Communication and Theatre 4/514 Issues in Organizational Communication Approaches to Organizational Discourse

What is a “sedimented” discourse? How about methodological promiscuity? Theoretical promiscuity?

What does it mean to say “we will use a poststructural lens to focus on the ways language constitutes social reality?

Assumptions of Poststructuralism Language is primary We are determined by multiple discourses... that are located in time (episteme), and are mostly invisible. Humans primarily are unfinished discourses that emerge, maintain currency and disappear.

Otherwise put: discourses and organization are mutually productive, shifting formations.

To review: dialogue = the site and struggle among diverse forms of knowing, being and speaking. The trick is to maintain a “productive tension” among this diversity.

We come to understand organizing by noting viable themes, images as well as absences.

Absence = what is ambiguous? silent? diverse? fragmented? unstable?

Critical discourse analysis aims to make visible the (re)production of dominant ideology. What are the operant explicit/implicit rules and power structures?

Intertextuality = relationships among instances of discourse. This approach emphasizes the context of speaking and the fractured nature of interpretation.

Coordinated management of meaning. Context (where am I?) Prefigurative force (obligation) Practical force (outcome) Implicative force (future)

End of Approaches to Discourse