COM 303 Rhetorical Perspectives in Organizational Communication Fall, 2017
Day Three

George Cheney, Lars Thoger Christensen, Charles Conrad and Daniel J. Lair. 
"Corporate rhetoric as organizational discourse." The Sage Handbook of Organizational Discourse (David Grant, Cynthia Hardy, Cliff Oswick, Linda Putnam, eds.). Sage: 2004, 79-103.

Persuasion rather than coercion.

We will defer, for today, the enthymeme and the syllogism. We will come back to them when we cover Chapter 2 and Aristotle.

For a variety of reasons, across many time periods, the study of rhetoric has been denigrated. In each case when this has happened, the study has been limited to a subset of its full range. Whenever one overly stresses or suppresses one or more of the 5 canons (invention, arrangement, style, delivery, memory), the activity gets out of whack and becomes open to criticism. The classical conception includes the 5, with emphasis on the crucial importance of invention.

While initially conceived as the art of speaking well, the study of rhetoric has often expanded and now includes a wide variety of forms of symbolic influence; no longer limited to the study of giving a speech to a present audience.

pdf page 4; printed page 81;
Characteristic concerns of organizational rhetoric
The defining concerns of rhetoric include:
• Situations of uncertainty and possibility (for instance, when a corporation
seeks subsidies or tax breaks from a governmental unit but cannot guarantee
economic advantages to the community commensurate with the magnitude of
the request).
• Situations in which the ‘intent’ of a message is ambiguous for the speaker
and/or audience (as when managers of a hospital argue that fundamental
organizational changes are being imposed on them by market forces, without
admitting or recognizing that the anticipated changes will transform the underlying
values of the institution from an ethic of care to an efficiency model).
• Situations in which the credibility or the ethos of the source is problematic (as
when energy companies argue that self-regulation is sufficient for environmental
protection).
• Situations in which the nature of the audience(s) for a message is unclear or
complex (for instance, when the World Health Organization must simultaneously
speak to and coordinate with governments and health-care institutions
at all levels).
• Situations in which the likelihood of persuasion as the message effect is context dependent
(e.g., the persuasiveness of a corporate ad campaign on ‘diversity’ as
opposed to the success of an individual advertisement).

Org. rhetoric: the contingent, uncertain, ambiguous.
Most often about MAKING MEANINGS.

Three dimensions of rhetorical functions in organizations:
‘Texts/Artifacts’ versus ‘Discourse/Fragments’ (both)
• ‘Internal’ versus ‘External’ Forms (*both)
• Strategic versus Non-strategic Understandings (STRATEGIC —or ways in which the COM wasn’t)

for the most part, we’ll at least mention most of the elements on Table 3.1 at some point.

We will focus on Bitzer and the Rhetorical situation around class 8, chapter 3

We focus on issue and risk management around classes 17-19 and these considerations include getting out ahead on both.
Issues are managed rhetorically both internally and externally.

Identity management is also crucial.

Contemporary communication contexts are TURBULENT in the extreme. More communication is not always better. But org. life demands strategic message/meaning exchange.

Who are we? One organization? Multiple voices within? etc.

Are we/how are we credible?

Rhetorical strategy list. (dangerous thinking here… clearly, not “all of the means of persuasion.” Starting looking for just one of these, pretty soon one is delivering stock strategies rather than specifically appropriate answers. However, these are decent exemplars.