Possibilities of incorporating Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis into the study of organizations

Abstract

We start from an epistemological gap in papers on discourse analysis applied to management to introduce possibilities of incorporating Norman Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis (CDA) into organizational studies. CDA sees organizations as ideological and discursive formations, bringing up the relation between ideology, hegemony, and discourse. In fact, we give rise to reflection on the administration researcher’s object and working method. Fairclough’s proposal is clearly an alternative in this direction, as it enables an onto-epistemological reflection on organizations combined to a methodological effort, which ends up suggesting research alternatives on the emergence, hegemony, recontextualization, and discursive operation in the organizational routine. Finally, we believe that CDA plays the role of not separating the discourses of a particular field that is supposedly autonomous - such as a corporation - from their social context, something which enables a critical interpretation of organizations - detached from reified knowledge on management - and a reconnection of administration to the issues of contemporary society.

Keywords:
Discourse; Ideology; Critical discourse analysis; Norman Fairclough; Organizations.