26.4895, Review: Semantics; Socioling: Wee (2015)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-26-4895. Tue Nov 03 2015. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 26.4895, Review: Semantics; Socioling: Wee (2015)

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Date: Tue, 03 Nov 2015 15:20:35
From: Laura Di Ferrante [laura.diferrante at gmail.com]
Subject: The Language of Organizational Styling

 
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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.




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