TEXT ANALYSIS. Kostera, M. (2007) Organizational Ethnography. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

Transcription

1 TEXT ANALYSIS Kostera, M. (2007) Organizational Ethnography. Lund: Studentlitteratur.

2 Organizational texts Annual reports, Prospectuses, Structures, Regulations, Standards, Advertisements, Newsletters

3 Rhetorical Analysis Focusing on tropes, the rhetorical figures in the text: how many they are, how they are used, why, what for, etc.

4 Tropes Metaphor relates one phenomenon to another; it represents a way of understanding one piece of reality by means of a different one, Metonymy: one word serves as a semantic representative of another word, for example, "ministerial office"

5 Tropes Synecdoche: a kind of metonymy where the part represents the whole, for example, "terrific new wheels" meaning the whole new car, Irony: characteristic of a style in the text which implies a deliberate contradiction between the literary meaning of the utterance and its actual meaning that is not expressed directly.

6 Other tropes Rhetorical question: using the question not to express a lack of knowledge but to underline the viewpoint of the speaker, among others: "People, when being afraid of losing their job, work more, but do they work better?"

7 Other tropes Apostrophe: a formal, direct phrase, a personification of an unknown recipient, among others "O Irony!"

8 Other Tropes Omission: signaling that the speaker intends to skip certain issues, used as a way of drawing attention to them; Paronomasia: the use of words that sound similar in order to compare them semantically, contrast them and bring them together, among others "dirty deal"

9 Other Tropes Epithet: the noun s attribute, for example: puppet managers, titular engineer, transparent structures, increased income, etc; epithets may well be metaphorical, as in puppet managers and transparent structure ; descriptive, as in: increased income, and legitimating: titular ; Repetition: multiple use of a word or words in the utterance

10 Tropes in Management Metaphors: liken one thing with another, tame reality, invoke images, e.g. Market Tiger, competitive edge ; Labels: diagnose and assess the situation in, e.g. good leadership, strategic management, high personnel turnover, Platitudes: were once metaphors but have lost their power with use, worn-out metaphors, e.g. excellent companies (Czarniawska, 1988)

11 Metaphors Creative: unique, spontaneous, situational, Legitimating: derived from textbooks, press, consulting jargon.

12 Examples Barbara Czarniawska, To coin a phrase (1988) Deirdre McCloskey, The rhetorics of economics (1985)

13 Rhetorical analysis in ethnographic research How organizational texts make their points, by what means, in what style How they are read by the social actors in the field

14 Semiotic Analysis A method for reading texts, using the Umberto Eco s notion of the open work.

15 Open Work Can be interpreted in many different ways No interpretation diminishes its power of expression or uniqueness Every time it is read anew it receives a new meaning and comes alive in a new perspective The reader can be seen as a creative coauthor of open work (Eco, 1962/1973).

16 Reader Semantic: reads the text as intended to be read, at face value, Semiotic: reflexive, analytical, interprets the texts and ponders over the ways through which the text guides him/her, what kind of feelings it brings about, why the text is experienced the way it is.

17 Model Reader The Model Reader of a story is not the Empirical Reader. The empirical reader is you, me, anyone, when we read a text. Empirical readers can read in many ways, and there is no law which tells them how to read, because they often use the text as a container for their own passions, which may come from outside the text, or which the text may arouse by chance. (Eco, 1996)

18 Model Author a textual strategy, representing the empirical author and/or narrator, sometimes an impersonal construct pervading the text

19 Semiotic Analysis General outlook of the text: general presentation, format, cover, pictures

20 Semiotic Analysis The narrator and focalisation The narrator (the model author): signs of the narrator, grade of intrusiveness of the narrator, distance of the narrator, reliability of the narrator Focalisation: angle from which things are seen, identity of the focaliser(s), unrestricted point of view, internal point of view, objective point of view, or else?

21 Semiotic Analysis The audience model reader (who and why)

22 Semiotic Analysis Arrangement of the text Titles: name given to the report, name given to other performance reports Table of contents: overview of the structure of the text is given Highlights: presence of highlights, what is highlighted and how Presence of summary Text and time: order, duration, frequency of the text (if it is for instance a bulletin), signs of the spatio-temporal orientation of the text

23 Semiotic Analysis Style The language of activity report: technical terminology, positive and diminishing words The practice of naming and of normalisations Verbs: are verbs in the active or passive voice? If in passive voice, is the agent explicated? Types of speech presentation: free direct discourse, normal direct discourse, and normal indirect discourse The place given to figures The place given to performance indicators The place given to diagrams The practice of quotation (rules of quoting, how it is quoted, why and when, etc.)

24 Semiotic Analysis Organisation of the narration Plots: events, presence of functionality, equivalents events (relevance of events), order of presentation (among which temporal axis of the events), duration of events and speed of the narration, casual relations, organisation of the events into a plot, multiple sequences of narration, homogeneity of the narratives Characters: traits and attributes, articulation of the traits, categorisation of characters, portraits and portraying technique (means of characterisation), characters who are and characters who do Settings: indication of the spatio-temporal complex

25 Semiotic Analysis Explicit/implicit information and presupposed information Themes Comments

26 Example Hervé Corvellec, Stories of Achievements (1997)

27 Semiotic Analysis in Ethnographic Research Textual strategies How the social actors react to the strategies of the texts aimed at them

28 Tropes: Metaphor: represents a way of understanding one piece of reality by means of a different one, Metonymy: one word serves as a semantic representative of another word, for example, "ministerial office Synecdoche: a kind of metonymy where the part represents the whole, for example, "terrific new wheels" meaning the whole new car, Irony: characteristic of a style in the text which implies a deliberate contradiction between the literary meaning of the utterance and its actual meaning that is not expressed directly, Rhetorical question: using the question not to express a lack of knowledge but to underline the viewpoint of the speaker, among others: "People, when being afraid of losing their job, work more, but do they work better?" Apostrophe: a formal, direct phrase, a personification of an unknown recipient, among others "O Irony! Omission: signaling that the speaker intends to skip certain issues, used as a way of drawing attention to them; Paronomasia: the use of words that sound similar in order to compare them semantically, contrast them and bring them together, among others "dirty deal" Rhetorical question: using the question not to express a lack of knowledge but to underline the viewpoint of the speaker, among others: "People, when being afraid of losing their job, work more, but do they work better?" Semiotic analysis: Open or closed work? Who is the model reader? Who is the model author?

29 Critical Analysis of Culture Narratives and media discourse: press, TV, social media, websites, books, films, radio shows

30 Critical Analysis of Culture The aim is to find and describe elements of texts which are unconscious, unintentional, which pertain to how culture,created and spontaneously experienced by people, is determined by structures of meaning, which they have not chosen for themselves (Denzin, 1992: 74).

31 Critical Analysis of Culture Such textual readings attempt to show how specific texts create their particular images of subjects and their experiences. These readings attempt to examine the narrative-writing strategies that structure the texts treatment of text and author, presence and lived experience, the real and its representations, and the subject and intentionality. These are explicitly critical readings [ ] (Denzin, 1992: 82)

32 Critical Analysis of Culture in Ethnographic Research (Qualitative) interpretation Contrasting and triangulating with the reactions of social actors from the field Context!!!!!