Categories: Communication Design, Theory & Rhetoric
Citation-worthy
“Beyond the explicit controls of governmental and
administrative bodies, a complex configuration of factors exists that orders
the communicative practices in which people in workplaces and professions
engage” (Zachry & Thralls, 2007, p. vi).
Summary
This book began to “account for routine or regularized
communicative practices in workplaces and professions” (Zachry & Thralls,
2007, p. v). It aimed to address regulation: self-regulation (including
psychological self-regulation), government regulation, and professional
regulation. One of the authors’ early points declares regulation and
communication are NOT unidirectional; they influence each other. This led to the eventual conclusion that individuals need to
accept responsibility for their choices.
The authors adopted a Social Constructionist Perspective as a
method of regulation, centered on the context of an organization. Lev Vygotsky,
a cognitive psychologist, is considered the originator of Social
Constructionism. He shared many assumptions about how children learn with
Piaget, but he focused on the social context of learning while Piaget's
cognitive theories have been used as the foundation for discovery learning
models in which the teacher plays a limited role. In Vygotsky's theories both
teachers and older or more experienced children play very important roles in
learning.
“We call Vygotsky's brand of
constructivism social constructivism because he emphasized the critical
importance of culture and the importance of the social context for cognitive
development. Vygotsky's zone of proximal development is probably his
best-known concept. It argues that students can, with help from adults or
children who are more advanced, master concepts and ideas that they cannot understand
on their own” (Social Constructivist Theories, retrieved January 2015, http://viking.coe.uh.edu/~ichen/ebook/et-it/social.htm).
“Rather than arguing for a refined definition of the social
[constructivism to account for complex connections, Zachary & Thralls] turn
toward non-essential conceptions of culture to account for how language and
other practices function in human experience” (Zachry & Thralls, 2007, p.
vii). This book is a collection of these new conceptions.
Their key ideological contributions in the study of
regulated communicative practices were:
Relationality: how
practices relate to those things around them.
Situatedness: how
things are framed.
Agency: The
identity position of participants.
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Ruef, M. (2007). Reason and Rationalization: Modes of Argumentation Among Health-Care Professionals. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations (93-111) Amityville, NY: Baywood.
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Chapter-specific notes:
Winsor, D. (2007). Using Texts to Manage Continuity and
Change in an Activity System. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (3-19). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Because they produce a stable representation of shifting
reality, texts are among the tools used both to create common objects and to
coordinate activity over time” (Winsor, 2007, p. 4). {Basic working thesis of
Genre theory}
“Genres embody typified textual responses to typified social
situations and hence constitute a stabilizing force (Winsor, 2007, p. 6).
“As Ted said, ‘Just creating the document isn’t the hard
part. The hard part is going through
several meetings, communicating, and determining content’” (Winsor, 2007, p.
9).
“The term ‘regulation’ may be misleading, at least as it is
commonly used. It often seems to imply that people’s behavior is regulated when
an outside force coerces certain kinds of behavior. This view of regulation
ignores the question of how regulation is generated” (Winsor, 2007, p. 17).
Bullet Summary
- Chapter examined the centrality of texts in regulation of
human activities.
- She demonstrates that the regulatory efforts of texts are
complicated by a number of factors including:
-
Continuous systems change
- Competing
goals of those involved in the processes.
- People write to ensure perceptions and actions are in
harmony (p. 5)
- People write in genres to stabilize communication and
understanding (p. 5)
- Genres should be defined and useful at a local level and
be open to an improvisational nature of regulation (see p. 7)
- Heavy reliance on Cultural/historical activity theory
Schryer, C. F., Lingard, L. & Spafford, M. (2007).
Regularized Practices: Genres, Improvisation, and Identity Formation in
Health-Care Professions. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (21-44). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Regulated resources refers to the certain, factual
knowledge required in professions; regularized resources refers to the
situational, improvisational knowledge and skills that emerge in uncertain
practice situations.
“Techne had at least two quite different meanings. At one
level, techne referred to a teachable set of formulae, techniques, or regulated
knowledge. Rookchnik (1996) provides a succinct description of this form of
techne, which he calls ‘techne 1’: The techne must have a determinate subject
matter[;] it aims to affect a useful result… [;] its subject matter … is a
complex conceptual whole that can be analyzed into discrete parts, the
recombination of which is clearly delineated by a set of rules…
”Among the characteristics that describe techne 2, Roochnik
(1996) includes the following: A techne has a determinate but not a rigidly
fixed or invariable subject matter. For example, the human body, like wood or
lumber, is a unit of epistemic context. … Because it is complex … it is not …
fixed or invariable [;] it affects a useful result, for example, health [;] it
is reliable, but not totally so. It
offers ‘rules of thumb,’ rather than rigid rules. It … requires appropriate responses
to particular occasions. … [;] it is precise, but does not measure up to the
standard provided by mathematics [;] it is certifiable and recognizable by the
community, but not infallibly so. [;] it is teachable but not infallibly so
(Schryer, Lingard, & Spafford, 2007, pp. 31-33).
Bullet Summary
- Study of how medical students attempt to join health-care
professions then learn their profession through regulated resources, mentoring. The
authors distinguish a difference between regulation (external controls) and
regularized actions.
- How does participating in situated practices of case
situations regularize the professional identity of the medical profession.
- A proper genre study is more than that of the text itself,
it is also the context of the text and the circumstances surrounding its
creation, use, and distribution (Rylish’s interpretation of the article).
- Genres continue because they work, or because they
continue to be used in spite of not working.
- Theorists: Bourdieu, Giddens
- Activity and Genre theory
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Spinuzzi, C. (2007). Who Killed Rex? Tracing a Message
through Three Kinds of Networks. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (45-66). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Activity theorists conceive of mediation as a way of
controlling one’s actions from the outside (Vygotsky, 1978, p. 40)” (Spinuzzi,
2007, p. 47).
“Actor-network theorists go further, roughly equating
mediation with transformation (Latour, 1999b) and noting that all elements in
an activity network mediate each other…” (Spinuzzi, 2007, p. 47).
“We are tempted to see actor-networks and activity networks
as rival frameworks and to do what others (Engestrom & Escalante, 1996;
Miettinen, 1999) have done – compare them and declare a winner. Instead I will
examine them as entangled networks…” (Spinuzzi, 2007, p. 53).
Bullet Summary
- Spinuzzi traces the blame for a dead dog using activity
and actor/network theory to blame multiple individuals and question agency, cognition
and responsibility within self-regulation. Proves that different theories will
result in different blame and different corporate or individual perspectives.
- When reconfigured to a specific theory, accountability can
be demanded.
- Point: if an activity is distributed across a socio-technical
system, so are its successes and failures.
Therefore: can we blame an individual for the failure of a community’s
self-regulative practices? What role do individuals have in influencing and
regulating such practices.
- Theory(s)(ists): Activity theory, Actor/network theory, Engestrom, Latour
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Yates, J. & Orlikowski, W. (2007). The PowerPoint
Presentation and Its Corollaries: How Genres Shape Communicative Action in
Organizations. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural
Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations. (pp. 67-91)Amityville,
NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Genre influences the communicative practices of
organizational members, and, in particular, how it enables and constrains their
discursive choices and actions” (Yates & Orlikowski, 2007, p. 68).
“Corollary genres emerge from microlevel improvisations that
shift some of the genre expectations associated with a particular genre, but do
not (yet) transform it (Yates & Orlikowski, 2007, p. 89).
Ruef, M. (2007). Reason and Rationalization: Modes of Argumentation Among Health-Care Professionals. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations (93-111) Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Bullet Summary
-An exploration of regulation in terms of constraint and
enablement. How did PowerPoint move from enabling to limiting presentation
behavior.
- Analysis of communication: Purpose, content, form,
participants, time, and place (see p. 70).
- Genre Theory
- Research question: How to factions of a profession contest the regulation of
their professional communication
Gergen, K. J. (2007). Writing and Relationship in Academic
Culture. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural
Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations (113-129). Amityville,
NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Strong pedagogical movements toward collaborative and
paired writing are highly congenial with dialogic experiments… [and] may
succeed in creating future scholars whose orientation to their colleagues will
be far more communal than heretofore” (Gergen, 2007, p. 127).
Bullet Summary
- Challenges the conventional regulated forms in academic
writing emphasizing the undesirable implications such as isolated subcultures.
- Suggests a genre shift to better reach audiences.
- A “fight against the man” chapter.
- This article focuses much of on western approaches and
thought, it addresses a valid problem with invalid questions, focusing on academic pride (the authors purport the most essential questions
answered about the academic in academia are “who am I, what is my value, and
how good am I” and ‘how to
resolve the issues of current education’?
- Theory: Social-constructivism
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Herndl, C. G. & Licona, A. C. (2007). Shifting Agency:
Agency Kairos, and the Possibilities
of Social Action. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural
Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations. (pp. 133-154)Amityville,
NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“We argue that agency is the conjunction of a set of social
and subjective relations that constitute the possibility of action. … We
reconsider the relationship between agency and authority, identifying authority
as both a potential constraint and a potential resource to agency depending
upon specific contexts” (Herndl & Licona, 2007, p. 135).
Bullet Summary
- One of the best summaries of the various agency theories I
have seen, the article is mostly historical and a literature review.
- A rejection of agency as something an individual can
possess.
- Proposes that agency is enacted in a context of shifting
contexts and relationship.
- Constrained agency theory (Time and space specific agency)
Clark, D. (2007). Rhetoric of Empowerment: Genre, Activity,
and the Distribution of Capital. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (155-180). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
Empowerment “incorporates the individual perspective,
financial rewards, value, and authority placed on work."
Bullet Summary
- Are workers really empowered, or is the power they have so
regulated they lack power?
- Exploration of the regulation of power
- Access to information increases motivation. Limiting
access to information decreases worker empowerment
- Specific discussions of empowerment,
narratives, decision-making
- Small groups of individuals overcome difficulties and
write code better, and faster than the hegemonic forces of corporate software
creators (see 159).
- Activity theory
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Schneider, B. (2007). Power as Interactional Accomplishment:
An Ethnomethodilogical Perspective on the Regulation of Communicative Practice
in Organizations. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural
Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and Organizations (181-202). Amityville,
NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“For Ethnomethodologists, the agency/structure distinction
is a false dichotomy. Neither affirming nor denying the existence of social
structure” (Schneider, 2007, p. 186).
“Social actors are thus seen not as pawns, moved around at
will by forces in the social environment within which they happen to find
themselves. Rather they are regarded as reflexive being, ‘active agents in the
constitution of their unfolding social worlds’ (Boden, 1990, p. 203)”
(Schneider, 2007, p. 186).
“Social settings are never settled once and for all; they
are constantly shifting, constantly accomplished in social interaction. Even when the conventions of an organization
seem settled” (Schneider, 2007, p. 187).
“The focus on the interplay of individual communicative
activity and larger social and organizational discourses allows researchers to
study the communicative practices of individuals in organizations as
simultaneously embedded in and constitutive of the social reality of
organizations without privileging either structure or agency “Schneider, 2007,
p. 189).
“Power and regulation are collaborative interactional
accomplishments (Schneider, 2007, p. 195).
“Understanding power as constructed in interaction also
allows us to see why it is that power can slip away so easily. If we understand
power as a kind of commodity that people have in varying amounts, it is hard to
explain why someone can suddenly have so much less of it. But if we understand
it as an interactional accomplishment, we can see that it can never be
accomplished once and for all” (Schneider, 2007, p. 196).
Bullet Summary
- Proposes that power is something that is accomplished by
individuals, not something possessed by individuals in hierarchical positions.
- Historical/literature review of power
-
Functionalist perspective of power
o
Founding voice of power is managerial
o
Organizational interests are equated with
managerial interests
- Critical perspectives on power
o
Max and Weber
o
Focuses on the existence of conflicting
interesting in organizations and studies power as domination
o
Power is derived from ownership and control (of
the means of production)
-
Foucault
o
Power “is embedded in the fiber and fabric of
everyday life”
o
Power is not a resource to be held
o
“Power has no essence and cannot be described or
measured” (p. 184)
o
Power resides in “discursive formation,
historically and culturally located systems of power/knowledge.
-Power as an interactional accomplishment (produced by
participants in the course of social interaction.
Faber, B. (2007).Critical Text Analysis. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (203-218). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“Complex issues of organizational regulation, like any
communicative activity, are social acts and choices that take place as multiple
coordinated, discursive activates” (Faber, 2007, p. 204).
Bullet Summary
- Remember Faber is a linguist
- Problem: How are forces of change and resistance regulated
within the workplace?
- Thesis: “Examining organizational regulation as a
discursive process makes explicit the social issues that are often eluded in
regulatory discourse.
- Good example of an author creating exigency (demonstrating
the need for what has been done).
- Support for his theory that “power can be seen as the
self-reflective ability to control an image” (Faber, 2007, p. 209).
- An exploration of a company striving to force employees to
change their email address.
- Faber's theory of power combined with Fairclough’s approach to agency (Agency is one’s ability to
construct and enact a social identity see page 214).
Boje, D. (2007). The Antenarrative Turn. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C. (Eds.), Communicative Practices in Workplaces and
the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of Discourse and
Organizations (219-238). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Bullet Summary
- Problem: what do we do with all of the texts and ideas
within an organization or situation that are not regulated?
- Encouragement of the acknowledgement of antenarratives.
- A call for us to explore other stories, question stories,
and not just accept the spin or the company line. This is really the simple
point, though there are significant implications for actions.
- Effort to “shift the focus of analysis from ‘what’s the
story here?’ to questions of ‘why and how did this particular story emerge to
dominate the stage?’” (Boje, 2007, p. 227).
- Antenarrative (sub-culture narratives) and Narratology (The theory and systematic study of narrative
(currie, 1998 p. 1)(see page 219).
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Gephart, R. P. (2007). Hearing Discourse. In Zachry, M. & Thralls, C.
(Eds.), Communicative Practices in
Workplaces and the Professions: Cultural Perspectives on the Regulation of
Discourse and Organizations (239-263). Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Citation-worthy
“[He] proposes[s] in this chapter that the regulation of
hearing discourse and its implications for institutional legitimation can be
usefully investigated through a critical/interpretive approach to discourse
analysis that combines three perspectives: rhetorical/narrative analysis,
ethnomethodology, and Habermasian critical theory. Each of these perspectives
focuses on different aspects of communication and communication contexts, and
each offers unique insights into specific aspects of regulated communication”
(Gephart, 2007, p. 240).
Bullet Summary
- Encourages a critical/interpretive approach to analyzing
regulated communicative practices.
- Study of how organizations are produced in and through
communicative practices?
- Narrative/rhetorical analysis
- Ethnomethodology
- Habermasian critical theory
