Organisation, Communication and Language: A Case Book of Methods for Analysing Workplace Text and Talk

This book showcases various methodological approaches to the analysis of organizational talk and text. Arguing that organizations are discursive constructions that are communicatively constituted, the authors use the analysis of transcripts of audio-recordings of naturally-occurring workplace talk and authentic written texts to demonstrate what applied linguistics has to offer to scholarly research into organizations as well as management practice and training. The authors discuss the theoretical underpinnings of discursive approaches to the role language in the communicative constitution of organization, and then each chapter focuses on one particular analytical approach. The chapters cover conversation analysis; membership categorization analysis, positioning theory; ventriloquism; metaphor analysis; and metadiscourse analysis and computer-mediated discourse analysis. Consequently, this interdisciplinary work presents a number of methods that allow researchers unfamiliar with fine-grained linguistic analyses of naturally-occurring talk and text to explore ways of adding to their repertoire of research skills.

Erika Darics is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of applied linguistics, critical discourse analysis and organisational communication. She is particularly interested in promoting language awareness and the importance of linguistic-oriented research across disciplinary boundaries. She is currently the vice president of the Association for Business Communication and one of the co-hosts of the Words and Actions podcast.

Jonathan Clifton is an associate professor at the Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France, in Valenciennes, France. Using various methodologies such as conversation analysis, membership categorization analysis and narrative analysis, his research is cross-disciplinary in nature focusing on both language use and issues of interest to organisational scholars, notably leadership.