LINGUIST List 26.4895
Tue Nov 03 2015
Review: Semantics; Socioling: Wee (2015)
Editor for this issue: Sara Couture <saralinguistlist.org>
Date: 21-Jul-2015
From: Laura Di Ferrante <laura.diferrante
gmail.com>
Subject: The Language of Organizational Styling
E-mail this message to a friend Discuss this message Book announced at
http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-850.html
AUTHOR: Lionel Wee
TITLE: The Language of Organizational Styling
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Laura Di Ferrante, Università degli Studi di Roma - La Sapienza
Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
“The Language of Organizational Styling” by Lionel Wee looks at many aspects of organizational styling, mainly focusing on semiotic and sociolinguistic issues.
The object of the work is not constituted by organizational styling of specific organizations, rather, theoretical concepts are explored as components of the organizational style-making process and more or less famous organizations are observed as examples or specimens apt to show how styling is performed on the basis of varying possibilities, enablements, and constraints.
The book is organized in eight chapters written in a refined way, full of references to real life organizations, events, and some trenchant personal anecdotes interpreted through a scientific approach.
The first chapter defines the concept of organization styling in a contemporary economic system. The central argument, introduced here and then supported throughout the book, is that discourse, from a sociolinguistic perspective, contributes to the construction of an organization’s identity and relationships, and ultimately also to the construction of the organization itself in an ongoing process.
Chapter Two is mainly definitional, establishing “the notion of style as the primary analytical framework” (p. 21) and differentiating between Discourse Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis. A parallel between individuals and organizations, comparing their respective constraints and possibilities, is presented to expound organization styling dynamics. The comparison is meant to look at organizations as (accountable) actors in the styling process that actively deal with constraints and possibilities derived from their statuses. Concepts like accountability, (in)authenticity, and (in)sincerity are analyzed as styling concerns. Also it is clarified how styling is broader than and different from ‘branding’ and ‘corporate communication’, although the author sees that the concepts are somewhat permeable and can overlap with one another.
Chapter Three presents some organizations’ external communication instantiations that are represented as a “mini-genre” (p. 48). “Vision and mission statements”, “narratives of growth and expansion”, and official rankings between competitors constitute simultaneously constraints and opportunities for the organizations. In order to gain legitimation, organizations are supposed to produce the contents for this kind of texts, but they can also choose how to turn these texts into discourses targeted towards their potential consumers. Conveying consistency and distinctiveness through pragmatically appropriate messages stands, clearly, as a compelling challenge.
In Chapter Four, small and large businesses are observed in the light of styling needs and obstacles related to business’ size. A small, newly set up laundromat, “Aquatic Living Laundry” and the large, well-established, Walgreens pharmacy are considered in their relationship with the San Francisco (CA) community. The author analyzes styling actions and identifies relations of reciprocity with the community proposed by the small businesses, while he notices that big businesses insist on supporting the community. Wee refines his argument by analyzing also businesses offering the same kind of goods: coffee related products. The analysis includes a small café in Stockholm, ‘Café String’ and one in San Francisco, ‘Caffe Greco’, a Swedish franchise, ‘Wayne Coffee’, the well-known chain of ‘Starbucks’ and, finally ‘Ya Kun’, a coffee place in Singapore that started off extremely small to become a renowned coffee chain. The observations of styling aspects, in diachrony and by contrast, led the author to uncover ideological constraints and to relate to businesses’ size the opposing concepts of “semiotic porosity” and “semiotic consistency” (p. 85).
Chapter Five is mainly concerned with how people, connected more or less loosely to an organization, support and/or embody the organization’s identity and image. The chapter explores a wide range of ways in which testimonials, endorsers, ambassadors, and employees are instruments of styling; connected to this, the author explains the Peter Principle and introduces the Dirty Harry Syndrome.
The first concept was first formulated in 1969 by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull; it states that “in a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence” (Peter & Hull, 1969, p. 172): in other words, at some point in their careers, workers who are competent doing their job get promoted to the next level. It happens that they show to be incompetent performing their duties at such new level, yet they will continue working in that position (with no more promotions) up to the end of their careers. Wee compares this concept to what he calls the Dirty Harry Syndrome named after the movie character, detective Harry Callaghan (Daley & Siegel, 1971), who “is professionally competent as a police officer but politically unacceptable to his superiors” (15). According to Wee, organization’s image, and its embodiment by employees, is often more important than employees’ professional competence. Both the Principle and the Syndrome are to be considered by organizations that aim at protecting their image.
Chapter Six considers the issue of organizations having to remediate something that went wrong in terms of identity or image communication. Three stages, or “conditions” (p. 117) of re-styling are analyzed and interpreted as they apply to actual case studies. Just as events and contexts are completely variable, so are style and stance: the reasoning in this chapter supports the idea of styling activities as opposed to the idea of a steadier ‘style’.
“Styling the organizational other” is the title of Chapter 7. The author deals with those styling processes that build a company’s image and identity by relying on connotations and references that belong to other businesses and that are associated, in the mind of the consumers, with specific dimensions. Wee analyzes those styling activities which rely on linguistic stratagems, like in “The Phone Clinic”, the organizational other being the clinic. Clearly “clinic”, in the mind of the consumer is associated with a whole series of dimensions (treating people, performing surgeries, etc.) that have little to do with phone reparation. Furthermore, the author looks at semiotic resources that are not necessarily linguistic in nature, but are still able to invoke ‘industrial others’. On the basis of these observations, copyright-related case studies are explored and connected to important analytical concepts such as “basking in reflected glory” (156) and “constructional riffing” (p. 160, which are brilliantly used as interpreting tools of styling choices.
Chapter Eight is the last one and deals with ‘language’ as a (also political) matter that organizations and institutions have to face. The distinction between “fixed and “flexible multilingualism” (p.169) helps the author to show that even companies and institutions that operate in global contexts and whose employees are of different origins, may have a tendency to avoid flexible multilingualism (“where speakers’ use of language resources cuts across language boundaries”, p.185). In order words, the author observes that organizations and institutions make choices related to language, being constrained by language ideologies about linguistic ‘purity’, standard language, and right and wrong. The second part of the chapter draws upon Archer’s concept of “analytical dualism” (p. 181), which accounts for a further distinction between people and organizations, particularly in terms of timescales. One of Wee’s conclusive thoughts is that organizations, and their language practices, should be considered in the dynamics between speakers and linguistic system.
EVALUATION
Lionel Wee warns that what should be discussed is ‘styling’, as a verb, and not ‘style’: the noun is steadier and more definite, while ‘styling’ conveys the meaning of an ongoing process that never ends for an organization that communicates with the potential audience and establishes its own place, image and identity on the market. This is particularly interesting as the author observes the processes through which organizations create and build their images and identities. Such processes are inherently changing by adapting to contexts, market needs, consumers’ wishes, and historical contingencies. The parallel between people and organizations is an occasion to explore ethical and pragmatic considerations that deeply vary from people to organizations, but they also vary within a given organization at different stages of its history.
This book’s main aim is to look at organizations’ styling from a sociolinguistic perspective and this is a particularly effective approach as political contexts, historical periods, local instances, communities’ languages, social, ethical, and environmental demands are actually informing business activities on any market, so it only makes sense to include them as intervening variables. Wee succeeds in analyzing these multiple variables the way actual businesses have faced them and he shows very effectively how semiotic and linguistic styling activities are informed by such variables.
Moreover, Wee touches on organizations and institutions in California, Singapore, Europe, India, Canada, offering a large and original spectrum of cultures, point of views, and insights. This increases the value of the work and the pleasure of reading it.
While the theoretical framework draws on renowned works such as Coupland (2007), Cameron (2000), and Eckert and Rickford (2001), Wee’s perspective is quite original, moving the focus from intra- and inter-speakers’ variations to organizations’ styling activities. This work covers many aspects of organizational styling and several new concepts are employed to explain styling mechanisms.
It is probably inherent to a work in which such a wide range of aspects, variables, and issues are disclosed and analyzed to be limited in systematicity. ,It lacks quantitative data to demonstrate the generalizability of certain phenomena. As a matter of fact, when examining businesses’ size related to style, Wee admits that “an ideal demonstration would involve a longitudinal study” (p. 69). Such issue characterizes a large section of the work as the extracts presented are not systematically gathered, rather they are picked on purpose to explain the theory, but are not enough to be extended for generalization. As an example, in order to demonstrate that Berkeley (CA) has a tradition of supporting local business, Wee uses an extract from a newsletter of a website aimed at advertising events, restaurants, and such in Berkeley. This clearly calls for further studies: quantitative and longitudinal analyses based on a representative number of organizations and diversified businesses. All this was hardly doable in this book, given its primary goal, and can certainly be considered a source for many works to come in Sociolinguistics, Business and Organization Studies, and Media Studies. Finally, this work not only could (and should) be included in universities’ curricula, but it also would make a great vade mecum for experts and professionals in organizational styling.
As a final remark, I believe that this book importantly contributes to what Lionel Wee calls the “sociolinguistic understanding” (187) of the articulated and complex reality of the contemporary world; linguistic variation, language change, and multilingualism can only be fully understood when analyzed in a context that is as broad as possible.
REFERENCES
Cameron, Deborah. 2000. Styling the worker: Gender and commodification of language in the globalized service economy. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 4: 323-347.
Daley, Robert (Producer), & Siegel, Don (Director). 1971. Dirty Harry. United States. Warner Bros.
Coupland, Nikolas. 2007. Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Eckert, Penelope & Rickford, John R. 2001. Style and sociolinguistic variation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Peter, Laurence J. & Hull, Raymond 1969. The Peter principle (No. Book). London: Souvenir Press.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Laura Di Ferrante, earned two Ph.Ds in Teaching Modern Languages and Applied Linguistics from the University for Foreigners of Siena, Italy and from Texas A&M University-Commerce, USA. Currently she is Adjunct Professor of English at the Sapienza University of Rome and at the Federico II University of Naples.
Her research interests focus on Workplace Discourse, Cross-cultural Marketing, Second/Foreign Language Teaching and Learning, and L1/L2 Pragmatics.
Page Updated: 03-Nov-2015