Teaching Discourse Analysis

Bill Fear

Cardiff Business School

fearwj@cf.ac.uk

07891469869

Basic Principles, Concepts, and Definitions•Introducing Discourse Analysis to Organizational Behaviour

•What is Discourse Analysis – What is Organizational Discourse Analysis

•Language, Text, and Context

•Approaches & Methods…?

Introducing Discourse Analysis to Organizational Behaviour

What is OB and why is DA relevant

Loosely define OB is a field of study concerned with the impact of individuals, groups and structure on behaviour within organizations, with the purpose of applying the related knowledge to improve organizational effectiveness.

DA/Organizational Discourse Analysis (ODA) can be considered the study of language and texts in relation to the construction of the social world/reality. ‘Objects’ such as social institutions and taken for granted ways of behaving are bought into question – they are problematized. In Critical studies/methods there is a focus on ‘improvement’.

Successful and effective managers spend a lot of time using language and texts

DA can be of use to managers and is relevant to OB; talk and text are heavily used; both OB and ODA focus on ‘improvement’/’effectiveness’…

The Relationship Between Action and Discourse

Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy (2004). Discourse and Institutions. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, 635–652.

Discourse

Need to recognise that discourse in definition and form is not fixed

Michael Stubbs (1983) observed, “Anything at all that is written on discourse analysis is partial and controversial” (p. 12).

Nonetheless, Talk and text are the central medium of social science research:

InterviewsFocus groupsObservationDocuments/reportsQuestionnaires (eg. How questions are phrased)

Hence we need to know how to analyse it…

“Qualitative research starts from and returns to words, talk, and texts as meaningful representations of concepts” (2004: 455). Academy of Management Journal 2009, Vol. 52, No. 5, 856–862.

Stubbs, M. (1983). Discourse analysis: The sociolinguistic analysis of natural language. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Discourse

Discourse’ ... refers to language in use, as a process which is socially situated. However ... we may go on to discuss the constructive and dynamic role of either spoken or written discourse in structuring areas of knowledge of the social and institutional practices which are associated with them. In the sense, discourse is a means of talking and writing about an acting upon worlds, a means which both constructs and is constructed by a set of social practices within these worlds, and in so doing both reproduces and constructs afresh particular social-discursive practices, constraining or encouraged by more macro movements in the overarching social formation. (Candlin 1997)

“the analysis of discourse is, necessarily, the analysis of language in use. As such, it cannot be restricted to the description of linguistic forms independent from the purposes or functions which these forms are designed to serve in human affairs.” (Brown and Yule 1983)

BUT schools of DA are contrasted between language representing reality (language is a mirror that reflects reality but does not play a functional role) and re-presenting reality (the use of language or present or share an aspect of reality) and constructing reality (language is one of the primary means, if not the primary means, by which we construct and create a social reality)

Organizational Discourse Analysis

ODA is the study of organizations through DA. ODA makes use of the wider concept of texts. ODA is the study of the production, distribution and consumption of texts (and how this relates to something else – the object) (Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy, 2004)

[Loosely speaking] texts and the related processes are the linked set of IVs and the Object is the DV although these is not necessarily a causal link in the positivist sense.

Objects include institutions, identities, policy, subjectivities, and other structures or things or patterns of ‘behaving’; e.g. leadership can be treated as an object and we can look at discourses of leadership or the discourses of leaders…

The Relationship Between Action and Discourse

Phillips, Lawrence & Hardy (2004). Discourse and Institutions. Academy of Management Review, Vol. 29, No. 4, 635–652.

Language, Text, and Context

ODA is the study of language, text and context

Language is focal in the study of organizations since the so called ‘linguistic turn’ in organization and management studies. This is the consideration that language plays a dominant role in constituting our social reality. That is, we use language to construct our world.

Many schools of DA focus on the use of language – spoken and written - How language is used, from words and parts of speech through grammatical structures to ways of presenting arguments.

Examples include Conversational Analysis (CA), Discursive Psychology (Potter and Wetherell), the Montreal School, and Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA; Fairclough)

When the focus is on language then language is the IV

Text and Context

Texts play an important role in DA and especially in ODA.

ODA has been defined as the study of the production, distribution and consumption of texts (Phillips, Lawrence and Hardy, 2004).

A text is something that can be read. It does not have to be a written text; a document per se. The wider use of texts has long been recognised in disciplines such as advertising, marketing, and environmental psychology.

Ricoeur (1971) published a seminal paper on text. He pointed out that any event leaves a trace. These traces can be read as patterns. These patterns form a discourse. The discourse is inscribed in a text. Discourse in language ceases to exist unless it is inscribed in a text; memory, a pattern of actions, a document. Once a text has been created it can, and will, be interpreted in ways other than intended by the author. This is saying that there are unintended consequences.

TEXT

DISCURSIVE PRACTICE

SOCIAL PRACTICE

Processes of text production, distribution & consumption

Social structures, power relations, material interests etc

Andrea Whittle, Cardiff Business School

Text and Context

The importance of texts is twofold. First, they are important in their own right as objects and can be used as objects. Second, texts contain discourses which can be analysed.

A text can contain multiple discourses.

Different levels of discourse are useful in terms of considering context - how we consider context is affected by the level at which we consider/analyse text/discourse/use of language.

Alvesson and Karreman, (2000, 2004)

Alvesson, M. & Karreman, D. (2000) Varieties of Discourse: On the Study of Organizations through Discourse Analysis. Human Relations, 53(9), 1125-1149

Alvesson and Kärreman (2000) provide useful distinction between:

Capital ‘D’ = Foucauldian notion of Discourse:

“general and prevalent systems for the formation and articulation of ideas in a particular period of time … functioning as a powerful ordering force” (p. 1126-7)

“standardized ways of referring to/constituting a certain kind of phenomenon” (p. 1134)

“forms of institutionalized intelligibility” (Wetherell, 1998: 394)

Lower-case ‘d’ = Close-range micro-interaction approaches

eg. CA, Potter & Wetherell, which focus on how people actually use language, how people talk about things in conversations

Approaches and Methods…?

The ‘method’ of Discourse Analysis will depend on the approach taken initially in relation to ODA

If we think about OB then DA is relevant right from the level of conversation through to the level of written documents (e.g. policy documents, strategy, corporate documents) as what DA tells us is that discourse is an IV for behavioural outcomes (the DV)

‘The theory and research challenge is to ascertain and trace the dialogue across fragmented discourses from the local into the situated social, historical, and economic contexts.’

Boje, Oswick and Ford (2004), LANGUAGE AND ORGANIZATION: THE DOING OF DISCOURSE, Academy of Management Review Vol. 29, No. 4, 571–577

Approaches and Methods…?

•foci of engagement—we can use language as a vehicle for analyzing and exploring organizations and organizing (language as a means to an end) or treating organizations as sites for language analysis (language as an end in itself);

•methods of engagement—there is a rich array of methodological alternatives available, including conversation analysis, ethnomethodology, content analysis, deconstruction, narrative analysis, intertextuality, and critical discourse analysis;

•levels of engagement—it is possible to think of analyses operating at different levels, ranging from “micro” (e.g., discrete organizational episodes or conversations) through “meso” (e.g., broader patterns and networks of organizational interaction) to “macro” (e.g., grand narratives and metadiscourses with wider social implications); and

•modes of engagement—we can interrogate organizations and organizing processes by privileging monologic, dialogic, or polyphonic perspectives.

Approaches and Methods

Andrea Whittle Cardiff Business School

Ongoing developments

Recently ODA has come to prominence in the field of organizational change. This has helped throw some of the approaches in views into contrast.

Good example of this development is:

Heracleous and Barrett. Organizational change as discourse: Communicative actions and deep structures in the context of IT implementation. AMJ

Conclusions

A discourse is a network of relations between objects – it is: how one thing is defined and recognised relative to another thing; how artefacts/objects are used; understanding of meaning and the role and use of meanings…

It is Relativist perspective and a Social Constructionist perspective – contrasted to a Neo-Positivist/Critical Realist and/or Essentialist ontology

The social world, the reality we live in, is constantly constructed and reconstructed and does not have a fixed state.

That doesn’t mean we can’t use DA to study what are assumed to fixed objects by other ontologies – e.g. Institutions, identities, Organizations, Subjectivities, Policy, and so on.

But we should appreciate the pre-requisite variety. We need to remember that we are not demonstrating causal links, even though we can talk about IVs and DVs.