Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Organization Studies
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Right arrow Citation Map
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (7)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Brown, A. D.
Right arrow Articles by Coupland, C.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Sounds of Silence: Graduate Trainees, Hegemony and Resistance

Andrew D. Brown

University of Bath, UK, andrew.brown{at}management.bath.ac.uk

Christine Coupland

University of Nottingham, UK, Christine.Coupland{at}nottingham.ac.uk

This paper analyses how graduate trainees in one UK-based private sector retail organization talked about being silenced. The paper illustrates how the trainees’ constructions formed a set of discursive practices that were implicated in the constitution of the organization as a regime of power, and how they both accommodated and resisted these practices. Our case focuses on the trainees’ discursive construction of normative pressures to conform, compliant and non-compliant types of worker, and explicit acts of silencing, together with their reflexive interrogation of the nexus of discursive constraints on their opportunities to be heard. Drawing on the analytical resources associated with the ‘linguistic turn’ in organization studies, our research is an exploration of the importance of language as a medium of social control and power, and means of self-authorship. It is also an attempt to locate ‘silence’ in putatively polyphonic organizations.

Key Words: silence • discourse • power • resistance • identity • impression management

Organization Studies, Vol. 26, No. 7, 1049-1069 (2005)
DOI: 10.1177/0170840605053540
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Marketing TheoryHome page
S. Bohm and V. Brei
Marketing the hegemony of development: of pulp fictions and green deserts
Marketing Theory, December 1, 2008; 8(4): 339 - 366.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATIONHome page
Guowei Jian, A. M. Schmisseur, and G. T. Fairhurst
Organizational discourse and communication: the progeny of Proteus
Discourse & Communication, August 1, 2008; 2(3): 299 - 320.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 DISCOURSE & COMMUNICATIONHome page
L. L. Putnam
Images of the communication-- discourse relationship
Discourse & Communication, August 1, 2008; 2(3): 339 - 345.
[PDF]

Home page
 OrganizationHome page
N. Beech
On the Nature of Dialogic Identity Work
Organization, January 1, 2008; 15(1): 51 - 74.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Organization StudiesHome page
A. Spicer and S. Bohm
Moving Management: Theorizing Struggles against the Hegemony of Management
Organization Studies, November 1, 2007; 28(11): 1667 - 1698.
[Abstract] [PDF]

Home page
 Human RelationsHome page
M. Kornberger and A. D. Brown
`Ethics' as a discursive resource for identity work
Human Relations, March 1, 2007; 60(3): 497 - 518.
[Abstract] [PDF]