ABSTRACT
The recent chapter, “Discourse Analysis in Organizations,” by Putnam and Fairhurst (2001), in the New Handbook of Organizational Communication, exemplifies the ways discourse analysis is relevant to, indeed a chief tool and intellectual inspiration of, organizational communication study. It also demonstrates that the label discourse analysis is itself polysemous to an uncomfortable if not torturous degree, in the range of phenomena, levels of organization, and assumptive bases that can inspire it. In this chapter, we depend on two complementary approaches to discourse analysis that were suggested by our specific reading of and interest in the meeting recorded in the Corporation: After Mr. Sam videotape. We came to this tape with a history of work in structuration theory, organizational knowledge and structure, and varied methods of discourse study. Watching the focal section of the tape (284–521) led us to note, in particular, the process of self-structuring enacted in the discourse, and the consequent implications of the meeting for organizational constitution and reproduction. These initial interests and interpretations, together with the methods choices they suggested and our assumptions about the taped interaction session, led to our chain of reasoning about the discourse itself.
