Citation
Cooren, F. (2001), "The Organizing Property of Communication", Corporate Communications: An International Journal, Vol. 6 No. 4, pp. 238-238. https://doi.org/10.1108/ccij.2001.6.4.238.1
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
The book has a straightforward structure with just six chapters. Within the pages, however, is a dense, complex attempt to forge a link between the study of language and of organisation. The author accomplishes this with a review of speech act theory, narrative theory, rhetorical theory, a semiotic analysis of illocutionary force and perlocutionary effect, and significant reflection on language use that we take for granted, through actor‐network theory. His analysis shows their connections deeply‐seated in a particular logic of communication.
Thus, we find here that speaking is a social action, i.e. a speech act is actional. Cooren also shows convincingly that in communicating, recipients‐addresses are not in receipt of information (the informative is only one of seven possible speech acts). Following Greimas’ narrative theory, in communication, an utterer (agent) performs an act (e.g. asserts, informs, etc.) that gives or attributes a new property to another. A transformation is accomplished (for example, the recipient is an interpreter who in attending to the utterance becomes convinced, surprised, intrigued, and so on). The utterance has illocutionary force that produces a perlocutionary effect. Cooren finds that intention and “uptake” (i.e. understanding) are not necessary for the performance of a speech act.
Hence, we are provided with a socioi‐semiotic model of organising, and the realisation that what is commonly referred to as an “organisation” is better termed an institution, thus freeing‐up the term organisation to refer to a condition or state of being more or less organised.
An “organisation” is able to speak only because actors are transformed by the ability to speak on behalf of it (them?), for example, to accredit, consent, delegate, mandate, permit, and so on. All speech acts are performances that produce transformations – narratives operate according to the principle of exchange. This is a remarkable “must read” for scholars of “organisational science”.