Transgenic Transformational Dialogue

In a world that demands our utmost creativity and resilience to support needed changes in sustainability and social justice, wild language is an accessible and extraordinary approach to generating innovative responsiveness. Wild language is a mysterious process of articulating of something unknown or unintelligible that alters the trajectory of our perceptions, and thus, our actions. This paper first gathers together various descriptions of verbal expression that overcomes the trappings of rational, constricted thought to demonstrate the raw power of wild language. It then discusses wild language as equivalent to agentic presence in the world in its capacity to expose and engage unseen fields of possibility. Finally, it identifies three examples in which the communicative force of wild language is positively transforming cultural and conceptual trends in our social and environmental life.

Most of us feel more comfortable in certain groups than others, and indeed find certain people just plain wrong headed or evil -perhaps neo-Nazis, the KKK, the Mafia, terrorist groups. This sense of alterity -distance or separation from particular others -is virtually an inevitable outcome of social life. As we come to generate realities and moralities within specific groups -families, friendships, the workplace, the religious setting -so do our interlocutors become invaluable resources. With their support -either explicit or implicit -we gain the sense of who we are, what is real, and what is right. At the same time, all world constructions and their associated forms of relational life create a devalued exterior -a realm that is not us, not what we believe, not true, not good. In important degree this devaluation derives from the structure of language out of which we construct our realities. Language is essentially a differentiating medium, with every word separating that which is named or indicated from that which is not (absent, contrary). Thus, whenever we declare what is the case or what is good, we use words that privilege certain existents while thrusting the absent and the contrary to the margins. An emphasis on the material basis of reality suppresses or devalues the spiritual; an emphasis on the world as observed subtlety undermines beliefs in the unseen and intuitive, and so on. In effect, for every reality there is alterity. These proposals are all congenial to a view of reality as socially constructed (see .

Relationships between people and the places they inhabit have become increasingly driven by rationality, process and a desire for visible and tangible outcomes. Whilst this attention to the measurable and manifest may have improved efficiency, productivity and material outcomes, it has been devastating on the social and emotional wellbeing of many.

Speaking is a normal, a special and ubiquitous human activity. Speaking or writing as a subjective and willful activity directed at others takes place within a dense set of behavioral norms. Speaking also activates selectively resources, concepts, logics and rules in language. We investigate the power of the language institution, speech-acting, constructed narratives and deliberations in creating social innovations. We look at new organizations, especially the constitution of new groups with operative collective intentions as social innovations. We ask how speech-acting theory can add or deepen insight into the constitution, the creation, the sustainability and the breakdown of organizations. Speech-acting theory has a focus on rationality as reasoning. Both Amartya Sen and John Searle have delved into reasoning – as creative subjectivity in multi-institutional settings. We try to exploit critically some of their philosophical findings into the field of empirical organization and social innovation studies.

International Journal of Public Administration, 2001

Most of us feel more comfortable in certain groups than others, and indeed find certain people just plain wrong headed or evil -perhaps neo-Nazis, the KKK, the Mafia, terrorist groups. This sense of alterity -distance or separation from particular others -is virtually an inevitable outcome of social life. As we come to generate realities and moralities within specific groups -families, friendships, the workplace, the religious setting -so do our interlocutors become invaluable resources. With their support -either explicit or implicit -we gain the sense of who we are, what is real, and what is right. At the same time, all world constructions and their associated forms of relational life create a devalued exterior -a realm that is not us, not what we believe, not true, not good. In important degree this devaluation derives from the structure of language out of which we construct our realities. Language is essentially a differentiating medium, with every word separating that which is named or indicated from that which is not (absent, contrary). Thus, whenever we declare what is the case or what is good, we use words that privilege certain existents while thrusting the absent and the contrary to the margins. An emphasis on the material basis of reality suppresses or devalues the spiritual; an emphasis on the world as observed subtlety undermines beliefs in the unseen and intuitive, and so on. In effect, for every reality there is alterity. These proposals are all congenial to a view of reality as socially constructed (see .

Journal of Management Development, 2010

Purpose-This paper proposes a perspective of change agency that builds on the regenerative power of language achieved through ongoing talk and conversations associated with managing change. It seeks to elaborate on the role of speech in helping one to see change as a continuous stream of socially constructed utterances. Design/methodology/approach-Configurations have played a central role in determining the extent of fit or misfit between entities-a prelude for steering change and modes of intervention. Much of the reliance on the notion of fit or misfit between entities has been largely driven by conceptions of organizations as consisting of objective entities. But change is not separate from its own construction; conduct of change is deeply rooted in meanings people attach to events. The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency; one that builds on the role of language in constructing change. Findings-The social construction of meaning remains crucial for building connections with organizational identity. The main finding is that there is a very rich meeting point where both language and social construction converge to find each other. For change to take root, change agents would need to emphasize the social co-construction of meaning and to focus on the role utterance plays in the formation of organizational identity. Originality/value-The paper develops a constructionist perspective of change agency (regenerative and transforming qualities); one that builds on the role of language in constructing change.

How do social entrepreneurs employ language to bring about a change in the structure of society and institutions? Drawing on discourse as the main epistemology in institutional theory, this research applies corpus linguistics (CL) –– a relatively new approach in studying discourse –– to identify the institutional-change work performed by social entrepreneurs. By applying CL on a small, specialized corpus of a Chinese social enterprise that offers taxi services to a specialty market — elders and physically disabled residents — and has institutionalized wheelchair accessible transportation in Hong Kong (China), this research found 17 discourse orientations (i.e., problem, difficulty, empowerment, beneficiary, altruistic, social process, economic, opportunity, sustainability, partnership, resource, solution, government-as-enabler, social business identity, change-making, mission, and impact) that can be aggregated into five meta discourses: problematization, empowerment, marketization, resource mobilization, and publicness. It also reveals the influence of collaborative efforts performed by volunteers, media, educational institutions and the State in institutionalizing and legitimizing wheelchair accessible public transport and social enterprises. This study also uncovers the influence of prior institutional context on the institutionalization of SE. This research suggests new avenues to better integrate social work, public administration, and sustainability research –– cognate disciplines at the fringes of SE –– to inform future SE research. Finally, this study articulates the promise of corpus linguistics as a primary or supplementary method for future SE discourse research.

This paper aims to extend the understanding of the ways in which social entrepreneurs give sense to and legitimize their work by introducing a rhetoric-orientation view of social entrepreneurship (SE). This study uses computer-aided text analysis and computational linguistics to study 191 interviews of social and business entrepreneurs. It offers validation and exploration of new concepts pertaining to the rhetoric orientations of SE. This study confirms prior untested assumptions that the rhetoric of social entrepreneurs is more other, stakeholder engagement and justification-oriented and less self-oriented than the rhetoric of business entrepreneurs. It also confirms that the rhetoric of both types of entrepreneurs is equally economically oriented. This research makes new contribution to the SE literature by introducing three new orientations, namely, solution, impact and geographical, which reflect distinctive rhetorical themes used by social entrepreneurs, and by revealing that social entrepreneurs use terms associated with other, stakeholder engagement, justification, economic, solution, impact and geographical orientations differently than business entrepreneurs