Critical Discourse Analysis, Organizational Discourse, and Organizational Change Essay Example for Free

Critical Discourse Analysis, Organizational Discourse, and Organizational Change EssayDiscourses is an divisor of all concrete genial events (actions, plowes) as soundly as of to a greater extent fixed cordial practices, though neither ar simply sermon they be articulations of discourse with non-discoursal shares. Discourse subsumes language as well as early(a) clays of semiosis such as visual images and body language, and the discoursal element of a kind event often combines different semiotical forms (eg a television programme).But the use of the term discourse rather than language is not purely or even primarily motivated by the diversity of forms of semiosis, it is primarily registers a relational way of seeing semiosisi, as one element of social events and practices dialecti identifyy interconnected with anformer(a)(prenominal) elements. The everyplaceriding object of discourse analysis, on this eyeshot, is not simply analysis of discourse per se, scarce an alysis of the dialectical dealing mingled with discourse and non-discoursal elements of the social, in order to annoy a better understanding of these complex dealings (including how tacks in discourse back in like mannerth cause changes in early(a) elements). But if we be to analyse relations amid discourse and non-discoursal elements, we must obviously see them as ontologically (and not just epistemologically, analytically) different elements of the social.They atomic come in 18 different, but they are not discrete that is, they are dialectically related, in the intelligence that elements internalize other elements, without universe reducible to them (Harvey 1996, Chouliaraki Fairclough 1999, Fairclough 2003, Fairclough, Jessop Sayer 2004). A realist view of social life sees it as including social structures as well as social events in critical realist terms, the real (which defines and delimits what is possible) as well as the actual (what actually happens).There is a general recognition that the family relationship between structures and events must be a mediated relation, and I follow for instance Bhaskar (1986) and Bourdieu (Bourdieu Wacquant 1992) in regarding social practices as the mediating entities more or less durable and stable articulations of diverse social elements including discourse which constitute social alternatives and orderings of the allowances of social structures as actualisable allowances in peculiar(prenominal) areas of social life in a veritable time and place. societal fields, institutions and organizations stop be regarded as internets of social practices. Networks of social practices include specifically discoursal selections and orderings (from languages and other semiotic systems, which are counted amongst social structures) which I call orders of discourse, appropriating but redefining Foucaults term (Foucault 1984, Fairclough 1992). Orders of discourse are social structurings of linguistic/semiotic v ariation or difference.Realist discourse analysis on this view is based in a dialectical-relational social ontology which gives ontological priority to helpes and relations over objects, entities, persons, organizations etc, yet sees the latter as socially produced permanences (Harvey 1996) which constitute a pre-structured existence with which we are confronted, and sets of affordances and limitations on processes. Epistemological priority is given to neither pre- puddleed social structures, practices, institutions, identities or organizations, nor to processes, actions, and events the concern is with the relationship and accent between them.People with their capacities for agency are seen as socially produced, contingent and subject to change, yet real, and possessing real causal powers which, in their tension with the causal powers of social structures, are a centralise for analysis. Social research proceeds through with(predicate) abstraction from the concrete events of soci al life aimed at understanding the pre-structured nature of social life, and returns to analysis of concrete events, actions and processes in the well-heeled of this abstract knowledge.Discourse and non-discoursal elements of social events and social practices are related in many ways. I distinguish three main ways representing, acting (and interacting), and being. At the level of social practices, orders of discourse can be seen as articulations of specific ways of representing, acting, and being ie specific discourses, genres and airs. A discourse is a particular way of representing indisputable parts or aspects of the (physical, social, psychological) world a genre is a particular way of (inter)acting (which comprises the discoursal element of a way of inter)acting which will also necessarily comprise non-discoursal elements) a style is a way of being (the discoursal element of a way of being, an identity, which will also include non-discoursal elements). I shall use the ter m textii, in a generalized sense (not just written text but also communicate interaction, multi-semiotic televisual text etc) for the discoursal element of social events.Texts are doubly contextualized, first in their relation to other elements of social events, second in their relation to social practices, which is internal to texts in the sense that they necessarily draw upon orders of discourse, ie social practices in their discoursal aspect, and the discourses, genres and styles associated with them. However, events (and therefore texts) are points of articulation and tension between two causal forces social practices and, through their mediation, social structures and the agency of the social actors who speak, write, compose, read, listen to, interpret them.The social resource of discourses, genres and styles is subject to the transformative potential of social agency, so that texts do not simply instantiate discourses, genres and styles, they actively rework them, articulate them together in distinctive and potentially novel ways, hybridize them, transform them. My focus in this paper is on organizational change, and this indication of CDA has indeed been developed in association with research on discourse in social change.Social change comprises change in social structures, social practices, the networking of social practices, and (the character of) social events and change in languages and other semiotic systems, in orders of discourse and relations between orders of discourse, and in texts. With respect to orders of discourse, social change includes change in the social structuring of linguistic/semiotic variation, therefore change in discourses, genres and styles, and change in their articulation in orders of discourse, and change in relations between orders of discourse (eg political and media orders of discourse).With respect to texts, social change includes tendential change in how discourses, genres and styles are drawn upon and articulated/hyb ridized together in various types of text. The process of social change raises questions about causal relations between different elements. Causal relations are not simple or one-way. For instance, it would seem to fabricate more sense to see brand-new communication technologies (ICTs) as causing the emergence of new genres than vice-versa changes in discourse caused by changes in non-discoursal elements.In other cases, change appears to be discourse-led. A pervasive contemporary process (for instance in processes of transition in central and eastern Europe) is change initiated through the recontextualizationiii in an organization, a social field, or a country of external discourses, which may then be enacted in new ways of (inter)acting including new genres, inculcated as new ways of being including styles, and materialized in for example new ways of organizing space.These enactments, inculcations and materializations are dialectical processes. There is an important proviso howe ver these processes are contingent, they depend upon certain conditions of possibility. For instance, when a discourse is recontextualized, it enters a new field of social relations, and its trajectory inwardly those social relations is decisive in determining whether or not it has (re)constructive effectuate on the organization, social field etc overall.In contexts of social change, different groups of social actors may develop different and conflicting strategies for change, which have a partly discursive character (narratives of the past, representations of the present, imaginaries for the future), and inclusion within a successful strategy is a condition for a discourse being dialectically enacted, inculcated and materialized in other social elements (Jessop 2002, Fairclough, Jessop Sayer 2004).Discourses construe aspects of the world in inherently selective and reductive ways, translating and condensing complex realities (Harvey 1996), and one always needs to ask, why this particular selection and reduction, why here, why now? (For a discussion of globalisation discourse in these terms, see Fairclough Thomas forthcoming. Locating discourses in relation to strategies in contexts of social change enables us to connect particular representations of the world with particular interests and relations of power, as well assess their ideological import. Discourses do not emerge or become recontextualized in particular organizations or fields at random, and they do not stand in an arbitrary relation to social structures and practices, forms of institutionalization and organization.If we can construct explanations of change in non-discoursal elements of social reality which attribute causal cause to discourses, we can also construct explanations of change in discourses which attribute causal effects to (non-discoursal elements of) structures and practices, as well as social and strategic relations. The social wind of the social world may sometimes be a matter of changes in non-discoursal elements caused by discourses (through the concrete forms of texts), but discourses (and texts) are also causal effects, the dialectics of social change is not a one-way street.We can distinguish four elements, or moments, in the social trajectories of discourses their emergence and constitution (through a re-articulation of existing elements) their entry into hegemonic struggles from which they may emerge as hegemonic discourses their dissemination and recontextualization across structural and scalar boundaries (ie between one field or institution or organization and others, and between one scale (global, macro-regional (eg the EU), national, local) and others and their operationalization (enactment, inculcation, materialization).These are distinct moments with respect to the causal effects of discourses on non-discoursal (as well as discoursal, ie generic and stylistic) elements of social life, and they are all subject to non-discoursal as well as dis coursal conditions. CDA cites that social research can be enriched by extending analysis of social processes and social change into detailed analysis of texts.More detailed (including linguistic) analysis of texts is connected to broader social analysis by way of (a) analysing texts as part of analysing social events, (b) interdiscursive analysis of shifting articulations of genres, discourses, styles in texts (Fairclough 2003).The latter locates the text as an element of a concrete event in its relationship to orders of discourse as the discoursal aspect of networks of social practices, and so allows the analyst to (a) assess the relationship and tension between the causal effects of agencies in the concrete event and the causal effects of (networks of) social practices, and through them of social structures (b) detect shifts in the relationship between orders of discourse and networks f social practices as these are registered in the interdiscursivity (mixing of genres, discourse s, styles) of texts. Text can be seen as product and as process. Texts as products can be stored, retrieved, bought and sold, cited and summarized and so forth. Texts as processes can be grasped through seeing texturing, making texts, as a specific modality of social action, of social production or making (of meanings, understandings, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, feelings, social relations, social and personal identities, institutions, organizations).The focus is on logogenesis (Iedema 2003115-17), including the texturing of entities (objects, persons, spaces, organizations) which can, given certain preconditions, be dialectically internalized (enacted, inculcated and materialized) in non-discoursal elements of social life. See for instance the discussion of the significance of nominalization as a logogenetic process in texts in processes of organizing, producing organization objects, in Iedema (2003).Organizational DiscourseI shall construct my very selective comments on organiza tional discourse analysis around the hobby four themes organization and organizing variation, selection and retention understandings of discourse and intertextuality. Organization and organizing Mumby Stohl (1991) argue that researchers in organizational communication most centrally differ from those in other areas of organization studies in that the former problematize organization whereas the latter do not. For us, organization or organizing, to use Weicks (1979) term is a precarious, ambiguous, uncertain process that is continually being made and remade.In Weicks sense, organizations are only seen as stable, rational structures when viewed retrospectively. Communication, then, is the substance of organizing in the sense that through discursive practices organization members engage in the construction of a complex and diverse system of meanings. Another formulation of this shift in emphasis from organizations as structures to organizing (or organizational becoming, Tsoukas Ch ia 2002) as a process is that of Mumby Clair (1997 181) we suggest that organizations exist only in so far as their members create them through discourse.This is not to claim that organizations are nothing but discourse, but rather that discourse is the principal means by which organization members create a coherent social reality that frames their sense of who they are. Despite the disclaimer at the beginning of the second sentence, this formulation can as argued by Reed (forthcoming) be seen as collapsing ontology into epistemology, and undermining the ontological reality of organizational structures as constraints on organizational action and communication.From the perspective of the realist view of discourse I have outlined, it makes little sense to see organizing and organization, or more generally agency and structure, as alternatives one has to choose between. With respect to organizational change, both organizational structures and the agency of members of organizations in organizational action and communication have causal effects on how organizations change. Organizational communication does indeed organize, produce organizational effects and transform organizations, but organizing is subject to conditions of possibility which include organizational structures.The paper by Iedema, Degeling, Braithwaite and egg white (2004) in the special issue of Organizational Studies is an analysis of how a doctor-manager in a teaching hospital in Australia manages the incommensurable dimensions of his boundary position between profession and organization by positioning himself across different discourses, sometimes in a single utterance. The authors identify a heteroglossia that is too context-regarding to be reducible to personal idiosyncracy, and too complex and dynamic to be the calculated outcome of conscious manipulation.They see the doctor-managers talk as a effect of bricolage, not as a display of behaviours that are pre-programmed. Nor is it an instant iation of a strategy, for strategies are they assume conscious. Although the authors recognize that organizations can set limits on what workers can say and do, impose closure, they see the doctor-manager as successfully deferring closure on his own identity and on the discourses that realize it.One can subscribe this as an interesting and nuanced study of organization as the organizing that is achieved in interaction (nuanced in the sense that it does not exclude organizational structures, though it does suggest that they are more fluid and less categorical than they have been taken to be, and it does recognize their capacity to impose closure). I would like to make a number of connected observations on this paper.First, one might see the doctor-managers feat in this case as a particular form of a more general organizational process, the management of contradictions. Second, discourse figures differently in different types of organization (Borzeix 2003, referring to Girin 2001). T he type of organization in this case seems to be in Girins terms a cognitive (or learning, or intelligent) organization, in which the normative force of (written) texts (rules, procedures) is limited, and there is an emphasis on learning in spoken interaction.There seems to be, in other terms, a relatively network type of structure rather than a simple hierarchy, where management involves a strong element participatory and consultative interaction with stakeholders. Third, connecting the first two points, spoken interaction in this type of organization accomplishes an ongoing management of contradictions which contrasts with the management of contradictions through suppressing them by imposing rules and procedures.Fourth, the doctor-managers feat can be seen as a performance of a strategy as long as we abandon the (somewhat implausible) claim that all aspects and levels of strategic action are conscious the doctor-manager would one imagines be conscious of the need to sustain a bal ancing act between skipper and managerial perspectives and priorities, and of certain specific means to do so, but that does not entail him being conscious of all the complex interactive means he uses to do it.Fifth, while particular performances of this strategy (or, indeed, any strategy) are not pre-programmed, the strategy is institutionalized, disseminated, learnt, and constitutes a facet of the type of organization as a network of social practices, ie a facet of organizational structure. Sixth, it strikes me that bringing off a sense of creative bricolage is perhaps itself a part of the managerial style of this type of organization, ie part of the strategy, the network of social practices, the order of discourse.My conclusion is that even in a case of this sort, rather more emphasis is indispensable on the relationship between organizing and organization, performance and practice, feat and strategyiv. Organizational discourse studies have been associated with postmodernist po sitions (Chia 1995, Grant, Harvey, Oswick Putnam forthcoming, Grant, Keenoy, Oswick 2001), though the field as a whole is too diverse to be seen as simply postmodernist.Chia identifies a postmodern style of thinking in organizational studies which accentuates the significance, ontological priority and analysis of the micro-logics of social organizing practices over and above their stabilized effects such as individuals. As this indicates, the focus on organizing rather than organisation is strongly associated with this style of thinking. Like the dialectical-relational ontology I advocated earlier, this style of thinking sees objects and entities as produced within ontologically prior processes.The key difference is that this style of thinking tends towards a one-sided emphasis on process, whereas the realist view of discourse analysis I have been advocating centres upon the tension between (discoursal) process and pre-structured (discoursal and linguistic, as well as non-discoursa l) objects. This form of realism is not subject to the tendency within modernist social research which is criticized by Woolgar (1988) to take the objects it arrives at through abstraction (which would include in the case of CDA orders of discourse, as well as language and other semiotic systems) to be exhaustive of the social reality it researches.The key difference in this case is whereas this form of modernist research moves from the concrete to the abstract and then forgets the concrete, the dialectic-relational form of realism I have advocated crucially makes the move back to analysis of the concrete. CDA is not merely concerned with languages and orders of discourse, it is equally concerned with text and texturing, and with the relations of tension between the two.