DIALOGS 

Dialogs is the Rhetoric of $pinmeisters and the Discourse of the World about Corporate Behavior

There is a multiplicity of dialogs to be analyzed in this fourth SEPTET element. The purpose of this site is to give basic definitions of Dialogs. You can then move on the Enron sites for examples of Dialogs. 

Dialogs are defined as rhetoric and discourse. (1) Rhetoric is the obfuscating language and double-speak mixed with euphoric testimonials and bland reassurances attain and shed meanings. Dialog is the scripted and off-scripted, con-scripted and de-scripted, and rescripted rhetorical acts of leaders and followers, regulators and stars of Metatheatre. (2) Dialogs is discourse, the multiple discourses of stakeholders about corporate behavior. 

I unbundled two Aristotelian elements (rhythm & dialog) that Burke (1945) reduced to agency. Texts are systems suspended in intertextual dialogue with texts of other times and places. “As such, the intertextual network is  [dialogically] antenarrative in its dynamic, unfinished and embedded qualities” (Boje, 2001a: 74, additions mine). Dialogs can be scripted, and con-scripted, and used to persuade and to control spectator behavior. 

Aristotle on Dialogs – (or Dictions) – Dialog, for Aristotle, is the “means of their [i.e. stories’] imitation” (1449b: 31, bracketed addition mine). Dialog means “merely this, the composition of the verses” (1449b: 34), the “expression of their [agent’s] thoughts in words” (1450b: 14, bracketed additions, mine). Dialog for Aristotle is the Rhetoric of persuasion. Dialog for Aristotle, was not explained in the Poetics (350 BCE) book, it is however the central topic of another of his books, Rhetoric. 

At one extreme, corporate theatre can oppress by subordinating everyone and collapsing everything to one dialogic-script, such as McDonaldization, or a Disneyfied corporate culture where everyone is a “cast member” and executives are “directors” and “script writers” or “editors” and “dialog coaches” and cast members who do not know their lines are fired (See Disneyfication Chapter of Theatres of Capitalism). At the other extreme, corporate theatre can be highly pluralistic, a construction of multiple scripts, too many directors, and a network of simultaneous performances on a network of stages. And there is dialogic resistance, the carnivalesque protest dialog that follows predatory corporate spectacles around the globe, then enacts with dialogs of deconstruction and satire. In more post-bureaucratic forms, there is a polyphony of voices, and less hierarchy.  

Dialogs do something, they contextualize and realize, decontextualize and derealize social practices and material conditions ('reality'). Dialogs ontologize. Dialogs play a central role in Global Capitalism. Dialogs do not just mirror the world in sense making, dialogs are world-creating. Dialogs constitute the world by naming "reality (in the Burkean Rhetoric of Motives sense) and dialogs construct event chains (in the Fairclough sense) and dialogs contextualized and decontextualize social networks (and quasi-object networks in the Latourian sense). Dialogs construct and deconstruct conflicting "corporate We's" and corporate I's (Burke, 1937: 289). For Burke the corporate We's are shaped by scene (situation or contextual constraints, which I study as Spectacles in SEPTET) and by agency (which I am decomposing back to Aristotle's dialogs/rhetorics & rhythms in SEPTET). Therefore in SEPTET terms, the corporate 'We's' and 'I's' of dialogs are character identities shaped by and constitutive of Spectacle (socio-economic situations). We's and I's are dialogic voices whose rhetoric is endemic to spectacles.  Characters are necessary to constitute spectacles of corporate power in events of Metatheatre. Thus in the SEPTET dramatistic method various elements come into being in relation to other elements (e.g. dialogs to spectacles; characters to dialogs; dialogs to frames) to bring realities in and out of being in relations of social power (Fairclough, 1992) and con-scripting disciplinary knowledge and surveillance (Foucault, 1979).  Power and knowledge is located and constructed in dialogs. Non-dialog social practice (performance routines) are effected by dialog (and vice versa).  In Foucault-language, dialogs construct " 'regime' of Truth' (1984: 74). 

In short, dialog is the prison of persuasion. In resisting dialogs, people can improve their consciousness of material conditions of situations of oppression (Freire, 1970) by rescripting dialog in events of postmodern Poetics, what Boal calls the Theatre of the Oppressed (1979), and in SEPTET language, the rehearsals of alternative dialogs to the scripted dialogs for we employees and consumers of spectacles of oppression, in Theatres of Capitalism (Boje, 2002c).

Critical Dialog Analysis (CDA). Dialogs is also about the Dialectics of Dialogs (Fairclough, 2002). Norman Fairclough uses the terms Critical Discourse Analysis, but I prefer the terms, 'Critical Dialog Analysis' (CDA). CDA is a "resource for Showing how discourse (language, semiosis, texts, utterances) figures in social processes and social change, in dialectical relations with other social elements" (Fairclough, 2002: 1). CDA was developed in Fairclough (1992) then extended to a critical realism position in subsequent work (Fairclough, Jessop & Sayer, forthcoming; Fairclough 2000, 2003 ).  Critical realism moves from sense making to a social ontology; to the ways social practices (orders of discourse) change social events (texts & talk) and social structures. Discourse (utterances & texts) enter into the causal effects of events, into ontology (ways of being), which is more than sense making epistemology (ways of knowing). A CDA focuses on how dialogs affect emergent 'global' networks of social practices (order of discourses) via recontextualization, local negotiation, and restructuring processes.  The analysis traces how dialogs diffuse and colonize other dialogs, making local adaptations and appropriations. In an interdialog analysis to focus is on how talk and text set up relations of equivalence and difference.  For example, with the new language of teams, "departments" equivalent to "teams," and "supervisors" are no different than the new "facilitators." Dialectic of dialogs analysis traces the way in which language terms are operationalized in social practices. Characters have ways of talking and acting, and their dialogs are ways of representing character identities in their talk and texts. The ways of dialoging, characterizing, theming, and framing (to tie in other Septet elements), are elements of social practices (orders of dialog), the ways of being in dialog. CDA focuses on how different types (genres) of dialogs are articulated, contextualized, and realized together in inter-dialog mixes.  The genre of talk is different from the genre of written text.

Dialogs of New Capitalism - The New Capitalism (Fairclough 2000) includes changes in dialogs that affect changes in social practices (orders of dialog) in ways that transform capitalism. Events are plotted into chains or networks of events and text and talk are elements of the chaining and contextualizing of events into plots (See Plots in Septet analysis). For example there is oral talk among accountants, lawyers, regulators, stock rating firms, and corporate executives that is translated and shaped into written press releases, stock charts, and into the corporation's annual report. This is followed by a gaggle of discourses in the business press, in wire services, and Internet discussions that retranslates the implication of the annual report and all its footnoted attestations. Through translation processes this chain of relations of different types or genres of discourses (talk, chat, meeting, report, release, news article, journal article) constitutes a network of dialogs whose interconnections (inter-dialogs) is about power and knowledge. It is through inter-dialog chains that subjects are characterized and constituted in networks of power (Foucault, 1997: 318). And it is through chains of inter-dialog that the New Capitalism is constituted in its power and knowledge (Fairclough, 2002: 4). Dialogs about capitalism chain together (emplot) events in talk and texts, into chains of dialogs that are proximate and remote from climatic or catastrophic events (See Enron Dialogs for examples). Changes and transformations of New Capitalism are dialogic.  The chains of dialogs extend in both time (history) and space (spectacles of socio-economic) situations. 

In sum, dialogs are one of the seven (septet) elements of theatre.  It is through theatric dialogs that capitalism recontextualizes and decontextualizes; New Economy speak is realized in corporate Spectacle theatre is dialectically opposed by Carnivalesque theatres of resistance. Through inter-dialog dialectic (chains & networks) Capitalism is transforming. In CDA there is an analysis of the chains and networks of dialogs (texts & talk), and the way these dialogs (genre chains) connect events, including how chronology becomes plotted into narrative.

Bunkum Dialogs?

Bunkum is defined as masterful, intoxicating prose or speech-making using such nonsense, claptrap, and rubbish to surround ludicrously false statements used to commit fraud by gaining public applause. Bunkum is dialog used for show. According to E. Cobham Brewer's (1810–1897) Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898) Bunkum is the name of a western North Carolina county, where in 1820, Felix Walker, "a representative at Congress being asked why he made such a flowery and angry speech, so wholly uncalled for, made answer, “I was not speaking to the House, but to Buncombe,” which he represented (North Carolina)". 

Meehan (1996), an English Professor in South Australia writes about the State Bank Bunkum case in Australia. Through dialogs of "rich 'placatory' proses" and "mellifluous corporate gibberish" and "general 'obfuscation" the State Bank's management was able to effect bunkum. A Royal Commission was set up in Australia in 1991 to investigate the collapse of the State Bank. This was the greatest financial disaster in Australian history, a loss of four billion dollars. John Bannon *State Premier and Treasurer fo South Australia) testified that "he simply didn't realize that much of the information coming up to the Board, and coming up to Treasury and government, was 'a lot of bunkum'" (Meehan, 1996: 1). The dialogs the Board and Treasury were given by the State Bank amounted to "corporate gibberish" an artful "sophistry" riddled with "management jargon," "double-speak" and "double-talk" (p. 1). Through dialog, the state Bank managers were able to create a facade and charade of words whose obfuscation and platitudes comforted and deceived the regulators and politicians. The Board had the responsibility of overseeing the State Bank, but the Bank's CEO used clichés, jargon, and platitudes and a pile of papers "more than a foot thick" to keep the Board in confusion, and away from reality. The State Bank was plunging towards disaster (p. 2), while the CEO painted misleading, yet "colorful pictures" and told stories.  Bunkum dialog preempted clear thinking. 

Meehan (1996: 6) theorizes a kind of "dual kaleidoscope, in which the shifting phases of the 'real picture' could be inserted, at each point in the narrative, against the shifting 'rose-tinted' visions of management" and these pictures needed to be framed by a further legal picture of the kind that assigns legal responsibility." 

SEPTET DIALOG QUESTIONS:

1. DIALOG - Whose voice is included, excluded, or marginalized in the dialogs? What metaphors and tropes are circulated in and between dialogs? What are the boundaries between dialogs?
2. PLOTS - What events are included and excluded in the plots of the dialogs? What social practices does the network of dialogs transform through its emplotments?  How are events realized and derealized in dialogs?
3. CHARACTERS - How are characters constructed in the dialogs? Whose included and excluded in the cast of characters invited to dialog? E.G. Do we limit the cast of characters to corporate players, or do we include all the institutions of a Capitalist Society who dialog? In the case of Enron, do we limit the cast of characters to Fastow, Skilling, & Lay or do we expand the cast to the dialogs among the WTO, IMF, and World Bank?  Who we include as the cast of  characters in the the dialogs will define our perps, victims, and invisible characters. Various case studies of recent corporate scandals define their cast of characters quite differently. 
4. FRAMES - What organizing frames (ideologies) are embedded in the assumptions circulating in dialogs? E.g. How is the New Economy dialog of Free Market capitalism a political and colonizing project to restructure capitalism? E.G. How is neo-liberal dialog bring about a recontextualization of capitalism? What networks of dialogs is a particular dialogic frame a part of?  What frames (managerialism, free market, critical theory, deregulation, democratic participation) do characters commit themselves to in their dialogs?  What is the dialectics of dialogs among the frames? 
5. THEMES - What themes of oppression and resistance weave in the dialogs? What themes of exploitation are dialectic to themes of liberation? How are these themes part of the Metascripting of government guidelines, accounting rules, campaign contrition legislation,  executive stock option scripts? 
6. RHYTHMS - How open or closed is the temporal rhythm of the dialogs? 
7. SPECTACLES - What is the dialectic relation between dialogs styles of spectacles (e.g.  concentrated, diffused,  integrated & mega)? What is the dialectic of spectacles of power/knowledge with carnivalesque dialogs of resistance within Theatres of Capitalism? How is each dialog situated within a (genre) chain of types of dialogs (talk/conversation/chat, meeting/presentation/speech, script, text/report/release, scenario)? 

How Do Dialogs Relate to Enron?

Enron is an excellent opportunity to study processes of antenarrative-dialog production, distribution and consumption that emerge in corporate as well as congressional theatre. Corporate theatre is defined here as a performance system of antenarrative production, distribution, and consumption, suspended in intertextual dialogue with events (and texts) antenarratively related to other times and places. This is a dialog network and chaining among institutions such as regulators, analysts, heads of state, Business Colleges, and the Academies of management, accounting, economics, finance, and marketing.  As in Meehan's (1996) analysis of the collapse of a State Bank in 1991, through CEO's use of obfuscating dialogs is correlated with the bunkum dialog used by Enron's CEOs and executives until the collapse of 2001. Bunkum speech-making and document proliferation was able to confuse and deceive board members, regulators, auditors, investors, analysts, politicians and Business professors into thinking that collapse and fraud was not happening. Enron bunkum persisted such that stakeholders suspended disbelief that fraud was being committed in the midst of the verbal charade. Enron ran a "kaleidoscope" of screens and word pictures between the raptor partners and the Enron board, its audit committing, and a hoard of spectators who were overeager to suspend disbelief in exchange for platitudes. Through creative accounting language, investors were dazzled into suspending critical thinking. Dialogs are full of concealments, and beneath the surface of communication prose, fraud can be committed, in the midst of collapse. Through a combination of "conscious disguise" and "obfuscation" Enron's management used dialogs as part of its corporate theatre, to use words as a "smoke-screen" of "corporate jargon" to commit (alleged) fraud. 

Go to Enron SEPTET Dialogs Page Now to Continue this analysis. 

Our point is quite simple. Enron is Theatre. Enron accomplishes its theatre to persuade and seduce employees, investors, and students into the willing suspension of disbelief. We live in what Boje (2002c) calls Theatres of Capitalism, in what Guy Debord (1967) calls the Society of the Spectacle and what our friends A. Fuat Firat and Nikhilesh Dholakia call the Political Economy of Theatres of Consumption (1998). 

References

Boje, D. M. (2001a). Narrative Methods for Organizational and Communication Research. London Sage.

Boje, D. M. (2001b). Carnivalesque Resistance to Global Spectacle: A Critical Postmodern Theory of Public Administration. Administrative Theory & Praxis. Vol. 23 (3): 431-458.

Boje, D. M. (2001c). Global Theatrics and Capitalism. Presentation to Academy of Management Conference, Washington D.C., August.

Boje, D. M. (2002a). Critical Dramaturgical Analysis of Enron Antenarratives and Metatheatre. Plenary presentation to 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July (London).
http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/ENRON_critical_dramaturgical_analysis.htm

Boje, D. M. (2002b) Enron Metatheatre: A Critical Dramaturgy Analysis of Enron’s Quasi-Objects. Paper presented at the Networks, Quasi-Objects, and Identity: Reintegrating Humans, Technology, and Nature session of Denver Academy of Management Meetings. Tuesday August 13, 2002.
  http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/papers/enron_theatre_LJM.htm

Boje, D. M. (2002c) Theatres of Capitalism. Book being published by Hampton Press (San Francisco). Available until publication, on line, at http://business.nmsu.edu/~dboje/theatrics/index.htm (password is required).

Boje, D. M., Ann L. Cunliffe & John T. Luhman (2002). A dialectic perspective on the organizational theatre metaphor. Paper under review.

Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). The Metatheatre Intervention Manual. To be published by ISEOR Research Institute of University of Lyon 2, France.

Boje, D. M. & G. A. Rosile (2002a). Theatrics of SEAM. Paper to be published in Journal of Organizational Change Management Special Issue on Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), guest edited by Henri Savall.

Boje, D. M., Grace Ann Rosile, Rita A. Durant & John T. Luhman (2002). Enron spectacle theatrics: A critical dramaturgical analysis. Under review at Organization Studies, for special issue on organization theatre.

Burke, K (1937). Attitudes towards history. Berkeley: University of California Press. 

Burke, K. (1945). A grammar of motives. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. 

Burke, K (1950). A Rhetoric  of Motives. Cleveland, OHMeridian Books (1962) or Berkeley: University of California Press for 1950 edition. 

Debord Guy (1967). Society of the Spectacle. La Société du Spectacle was first published in 1967 by Editions, Buchet-Chastel (Paris); it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre (Paris). The full text is available in English at http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/index.html It is customary to refer to paragraph numbers in citing this work. 

Duffy, Michael (2002). By the Sign of the Crooked E. Time.com, February 27. Accessed on web http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,195268,00.html  

Fairclough, Norman (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Polity Press. 

Fairclough, Norman (2000). New Labour, New language? London/NY: Routledge. 

Fairclough, Norman (2002) New Capitalism: A Critical Discourse Analysis Perspective. Plenary presentation to the 5th International Conference on Organizational Discourse: From Micro-Utterances to Macro-Inferences, Wednesday 24th - Friday 26th July (London).

Fairclough, Norman (2003) Textual Analysis for Social Research.  London/NY: Routledge. Available Spring 2003. 

Fairclough, Norman, R. Jessop, & A Sayer (forthcoming). A critical realist interpretation of the effectivity of the production of meaning. In J. Roberts (ed) Critical Realism, Deconstruction and Discourse. Routledge. 

Firat, Fuat A. & Nikhilesh Dholakia (1997). Consuming People: From Political Economy to Theatres of Consumption. London/NY: Routledge. 

Foucault, M. (1979). Discipline And Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated from the French by Alan Scheridan. NY: Vitage Books (A Division of Random House).

Foucault, M. (1984). The Foucault reader (P. Rabinow, Ed.). NY: Pantheon. 

Foucault, M. (1997). What is enlightenment. In Paul Rabinow (ed) Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984 Vol. 1, Ethics. Penguin. 

Freire, Paulo (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Translated by Myra Bergman Ramos. NY: The Seabury Press (A Continuum Book).  

London, Simon & Sheila McNulty (2001).  Enron flickers: Once a paragon of the new economy. Financial Times (London). October 29, London Edition, pg. 22.  

Meehan, Michael (1996). Accounting for Postmodernism: State bank bunkum and the four billion dollar blowout. Critical Perspectives on Accounting Symposium paper. April 26-28. City University, New York.

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