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Formalizing Organizational Meaning RICK IEDEMA Discourse Society 1999; 10; 49 DOI: 10.1177/0957926599010001003 The online version of this article can be found at: http://das.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/10/1/49

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Formalizing organizational meaning

RICK IEDEMA U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W S O U T H WA L E S

Discourse & Society Copyright © 1999 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) Vol 10(1): 49–65 [0957-9265 (199901) 10:1; 49–65; 006473]

A B S T R A C T.

Formality indexes interactional closure: it limits the possibilities for the renegotiation of agreements and decisions. In this article the focus is on how formality is constructed in organizational settings. The article proposes that organizational formalization is achieved on the strength of the recontextualization of meaning from one discourse or practice to another. Importantly, organizational processes of recontextualization tend to increasingly technologize meanings with respect to both what they signify and their materialization. This means that discursive practices will mobilize, aside from human or embodied modes of meaning making, increasingly disembodied or exosomatic modes of meaning making, such as electronic kinds of communication, as well as other kinds of inscription of meaning (infrastructure, architecture, and so on).

K E Y W O R D S : depersonalization, durability, formality, materiality, recontextualization

Introduction FORMALITY

Formality in interaction has been the object of a range of disciplinary interests, such as anthropology (Bloch, 1975; Irvine, 1979), organization studies (Walton, 1980), discourse analysis (Frake, 1983), conversation analysis (Drew and Heritage, 1992), and sociology (Atkinson, 1982). What these studies have in common is that they see formality as realized by features which signal a degree of interactive effort over and above that which usually characterizes ‘everyday’ interaction. As examples of such features, Bloch lists restricted loudness and intonation patterns, but also refers to specialized syntactic and semantic features (Bloch, 1975: 15). Atkinson mentions ‘the relative absence . . . of hesitations, hitches, self-corrections, repair initiations, etc.’ (Atkinson, 1982: 92). In an attempt to generalize across situations and cultures, Irvine proposes four


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aspects of formality, each of which varies independently from the others: (i) ‘increased code structuring’; (ii) ‘code consistency’; (iii) ‘invoking positional identities’; and (iv) ‘emergence of central situational focus’ (Irvine, 1979: 776 ff.). Four different aspects of formality emerge that seem to apply to a wide variety of speech communities, perhaps to all. The four kinds of formality often co-occur in the same social occasion though not always (hence their presentation as separate variables). (Irvine, 1979: 776)

Each dimension refers to a distinct kind of interactive predictability which actors aim to construe and maintain. In that sense, then, formality is a limiting or closing off of possibilities with regard to (paraphrasing Irvine’s dimensions) what is said and done, how it is said and done, who says it or does it, and the choices members have regarding their (mode of ) attention and attendance. In short, formality is about interactive closure. PROCESSES OF FORMALIZATION

But how is such closure interactively achieved? While Atkinson and others show how members interactively contribute to enacting apparently pre-agreed kinds of formality, there are few accounts of how the formal is ongoingly reshaped in the course of social practice. In other words, it is not clear how continuously changing contingents of social stakeholders expend efforts to determine the ultimate face of their communities’ formalities and rituals. The question as to how stakeholders determine among themselves what constitutes formal closure and agreement is what is at issue here. There are some studies which look at how formal knowledges arise from tentative insights and experimentation (Callon and Latour, 1981; Latour, 1988, 1990; Latour and Woolgar, 1986). Latour (1990) describes how, in science, individuals’ hunches inspire experiments which give rise to generalizations, which in turn lay claim to the status of ‘fact’. These facts ultimately appear as formal, abstract, authoritative and closed or ‘black-boxed’ discourses. According to the trajectory portrayed in Figure 1, a story is reconceived as scientific artifact by means of its recontextualization into institutionalized settings and attendant ‘laboratory’ practices. Then it is transposed into the appropriate discourses which ensure its recognition and acceptance as ‘formal knowledge’. Only the privileged few are now in a position to question and contest this ‘formal knowledge’—that is, only those whose voices play a constitutive role in the formulation and representation of such knowledge. Latour’s trajectory describes how the stories of 19th-century zoologists, geographers and chemists ascend to formal fact. This article aims to describe a similar trajectory, but one which takes place in a bureaucratic setting among six stakeholders. It looks at how a health-planning project moves from relatively informal accounts about its object of planning—the renovation of a mental hospital in south Sydney— towards a highly formalized account: the Project Definition Plan (PDP) report. This PDP report recontextualizes stakeholders’ voices into a unified content.


Iedema: Formalizing organizational meaning

Conviction of peers Laboratory Story

'It's just a story'

'It's just a laboratory artifact'

'It is probably a fact'

F I G U R E 1 . Latour’s ‘production of facts’ (after Latour, 1990: 62). Reproduced by kind permission of Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Concomitantly, their talk is recontextualized and formalized as print. Stakeholders show their commitment to this unifying, formal report by ‘signing it off ’ as a true and accurate record of their concerns, wishes and agreements. Importantly, this unifying-formalizing process is the condition for furthering the project towards its next stage, the designing of the actual building by architects. Once the design has been worked out, it is itself recontextualized as the physical (re)construction of the hospital building. Each recontextualization is a step away from here-and-now meaning makings (talk, gesture) towards meanings which are more distanced in time and space (print, design, built construction; Iedema, 1997a, forthcoming). This article aims to describe this process of recontextualization towards increasingly durable and formal realizations. It shows that this occurs first in talk itself, by the shift from localized to abstract or time–space distanciated constructions of the ‘real’. Important resources here are projection (‘. . . said that . . .’) and conjunction (‘. . . because . . .’). Simultaneously, these formalized constructions of the ‘real’ are inscribed into more durable and resistant materialities,1 in that sound is recontextualized as imprinted paper, which is itself again recontextualized as steel and brick (Iedema, 1997a, forthcoming). BACKGROUND TO THE PLANNING PROJECT

The institutional processes analysed here constitute a project planning the renovation of a mental hospital in south-west Sydney. This involved the hiring of an independent architect-planner. This person was in charge of writing up a report (the PDP), recording the successful interweaving of government guidelines, physical and technical constraints, user expectations, and bureaucratic procedure, as these were (re)presented by the various stakeholders: Department of Health (DoH) and Area Health Service (AHS) officials,2 a project manager, an engineer-supplier, users (mental hospital staff ), and the architect-planner.


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The PDP report includes a ‘Design Brief ’ in its Appendix, which translates the agreements reached among the various parties into two-dimensional drawings. These designs provide the basis for later and more detailed (3-dimensional) architectural design, and, eventually, the built construction. The PDP report itself is the outcome of lengthy negotiations: it took four months of biweekly meetings (5 in total), several faxes, telephone calls, and three major redraftings to complete (Iedema, 1997a, forthcoming).

The formalization of bureaucratic process The formalization of bureaucratic meaning is elaborated on the basis of two examples. The first concerns the discussions surrounding the percentage of hospital equipment replacement, and the second focuses on negotiations about the four design options. While the first example highlights the subtle manoeuvring between interpersonal differences towards a resolution, the second traces how stakeholders co-constructed an appropriately formal (ideational) logic favouring the fourth design option. FORMALIZATION AND INTERACTION : ACHIEVING CLOSURE

Section 8 of the PDP is the outcome of negotiations that took place during the first four planning meetings, and is headed ‘Equipment Requirements’. This section specifies the percentage and kind of replacement of the hospital’s original furniture, appliances and carpets. It is in effect the outcome of a series of negotiations that started between the architect-planner, the junior planner and the users during meeting 2, of those which took place in meeting 3 with the AHS official, as well as of the ones which took place during meeting 5 where an eventual resolution was achieved. During a meeting between only the architect-planner, his junior planner and the users, the senior architect-planner formulated the users’ wishes with regard to equipment replacement as ‘user requirements’. The nominalization ‘requirements’ linguistically ‘black-boxes’ user expectations, and its use indexes acknowledgement on the part of the architect-planner of their importance (Iedema, 1997a). During meeting 3, in the presence now of the health department’s officials, the issue of equipment replacement is raised again, but now by the architectplanner’s junior assistant standing in for the senior architect-planner on that day. She conveys the users’ expectation that ‘ninety percent’ will be replaced (Extract 1): Extract 1 [Meeting 3; turn 59] Junior planner: ‘the only other thing is the equipment, there, they feel the equipment will be almost um ninety percent replaced’.

During this meeting, which was quite conflictual, the AHS official ‘guaranteed’



to the junior female planner that the equipment would certainly not be ‘ninety percent replaced’. In short, user expectations were a sensitive and contested issue—one which the official sees it necessary to ‘contain’. While the architect-planner gave user expectations legitimacy by talking about ‘user requirements’ in meeting 2 (in the absence of the department officials), he takes a different tack in meeting 5 in the presence of the officials. This second extract (from meeting 5) centres on the issue of furniture replacement, and the architect-planner displays his sensitivity to stakeholders’ positionings as he bargains for a replacement percentage that is acceptable to all present (not 90%!): Extract 2 [Meeting 5, turns 49–56] Project manager: OK we’ll leave it eh leave that one for the moment. Ehm 2.6 latest equipment listing was to be sorted out, I think [AHS official’s name] you were going to get eh AHS official: . . . [?] Project manager: OK Alright well we need to eh AHS official: But the key point that [architect-planner’s name] has raised is we need a list of that equipment . . . but the design brief had a list of furniture . . . [inaudible] Project manager: Alright, eh can we sort that out in the next week as well AHS official: . . . that’s a starting point we need to run through the design brief . . . Architect-planner: Can I just ask again, I think in this instance with the PDP eh obviously when we get into the design stage and we have room data sheets with actually the room laid out with all that stuff in it and people sit down and say yes, we may find that some of the thoughts about what goes into these rooms may in fact adjust and may not at all go in . . . it may be ten pounds into a five pound bag, eh for the PDP stage I think what we really have to do is be confident that we’ve made enough allowance in the in the estimate to cover that, eh so perhaps again rather than holding this thing up for the purposes of accounting issues . . . maybe we can . . . I’ve made an assumption in my document here that a percentage of those would be replaced, perhaps if the users could look at that and say does that feel about right and we could check that with the costs would that get us through or . . . DoH official: Na . . .

Here, the architect-planner’s initial ‘user requirements’ is phrased as ‘some of the thoughts about what goes into these rooms’. This demotes user preferences from a nominalized modulation—‘requirements’—to a nominalized mental process— ‘thoughts’. The strategy employed here is to present users’ expectations as open for negotiation to both the AHS and DoH official, and thus as ‘thoughts’, not ‘requirements’. ‘Thoughts’ derives from a mental or inward-directed process, in contrast to ‘requirements’ which is ultimately a form of outward-directed control. The former merely implicates a ‘thinker’ who invites negotiation; the latter a ‘commander’ who expects compliance. The substitution of ‘thoughts’ for ‘requirements’ is a strategic move on the part of the architect-planner, I suggest, because he does not want to be seen at this stage to be according the users undue status and power in the presence of the officials. Also, those ‘thoughts’ may well represent the impossible ‘ten pounds’ that are to fit into a ‘five-pound bag’, which further delegitimizes the users on grounds


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of their undue optimism. In sum, the architect-planner rewords the users’ 90 percent replacement expectation in very tentative terms. Having put the users’ perspective in these tentative terms, the architectplanner goes on to say that we need to ‘be confident that we’ve made enough allowance . . . in the estimate to cover’ the replacement proposal. This is addressed to the AHS official and his DoH colleague: it is they who are in a position to either promote or oppose costing limits. Then the architect-planner produces a clause which is left unfinished, followed by the very indirect and tentative suggestion (‘perhaps if the users could’) that a proposed replacement percentage could be looked at by both parties (modalized tentativity underlined): [architect-planner:] ‘I’ve made an assumption in my document here that a percentage of those would be replaced, perhaps if the users could look at that and say does that feel about right and we could check that with the costs would that get us through or . . .’.

Indirectness redounds in this passage: it is realized by both the modalizations (‘could’ and ‘would’) but also by the interrogative syntax (‘does that feel about right’, ‘would that get us through or . . .’) and the hesitation phenomena. In short, the architect-planner renders his point as unthreatening as possible. The ensuing interaction shows a lot of manoeuvring on the part of the officials: they do not give a ‘straight answer’ to the architect-planner’s very indirect proposal. First, the DoH official agrees that ‘if we haven’t got some sort of confidence at this stage then the capital cost is just not going to be right’. Their subsequent hedging suggests both are reluctant to let the others that are present in on their chances of getting a higher figure approved by their superiors in the Health Department. Extract 3 [Meeting 5, turns 57–60] AHS official: . . . I’m gonna have to . . . (?) the Department it’s getting very eh requesting us to be quite precise, . . . probably have to go through it and say ‘well there’s $200,000 worth of stuff I’m going to re-use before we need x dollars’ DoH official: I guess we can’t, eh we we our experience has shown that equipment is always the thing that people are not really very sure about, and inevitably is more expensive than one thinks, and so if we can get some confidence at this stage and we quite agree that as you go into room data things you’ll really flesh that out, if we haven’t got some sort of confidence at this stage then the capital cost is just not going to be right Architect-planner: The only issue is really in this type of building we don’t have sort of major medical which is the usual problem, that we have items that are individually hundreds of thousands of dollars and you hit one of those then you’re right, here it’s mostly furniture, we know already that all the beds are going to be replaced and so on and all those kinds of things DoH official: But they’re expensive, na it’s an easy thing to do too it’s a simple format sheet like I’ve got here, I mean you literally transfer new but you’ll find it’ll give you a surprise when you work out how much you really do need

The DoH official has taken over from the AHS official in the defence of the issue



of cost reduction: ‘But they [beds] are expensive . . . you’ll find it’ll give you a surprise when you work out how much you really need’. Rather than saying either ‘no the budget is not going to be negotiable’ or ‘yes, the budget is negotiable’ the officials delay responding directly to the architect-planner’s proposal that ‘we could check that [percentage] with the costs would that get us through or . . .’. Indirectness typifies much of bureaucratic discourse (Sarangi and Slembrouck, 1996: 47;3 Iedema, 1994/6), and here it is mobilized in various ways on the part of the various players to stake out authority relations and power claims. The officials (and especially the DoH official) have sole access to the ‘channels’ which are crucial to exerting influence on the ultimate budget figure. Delaying the final response here may do little ideationally, but it does enhance the officials’ interpersonal position of control. In the following extract, the project manager steps in here and agrees that a clearer statement on funding is needed, because without it the more detailed design stage cannot proceed. Against this, the AHS official holds out by elaborating what has already been said (turns 62, 64). Then in turn 66 he admits that the $2.8 million figure is ‘a guesstimate’, which raises the possibility of a higher figure. Ultimately though, and after this long stretch of turns only involving the two officials (and perhaps representing an even more subtle enactment of some internal power hierarchy), it is the (higher placed) DoH official’s privilege to finally express confidence that a sum additional to the original figure may be able to be obtained, qualifying it again by saying that ‘it does need a bit of work’ (that is, exertion of influence on the right people). Extract 4 [Meeting 5, turns 61–71] Project manager: Alright, could I perhaps just summarize this, because I think what Ian is driving at is he wants to get on with designing, and eh, I think we’re really not in a position to get on with designing other than the sort of preliminary design until at least we’ve sorted out all the issues to do with cost and I think the recurrent cost is obviously the biggest one of those because if someone turns around and says we can’t afford this double the number of staffing you might as well throw the design out, ehm so we really need to clean that one out AHS official: And the major one of course is the capital budget being validated at the moment is still 2.8 million DoH official: That’s the biggest AHS official: If this design is going to prove a different figure and eh it might be 3.6 or 3.4. or whatever it does, but if the Department came back to us and said ‘no, you gotta go back and design it to 2.8 million’ that’s a different exercise Project manager: Alright AHS official: Yeah we’ve always been arguing that their original figure was a guesstimate and that DoH official: Yeah I think we’ve got we’ve got good justification to say that that figure is not viable but really we still need certainly John and I need to make a submission to to justify and all of this will do it, I mean this design AHS official: This is the justification DoH official: But we do need to Treasury, as far as Treasury is concerned we’ve got 2.8


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Discourse & Society 10(1) and we haven’t got 3.6, and so we just need to make sure we put in a submission for that extra money and I think John and I are both confident that we’ll get it Architect-planner: Ok DoH official: but it does need a bit of work

This ‘shadowplay’ has taken up 20 turns in all, during which the officials pussyfooted around the architect-planner’s suggestion that ‘we could check that [percentage] with the costs would that get us through or . . .’. Had the officials known the budget limit was fixed at $2.8 million, they would not have needed to delay their ‘answer’ this long.The delay is therefore not so much an ideational issue as an interpersonal one, and it centred around the question of how much to divulge to the planners and users, and how soon. In this case, and from my reading of the situation as it unfolded, delay served to carefully calibrate interpersonal power relations. It is also significant that the users who were actually present at this meeting did not take part in this ‘negotiation’. The architect-planner perhaps inspired confidence about the acceptability of his percentage proposal, or his way of handling the matter suggested that he was likely to achieve a positive outcome. It may also be that the users ‘recognized’ that a powerplay was going on, but that it was enacted beyond their ‘usual level of participation’. To prevent the issue from slipping away, the project manager insists that the DoH official commit herself to reporting on the outcome of her discussion with her superiors and confirm or disconfirm the higher (3.6 million) figure (mustness is underlined in the following extract): Extract 5 [Meeting 5, turns 72–7] Project manager: Alright, so we’re saying potentially in the next week we ought to have some sound information which would then be able to go forward for you to make a formal submission DoH official: Through Mental Health Services . . . Project manager: Yeah, and how long do you think would the confirmation for that will actually take? DoH official: I think it’d be silly to say, I think we’d need two weeks, I think it’d be silly to say under that, although we try and do it faster than that but with eh different sort of . . ., Project manager: Na it’s alright we eh DoH official: government

The tension that arose during Meeting 3 between the junior planner and the AHS official concerning the extent of equipment replacement is now interactionally resolved. The officials have had their ‘stage time’, and others have shown respect for their control over particular areas of knowledge (funding levels) and social relations (the bureaucratic hierarchy). The users showed themselves to be willing to see their ‘requirements’ referred to as ‘preferences’, and leave the negotiation to the interpersonal skills of the architect-planner. The users were finally assisted with the drawing up of equipment lists, and a budget of $300,000 was ultimately confirmed for new equipment. Figure 2 maps the trajectory of meanings to do with equipment replacement.


Iedema: Formalizing organizational meaning Architect-planner we could check that with the costs [IF, Meeting 5, turn 55]

it’s mostly furniture, we know already that the beds are going to be replaced [IF, Meeting 5, turn 59]

Officials it’s getting very uh, requesting us to be precise [Meeting 5, turn 57] inevitably it’s more expensive than one thinks [Meeting 5, turn 58] but they’re expensive [AT, Meeting 5, turn 60] the capital budget being validated at the moment is still 2.8 million [Meeting 5, turn 62]

‘pre-resolution’

we’ve always been arguing that their original figure was a guesstimate [Meeting 5, turn 66] John and I need to make a submission [Meeting 5, turn 67] as far as Treasury is concerned we’ve got 2.8 and we haven’t got 3.6 [Meeting 5, turn 67]

‘resolution’

FIGURE

I think both John and I are confident that we’ll get it [Meeting 5, turn 69]

2 . Turn-taking dynamics between architect-planner and AHS official (Meeting 5)

It singles out the salient turns. It has the architect-planner on the left and the officials’ contributions on the right. The figure shows that the AHS and the DoH officials begin to signal the possibility of more funding by turn 66, and that a promise of confirmation for more funding has been granted by turn 69 (‘both John and I are confident that we’ll get it’). As could be expected, and in stark contrast to this interactional ‘shadowplay’, the section of the PDP document which reports on ‘equipment requirements’ is factual and impersonal (see Jönsson and Linell, 1991): 8.0 Equipment Requirements The equipment required for the project are provided in the Design Brief. Each room has an estimate of the furniture, fittings and equipment to be provided and the costs associated with this are nominated in the capital estimates at $300,000. This allows for replacement of all the beds to ensure domestic type beds are used, new furniture


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Discourse & Society 10(1) will be provided in all new rooms and replacement is expected of more than 50% of the present furniture in the other rooms since much of this has not been upgraded over time. The details of the actual equipment and furniture will be resolved on a room by room basis when the detailed Design Development Drawings are prepared. Until that time the estimates are believed to provide a realistic allowance.

Section 8 of the PDP makes no mention of tension, and announces that there will be ‘replacement of all the beds to ensure domestic type beds are used, new furniture will be provided in all new rooms and replacement is expected of more than 50% of the present furniture in the other rooms’. It confirms that the officials obtained permission to allow additional funding because ‘the estimates are believed to provide a realistic allowance’ (a clause that would not have gone into the PDP had that issue not been resolved). In sum, the meetings invoked ‘positional identities’ and maintained a ‘central situational focus’ (Irvine’s (1979)) dimensions iii and iv). Moreover, the project’s output (at this PDP stage) displays the linguistic and layout conventions typical of formal bureaucratic reports (Iedema, 1994/6). Thus, the interactional manoeuvring and the power relational struggles are excluded from this written version. The PDP, as formal bureaucratic record, enshrines the consensus as unproblematic, impersonal and durable, in print, naturalizing the interactional relations and power claims as the ‘mere background’ against which interactions are played out. Unfortunately, I had no access to the higher-up DoH and AHS stakeholders and meetings, and therefore was not able to trace the health department level dynamics which must have provided the link between the state of play at the end of Meeting 5 and section (8) of the PDP. The next section of this article, however, looks closely at the ways in which specific instances of talk are transformed into formal writing. This process reveals how ‘increased code structuring’ and ‘code consistency’ (Irvine’s (1979) dimensions i and ii) are cooperatively achieved, thereby construing formal closure. CHOOSING DESIGN OPTIONS

With regard to the design options among which stakeholders had to decide for the mental hospital, the PDP report recorded the following: All of the [original three] options examined contained some good points and some bad points but none were able to meet the majority of the criteria. This means that another option had to be created to gain the best of all options. The solution was to place the new accommodation wings on the same side of the building so that the closest functional adjacency could be achieved. It would be placed on the eastern side of the present building and by having the non-secure rooms at a diagonal to the present building would effectively work with the [geographical] contours. To achieve the benefits of the options which had the new wing running east–west, the rooms in Option D were staggered so that each room aligned north–south to reduce heat gain. In this way a solution which met most of the criteria was achieved. (PDP: 8)

The tenor of this passage is a long way from the jocular way the issue was addressed in meeting 1:


Iedema: Formalizing organizational meaning Extract 6 (Meeting 1, phase 12) AHS official: Yeah, they’re the options, and then you can get them costed and then you can say ‘hey, we can’t afford them, this is the best one’ hahaha . . .

It is even further away from the architect-planner’s private estimation of how options are assessed: Extract 7 (Interview with the architect-planner at UNSW School of Health Services Management, 9 February 1995) it says there’s supposed to be three alternatives looked at, all these things, now if someone insists on us going through the full exercise of looking at quite distinct options, I’m sure [DC; head of the architectural firm for whom the architect-planner works as a consultant] would not in the slightest be interested in seeing two other options because he’s picked the one he likes, so the question is whether we can create fictitious options that can be knocked down, that often happens, you’ve got the one you like and two that are not quite as good for various reasons, and then you say, ‘well these are three options’ . . .

The architect-planner goes on to argue that the favoured option is generally subject to a foregone conclusion, and that the alternatives are often afterthoughts that are to satisfy bureaucratic process: Extract 8 (Interview with the architect-planner at UNSW School of Health Services Management, 9 February 1995) . . . I usually try to get three genuine options and go through a selection process in which they have pros and cons and that is not hard to do, I mean if you if you picked three or four criteria, and you say ‘if we take this criteria as the most important criteria then this scheme is better than that’, but you can take the next criteria as the most important then maybe that scheme is better than that’, and if you find the one that against each criteria is the best it comes out and I don’t think that’s, there’s there’s then you can’t be, you can’t be accused of in fact setting it up, but not always you have three equally valid ways of doing something, so that’s why often options don’t come out like that, but I’ll just see we’ll see on Thursday [when Meeting 1 was going to be held] whether or not eh they’re prepared to go through the game basically, what they wanna do is get the solution they’ve already got and get on with it and they’re prepared to see the whole thing rigged

In what follows, it is shown how the transition from this kind of informal decision-making to the well-argued and formal logic of the PDP passage shown earlier was achieved. Importantly, this transition was achieved co-operatively and its outcome was construed as a share-able and shared agreement. The project manager, in the following extract (from Meeting 4), elicits reasons from those present to add to the argument favouring the fourth option: ‘is there anything else that anybody can comment as to any other criteria which people think ought to be included’. The AHS official suggests that the criterion of ‘capital minimization’ (‘through the re-use of existing spaces’) should be added:


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Discourse & Society 10(1) Extract 9 [Meeting 4, turns 267–70] Project manager: Can I just, sorry, just to stop you there, eh the criteria, the selection I guess eh seem to be reasonable as one would expect, is there anything else that anybody can comment as to any other criteria which people think ought to be included in this document, eh they’re pretty generalized criteria, I guess I wouldn’t expect this thing to say very much different to that, but if there are specific criteria which occur to people which seem to be important on the process of design it’s important that we we flush everything out by this stage Architect-planner: Ehm can’t think of anything AHS official: I think [name of Project manager] one of the major criteria in getting the preferred design is the eh . . . it looks like an open site but it’s so I guess you’ve got capital minimization through the re-use of existing spaces and eh you’ve got the lowest cost for construction solution . . . Architect-planner: So OK that we’ll add to that

Somewhat later in that meeting, the architect-planner begins to support their choice by starting to build up the logic that is to underpin the final formal argument. At this stage, this logic is still relatively spoken, or ‘congruent’, as well as causal-consequential, in that it explains how option D came to be preferred (‘what that does for us though is’, ‘therefore’, ‘that is why’—see Martin, 1993: 239—underlined in the following extract): Extract 10 [Meeting 4, turn 293] Architect-planner: Yeah and then eh we tried to look, one of the other advantages of course of the east–west wing is that you get north–south sun control, ehm, and eh that’s a bit of a compromise on a diagonal if you like, what that does for us though is it minimizes the amount of excavation by being on a diagional you see it runs along a contour, which therefore trades a little bit, it’s not ideal, in the sense that if it was directly east–west you in fact have better sun control, but I think we were happy that is why the solution that came out was staggered to try and maintain both the sun the sun control north–south as well as working up the contour.

The project manager summarizes all these contributions again somewhat later in the meeting, integrating these suggestions with equally congruent, but somewhat less spoken, logical relations (cause–consequence: ‘because’, ‘therefore’; dotted underlined in the following extract). The significant step here, however, is that what was said is now rephrased as projection, or ‘metaphenomenon’4 (‘what you’re saying is that . . .’, ‘we’re saying that . . .’, ‘you’re saying however that . . .’) and even as Fact5 (‘the fact that there’s no substantial sort of buildingup’). Projection, I suggest, is important for ‘formalizing’ what was said (Hill and Irvine, 1993), as is also evidenced by the constructions generally used for Minutes of meetings. In that sense, projection (dotted underlined in the following extract below) is an important device for shifting the talk from its own (time–space located) reality (as phenomenon) to a different (time–space distanciated) reality (as meta-phenomenon).6


Iedema: Formalizing organizational meaning Extract 11 [Meeting 4, turn 434] Project manager: Could could I just summarize this in my usual naive way, ehm, essentially what you’re saying is that option D is preferred because it’s the most compact and therefore one any eh measurement it should be the least cost option, that’s also added to by the fact that there is no substantial sort of building-up or elevation we are ehm biting into the existing hillside, we’re saying that the compactness means you have central staff control with vision virtually to all units which gets over some of the problems associated with having the two new units at either end of the building in all the other options, ehm you’re saying however that in this option you’d need two separate accesses basically, one maintaining the existing function with the hospital, but also providing an access which comes round to the eastern side of the site

Then, finally (and thanks to its metaphenomenonalization), the PDP gets grounded in a self-sufficient and impersonal causal logic, representing an ‘appropriate bureaucratic narrative’ about how Option D came about (Forester, 1993b; Roe, 1994). Figure 3 schematizes the instances of purposive or instrumental (and manner) logic which create this texture. It is important to note also that now the logic is frequently Theme, i.e. the ‘point of departure’ of the clause (‘this means’, ‘so that’, to achieve’, ‘in this way’). This means that the logic generated to support the preferred option is here positioned as given, as starting point—in contrast to its being the end point of a whole series of bureaucratic recontextualizations in the unfolding of the very interactions which constructed it. The altered mode (i.e. from talk to printed document) has made further explicit projections unnecessary: this is now not a record of who said what framing the

F I G U R E 3 . Criteria suggested during the meetings and their purposive logical links in the PDP document


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FIGURE

4 . Main shift in architect-planner’s talk to writing

said as independent [semiotic] reality. That was achieved in the project manager’s summary seen earlier. Instead, the writing is a tribute to bureaucratic efficiency erected on top of coherent and ‘objective’ reasoning, and ‘cleansed’ of personal references and attributions. Figure 4 looks more closely at a salient shift in the talk of the architect-planner to his written PDP report. Predictably, his talk is interspersed with pronominal references, while the PDP uses predominantly passive constructions. The resultant PDP document foregrounds a self-sufficient logic, replaces professionals’ jokes, hunches and insights with a coherent and articulate argument which suits the expectations of the bureaucratic hierarchy, formulates its reasons not as ordinary phenomena but as metaphenomena, and elides personal issues and concerns which drove much of the negotiating process (see section 2.1). In effect, this whole formalizing process recontextualizes meanings away from their original source and mode of articulation, and rearticulates them into contexts of relative closure at different levels: linguistic nominalization, projection, print, built construction (Iedema, forthcoming).

Conclusion This article has illustrated by means of two separate examples how formal closure is dynamically achieved in bureaucratic interaction. The first example demon-



strated how interactional dynamics, which revealed subtle and complex power plays, are resolved before becoming bureaucratically processable. The report which summarized the outcome of these negotiations mentioned only the ideational details, and entirely elided the interpersonal dynamics. Reference to people’s official title and rank was made only in the PDP’s Acknowledgements. The second example demonstrated how informal, ‘profane’ talk is gradually reconstituted as formal, ‘sacred’ language. The trajectory here led from highly personal and congruent linguistic forms, via their projection as metaphenomena, to a formal and impersonal logic which transcends common, here-and-now reality. While this formalizing shift could be described merely in terms of differences between speech and writing (Halliday, 1985; Jönnson and Linell, 1991), it is crucial, I suggest, to link it in with the nature of the bureaucratic process which it realizes, and with the consequences for interactants, their shared meanings, as well as the ultimate appearance of their semiotic-material environment. Formalization, in this sense, is a dynamic and social co-construction of agreements7 and of reasonings, but also of more time–space distanced phenomena such as infrastructures, architectures, and technologies, all of which accrue socio-historical relevance and significance. The analysis has foregrounded the dynamic co-construction of such outcomes in the process towards bureaucratic closure. Considered multimodally, the article has emphasized the continuity between interaction (Bourdieu’s 1981, ‘structuring’) and those aspects of social life usually relegated to ‘macro context’, the ‘structured’, the ‘material’, or ‘space’. This article aims to make the point that the dynamics considered here, while taking place in ‘local’ places and times, are far from purely local: they mobilize resources which span a range of local and global time–spaces or ‘spatio-temporalities’ (Harvey, 1996: 401). And through this mobilization of resources which span a range of time–spaces, interaction surpasses the localness usually associated with it or ascribed to it. The contemporary emphasis on the local, while it enhances certain kinds of sensitivities, totally erases others and thereby truncates rather than emancipates the field of political engagement and action. While we may all have some ‘place’ (or ‘places’) in the order of things, we can never be purely ‘local’ beings, no matter how hard we try. (Harvey, 1996: 353)

Interactive dynamics are therefore not exhaustively describable on the basis of such (albeit crucial) interactive issues as ‘the allocation and size of turns among the parties, providing for the organized production of stretches of talk into coherent sequences and courses of action’ (Schegloff, 1987: 221). These dynamics need to be seen as being as much grounded in structured exchange and content (turn-taking, grammar and semantics) as in material realization (as gesture, sound, print, or brick). It is the interplay between structured contents and their materialities which constitutes and drives the social process, and which ultimately determines its meaning.


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Discourse & Society 10(1) NOTES

1. Compare Callon and Latour’s notion of ‘resistivity’ (Callon and Latour, 1981: 284). 2. AHS are regional sub-branches of the DoH. 3. Sarangi and Slembrouck’s (1996) descriptions are ‘pragmatic’ and are not concerned with the more structural and formal aspects of bureaucratic discourse. 4. Metaphenomena are what the literature refers to as ‘(in)direct quotes’. 5. Halliday’s notion of Fact noun refers to lexical items which can occur with embedded projections but which do not suggest a sayer or a senser (e.g. ‘the requirement that staff attend’; ‘the chance that people might show up’; Halliday, 1994: 268). 6. Jönsson and Linell (1991: 435) treat projection as merely an aspect of the bureaucrat’s ‘stylistic repertory’, and thereby miss its crucial significance as ‘resemioticiser’: projection alters the reality status of what is projected (see Thibault, 1991: 31 ff.). 7. The term ‘agreement’ is not used to suggest that every stakeholder was in full and conscious knowledge of all the details, implications, and consequences of the final formulation of the PDP report. It is used to suggest that it attained the status of ‘agreement’ despite certain kinds of inclusion and exclusion that came into play. ‘It is misleading and incorrect to think of an agreement as an actuarial device . . .’ (Garfinkel, 1967: 74).

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Iedema: Formalizing organizational meaning Iedema, R. (1997a) ‘Interactional Dynamics and Social Change: Planning as Morphogenesis’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sydney. Iedema, R. (forthcoming) ‘Bureaucratic Planning and Resemiotisation’, in E. Ventola (ed.) Proceedings of the Halle Systemic Functional Workshop 1997 [Pragmatics and Beyond Series]. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Irvine, J. (1979) ‘Formality and Informality in Communicative Events’, American Anthropologist 81(4): 773–90. Jönsson, L. and Linell, P. (1991) ‘Story Generations: From Dialogical Interviews to Written Reports in Police Interrogations’, Text 11(3): 419–40. Latour, B. (1988) The Pasteurization of France, transl. by A. Sheridan and J. Law. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Latour, B. (1990) ‘The Force and the Reason of Experiment’, in H. E. LeGrand (ed.) Experimental Inquiries, pp. 49–80. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. Latour, B. and Woolgar, S. (1986) Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Martin, J. R. (1993) ‘Life as a Noun: Arresting the Universe in Science and Humanities’, in M. Halliday and J. R. Martin (eds) Writing Science: Literacy and Discursive Power, pp. 221–67. London: Falmer Press. Roe, E. (1994) Narrative Policy Analysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Sarangi, S. and Slembrouck, S. (1996) Language, Bureaucracy and Social Control. London: Longman. Schegloff, E. (1987) ‘Between Micro and Macro: Contexts and Other Connections’, in J. Alexander, B. Giesen, R. Munch, and N. Smelser (eds) The Micro–Macro Link, pp. 207–36. Berkeley: University of California Press. Thibault, P. (1991) Social Semiotics as Praxis. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Walton, E. J. (1980) ‘Formal Structure: A Review of the Empirical Relationships between Task Differentiation, Role Prescription and Authority Dispersion’, Organization Studies 1(3): 229–51.

currently works as Research Associate with the School of Health Services Management, Centre for Hospital Management and Information Systems Research (University of New South Wales). He researches the discursive–practical disjunctions between requirements of hospital economic efficiency and the moral or ‘purist’ imperative of humanist clinical care. He studied organizational interaction in the area of mental health policy planning, which provides the basis for his PhD on organizational semiotics. He has written two major research reports for the NSW Department of Education. He has further published several articles in a range of areas, including legal English, teacher talk, the semiotics of women’s magazines and political newsreporting. A D D R E S S : Information Systems Research School of Health Services Management, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052 NSW, Australia. [email: [email protected] or [email protected]]

RICK IEDEMA


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