2

Analyzing Organizational Discourse

Six Perspectives

Let us now turn our attention to the blind men. As mentioned in the previous chapter, I decided to select six of them - that is, six perspectives that will be introduced, discussed, and applied in each of the remaining chapters of the book. These perspectives are: (1) semiotics; (2) rhetoric; (3) speech act theory; (4) conversation analysis/ethnomethodology; (5) narrative analysis; and (6) critical discourse analysis. Other perspectives could have been selected, of course, but the advantage of these perspectives is that (1) they are all well established; (2) they each promote (implicitly or explicitly) a constitutive view of organizational discourse; and (3) although they are focused on discourse, they are broad enough to include other approaches like gender studies (Ashcraft, 2004), deconstruction (Kilduff and Kelemen, 2004), dialogic perspectives (Gergen, Gergen, and Barrett, 2004).

Although my goal is to highlight what is specific to each of these approaches, I will also show what they have in common with each other, especially with regard to their explicit or implicit positions vis-à-vis the constitutive dimension of discourse and communication. In other words, whenever possible, I will demonstrate what each of these perspectives has to say about the constitutive power of discourse and communication vis-à-vis organizational forms.

Semiotics

Semiotics (also sometimes called semiology) has two historical roots: one in Europe, around the work of the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913), and one in the United States, with the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who was not only a philosopher but also a logician, mathematician, and scientist (Taylor and Van Every, 2011). Although this short presentation will not do justice to the complexity of this field of study, semiotics can be globally summarized as the systematic study of signs and their functioning. Saussure (1959) envisioned semiology as this "science that studies the life of signs within society" (p. 16) when he noticed that linguistic signs (i.e., words) were only one type of signs among many others. As for the term "semiotics," which was proposed by Peirce, it was first coined by the British philosopher John Locke (1959/1690) from the Greek word semeion, which means a mark, sign, or token.

What makes a semiotic study specific with regard to other perspectives and how does it analyze discourse? One specific trait that characterizes this approach is that it tends to be first and foremost interested in the functioning of signs, whatever they are, which means that discourse, for a semiotician, should be understood as made of signs. What is a sign? A quick answer would be, paraphrasing Peirce, that it is anything that stands for something else in some capacity. A classical example is a series of symptoms, which could be identified as the signs of a specific disease by a physician. These symptoms (and this is why they could be associated with a form of discourse) tell the physician that the patient she is observing might be suffering from a given illness, a reading that is made possible because the physician learned how to recognize the various signs of this disease.

There are, of course, many different types of signs, which were all the topic of numerous classifications and typologies (see Nöth, 1995). For instance, Peirce proposes no less than ten classes of signs, which he identifies according to what constitutes for him the three components of any given sign: its representamen (the material dimension of the sign itself), its object (what the representamen stands for) and its interpretant (what allows the connection between the representamen and its object). In our example, the material aspect of a series of symptoms is the representamen (for instance, a fever, a runny nose, a sore throat, and a cough), the disease itself is the object (for instance, a bad cold), and the physical connection between the disease and the symptoms is the interpretant (the fact that bad colds tend to come with these specific symptoms, as any physician knows).

But beyond this (legitimate) interest in the classification of signs (for more detail, see, for instance, Eco, 1979), what makes the semiotic perspective crucial to anyone interested in discourse analysis is that this approach focuses on how signs come to do something in specific circumstances (Cooren, 2008). In other words, semiotics is implicitly interested in the performative aspects of discourse itself, that is, what discursive elements do or perform in certain conditions. To illustrate this point, just imagine that you are entering a corporate building and you want to get to a specific location: the office of a law firm, for example. Chances are that you will be successfully directed to your final destination by a series of signs that will lead you there.

For instance, a board posted on the left wall of the lobby will provide you with the list of companies located in this building. Having found the name of the law firm in this list, you will then look at the floor number that the board indicates for this company: 15. You will then get to the elevator and press the call button with the number 15 printed on it, an action that will bring you (hopefully!) to the corresponding floor. Once you've arrived at the fifteenth floor, you will then follow a series of arrows that will lead you to the entrance of the law firm and its recognizable logo. You will then enter the office space, speak with the front desk and sit in the waiting room. Having a chance to look around you (the furniture, the paintings on the walls, the carpets, the way people dress), you will then start to have a general feeling about the type of firm you might be dealing with (conservative, hip, modern, classic, wealthy, etc.).

As we see in this illustration, signs are not simply things that we look at and interpret, they are also - and this point is crucial for a semiotic reading of the situation - active or acting, that is, they are doing things. Peirce called "semiosis" this activity or action of the signs, which you can find in the following series of descriptions.

  The entrance directory provides you with the list of the companies and the floor numbers.

  The call button 15 stands for the fifteenth floor of this building.

  The arrows lead you to your final destination.

  The company logo confirms that you now are at the entrance of the firm.

  The way the office space is furnished and decorated informs you about the type of company you might be dealing with.

Of course, you could point out that all these signs (the board, the call button, the arrows, the logo, the various elements of the office space) do not do these things by themselves. They need to be interpreted or deciphered by someone (in this case, you, as the visitor). Semiotics does not deny such evidence, but points out that these interpretations precisely consist of recognizing what signs are doing (Cooren, 2010; Cooren and Bencherki, 2010; Cooren and Matte, 2010).

For instance, we already saw that someone (usually a physician) has to know how to read a series of symptoms in order to recognize what they tell him, that is, that the patient is suffering from such and such disease. The same thing can be said about the law firm example to the extent that you have, of course, to be capable of reading or interpreting signs in order to recognize what they do or perform: it is because you know how to read and interpret a directory board, a call button, an arrow, a logo, and even an office space, that you are able to recognize what they are telling you. The board is telling you where you should go to get to the law firm; the call button is telling you where you should press in order to get to the fifteenth floor; the arrows are telling you where you should go once you leave the elevator; the company logo is telling you that you arrived at your destination

As we see, semiotics defends (implicitly or explicitly) a very broad conception of communication and discourse. A sign can be a word, a sentence, or even an argument, what Peirce defines as symbols, but also an image, an arrow, a footprint, or even a color. For example, a photograph, a painting or an image is a sign, more precisely what Peirce calls an icon, to the extent that you are able to recognize or interpret what the image itself (the representamen, in Peircian semiotics) stands for (for example, your cousin Willy, i.e., the object). This recognition is made possible because the image you see on the print looks like the Willy you know and who happens to be your cousin. This relation of resemblance is what allows you to interpret what the picture does (for instance, this picture shows my cousin Willy when he was young), which is what Peirce calls the interpretant. Icons are therefore characterized by this relation of resemblance between the representamen and the object.

Peirce also identifies what he calls indexes, which are characterized by a relation of causality between the object and the representamen. The example I gave you before about the symptoms is a good illustration of what an index consists of. It is because the...