ABSTRACT
In the previous chapter, we followed the implications of Miller’s (1994) thesis
that rhetorical community is the cultural basis for genre. In so doing, we saw the
murderers of the Sipo Technical Matters Group as a community that, through
organizational texts that served as boundary objects to negotiate their differ-
ences, marshaled the rhetorical resources of narrative, metaphor, and genre to
(re)produce itself. Along the way, we employed two of three approaches,
rhetorical and genre analysis, that Berkenkotter (2002) cited as methods
for research into everyday organizational texts. What, then, could the third
approach-discourse analysis-add to what we have already learned? Within
the context of organization studies, Alvesson (2004) asked a similar question: Is
the “organizational discourse” approach merely a relabeling of the “organiza-
tional culture” approach since the two frequently study the same things? Or to
rephrase this question for the present study: If we have seen-through rhetorical
and genre analyses-that rhetorical community (re)produces the organizational
culture that furnishes the basis for genres by which organizations pragmatically
structure social action, can discourse analysis bring anything new to the table?
