The Organizing Property of Communication
Author
What is an organization? What are the building blocks that ultimately constitute this social form, so pervasive in our daily life? Like Augustine facing the problem of time, we all know what an organization is, but we seem unable to explain it. This book brings an original answer by mobilizing concepts traditionally reserved to linguistics, analytical philosophy, and semiotics. Based on Algirdas Julien Greimas semio-narrative model of action and Jacques Derridas concept of écriture, a reconceptualization of speech act theory is proposed in which communication is treated as an act of delegation where human and nonhuman agents are mobilized (texts, machines, employees, architectural elements, managers, etc.). Perfectly congruent with the last development of the sociology of translation developed by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, this perspective illustrates the organizing property of communication through a process called interactoriality. Jacques Lacan used to say that the unconscious is structured like a language. This book shows that a social organization is structured like a narrative.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 65] 2000. xvi, 272 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
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Acknowledgments | p. xi
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PrefaceJames R. Taylor | p. xiii
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Introduction | p. 1
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PART I. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
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1. Speech Act Theory | p. 11
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2. Critiques Addressed toward Speech Act Theory | p. 35
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3. Narrativity and Speech Acts | p. 57
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PART II. TOWARD A MODEL OF THE ORGANIZING PROPERTY OF COMMUNICATION
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4. The Semiotic Model of Illocutionary Acts | p. 81
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5. The Semiotic Model of Perlocutionary Acts | p. 137
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6. The Organizing Property of Communication | p. 171
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Conclusion | p. 217
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Notes | p. 223
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Author Index | p. 255
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Subject Index | p. 259
“We read much these days about 'linguistic turns' in organisation studies as well as in most of the social sciences. Here we find a book in linguistics with an 'organisational turn'. I am inclined to believe that this book might become a classic.”
Leopold Vansins, Professional Development Institute, Belgium
“François Cooren's first book 'The Organizing Property of Communication' (TOPC) makes an important contribution to the growing literature on fundamental connections between language and organization. The book is crucial reading not only for scholars of organizational communication, but also for sociolinguists, semioticians and sociologists.”
George Cheney, University of Montana-Missoula, University of Waikato, Hamilton NZ, USA
“[...] it would seem impossible to honestly proceed within pragmatics without having first responded to Cooren's critiques and the explanatory claims of his model. The book will also interest the semiotician, communications researcher, sociologist and anthropologist [...]”
Christopher Gothard in Discourse Studies 4(2)
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BIC Subject: CF – Linguistics
BISAC Subject: LAN009000 – LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General