Organization as an Effect of Mediation: Redefining the Link Between Organization and Communication

Abstract

How can we explain a phenomenon as general and as central as social organization? This is the question discussed in this article. Starting from the analysis of uttering, and more generally, communication, it attempts to demonstrate the profoundly organizing nature of communication. Speech act theory (Austin, Searle, and Vanderveken) is used and reformulated in a new analytical model based on the concept of “modality” borrowed from the Greimassian theory and the Semantics of Modality Theory (Palmer, Bybee, and Fleischman). Through this analysis, the concepts of “interobjectivity” and “mediation,” presented by Latour as the foundations of the collective, are translated and extended to all enunciative activity. This parallel allows us to present communication as an activity of mediation which consists of illocutionarily distributing and perlocutorily fixing enablements and constraints which form the basis of all organizational structure. Key words: organization, communication, mediation, speech acts, Austin, Searle, semiotics, Greimas, semantics of modality, sociology of translation, actor-network theory, transformation, structure, interobjectivity.