A rhetorical analysis of the self within an organization, the production & reception of discourse in a Canadian bank

Abstract

Communication is a complex interaction drawing on multiple resources (social, economic, discursive), across different units of agency (individuals, organizations), towards multiple and often conflicting goals with not entirely predictable consequences. Yet we manage communication in organizations without much second thought - until a crisis occurs. A case study, conducted in a major Canadian bank, provides the opportunity to analyse perhaps the largest lending crisis in the bank's history and the rhetorical strategies forming a significant part of the bank's response.

The organizational nature of our society requires individuals to perform multiple roles, requiring multiple identities and resulting in a divided self. For coherence in texts, consistency in values ascribed to the self, and a concerted set of images for organizations, the divided self relies on rhetorical transformations.

Chapter 1 discusses contributions from Rhetoric, Social-Constructionist Theories of the Self, and Management Policy. Chapter 2 introduces the case and its methods, and develops a theoretical framework for analyzing the rhetoric of the interview transcripts. Chapter 3 provides background on banking. Together, these three chapters develop a contextually-sensitive, theorized approach to a rhetorical analysis of transcripts collected from interviews with bank employees. Specifically, they develop a systematic way to mark the interaction among discourse, the self and social structures. They do so, chiefly, by marking what the author terms the "Bracketing, Ranking, and Distancing" practices of discourse, practices designed to maintain stability within the self, and between the self and its organizational contexts.

Chapters 4 and 5 provide rhetorical analyses of interviews with employees, one in a reception regime, and one in a production regime. Both reveal tensions arising as the self oscillates between resistance to and compliance with organizational values. However, significant differences in resources, approaches and outcomes are revealed.

Chapters 6 and 7 provide conclusions about the dynamic workings of communication in an organizational society. The ability to use language to maintain a unified sense of self plays a pivotal role in our ability to survive in the midst of daily complexity (product of our discourse) and social structures (rhetorical collectives, what organizational theorists view as systems representing patterns of relationships). They do so, chiefly by marking what I have termed the "bracketing, ranking, and distancing" practices of discourse, practices designed to maintain stability within the self, and between he self and its organizational contexts.

Chapters 4 and 5 provide extensive rhetorical analyses of the interview texts. Chapter 4 focuses on an interview with the employee in a reception regime (someone who receives rather than generates a text), and analyzes the participant's multiple identities, revealing the tensions faced by a divided self operating in an organizational complex. These tensions arise as the self oscillates between resistance to and compliance with organizational values, and participates in what Hodge and Kress call a "logonomic system" (higher level rules governing behaviours and both relying on and expressing an ideology at points of production and reception). The results reveal competing concerns and constant tensions involved in the management of multiple identities and point to a middle space between text and context, a space where considerable rhetorical action takes place, usually without anyone's acknowledgement of its existence, let alone of its importance. In this space, relationships of power and ideology are acted out. Similarly, Chapter 5 provides for the text of an interview with a bank employee in a production regime. Again, the interview exhibits rhetorical transformations at points of tension caused by the desire to avoid incompatibilities arising from multiple identities. However this analysis begins to make visible significant differences in the resources, approaches and outcomes of the two participants.

Chapters 6 and 7 complete the dissertation with conclusions about what the interactions of discourse, the self and social structures - seen now through the variety of lenses provided by the analytical framework - reveal about the dynamic workings of communication in an organizational society. Chapter 6 compares the results of the analyses performed in the previous two chapters; despite numerous similarities, the participants experience very different outcomes, outcomes that demonstrate the nature and results of power differences. It concludes that the ability to maintain a unified sense of self - a function of language resources primarily - plays a pivotal role in our ability to survive in the midst of the complexity that surrounds us daily. Chapter 7 reflects on the implications of these findings for our society and for the role of rhetoric, and it reflects on the nature of the study itself.