Varieties of Discourse: On the Study of Organizations through Discourse Analysis

Discourse is a popular term used in a variety of ways, easily leading to confusion. This article attempts to clarify the various meanings of discourse in social studies, the term's relevance for organizational analysis and some key theoretical positions in discourse analysis. It also focuses on the methodological problem of the relationship between: a) the level of discourse produced in interviews and in everyday life observed as `social texts' (in particular talk); b) other kinds of phenomena, such as meanings, experiences, orientations, events, material objects and social practices; and, c) discourses in the sense of a large-scale, ordered, integrated way of reasoning/ constituting the social world. In particular, the relationship between `micro and meso-level' discourse analysis (i.e. specific social texts being the primary empirical material) and `grand and mega-level' discourse (i.e. large-scale orders) is investigated.

[1]  M. Alvesson,et al.  Taking the Linguistic Turn in Organizational Research , 2000 .

[2]  M. Alvesson.  Doing critical management research , 2000 .

[3]  Tom Keenoy,et al.  Discourse and Organization , 1998 .

[4]  Tim Newton.  Theorizing Subjectivity in Organizations: The Failure of Foucauldian Studies? , 1998 .

[5]  David Knights,et al.  Managing Masculinity in Contemporary Organizational Life: A Managerial Project , 1998 .

[6]  Stories of Development and Exploitation: Militant Voices in an Enterprise Culture , 1998 .

[7]  C. Hardy,et al.  Talking Action: Conversations, Narrative and Action in Interorganizational Collaboration , 1998 .

[8]  Thomas B. Lawrence,et al.  Talk and Action: Conversations and Narrative in Interorganizational Collaboration , 1998 .

[9]  C. Oswick,et al.  Introduction: Organizational Discourse: Of Diversity, Dichotomy and Multi-disciplinarity , 1998 .

[10]  Tom Keenoy,et al.  Organizational Discourses: Text and Context , 1997 .

[11]  D. Silverman.  Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text and Interaction , 1994 .

[12]  Norman Fairclough,et al.  Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities , 1993 .

[13]  T. V. Dijk,et al.  Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis , 1993 .

[14]  D. Silverman.  Interpreting Qualitative Data , 1993 .

[15]  S. Deetz.  Democracy in an age of corporate colonization : developments in communication and the politics of everyday life , 1992 .

[16]  Pauline Marie Rosenau,et al.  Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions , 1991 .

[17]  F. Steier.  Research and reflexivity , 1991 .

[18]  F. Steier.  Introduction: Research as self-reflexivity, self-reflexivity as social process , 1991 .

[19]  Stewart Clegg,et al.  Frameworks of power , 1989 .

[20]  Robert Jackall,et al.  Moral mazes: The world of corporate managers , 1989 .

[21]  J. Potter,et al.  Discourse and Social Psychology: Beyond Attitudes and Behaviour , 1987 .

[22]  Chris Weedon.  Feminist practice and poststructuralist theory , 1987 .

[23]  M. Foucault,et al.  Foucault: A Critical Reader , 1986 .

[24]  M. Foucault,et al.  Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977 , 1980 .

[25]  M. Foucault.  The History of Sexuality , 1976 .