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Textual Agency: How Texts Do Things in Organizational Settings
FranÁois Cooren
Universit¥e de Montr¥eal, Canada
Research on organizational discourse typically reduces it to what members do when producing and using texts in organizational contexts, but fails to recognize that texts, on their own, also seem to make a difference. This essay shows that one way to approach discourse is to analyze the active contribution of texts (especially, but not only, documents) to organizational processes, that is, to what extent texts such as reports, contracts, memos, signs, or work orders can be said to beperforming something. After reviewing what other scholars have been saying on the question of textual agency, I show how it is possible to ascribe to texts the capacity of doing something without falling into some modern form of animism. Having done that, I explore systematically the different types of action that texts can be said to be performing by taking up Searle’s well-known classification of speech acts. This review then leads me to address questions related to the constitution of organizations, that is, to what extent this reflection on textual agency enables us to redefine the mode of being of organizational forms.
Key Words: text • agency • organization • speech acts • constitution • discourse
Organization, Vol. 11, No. 3,
373-393 (2004)
DOI: 10.1177/1350508404041998
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