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

E. Johanna Hartelius and Larry D. Browning. "The Application of Rhetorical Theory in Managerial Research: A Literature Review." Management Communication Quarterly, Volume 22 (1) August, 2008: 13-39.

The focus of the article is to understand how the management literature thinks about rhetoric in organizations.

My observation one:
Managerial literature using rhetorical concepts often gets the basic idea/uses the headline, but doesn't reflect a sound grasp of the theory/ies behind the ideas.

My observation two:
The principle concern of most identified uses is power as it relates to language.
-source of influence?
-maybe even manipulation and control?
-superficial addition to the "substance" of the matter?
-rhetoric as flowery as opposed to plain speaking

My observation three:
Many org. researchers use a rhetorical lens for analyzing how communication works in organizations. But as noted above, sometimes they don't fully recognize/understand what they are seeing/hearing/using.

Your intial thoughts?

Rhetoric as Control and Manipulation
-can be used to mislead employees and publics
-can be stripped off so we can get down the "real" communication
-lots of terminological confusion in the management literature. ideology, discourse, rhetoric are not the same terms.

("In other words, rhetoric is conceptualized as the spoken dimension of management’s ideological practices": Ideology represents values; discourse serves as the overarching term for communication; and rhetoric is the tool for persuading others to take up ideas and practices. Rhetoric is often thought of as only manipulative and non-substantive).

Theme 1: Rhetoric Is Theoretical and Practical:
-rhetoric is at once a lens for interpreting the world and a concrete strategy for intervening in it.
-the constructivist view of rhetoric, acknowledging the extent to which language creates reality.
-There is also a practical side to rhetoric that management science imports—particularly, its intervention in human affairs that cause or facilitate change.
-The first theme that we have identified in management’s use of rhetorical studies is that of a dialectic—the theoretical and the practical. In short, the idea that it is a theoretical ability and a practical mode of action makes rhetoric quite useful

Theme 2: Rhetoric Creates, Sustains, and Challenges Organizational Orders
-that language creates reality, including organizational culture
-This second theme in management research reflects the realization that an organization’s discourse provides its sense of institutional order and logic. Put differently, management scholars emphasize the role of language in organizational culture. Rhetoric is what sustains the rituals that characterize organizations and distinguish their identities

Theme 3: Rhetoric Is Constructive and Constitutive of Identity
-organizations acquire an identity, over time, through discursive (cultural) practices: rhetoric
-the collective is held together by that which they share, esp. symbolically (esp. labeling and ritual)

Theme 4: Managers Are Rhetors
-managers strategically communicate with members of an organization.
-esp. regarding persuasion
-and diffusing new ideas and dealing with ambiguities

Theme 5: Rhetoric Is Inextricably Linked to Both Rationality and Narrative Form
-have to be able to communicate coherent narratives about past, present and future
-but also have to be able to speak and write rationally (including argumentatively).
-common sense v. formal logic; storytelling v. argument

Questions & Comments