Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-10: 1

Critical Issues in Information Systems

BUSS 951

Lecture 10Language in the Workplace

Clarke, R. J (2001) L951-10: 2

Notices (1)General

As mentioned last lecture, Assignment 2 results will be available in week 11

Assignment 3 was put up on the web during the first week of the holidays- please download it

Please check that your Assignment 1 mark is correctly recorded, current marks are available on the departmental notice board and pick up assignments if you have not yet done so

BUSS951 is supported by a website (available from Tomorrow), where you can find out the latest Notices get Lecture Notes, Tutorial Sheets, Assignments etc

www.uow.edu.au/~rclarke/buss951/buss951.htm

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Notices (2)

we will now not be conducting seminars were I check to see your understanding of material you should have read

we will be giving focused seminars with a view to you completing your third assignment which concerns language in the workplace

I will now give you a set of the readings that you should be undertaking that are relevant until the end of the course…

… feel free to raise questions about these as needed during the seminar slot or during consultation times

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Notices (3)Relevant Readings

Week 10 #13: Venn, C. (1984) #15: Innis, R. E. (1985) #16: Volosinov, V. N. (1973) #17: Dore, J. (1995) #21: Andersen, P. B. & B. Homqvist (1988)

Week 11 #22: Kress (1985) #23: Eggins (1994) #24: Hasan (1985)

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Agenda (1)

in previous lectures, we have looked at views which theorise office work in terms of action and human communication

in this next block of lectures we will look at a semiotic model of communication called systemic functional linguistics and its extension into a general form of semiotics called social semiotics (your third assignment is based on these concepts)

in this lecture we will lay down some of the communication concepts that will be exemplified in the remainder of the course…

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Agenda (2)

we start by first summarising some points about human communication as distinct from ‘information’…

…we then look at some general points about communication and its application to IS/IT…

…then we look at the amasing and unique contribution made by Bakhtin

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CommunicationGeneral Points

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Communicationin the ‘Age of Information’

in the ‘age of information’ communication appears to be everythingour problems in (western) society

appear to based on bad communicationcountless experts trying to fix

communication problemsmost jobs require communication skills;

promotion demands skills in it

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CommunicationObject and Process

if communication is so important what is it?communication appears to be object-

like; a noun or a thingbut rather than being an object- it is

actually a process

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CommunicationDefinition has Changed over Time

19th Century: “communication” = ‘lines of

communication’ for example roads, canals, railways

20th Century:“communication” = ‘the development of

other means of passing and maintaining social contact... [and now mainly refers] to media

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CommunicationMeaning

communication is about meaning rather than informationinclude such things as attributes, social relations,

individual feelings, social positioning of the sender and receiver

as well as things we think of as information: statements about the physical and social world

everything that has cultural significance enters into communication used here

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CommunicationProduction & Consumption of Meaning

communication is about the production and consumption of meaning in actual process of communicationneed to look at the consumers of

meaning and to their activity in this process as much as to producers of meaning

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CommunicationSocially and Culturally Constituted

communication never involves ‘just’ individuals expressing ‘their’ meaningsthe meanings are produced and

consumed by individuals who are already socially and culturally formed

these ‘individuals’ draw on the meanings of their culture and social group

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CommunicationNot ‘Just Sharing’

communication is much more, and very different from, ‘sharing meaning’ or ‘mutual construction of meaning’ societies consist of multiplicities of social

and cultural groupingsinteractions between and across these

groupings are likely to involve contradiction and contestation, as much as they are likely to involve sharing

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CommunicationDifference & Resolution of Difference

the processes of communication are likely to be based on difference and on the ‘resolution of difference’ at one and the same time

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CommunicationOne Possible Definition

“the point is that the processes of communication always take place in a specific social and cultural setting, never simply between you and me just as individuals; and the structures of power, or authority, as well as the structures of solidarity, exert their influence on the participants”

Kress ed/ (1988), 4-5

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CommunicationRethinking Organisations

Try to think about Organisations this way...

What conclusions might we reach about organisations if we apply these ideas?

How is this similar or different different to how the IS discipline thinks about organisations

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CommunicationRethinking IS/IT

Try to think about IS this way...What conclusions might we reach

about information systems and information technology if we apply these ideas?

How is this similar or different different to how the IS discipline thinks about IS/IT?

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CommunicationRethinking Development

Try to think about IS Development this way...

What conclusions might we reach about IS/IT Development if we apply these ideas?

How is this similar or different different to how the IS discipline thinks about IS/IT Development?

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Communication Rethinking the Profession

Try to think about IS Profession this way...

What conclusions might we reach about the Profession if we apply these ideas?

How is this similar or different different to how the IS discipline thinks about itself?

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Bakhtin

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BakhtinInterests

Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) was writing at the time of Stalin in the 1920s

his greatest works involved studies of the ‘novel’- which is a relatively recent literary form

so why are we interested in his work if he was writing so long ago about works of fiction?

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BakhtinInterests

well in order to understand about ‘novels’, Bakhtin needed to:understand about authorship, but in order to understand about

authorship, he needed to understand about writing, and

in order to understand writing he had to understand language, meaning etc...

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BakhtinInterests and the Uptake of Ideas

Bakhtin developed an innovative and dynamic perception of language and meaning

a strange set of circumstances in Russia and in the West has led to Bakhtin becoming an extremely influential thinker in many areas of the humanities

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BakhtinUptake of Ideas

at the time Bakhtin was writing, there was enormous political turmoil in Russia

his ideas were not available for translation into English until the late 1970s

some of his work has been lost, most of it published years after his death

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BakhtinUptake of Ideas

this timing was crucial- during the 1970s Western theorists were, and still are, concerned with meaning and language

eg. ‘failure’ of structuralist linguistics and the emergence of new approaches like deconstruction

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BakhtinQuestions of Authorship

he was an extremely strange and weird man!

he had developed a ‘circle’ or discussion group which included amongst others two other authors:Medvedev (1891-1938)Voloshinov (1884/5-1936)

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BakhtinQuestions of Authorship

both Medvedev and Voloshinov had authored many books as well...

... until in 1973 it was claimed that Bakhtin had actually authored their books as well and published them under their names

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BakhtinQuestions of Authorship

this is actually not surprising because Russia under Stalin was a very dangerous place to live and write

Medvedev was actually killed during the Stalin purges which saw millions of Russians executed

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BakhtinIdeas about Language

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Bakhtin Ideas about Language

unifying concern of all the texts written by Bakhtin and/or Volosinov, and Medvedev is the nature of discourse

discourse = language usebut it is not about language as a self-

contained conceptual system found in traditional linguistics

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Bakhtin Ideas about Language

in fact Bakhtin wrote a number of critiques about formalism and structuralism in linguistics

Bakhtin referred to traditional, abstract linguistic accounts as monologic

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Bakhtin Ideas about Language

by monologic Bakhtin means that traditional linguistics:attempts to account for discourse as if it

consisted of only ‘single meanings’viewed traditional linguistics as a

political exercise concerned with control over language

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Bakhtin Ideas about Language

any monologic view of language, fails to account for what Bakhtin called ‘living utterances’:the active, creative capacity of languagethe always evaluative nature of meaningsocial subjectivity- relationship between

language and our consciousness- our sense of self is social, not natural or innate

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Creative Capacity of Language

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Bakhtin Creative Capacity of Language

evaluative nature of discourse makes context absolutely essential

should not treat language as words in a dictionary which can only have a meaning potential

instead texts require actualized meaning of the words used in a specific situation

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Bakhtin Creative Capacity of Language

Example:“That’s a fine view”

has many potential or possible meanings

but only as uttered in a particular context can we know which meanings are being realised

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Bakhtin Creative Capacity of Language

discourse- the production of actualized meaning- can only be studied adequately as a communication event...

...as responsive interaction between at least two social beings

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Bakhtin Creative Capacity of Language

language exists on the boundary between human consciousnesses, between a self and an other

this responsive interaction between speakers that constitutes the creative capacity of language to produce new meaning

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Evaluative Nature of Meaning

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

every utterance generates a response in the other who receives it, even if that response is only inner speech

but, the initial utterance already anticipates that active response in the receiving other and so shapes itself to take it into account

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

but the ‘initial utterance’ is never actually the first word in any real sense

an ‘initial utterance’ is moulded not just by the future response but also as an ‘answer’ to all relevant previous utterances

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

Bakhtin refers to this aspect of the nature of discourse as dialogic

the dialogic nature of discourse accounts for the constant generation of new meanings

produces a complex understanding of time

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

meaning is produced or realised only in the specific utterance of an actual communicative event

but, every utterance is also a link in the continuous chain of other utterances

an utterance is both a moment and part of a long evolution of social change- intertextuality

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

a word is a two-sided actthe product of a reciprocal

relationship between speaker and listener, addresser and addressee

not only does an utterance call forth or provoke a new word, it creates itself in anticipation of that response

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Bakhtin Evaluative Nature of Meaning

every word and utterance, looks back to the word it is answering, and

looks forward to the anticipated word it will partly determine in advance

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Social Subjectivity

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Social Subjectivity

Bakhtin then goes on to consider the social basis of meanings

for Bakhtin language and thought are intertwined-language cannot exist without thoughtnor can thought exist without languageboth are social not individual

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Social Subjectivity

always and in all situations, the ‘individual’ (user, worker, manager, developer) is implicated in and subject to the social construction of meaning

Dore #12 provides an example of how meanings must be social...

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Social SubjectivityExample

imagine a new born child in a cot, the child is being watched by its parents

the child stretches its arm outthe parents may interprete this action

by the child as a request for a toy...

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Social SubjectivityExample

the parents will probably give the toy to the child, interpreting the childs action with an already socially determined meaning

the childs behaviour is being interpreted as a request for a toy

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Social SubjectivityExample

the child is just as likely wanting to get comfortable in the cot

none-the-less it does not take a small child long to learn that when they stretch their arm out, something is likely to be given to them

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Social SubjectivityExample

the child is actually realising the power of communication, although it probably cannot do this with language (paralinguistics)

what is important in this example is not that the child learns that there is this paralinguistic resource it can use, ....

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Social SubjectivityExample

but rather that these paralinguistic and ultimately linguistic resources are always social

the childs stretch is already interpreted as a meaningful communicative act by the parents

the child has already entered the world of language as social

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Social Subjectivity

language is not about how expressive we are, language is not created inside ourselves

thats just the way that it is viewed in a Western culture that emphases ‘individualism’

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Social Subjectivity

rather as Bakhtin points out: children do not acquire language, but its actually the opposite

in fact, the startling conclusion is that language acquires children!

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Social Subjectivity

language is not owned by us, language is ultimately social, it is something that is between us not within us

and just as language is social, so to is our own conscious, our individuality!

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Conclusions

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Summary

we have introduced some of the radical theories of Bakhtin

his theories were an attempt to understand the Novel

but they have had a profound and recent influence over the social sciences

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Summary

I propose that these ideas have the capacity to change the IS discipline:away from mentalistic and machine-like

views of humans, a result of applying the subject of psychology- the ‘individual’

to a theory in which our actions and our subjectivity can be understood as meaningful and social in nature!

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Next Week

we start to apply the ideas of Bakhtin to understanding organisations

we start to look at ideas based on Bakhtin (social semiotics)

show how they are compatible with Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL)