Abstract
This chapter offers several innovative ways to craft institutional language so that it is more inclusive, flexible, and sustainable. Mayock examines speeches and informal messages generated by institutional leaders to suggest ways in which the institution can implement consistent messages in original ways.
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Notes
- 1.
Martin lists nine strategies for deconstructing organizational language. These include dismantling a dichotomy; examining silences; attending to disruptions and contradictions; focusing on the element that is most alien to a text or a context; interpreting metaphors as a rich source of multiple meanings; analyzing “double-entendres” that may point to an unconscious subtext, often sexual in content; separating group-specific and more general sources of bias by “reconstructing” the text with iterative substitution of phrases; exploring the unexpected ramifications and inherent limitations of minor policy changes; and using the limitations exposed by “reconstruction” to explain the persistence of the status quo and the need for more ambitious change programs (355). Martin suggests that it would be a useful exercise to perform deconstructions from a variety of ideological viewpoints in order to have a grasp on how different employees interpret a variety of work situations. On a more general note, Sheryl Sandberg, in her final chapter of Lean In, states: “We need to be grateful for what we have but dissatisfied with the status quo. This dissatisfaction spurs the charge to change. We must keep going” (172).
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Mayock, E. (2016). Thinking About Institutional Language in New Ways. In: Gender Shrapnel in the Academic Workplace. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_10
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-50830-0_10
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