1 / 17

“Building out the business”: tense usage in the construction of corporate identity

“ Issues of Identity in and across Cultures and Professional Worlds” I.U.S.M Roma 25-27 October 2007. “Building out the business”: tense usage in the construction of corporate identity. Janet Bowker Università “La Sapienza” Roma

kamea
Download Presentation

“Building out the business”: tense usage in the construction of corporate identity

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. “Issues of Identity in and across Cultures and Professional Worlds” I.U.S.M Roma 25-27 October 2007 “Building out the business”: tense usage in the construction of corporate identity Janet Bowker Università “La Sapienza” Roma Dipartimento Studi Geoeconomici Linguistici Statistici Storici per l’analisi Regionale

  2. company employees company management Corporate identities: a relational model Corporate culture/identity Client/ customer

  3. The data Presentation topics Interactional objectives Research focus Approach The Study

  4. Power Point – competence face Transactional, ideational and expository Claims to expertise, efficiency, validity Narrative - solidarity face Interactional, evaluative, affective Claims to trust, shared interests, appreciation Discourse structure, function and face Face is not what one thinks of oneself, but what one thinks others should think of one’s worth.”( Lim: 1994: 210)

  5. Power Point mode Narrative mode Channel and face negotiation: assertion and mitigation Asymmetrical status authority-based monoglossic symmetrical collaboration-based diaglossic

  6. “Every lexical and grammatical element incorporates a particular way of construing conceptual content. It follows that a change in grammatical class involves a reconceptualization, an alternate construal resulting in a subtly different meaning in accordance with the abstract semantic values of the classes.” (Langacker 2001:8 ) Discursive management of identity and face: language choices--grammatical class andtense

  7. Nominalization in Power Point: reification and “fact”

  8. Tense usage in narrative mode: non-temporal functions It is virtually impossible to conceptualize time and temporal processes without appealing to spatial image content—now = here (the “here and now”).

  9. Narrative force and point of view: creating “the story” Tense morphemes have come to be associated with non-temporal functions of tense on a proximal-distal conceptual cline: namely indications of intimacy, salience, actuality and attenuation (Tyler and Evans 2001)

  10. The proximal perspective intimacy Coloured by subjectivity, affect salience Use of focussing, foregrounding and emphasis actuality Grounded in realism, high probability and possibility attenuation Attention to mitigation, politiness

  11. So what I’m showing here is an extract, a couple a slides from what X presented to the X Board in December… This was some of the conversation that was happening. So we’re seeing outplacement as a transition business as probably being flat to 5% growth over the next few years and consulting growth being 4 to 10%. Narrativizing discourse: “the stories”

  12. I wanted to show you this because it shows a realistic sense of how our revenues are growing over the next few years. If you look at that mm third orange bar there we’re talking about 2006 pretty much being a flat year↑ in terms of overall growth ↑. But if we contrast that with the next slide which is looking at OUP, there’s a clear sense that we want to return to a good sense of profitability… Narrativizing discourse: “the stories”

  13. So how’ve we done this year? If we look at Employer Advocacy the motivation and satisfaction, you can see here the results….. “I would recommend the company as a great place to work”—46%--that’s very low— that’s horrifyingly low…I thought “well what’s going on”— and then I reeled back to what was happening last September… . E-Solutions all being told that they’re out of business and all of their friends feeling about this. Narrativizing discourse: “the stories”

  14. …..if you think about that, that gap, if people are feeling stressed that’s probably what’s going on. “I’m working as hard as I can, but X isn’t doing its share — X isn’t really responding the way that I expect—and I wouldn’t necessarily ask my best friend to come here, you know↑. I’m committed to what I am doing but I don’t think of X as the company I would love it to be… . Narrativizing discourse: “the stories”

  15. Competence face work (+) expert, trustworthy, powerful Face outcomes: risks and threats The two faces of “face”: self-attributes recognized or denied (-) confrontational, arrogant, authoritarian Solidarity face work (+) egalitarian, empathetic, reassuring (-) manipulative, insincere,cynical

  16. “Well, if our staff feel that their opinions are valued and their experiences taken into account, they are more ready to believe that their leadership is capable of doing something about their problems.” “Two birds with one stone”: participant feedback And conversely “ The communication of clear company objectives and coherent strategic planning creates greater team spirit and boosts motivation and engagement.”

  17. Identity-face construction: discoursestructure, channel, discourse mode and linguistic choice Organizational v personal, professional identity Narrative as a vehicle of identity creation Data and linguistic theory Findings

More Related