Critical Discourse Analysis, Organizational Discourse, and Organizational Change Essay

Discourses is an component of all concrete societal events ( actions. procedures ) every bit good as of more lasting societal patterns. though neither are merely discourse: they are articulations of discourse with non-discoursal elements.

‘Discourse’ subsumes linguistic communication every bit good as other signifiers of semiosis such as ocular images and ‘body language’ . and the discoursal component of a societal event frequently combines different semiotic signifiers ( eg a telecasting programme ) .But the usage of the ‘term ‘discourse’ instead than ‘language’ is non strictly or even chiefly motivated by the diverseness of signifiers of semiosis. it is chiefly registries a relational manner of seeing semiosis [ I ] . as one component of societal events and patterns dialectically interconnected with other elements.The overruling aim of discourse analysis. on this position.

is non merely analysis of discourse per Se. but analysis of the dialectical dealingss between discourse and non-discoursal elements of the societal. in order to make a better apprehension of these complex dealingss ( including how alterations in discourse can do alterations in other elements ) .

But if we are to analyze dealingss between discourse and non-discoursal elements. we must evidently see them as ontologically ( and non merely epistemologically. analytically ) different elements of the societal.They are different. but they are non distinct – that is. they are dialectically related. in the sense that elements ‘internalize’ other elements.

without being reducible to them ( Harvey 1996. Chouliaraki & A ; Fairclough 1999. Fairclough 2003. Fairclough. Jessop & A ; Sayer 2004 ) . A realist position of societal life sees it as including societal constructions every bit good as societal events – in critical realist footings.

the ‘real’ ( which defines and delimits what is possible ) every bit good as the ‘actual’ ( what really happens ) .There is a general acknowledgment that the relationship between constructions and events must be a mediated relation. and I follow for case Bhaskar ( 1986 ) and Bourdieu ( Bourdieu & A ; Wacquant 1992 ) in sing societal patterns as the mediating entities – more or less lasting and stable articulations of diverse societal elements including discourse which constitute societal choices and ordinations of the allowances of societal constructions as actualisable allowances in peculiar countries of societal life in a certain clip and topographic point.

Social Fieldss. establishments and organisations can be regarded as webs of societal patterns. Networks of societal patterns include specifically discoursal choices and ordinations ( from linguistic communications and other semiotic systems. which are counted amongst societal constructions ) which I call ‘orders of discourse’ . allowing but redefining Foucault’s term ( Foucault 1984. Fairclough 1992 ) . Orders of discourse are societal structurings of linguistic/semiotic fluctuation or difference.Realist discourse analysis on this position is based in a dialectical-relational societal ontology which gives ontological precedence to procedures and dealingss over objects.

entities. individuals. organisations etc.

yet sees the latter as socially produced ‘permanences’ ( Harvey 1996 ) which constitute a pre-structured world with which we are confronted. and sets of affordances and restrictions on procedures. Epistemic precedence is given to neither pre-constructed societal constructions. patterns. establishments. individualities or organisations. nor to procedures. actions.

and events: the concern is with the relationship and tenseness between them.Peoples with their capacities for bureau are seen as socially produced. contingent and capable to alter. yet existent. and possessing existent causal powers which. in their tenseness with the causal powers of societal constructions.

are a focal point for analysis. Social research returns through abstraction from the concrete events of societal life aimed at understanding the pre-structured nature of societal life. and returns to analysis of concrete events. actions and procedures in the visible radiation of this abstract cognition.Discourse and non-discoursal elements of societal events and societal patterns are related in many ways. I distinguish three chief ways: stand foring. moving ( and interacting ) . and being.

At the degree of societal patterns. orders of discourse can be seen as articulations of specific ways of stand foring. moving. and being – Internet Explorer specific discourses. genres and manners. A discourse is a peculiar manner of stand foring certain parts or facets of the ( physical. societal.

psychological ) universe ; a genre is a peculiar manner of ( inter ) playing ( which comprises the discoursal component of a manner of inter ) moving which will besides needfully consist non-discoursal elements ) ; a manner is a manner of being ( the discoursal component of a manner of being. an ‘identity’ . which will besides include non-discoursal elements ) . I shall utilize the term ‘text’ [ two ] . in a generalised sense ( non merely written text but besides spoken interaction. multi-semiotic televisual text etc ) for the discoursal component of societal events.Texts are double contextualized.

foremost in their relation to other elements of societal events. second in their relation to societal patterns. which is ‘internal’ to texts in the sense that they needfully draw upon orders of discourse. ie societal patterns in their discoursal facet.

and the discourses. genres and manners associated with them. However. events ( and hence texts ) are points of articulation and tenseness between two causal forces: societal patterns and. through their mediation. societal constructions ; and the bureau of the societal histrions who speak. compose. compose.

read. listen to. construe them.The societal ‘resource’ of discourses.

genres and manners is capable to the transformative potency of societal bureau. so that texts do non merely instantiate discourses. genres and manners. they actively rework them.

joint them together in typical and potentially fresh ways. crossbreed them. transform them. My focal point in this paper is on organisational alteration.

and this version of CDA has so been developed in association with research on discourse in societal alteration.Social alteration comprises change in societal constructions. societal patterns. the networking of societal patterns. and ( the character of ) societal events ; and alter in linguistic communications and other semiotic systems. in orders of discourse and dealingss between orders of discourse. and in texts. With regard to orders of discourse.

societal alteration includes alteration in the societal structuring of linguistic/semiotic fluctuation. therefore alteration in discourses. genres and manners. and alteration in their articulation in orders of discourse. and alteration in dealingss between orders of discourse ( eg political and media orders of discourse ) .With regard to texts.

societal alteration includes tendential alteration in how discourses. genres and manners are drawn upon and articulated/hybridized together in assorted types of text. The procedure of societal alteration raises inquiries about causal dealingss between different elements. Causal dealingss are non simple or one-way. For case. it would look to do more sense to see new communicating engineerings ( ICTs ) as doing the outgrowth of new genres than vice-versa – alterations in discourse caused by alterations in non-discoursal elements.In other instances. alteration appears to be discourse-led.

A permeant modern-day procedure ( for case in procedures of ‘transition’ in cardinal and eastern Europe ) is change initiated through the recontextualization [ three ] in an organisation. a societal field. or a state of ‘external’ discourses. which may so be enacted in new ways of ( inter ) moving including new genres. inculcated as new ways of being including manners. and materialized in for illustration new ways of forming infinite.These passages. ingrainings and materialisations are dialectical procedures.

There is an of import provision nevertheless: these procedures are contingent. they depend upon certain conditions of possibility. For case. when a discourse is recontextualized. it enters a new field of societal dealingss. and its flight within those societal dealingss is decisive in finding whether or non it has ( rhenium ) constructive effects on the organisation. societal field etc overall.In contexts of societal alteration.

different groups of societal histrions may develop different and conflicting schemes for alteration. which have a partly dianoetic character ( narrations of the yesteryear. representations of the present.

complex numbers for the hereafter ) . and inclusion within a successful scheme is a status for a discourse being dialectically enacted. inculcated and materialized in other societal elements ( Jessop 2002.

Fairclough. Jessop & A ; Sayer 2004 ) .Discourses construe facets of the universe in inherently selective and reductive ways. ‘translating’ and ‘condensing’ complex worlds ( Harvey 1996 ) . and one ever needs to inquire.

why this peculiar choice and decrease. why here. why now? ( For a treatment of ‘globalisation’ discourse in these footings. see Fairclough & A ; Thomas forthcoming. Locating discourses in relation to schemes in contexts of societal alteration enables us to link peculiar representations of the universe with peculiar involvements and dealingss of power. every bit good assess their ideological import. Discourses do non emerge or go recontextualized in peculiar organisations or Fieldss at random.

and they do non stand in an arbitrary relation to societal constructions and patterns. signifiers of institutionalization and organisation.If we can build accounts of alteration in non-discoursal elements of societal world which attribute causal effects to discourses.

we can besides build accounts of alteration in discourses which attribute causal effects to ( non-discoursal elements of ) constructions and patterns. every bit good as societal and strategic dealingss. The societal building of the societal universe may sometimes be a affair of alterations in non-discoursal elements caused by discourses ( through the concrete signifiers of texts ) . but discourses ( and texts ) are besides causal effects. the dialectics of societal alteration is non a one-way street.We can separate four elements. or minutes. in the societal flights of discourses: their outgrowth and fundamental law ( through a re-articulation of bing elements ) ; their entry into hegemonic battles from which they may emerge as hegemonic discourses ; their airing and recontextualization across structural and scalar boundaries ( Internet Explorer between one field or establishment or organisation and others.

and between one graduated table ( ‘global’ . macro-regional ( eg the EU ) . national. local ) and others ; and their operationalization ( passage.

ingraining. materialisation ) .These are distinguishable minutes with regard to the causal effects of discourses on non-discoursal ( every bit good as discoursal. ie generic and stylistic ) elements of societal life. and they are all capable to non-discoursal every bit good as discoursal conditions.

CDA claims that societal research can be enriched by widening analysis of societal procedures and societal alteration into elaborate analysis of texts.More elaborate ( including lingual ) analysis of texts is connected to broader societal analysis by manner of ( a ) analyzing texts as portion of analyzing societal events. ( B ) interdiscursive analysis of switching articulations of genres.

discourses. manners in texts ( Fairclough 2003 ) .The latter locates the text as an component of a concrete event in its relationship to orders of discourse as the discoursal facet of webs of societal patterns. and so allows the analyst to ( a ) assess the relationship and tenseness between the causal effects of bureaus in the concrete event and the causal effects of ( webs of ) societal patterns. and through them of societal constructions ( B ) detect displacements in the relationship between orders of discourse and webs f societal patterns as these are registered in the interdiscursivity ( commixture of genres.

discourses. manners ) of texts. Text can be seen as merchandise and as procedure. Texts as merchandises can be stored. retrieved. bought and sold. cited and summarized and so forth. Texts as procedures can be grasped through seeing ‘texturing’ .

doing texts. as a specific mode of societal action. of societal production or ‘making’ ( of significances. apprehensions. cognition. beliefs. attitudes. feelings.

societal dealingss. societal and personal individualities. establishments. organisations ) .The focal point is on ‘logogenesis’ ( Iedema 2003:115-17 ) . including the texturing of entities ( objects. individuals. infinites.

organisations ) which can. given certain stipulations. be dialectically internalized ( enacted. inculcated and materialized ) in non-discoursal elements of societal life. See for case the treatment of the significance of nominalization as a logogenetic procedure in texts in procedures of forming. bring forthing organisation objects. in Iedema ( 2003 ) .

Organizational Discourse I shall build my really selective remarks on organisational discourse analysis around the following four subjects: organisation and organizing ; fluctuation. choice and keeping ; apprehensions of ‘discourse’ ; and intertextuality. Organization and forming Mumby & A ; Stohl ( 1991 ) argue that research workers in organisational communicating most centrally differ from those in other countries of organisation surveies in that the former problematize ‘organization’ whereas the latter do non. ‘For us. organisation – or forming. to utilize Weick’s ( 1979 ) term – is a unstable. equivocal.

unsure procedure that is continually being made and refashion.In Weick’s sense. organisations are merely seen as stable. rational constructions when viewed retrospectively. Communication.

so. is the substance of forming in the sense that through dianoetic patterns organisation members engage in the building of a complex and diverse system of meanings’ . Another preparation of this displacement in accent from organisations as constructions to ‘organizing’ ( or ‘organizational becoming’ .

Tsoukas & A ; Chia 2002 ) as a procedure is that of Mumby & A ; Clair ( 1997: 181 ) : ‘we suggest that organisations exist merely in so far as their members create them through discourse.This is non to claim that organisations are “nothing but” discourse. but instead that discourse is the chief agencies by which organisation members create a consistent societal world that frames their sense of who they are’ . Despite the disclaimer at the beginning of the 2nd sentence. this preparation can as argued by Reed ( forthcoming ) be seen as fall ining ontology into epistemology. and sabotaging the ontological world of organisational constructions as restraints on organisational action and communicating.From the position of the realist position of discourse I have outlined. it makes small sense to see forming and organisation.

or more by and large bureau and construction. as options one has to take between. With regard to organisational alteration. both organisational constructions and the bureau of members of organisations in organisational action and communicating have causal effects on how organisations change. Organizational communicating does so form. bring forth organisational effects and transform organisations.

but forming is capable to conditions of possibility which include organisational constructions.The paper by Iedema. Degeling. Braithwaite and White ( 2004 ) in the particular issue of Organizational Studies is an analysis of how a ‘doctor-manager’ in a teaching infirmary in Australia manages ‘the incommensurable dimensions’ of his ‘boundary place between profession and organization’ by positioning himself across different discourses. sometimes in a individual vocalization.

The writers identify a heteroglossia ‘that is excessively context-regarding to be reducible to personal idiosyncracy. and excessively complex and dynamic to be the deliberate result of witting manipulation’ .They see the doctor-manager’s talk as a ‘feat’ of ‘bricolage’ . non as a show of ‘behaviours that are pre-programmed’ . Nor is it an instantiation of a ‘strategy’ . for ‘strategies are they assume ‘conscious’ .

Although the writers recognize that organisations can ‘set limits’ on what workers can state and make. enforce ‘closure’ . they see the doctor-manager as successfully ‘deferring closing on his ain individuality and on the discourses that realize it’ .One can take this as an interesting and nuanced survey of organisation as the ‘organizing’ that is achieved in interaction ( nuanced in the sense that it does non except organisational constructions. though it does propose that they are more ‘fluid’ and less ‘categorical’ than they have been taken to be.

and it does acknowledge their capacity to enforce ‘closure’ ) . I would wish to do a figure of affiliated observations on this paper.First. one might see the doctor-manager’s ‘feat’ in this instance as a peculiar signifier of a more general organisational procedure. the direction of contradictions. Second. discourse figures otherwise in different types of organisation ( Borzeix 2003. mentioning to Girin 2001 ) .

The type of organisation in this instance seems to be in Girin’s footings a ‘cognitive’ ( or ‘learning’ . or ‘intelligent’ ) organisation. in which the normative force of ( written ) texts ( regulations. processs ) is limited. and there is an accent on larning in spoken interaction.

There seems to be. in other footings. a comparatively ‘network’ type of construction instead than a simple hierarchy. where direction involves a strong component participatory and advisory interaction with stakeholders.

Third. linking the first two points. spoken interaction in this type of organisation accomplishes an on-going direction of contradictions which contrasts with the direction of contradictions through stamp downing them by enforcing regulations and processs.Fourth. the doctor-manager’s ‘feat’ can be seen as a public presentation of a scheme every bit long as we abandon the ( slightly implausible ) claim that all facets and degrees of strategic action are witting – the doctor-manager would one imagines be witting of the demand to prolong a equilibrating act between professional and managerial positions and precedences. and of certain specific agencies to make so. but that does non imply him being witting of all the complex interactive means he uses to make it.

Fifth. while peculiar public presentations of this scheme ( or. so. any scheme ) are non ‘pre-programmed’ . the scheme is institutionalized.

disseminated. learnt. and constitutes a aspect of the type of organisation as a web of societal patterns. ie a aspect of organisational construction.

Sixth. it strikes me that conveying off a sense of originative bricolage is possibly itself a portion of the managerial manner of this type of organisation. ie portion of the scheme. the web of societal patterns.

the order of discourse.My decision is that even in a instance of this kind. instead more accent is needed on the relationship between forming and organisation. public presentation and pattern. ‘feat’ and scheme [ four ] . Organizational discourse surveies have been associated with postmodernist places ( Chia 1995. Grant.

Harvey. Oswick & A ; Putnam forthcoming. Grant. Keenoy.

Oswick 2001 ) . though the field as a whole is excessively diverse to be seen as merely postmodernist.Chia identifies a postmodern ‘style of thinking’ in organisational surveies which ‘accentuates the significance. ontological precedence and analysis of the micro-logics of societal forming patterns over and above their stabilized ‘effects’ such as ‘individuals’ . As this indicates.

the focal point on forming instead than administration is strongly associated with this ‘style of thinking’ . Like the dialectical-relational ontology I advocated before. this ‘style of thinking’ sees objects and entities as produced within ontologically anterior procedures.The cardinal difference is that this ‘style of thinking’ tends towards a nonreversible accent on procedure. whereas the realist position of discourse analysis I have been recommending Centres upon the tenseness between ( discoursal ) procedure and pre-structured ( discoursal and lingual. every bit good as non-discoursal ) objects. This signifier of pragmatism is non capable to the inclination within modernist societal research which is criticized by Woolgar ( 1988 ) to take the objects it arrives at through abstraction ( which would include in the instance of CDA orders of discourse.

every bit good as linguistic communication and other semiotic systems ) to be thorough of the societal world it researches.The cardinal difference in this instance is whereas this signifier of modernist research moves from the concrete to the abstract and so ‘forgets’ the concrete. the dialectic-relational signifier of pragmatism I have advocated crucially makes the move back to analysis of the concrete.

CDA is non simply concerned with linguistic communications and orders of discourse. it is every bit concerned with text and texturing. and with the dealingss of tenseness between the two.