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There is inevitably some vagueness about negotiation as both a practice and a concept. We show here that this is due to an inescapable ambivalence within the relationship between negotiators and to ambiguity in negotiation contents, the root cause of both being the mix of integrative and distributive dimensions inherent in negotiation. In practice, ambivalence and ambiguity are a source of pride for the expert negotiator and a source of stress for the occasional one. They may also partly explain why so many social-science researchers are reluctant to concentrate on either the phenomenon or the concept of negotiation. Taking the opposite view, we defend the idea that ambivalence and ambiguity are at the core of the practice and theory of negotiation and deserve a central place in negotiation research. We believe this would enhance the relevance of negotiation research at a time when both public policies and private management practice tend to rely heavily on ambiguous commitments and orientations (for instance, in our own field of environment and sustainable development, but also, we believe, in many other domains).