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Question 2
7 July 2006
Examiner: Leda Cooks
Area: Critical Organizational Communication
3 hours
While there is increasing emphasis among critical organizational communication scholars
on intercultural communication in the workplace, there is little to no attention paid to the
uses (or heteroglossic forces) of language in multilingual spaces. In this question I want
you to: a) discuss the epistemological assumptions about language (its function, usage,
etc.) in critical organizational communication scholarship; b) note the impact of these
assumptions on our understanding of the dynamics of intercultural/multilingual
workplaces, and c) explicate the possibilities for utilizing problematic moments as an
alternative epistemological stance from which a theory and methodology of language use
in multilingual organizational contexts might be derived.
Addressing the question of language use in multilingual work spaces remains a
challenge. Most critical organization scholarship to date focuses upon domestic (U.S.) or
single nation studies that import a U.S.-based research paradigm. Cross-nation studies in
the area of international business (where one is most likely to encounter multilingualism)
tend not to acknowledge the role of natural (native) language per se, except in instances
where written translation of survey instruments (for example) are required. The difficulty
of bringing language to the fore of international organizational research appears to be (at
least) twofold. One theme that runs throughout the critical organizational literature is the
problem of operationalizing culture. A second issue regards the deeply embedded
assumption of monolingualism that feeds a monologic about language and language use.
A spurt of scholarship in the early 1980s ushered the concepts of language and
discourse into the field of international management. Adler, Sekaran, Child, Negandhu,
de Villafranca, Boyacigiller, and Roberts are among the scholars who grapple with the
problems of researching cross-national management. The term, “language,” is present to
varying degrees in all of their work, but the epistemological understanding of the concept
of language appears relatively shallow. Foucault is referenced and/or applied
occasionally, and it seems actual research that directly focuses on language use is geared
to a rather surface acceptance of words either reflecting actual meanings (as if language is
a mirror to an external reality) or conveying some already-established meaning. This is
not to accuse these early scholars of simplistic research! There are sophisticated studies
of gender (e.g. Martin, Collingsworth), race, and identity which show intricately
coordinated social relationships that are constructed and maintained (or dissolved)
through language use.
The irony in this early literature is how frequently language is identified as an
issue while not being recognized (at least, not overtly) as a source of the kinds of answers
these scholars and international managers seek! This thread of discourse parallels
another theme, which is a steady stream of laments regarding the difficulty of
operationalizing culture. John Child (1981) asserted 25 years ago that the research
community needed to stop asking if culture is an issue. Instead, the question that needs an
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answer is when does culture become an issue? This question was reiterated by Redding
(1994) in a rather polemical article in which he “critique[s] the character” (emphasis in
original) of the first thirty years of international management scholarship. While
Redding successfully highlights the theoretical spin around defining and operationalizing
the measurement of culture, he also provides evidence that his understanding of language
is (still, as with most of his predecessors) rather literal. This evidence comes in the form
of his repeated call for “a common observational language” among researchers of
international business.
Moving away, for a moment, from the preceding subset of critical organizational
communication literature to the broader field of organizational studies, we can see that
language is ‘on the map’ (so to speak) but the road to find and use it as a tool in
methodology and theory-building is long. The Handbook of Organization Studies by
Clegg, Hardy and Nord (re-published in 2002, original 1996) provides the means by
which to situate the prominence (or lack thereof) of contemporary philosophies of
language within the field of organization studies. Language is cited in the index of this
700-page tome nineteen times. Taken as a page percentage of the entire text, only .04%
is specific to “language-as-such” (borrowed from Walter Benjamin). The placement of
these pages specific to language-as-such is also revealing. They occur in six chapters (of
thirty). The chapters are located near or at the end of the larger organizing sections (Part
1, Part 2, etc.); in four of the six chapters the description of language-as-such occurs near
the end. Only one of the chapters includes epistemological information about language
near the beginning (third page in) – it happens to be the first chapter that has an indexed
reference to language. This chapter, by Alvesson & Deetz, develops the concept of
language more thoroughly in its central section, which is also where the reference to
language occurs in the next chapter, by Calás & Smircich.
These two chapters revolve around postmodernism, closing the first part of this
Handbook, “Frameworks for Analysis.” Alvesson & Deetz specifically position
themselves at the “critical edge of postmodern epistemology” (or was it the postmodern
edge of critical theory?!). It is here – in critical postmodernism (postmodern criticism?) –
a small but up-and-coming clutch of scholars, has begun to insert language as a
conceptual tool of extraordinary utility for international organization studies. (This does
not imply, however, that we have arrived, yet, at multilingual workspaces.) Mumby and
Putnam (1992) are situated at a transitional point between dated conceptions of language
in a reified, dialectical form (based upon structural linguistics) and a more fluid
understanding of how meaning develops in interaction, but interaction per se (i.e.,
with/through language-as-such) has been very rarely studied. Alvesson & Deetz, Calás &
Smircich, Clegg & Hardy, and a very few others form a tiny collective of scholars who
are publishing scholarly work within organization studies that moves beyond the category
of (traditional) critical organizational communication into postmodern organizational
communication. I believe it will be within (or as an outgrowth of) this epistemological
paradigm that modes for researching interlingual communication processes will
eventually emerge.
In most of the international management literature to date, language – as in the
presence/use of different languages – is still presented as “a problem” (circa 2002, in
reference to financial markets in the European Union). The “problem of language” in the
international management literature parallels the “problem of culture” in the
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organizational studies literature. How and why the connection between these two
“problems” has escaped notice for so long provides a huge clue about a deeply-embedded
assumption regarding language (and communication and culture), inviting investigation
of the functions, effects, and potential detrimental impacts of this assumption. Because
most of the research either originates from or is modeled after research conducted in the
U.S., a monolingual logic reigns. A nod is given by one US scholar (Redding?) to
European researchers for being the ones more inclined toward postmodern modes of
research, perhaps (I infer) precisely because of their constant exposure to and with other
languages. At any rate, I do not think the monolingual assumption is only a characteristic
of Americans’ limited exposure to only one language: it seems even the Europeans would
prefer to speak with each other “directly” or “in the same language” via a lingua franca
rather than (for instance) through an interpreter (personal fieldwork).
One of Redding’s complaints in 1994 was that no whole theory to guide the field
had emerged. He notes Hofstede’s work as the one that comes closest, yet it has various
problems (enumerated by others) and (let me note) does not attend to language. Adler (?)
provides a critique of the cross-national research procedures of the day, which sought
standardization of all factors “except language.” (This may still be the case.) Language
difference in multi-nation studies is usually reduced to the task of written translation.
Many (ethnographic) studies rely on literal, word-for-word translations; others seek
equivalence in meaning but appear to maintain an exclusive focus on the text of the
survey instrument without accounting for verbal/spoken interactions regarding
contextualization, instructions, and the like. In fact, when differences arise because of
translational difficulties, these are often attributed “to cultural difference” and left as a
“finding”! Perhaps it is the assumption of equifinality that leaves these openings
unexplored (that there are many ways to accomplish the same thing)? The insistence that
“equivalent translations” are adequate for the purposes of research standardization, that
language is something readily fixed to a page, indicates an assumption that language is
“just” a code that merely requires tweaking into another form in order to manage
meaning.
Writing about simultaneous interpretation in the early 1990s, Jankowicz discovers
that language is definitely not easily codable. He studies the struggle to coordinate
common meanings in a US-based management training program for Polish managers
after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. His approach is ethnocentric in a capitalistic
sense (nationality unknown) – western capitalism is what these east Europeans need;
difficulties in conveying the concept and value of managerial hierarchies are attributed to
“their” cultural constructs. Jankowicz attempts to make the point that local microcultures
need to be established in order to cultivate common meanings, yet his approach
(comparing certain key terms in English to their closest equivalents in Polish and viceversa) works against pluralingualism by reduction. Meaning is never contained in a
single word! While interpreters are applauded for their hard work, what is presented is
how difficult it is to create understanding across languages; this subtly works to
encourage a monolingual ethic (it’s easier, right?) There are only two other types of
writing addressing simultaneous interpreting in international management: those that
provide simple instructions for how to use an interpreter (of varying quality), and those
that tell funny stories about interpreting faux paux’s (not exactly encouraging of the
process).
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It is possible to infer that the discursive trends highlighted here do point to a deand re-centering process regarding epistemologies of language and their utility to critical
organizational communication. First, the convergence of the culture problem and the
language problem might begin to clarify the need to focus on language itself as a source
of information about when, how, and even why (to what ends) culture is an issue in any
given instance. Second, the painfully slow but steady growth of discourse as an
acknowledged site of language-in-use indicates an evolution in the awareness and
conception of language-as-such. There is resistance at the political level (organization
studies’ version of the paradigm wars) and individual level (an exploratory piece
questioning leadership as seduction by Calás & Smircich (1992?) “invited” a rude and
practically obscene reply which was published – apparently accepted as legitimate
criticism because it was framed as “play” in the same mode). Professional and personal
sanctioning is operative to undermine postmodern attempts at upsetting normal science
paradigmatic comfort zones. Even so, fifteen percent of the chapters in the 2002
Handbook referenced language-as-such, indicating that the early efforts and persistence
are making inroads.
The gap that is left to fill is how to operationalize the link between language and
culture. Organizational studies in general has been stumbling upon this hurdle since (at
least) the 1960s. Critical organization studies has not fared much better, since the danger
of naming is that it re-invokes that which it names. At any rate, even critical organization
studies tend only to describe how power operates through patterns observed in discourses
over time; it is not equipped to capture or intervene in moments when culture becomes an
issue “now” – which is when organization members need to know so that they can
respond effectively and plan efficiently. An epistemology premised upon problematic
moments could provide a means not only for identifying the instances when culture
becomes an issue (or a relevant component of an issue) but also a stance from which to
work with and resolve, or otherwise determine how to move on from, these instances
when they do occur. The theory of a problematic moment (Cumming) is based upon
flows within and among a given group’s discourses. Problematic moment theory adopts
all of the postmodern premises of fragmented subjectivities that are co-constructed
through communication and interaction and result from the cumulative exposure to
various discourses throughout one’s life. Additionally, the theory of problematic
moments assumes that all of these discourses are present, to varying degrees, in each and
every communicative interaction.
With such a huge repertoire of discursive exposures, multiplied by however many
persons are gathered for the interaction, the range of possibilities for meaning-making are
innumerable, even among speakers of the same language. Of course there will be
pressures to simplify and cohere (Bakhtin’s centripetalization), but it is inevitable that
instances of resistance, difference, desire and/or expectation for something other will
arise (a centrifugalizing force). These moments – when they are cultural – do not appear
in the form of arguments, disagreements, or debates about strategy (although such a label
might be a description someone would use to characterize the group’s interaction at the
time). These moments occur in language, and are usually felt by most, if not all members
of the group. These felt moments are a clue that a cultural question has arisen. Where
the larger, umbrella notion of heteroglossia (Bakhtin) comes into play is in the style and
skill with which group members then address and attempt to understand and deal with the
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ramifications of the cultural question. Heteroglossia is a concept and an epistemology
that counters the existing monologic. It is a framework that encourages openendedness,
discovery, and co-construction on terms that deviate from the established, normative,
dialectical patterns of group behavior. Heteroglossia is not just a different way of talking;
it is a different way of making meaning. As such, it provides an alternative basis from
which to theorize language as figural in intercultural, international organization studies.
As demonstrated throughout, the possibilities for utilizing problematic moments
are theoretically promising. Epistemologically and methodologically problematic
moment theory responds to the crucial question of how to operationalize culture,
particularly in terms of identifying when and how culture needs to be addressed rather
than subsumed within standard organizational patterns of operation and socialization.
Disciplinarily, as a challenge to the established ways of imagining language as a more-orless fixed form in which meaning-making is less-or-more complicated, there may yet be a
way to go before experimentation becomes compelling enough for organizations to turn
such a discourse-based intervention as a plausible and effective solution to intercultural
and interlingual organizational concerns. I imagine that an intermediate step within
monolingual settings is necessary in order to acclimate organizational communities to the
fact of multiplicity and heteroglossia (what Calás & Smircich describe as polysemous
meaning) in every discourse – including those that are monolingual. Perhaps the
problematic moment epistemology will leapfrog directly into bi-, tri-, and multilingual
environments. While it will be of great benefit there, such a move might also be a shame,
as application in exclusively pluralingual environments could easily leave the basic
monolingualist assumption currently in (dominant) effect untouched.
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