the main lexicographical definition of the word: a person who does some-
thing, especially helping other people willingly and without being forced or paid
to do it (based on the definition of the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary
English, 2007). The general public/ordinary speakers commonly use the word
VOLUNTEER with this meaning. In contrast, the narrow industry meaning of
VOLUNTEER refers to “a passenger who has mandatory obligation to comply
and deplane based on the volunteer selection policy in a overbooking situation”
(for details of the policy, please refer to Rule 21 & Rule 25 of the United Air-
lines’ Contract of Carriage).
It should be highlighted that the focus of VOLUNTEER as Term II is on the
passengers’ involuntary act of compliance, although the expressions such as
“not against his/her will, willingly” are occasionally mentioned in Rule 25 of the
Contract of Carriage. On the surface and at the initial stage, the air carrier seems
to respect the individual passengers’ rights and choices, this “volunteer” policy
is essentially mandatory for all the passengers and it embodies “involuntarily
denied boarding”. United Airline requests that the Contract of Carriage should
be signed by each passenger at the moment of purchasing the flight ticket, with
volunteer selection being determined by a passenger’s fare class, itinerary, status
of frequent flyer programme membership, and the time in which the passenger
presents him/herself for check-in without advanced seat assignment.
It is found that the use of dissociation “volunteer” appeared in the different
stages of argumentation: bringing forward a standpoint, maintaining a stand-
point, mitigating a standpoint. This is similar to van Rees’ (2009) line of investi-
gation, which suggested that, when setting the confrontation stage, dissociation
is in instrumental by using three moves: bringing forward a standpoint, bringing
forward criticism against a standpoint, maintaining or withdrawing a standpoint.
In this case analysis, we draw inspiration from van Rees’ categorization and
identified three similar phases as well.

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 330 J. Feng et al.

6.1 Bringing Forward a Standpoint

Official Statement I: Flight 3411 from Chicago to Louisville was over-

booked. After our team looked for volunteers, one customer refused to
leave the aircraft voluntarily, and law enforcement was asked to come to
the gate. We apologize for the overbook situation. Further details on the
removed customer should be directed to authorities (April 9, 2017).
In Official Statement I, United Airlines dissociated between “volunteer” as
Term II and Term I. In the first place, it brought forward a standpoint of identi-
fying the forcibly removed passenger, Dr. Dao, as a “volunteer”, in light of the
Contract of Carriage and the general commercial aviation regulations. It stated:
“after our team looked for volunteers…”. In this sentence, “volunteers” referred
to the passengers who have the contractual obligation to leave the plane as long
as they have been selected by the airline based on certain selection criteria. In
this context, volunteering is a mandatory act and “volunteer” (noun) is attached
much importance to Term II of the notion, the specific and narrow meaning
defined by the air carrier and the commercial aviation regulations.
It then continued to state: “one customer refused to leave the aircraft volun-
tarily, and law enforcement was asked to come to the gate.” Here, voluntarily
(adverb) was used with a broad usage of its lexical meaning, emphasizing the
willingness of the passengers. “Voluntarily”, which contains the same word root
as “volunteer”, varies greatly in its meaning from that of “volunteer” (noun) in
the first part of the same sentence. While “volunteer” stressed on the mandatory
nature, “voluntarily” returned to the broad and lexical meaning that people use
in general, i.e. acting willingly in helping us.
Finally, in “further details on the removed customer” of the last sentence of
its official statement, “this removed customer” implicitly referred to a narrowly-
defined “volunteer” (noun). This is because as we reconstruct the whole text of
this official statement, it is inferred that United Airline looked for and identi-
fied “volunteers” based on its corporate policies and THIS customer was one of
them. Probably, the corporation deliberately made it implicit to avoid the contro-
versy of the lexis “volunteer” and its corporate policy.
For what the company should apologize is an issue we should consider, which
is highly related to our discussion of use of dissociation. In the first official
statement, United Airlines did not apologize for implementing the mandatory
“volunteer” selection policy. Rather, it chose to apologize for the overbooking
situation. As overbooking is caused by the external factors, in particular, by the
customers’ high demand for flight seats, which is beyond the airline’s control
and naturally unavoidable in the commercial aviation, apologizing for the over-
booking situation does less harm to the corporate reputation than that for operat-
ing the “volunteer selection” policy.

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 331

6.2 Maintaining a Standpoint

Official Statement II: This is an upsetting event to all of us here at United.

I apologize for having to re-accommodate these customers. Our team is
moving with a sense of urgency to work with the authorities and conduct
our own detailed review of what happened. We are also reaching out to this
passenger to talk directly to him and further address and resolve this situa-
tion (April 10, 2017).
In Official Statement II, United Airlines continued to dissociate between “vol-
unteer” as Term I and Term II, but it made this distinction in a very indirect way.
Although the statement did not adopt the expressions such as “volunteer” policy
and “voluntarily”, it could be inferred that the corporation maintained its stand-
point of identifying this passenger as a “volunteer” (Term II).
It stated in this official statement: “I apologize for having to re-accommodate
these customers”, which implied that the company has the contractual respon-
sibility of re-accommodating these “volunteers” (based on the contract of car-
riage), providing meals, hotel rooms and a certain amount of compensation, in
exchange for the passengers’ involuntary denial boarding. Following this logic
of investigation, “this passenger” was one of the “re-accommodated customers”,
who had to relinquish his confirmed seat based on the corporate policy. This nar-
row industry meaning of VOLUNTEER was brought forward in the first official
statement and it was maintained in the second official statement.
While adhering to using volunteer as Term I, the corporation chose to separate
from using the broad meaning that is widely accepted by the general public and in
the dictionaries. Although the corporation should be highly aware that the official
statements it released targeted at the international public, the common usage and
understanding of the lexical item was kept aside.
In this public release, United Airliner made another apology, this time for
“having to re-accommodate these customers”. This suggested that “providing
re-accommodation” had caused some inconvenience to the involved passengers,
but this is what the corporation had to do, in that it bore the responsibility for
these passengers who were involuntarily requested to deplane and whose fighting
schedules were delayed. Again, it is noticeable that the air carrier did not apolo-
gize for the “volunteer” policy operated by the company, nor it made any self-
reflections on how to reduce the involuntariness in the policy. Rather, it chose to
apologize for the inconvenience caused to the customers, which were natural and
negative outcomes on the customers’ side and uncontrollable by the company.

6.3 Mitigating a Standpoint

In the final part of the crisis communication of the event, the air carrier continued
to dissociate between “volunteer” as Term I (the broad meaning) and as Term
II (the narrow industry meaning); meanwhile, it mitigated its firm stance in its

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 332 J. Feng et al.

“volunteer” selection policy, which contributed to the end of the critical discus-
sion and resolution of the incident.
First of all, United Airlines still adopted “volunteer” with its narrow meaning in
the official statement, in the review and action report and in the attached regulations.
In Official Statement III, although the airline did not explicitly used the word
“volunteer” to refer to “the customer forcibly removed”, some important clues in the
following part gave us a clear idea that “the customer forcibly removed” was treated
as a “volunteer” by United Airlines. In the following part, “this will include a thor-
ough review of crew movement, our policies for incentivizing volunteers”, implic-
itly acknowledged that it had carried out the “volunteer” selection policy, the policy
had some problems and the corporation identified “the customer forcibly removed”
as one of the “volunteers”.
Official Statement III: The truly horrific event that occurred on this flight
has elicited many responses from all of us: outrage, anger, disappointment. I
share all of those sentiments, and one above all: my deepest apologies for what
happened. Like you, I continue to be disturbed by what happened on this flight
and I deeply apologize to the customer forcibly removed and to all the cus-
tomers aboard. No one should ever be mistreated this way. I want you to know
that we take full responsibility and we will work to make it right. It’s never too
late to do the right thing. I have committed to our customers and our employ-
ees that we are going to fix what’s broken so this never happens again. This
will include a thorough review of crew movement, our policies for incentiv-
izing volunteers in these situations, how we handle oversold situations and an
examination of how we partner with airport authorities and local law enforce-
ment. We’ll communicate the results of our review by April 30th.
I promise you we will do better (April 11, 2017).
Likewise, in the first paragraph of the review and action report, the corporation
used the word “volunteer” as Term II, as in “Untied agents began to seek four vol-
unteers…but no customers were willing to accept the offer. The agent then followed
the involuntary denial of boarding selection process to determine which custom-
ers should be asked to leave the airplane.” It is safe to infer that Dr. Dao, was later
picked out by the United agent as “a volunteer”, and he was involuntarily denied
boarding.
In addition, the regulations attached at the end of review and action report enti-
tled “Involuntary Denied Boarding (IDB) selection process” also used “volunteer”
(noun) as Term II. It begins with: “United’s involuntary denied boarding (IDB) pro-
cess is automated and customers are not subject to discretionary choice by agents”.
The IDB process elaborated in the regulation clearly states that “volunteer” in the
airline’s policy refers to a passenger who should comply with this involuntary selec-
tion policy. This stance was expressed throughout all the corporate crisis communi-
cation of this event, with the corporation highlighting the involuntary nature of the
customers’ compliance in the policy.
Secondly, the air carrier occasionally used the associated words with volunteer
(noun) and returned to the broad notion of “willingly help others” (Term I), which is
generally used by the public and in the dictionaries.

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 333

These expressions include two words “volunteer” (verb) and “voluntarily”

(adverb). For instance, in paragraph two of extract one of the review and action
report, “volunteered” in “at this point, one customer onboard the aircraft volun-
teered to change flights for $ 1000 and “volunteer” in “No other customers would
volunteer unless United could guarantee an arrival in Louisville later that night”
were both used as verbs, embodying the act of helping others willingly. In a simi-
lar vein, in the same extract of review and action report, “voluntarily” (adverb) in
“getting customers to voluntarily comply” also meant “helping others willingly”.
While the differences between Term I and Term II were remarkable, it is
observed that United Airlines made efforts to close up the gap between volun-
tariness (Term 1) and involuntariness (Term II). For instance, by using “incentiv-
izing volunteers” in “this will include a thorough review of crew movement, our
policies for incentivizing volunteers” (in the final part of Official Statement III),
the company acknowledged that its “volunteer” selection policy was too forcible
and it was time to reconsider this policy by reducing the involuntariness (Term II)
and enhancing the voluntary degree, thus narrowing up the gap between Term II
and Term I.
On the same issue of reducing involuntariness, extract two in the final review
and action report made an elaborated discussion. In particular, it pointed out that
the “voluntary level” of the customers was rather low due to “offering insufficient
compensation and not providing inadequate provision of transportation/destination
options to entice more customers to give up their seats willingly. Agents did not
have the authority to act independently and authorize higher levels of compensation
or provide other modes of transportation and/or the right destination options”.
It spite of it, it was expressed by United Airlines that this “volunteer” policy
should not be totally abolished. This is manifested in this direct quote from the
review and action report: “Our goal is to reduce incidents of involuntary denial of
boarding to as close to zero as possible and become a more customer-focused air-
line.” “As close as zero” meant that we have to admit “the volunteer policy” (i.e.
Involuntary Denied Boarding) generally exists, though the corporation pledged to
reduce the number of similar events.
At the last stage, United Airlines changed its position in what apologies they
should make. It finally apologized for the faulty “volunteer” policy, though in very
indirect ways. For example, Official Statement IV made much elaboration of it,
although expressions such as “we sincerely apologize for our policies” never directly
appeared, at least it declared that “we’ve started a thorough review of polices that
govern crew movement, incentivizing volunteers in these situations, how we handle
oversold situations and an examination of how we partner with airport authorities
and local law enforcement…..” (paragraph 3 of Official Statement IV). Furthermore,
in the second paragraph of the review and action report, the corporation continued
to express that it apologized for the harm that the policy has caused, for their initial
response that followed (as in “we can never apologize enough for what occurred and
for our initial response that followed”). This indirectly showed that the initial corpo-
rate apologies such as “apologizing for overbook situation” in Official Statement I
and “apologizing for having to re-accommodate these customers” in Official State-
ment II, were inappropriate or insufficient, as they did not address the root causes of

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 334 J. Feng et al.

the passenger dragging-off event nor contribute much to the resolution of the crisis
event.
To sum up, the dissociation of the lexical item “volunteer” went through the
entire critical discussion of the incident. United Airlines dissociated between vol-
unteer as Term I and Term II in the different stages of argumentation: bringing for-
ward a standpoint, maintaining a standpoint and mitigating a standpoint. It moved
between the remarkably different notions: the narrow industry meaning (“volunteer”
as noun) and the broad meaning (“volunteer” as verb and “voluntarily” as adver-
bial). In the final stage, the air carrier made attempts to bridge the notional gap and
decided to enhance the voluntariness in the “VOLUNTEER” policy.

7 Corporate Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation

There are three inseparable aspects of strategic manoeuvring, named the “strategic
manoeuvring triangle” by van Eemeren (2010), including audience demand, topi-
cal potential and presentational devices. For a successful communication, the audi-
ence demands should be fully considered so as to enhance mutual understanding and
build common trust between the two parties. In the following section, we will exam-
ine the United Airlines’ strategic manoeuvring triangle by explicating “volunteer” as
dissociation.
The purpose of meeting the audience’s demand requires the coordination of both
topical potential and presentational devices. Under the institutional context, among
all the other considerations, United Airlines was expected to explain the reasons
for this incident and communicate with its main audience, the international public.
When this incident occurred, the main emotions of the international public involved
sympathy for the injured customer, anger towards the company and eagerness to
know the causes of the incident. To meet the demands of the international pub-
lic, United Airlines had to give public responses as quickly as possible, including
explaining the major reasons for this incident, apologizing for the wrongdoings and
ensuring the airline is a professional and caring company.
Topical potential is an important aspect for investigation, it that it examines what
the possible topics that the speaker should address to satisfy the needs of the audi-
ence. In this case, before the release of Official Statement I, United Airlines had
many topics to choose from, bring forward or explain, the overbooking situation, the
inhumane act of dragging away the passenger, the need to avoid further flight delay
and possible cancelation and other relevant topics. The company chose to focus on
revealing the identity of the removed customer-a VOLUNTEER, which made it con-
tractually right to forcibly remove the passenger and suit the company’s interests
best.
In addition, presentational devices were also used to cater to the audience
demands. The corporation typically employed the technique of dissociation, with
“voluntarily” (adverb) and “volunteer” (verb) corresponding to Term I and “volun-
teer” (noun) corresponding to Term II, as seen in “After our team looked for volun-
teers, one customer refused to leave the aircraft voluntarily” (Official Statement I).
On the one hand, with the use of Term II, United Airliner defended its contractual

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 335

right to remove Doctor David Dao. On the other hand, the corporation slid to use
Term I, the general usage of the word, which is an attempt to create a caring corpo-
rate image, as if the company cared about and respected the individual passenger’s
willingness and individual choices.

8 Evaluating the Employment of Dissociation

After analysing the strategic manoeuvring of dissociation, this section will evaluate
the reasonableness and effectiveness of such manoeuvring in this incident, based on
the general rules in a critical discussion and the institutional preconditions in the
commercial aviation.
In a pragma-dialectical approach, not all dissociations are always sound but
depend on the rules of critical discussion. There are mainly ten rules to observe dur-
ing a critical discussion (van Eemeren and Grootendorst 1992). By reviewing these
rules in the employment of dissociation, whether and when dissociation can be a
sound argumentation technique can be determined. In this study, out of the ten rules,
the “unexpressed premise rule” and the “common starting point rule” are highly rel-
evant and are selected for analysis.
First, the “unexpressed premise rule” means that a party may not falsely present
something as a premise that has been left unexpressed by the other party. This rule
was violated by United Airlines who took advantage of the institutional context and
the dissociated use of “volunteer” for its own benefits. It seemed that the company
was vey professional and caring, nevertheless, this strategic manoeuvring of “volun-
teer” aroused much criticism and anger from the netizens worldwide and the media
coverage. This is because it deviated from the unexpressed premise of the general
international audience, who watched the on-line video with their own eyes and gen-
erally considered that Dr. Dao, was forcibly and violently taken away from the air-
plane against his own wills and United Airlines was not caring or humanistic in han-
dling this crisis. Thus, it was very unlikely for the air carrier to reach a consensus
with the international public nor to enhance mutual understanding or trust between
each other.
Second, the “common starting point rule” means that an arguer may not falsely
present a premise as an accepted starting point. This rule is violated in the employ-
ment of dissociation of “volunteer”, in that the arguer did not take into account the
knowledge gap of the audience. In this incident, the main audience, the international
public, had a very limited knowledge of the general regulations in the commercial
aviation, including how regulations request the airline agents to handle the over-
booked situation and what “volunteer” means in the professional domain. Never-
theless, United Airlines assumed that the audience was very familiar with how to
handle the overbooked situation and with the contractual terms concerning “volun-
teers”. The company attempted to establish a common starting point that “the for-
cibly removed customer was identified as a volunteer” and falsely presented this
premise as “consensus knowledge”, which deviates from the common understand-
ing of the international audience. They strongly consider that a volunteer should be

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 336 J. Feng et al.

identified as someone who does something willingly without being forced or paid to
do so.
In summary, both the “unexpressed premise rule” and the “starting common point
rule” are violated in the strategic manoeuvring by dissociation. On the one hand, the
use of industry-specific terminology helped to explain the causes and the overall
situation of the crisis, thus justifying the company’s standpoints. On the other hand,
this terminology served as a double-edged sword, in that the industry-related defini-
tions and interpretations were difficult for the international public to understand and
weakened the credibility and acceptability of United Airlines’ standpoints. There-
fore, the airline’s communication effectiveness was called into question.

9 Conclusions and Discussion

By adopting the theoretical framework of pragma-dialectics, this research analysed

and assessed strategic manoeuvring by dissociation in corporate crisis communica-
tion via a case study of the 2017 United Airlines’ Passenger Dragging-Off Incident.
Drawing upon the data from United Airlines’ public statements, the Review and
Action Report and Contract of Carriage, the study reached the following conclu-
sions: the airline adopted the dissociation of “volunteer” in different stages of a criti-
cal discussion to resolve the differences of opinion and strategically manoeuvred it
in the three aspects of audience demand, topic potential and presentational devices.
The dissociation was employed because it seemed to be reasonable as conforming
to the internal regulations of the airline and served the corporation’s interests best
in front of the general international audience; nevertheless, the argumentative effec-
tiveness was called into question based upon the general rules for critical discussion
and the institutional context.
The study’s main contribution lies in adopting a pragma-dialectical approach to
studying corporate crisis communication. Although corporate crisis communication
is a rich field in which scholars from management and rhetorical fields have gener-
ated plenty of research, the pragma-dialectical approach deserves due attention and
it has its own merits. This approach attaches more importance to the actual language
use and adopts a much broader perspective than traditional rhetorical studies by
examining the linguistic persuasiveness, the argumentative reasonableness and the
institutional preconditions in which the discourses are inherently situated.
Although van Eemeren (2010: 143) emphasised the importance of studying
different institutional contexts and he identified eight important commination
activity types, corporation crisis communication was not listed as one of the main
categories. We consider that, given the big social and economic impact of the
corporation crisis communication, especially that of the multinational compa-
nies, our study is an important and valuable endeavour in investigating corpo-
rate crisis communication from a pragma-dialectical approach. Finally, we would
like to offer three suggestions as to what future research should be conducted.
First, more communicative activity types should be considered by adopting a
pragma-dialectical approach to prove its applicability and expand the scope of
research. Second, more efforts should be made to investigate how institutional

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 Strategic Manoeuvring by Dissociation in Corporate Crisis… 337

preconditions influence argumentative discourses, both imposing constraints on

and creating opportunities for strategic manoeuvring by dissociation. Third, the
rules for assessing whether argumentative fallacies have been committed should
be made clearer and more elaborated, and it is important to provide more system-
atic standards for the applicability of these rules.

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