Creating Rhetorical Stability in Corporate University Discourse

Written communication scholarship has shown that successful social change requires discursive stability. This study was designed to investigate how this stability is created. Critical discourse analysis of 30 corporate university articles investigated claims authors made about the expansion of market-based values into contexts of organizational learning and academic higher education. In total, 243 claims were examined for uses of modality, hedging, presupposition, and the progressive aspect. Results claim that articles used modality, hedging, and the progressive aspect to create strategic ambiguity that was resolved ideologically through presuppositions that reflect the assumptions of “the new capitalism.” Results indicate that discursive stability is not solely a semantic issue but may occur pragmatically and syntactically as texts are structured to displace existing knowledge within contested spaces. Results also indicate that a heavy reliance on pragmatic features may characterize technologized texts, texts designed to create social change without input, democratic participation, or consensus building.

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