François Cooren
Biographic Data
| ID | 1019792 |
|---|---|
| NAME | François Cooren |
| GIVEN NAMES | François |
| FAMILY NAME | Cooren |
| SIGNATURE | COOREN F |
| AFFILIATIONS | Université de Montréal |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8954-4511 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 57 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 305 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 52 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 4 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
To communicate is to make communicate: Interaction and ventriloquation in an instant messaging service
What happens when people interact through the exchange of texts in messaging software applications? Through these applications, people exchange messages that present them as doing certain things: informing, asking something, reassuring, joking, etc. These messages therefore act on people’s behalf. To account for this reality, we need to develop a theory of communication that allows us to analyze the phenomenon by which what we say or write speaks…
Envisioning sustainability through (un)shared professional visions of the “visual” materials of a design situation: A CCO approach
Purpose Communicating a clear, precise, interpretable and unambiguous visual message usually relies on a cross-disciplinary team of professionals. Their complementary visions can uncover which information matter and how it could be visually displayed to inform, sensitize and encourage people to act toward sustainability. While design studies generally claim that this team has to come to a shared vision, the authors question this assumption, which…
Investigating the making of organizational social responsibility as a polyphony of voices: A ventriloquial analysis of practitioners’ interactions
Though studies increasingly suggest nurturing a polyphonic and conflict-centered understanding of organizational social responsibility—referred to as CSR here—little is known about which voices make a difference (how and with what effect) when practitioners discuss CSR matters. Similarly, more work is needed on what and how tensions emerge in CSR planning, and how conflicts are addressed. By analyzing conversations with a ventriloquial framework,…
A critique of the adjacency pair dogma: The organization of interaction and the emergence of organized forms from basic organizing units
Drawing inspiration from key authors such as Weick, Taylor and Van Every, Greimas, Goffman, Sbisà, and Tsui, we propose to explore what we call the basic organizing unit, in other words, the minimal form that a sequence of action must take in order to claim a certain degree of organizationality. In order to empirically test this proposition, we purposively analyze interactions taking place outside of a classical organizational context, i.e., stre…
La base communicationnelle de l'organisation: Entre la conversation et le texte
Des travaux récents en sociologie de la connaissance scientifique nous amènent à penser que l'organisation existe dans les processus d'interprétation de ses membres. Une théorie de la communication est présentée qui considère le processus communicationnel comme une traduction ayant deux facettes, du texte à la conversation et de la conversation au texte. En nous servant de cette théorie comme base, une conception de formes complexes et étendues d…
Qu'est-ce qui rend la communication « organisationnelle »?: Comment les nombreuses voix d'une collectivité deviennent la voix unique d'une organisation
Comment une organisation se constitue-t-elle en tant qu'acteur? Cet article explore la propriété de la communication qui explique comment une organisation peut entrer dans le champ du discours, exprimer une intention et se voir accorder une voix. L'article soutient que la communication devient explicitement « organisationnelle » lorsqu'une agentivité collective trouve son expression dans une acteur identifiable, et que l'acteur est reconnu par la…
L’organisation comme effet de médiation: Redéfinir le lien entre organisation et communication
Comment expliquer un phénomène aussi général et aussi central que l’organisation sociale ? Telle est la question abordée dans cet article. Partant de l’analyse de l’énonciation, et plus généralement de la communication, celui-ci tente de démontrer la nature profondément organisante de la communication. La théorie des actes de langage (Austin, Searle et Vanderveken) est mobilisée et reformulée selon un nouveau modèle analytique basé sur le concept…
Petit traité de l’amour à l’usage des connards: Une approche économique de l’amour
Cette note de lecture fait la recension du « Petit traité de l’amour à l’usage des connards : Une approche économique de l’amour » publié par Bertrand Fauré chez l’Harmattan en 2021. François Cooren, l’auteur de cette note, montre comment Fauré parvient à déployer, d’une manière assez originale, les tenants et aboutissants d’une théorie monofactorielle de l’amour, une théorie selon laquelle ce sentiment permettrait d’expliquer la plupart de nos c…
The voice of the work to be made: Abductive communication and creativity
While artists often present their works as communicating to and through them, this idea has rarely been taken seriously, nor empirically studied from a communicational perspective. Building upon the pragmatist tradition, we show how this particular form of communication takes place. Using Peirce’s concept of abduction, we argue that a creative process essentially happens when a resonance between two materials leads to the unification of these mat…
The work of conflict mediation: Actors, vectors, and communicative relationality
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this artic…
At the Junction Between Subsistence and Reference: A Pragmatist Take on Interaction Analysis
This paper presents a view of interaction analysis that departs from the intersubjectivist assumptions that underlie its ethnomethodological tradition. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we propose to treat phenomena as being composed of relations; that is, as being constituted by passing through various things and beings. Extending Latour’s work on modernity, we argue that interaction analysts aim to capture social phenomena at the junction betw…
Reconciling dialogue and propagation: A ventriloquial inquiry
Dialoguing is about co-orienting to various elements of a situation, that propagate themselves in what people say and do. In other words, each time people talk about an element of a situation, whether it is the weather, the economy, or the declaration of a presidential candidate, it is, by definition, a way for it to transport itself through time and space, which is the essence of propagation. Language must therefore be rethought as something tha…
La culture en tant que cultivation: Vers une conception communicationnelle de la culture organisationnelle
Bien que le lien entre organisation, culture et communication soit établi de longue date, de façon surprenante, hormis quelques exceptions, peu de chercheurs semblent avoir étudié la culture organisationnelle en train de se re-produire, à partir d’une perspective résolument communicationnelle. La plupart des études qui ont tenté de le faire se sont surtout basées sur des entrevues, et non pas sur l’analyse d’interactions qui aurait permis de comp…
“The Magic of the Meeting Necessitates Having Multiple Voices Heard.” An Interview with François Cooren about Ventriloquism, Interaction, and the Montreal School
This interview with François Cooren, professor in the Department of Communication at the Université de Montréal, discusses his best-known contribution to communication theory, his metaphor of communication as ventriloquism. According to this perspective, we all have a “capacity to make other beings say or do things while we speak, write, or, more generally, conduct ourselves” (Cooren, 2012, p. 4). More specifically, the notion of “meetings” and t…
« La magie de la réunion nécessite de faire entendre plusieurs voix. » Un entretien avec François Cooren sur la ventriloquie, l’interaction et l’École de Montréal
Cette entrevue avec François Cooren, professeur au Département de communication de l’Université de Montréal, discute de sa contribution la plus connue à la théorie de la communication, sa métaphore de la communication comme ventriloquie. Selon cette perspective, nous avons tous une « capacité à faire dire ou faire faire des choses à d’autres entités lorsque nous parlons, écrivons ou, de façon plus large, agissons » (Cooren, 2010, p.4). Plus parti…
Embodiment in the Semiotic Matrix: Communicology in Peirce, Dewey, Bateson, and Bourdieu
Isaac E. Catt presents his latest book as a contribution to the philosophy of communication and what he calls the “human science of communicology” (p. 1), an approach that he has been defending, along with Richard L. Lanigan (1992) and others, for more than 30 years in various publications and teachings. Throughout this volume, Catt insists that communicology should be considered a human science and, in that respect, should be clearly distinguish…
Materializing Communication: Making the Case for a Relational Ontology
In this paper, I argue that materiality and sociality should be considered essential features of everything that exists; that is, two ways by which any being gives itself to be experienced. Insisting on the sociality of anything amounts to focusing on the relations that sustain its existence and identity, while insisting on its materiality consists of highlighting what this thing is made of, which also leads us to acknowledge its relationality. T…
Methodological and Ontological Principles of Observation and Analysis: Following and Analyzing Things and Beings in Our Everyday World
Analyzing online suicide prevention chats: A communicative constitutive approach
In this article, we propose to mobilize a communicative constitutive approach to analyze sessions that took place in the context of online suicide prevention chats in France. By analyzing the detail of a specific excerpt, we propose, more precisely, to draw a portrait of various figures that appear to express themselves in what could be called online help in action (see also Bartesaghi, 2014 ). Beyond the various psychotherapeutic approaches that…
Discourse Theory
Analyzing discourse consists of studying naturally occurring excerpts of language, whether in written or in oral form. While the study of d iscourse (with a small d) tends to focus on the eventful aspect of interactions, the study of D iscourse (with a big D) centers on the iterable aspects of verbal productions, that is, the extent to which certain genres, repertoires, or registers can be identified in what people say and write. After showing th…
Communicative Constitution of Organizations
Proposed in the 1980s, the idea that organizations are communicatively constituted amounts to searching in communication for the mechanisms that produce organizational forms. Communication, according to this perspective, should therefore be understood not as one variable among others, but as that which provides the building blocks that constitute organizations. Three scholars—Chester Barnard, Mary Parker Follett, and Gabriel Tarde—can be retrospe…
The Three Schools of CCO Thinking: Interactive Dialogue and Systematic Comparison
The idea of the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) has gained considerable attention in organizational communication studies. This rather heterogeneous theoretical endeavor is driven by three main schools of thought: the Montreal School of Organizational Communication, the Four-Flows Model (based on Giddens’s Structuration Theory), and Luhmann’s Theory of Social Systems. In this article, we let proponents of all three schools direc…
Communication as Organizing
Communication et organisation: Perspectives Critiques
Les transformations organisationnelles qui accompagnent l'évolution du capitalisme depuis 30 ans donnent une place centrale à la communication. Celle-ci est généralement appréhendée dans une optique descriptive d'étude des organisations, ou comme dispositif au service de la performance. Il existe cependant une tradition de recherche qui l'aborde dans une perspective critique. C'est à cette orientation que cet ouvrage est consacré : Qu'est-ce qu'u…
Communication As Organizing: Empirical and Theoretical Explorations in the Dynamic of Text and Conversation
Communication, Organizing and Organization: An Overview and Introduction to the Special Issue
This paper provides an overview of previous work that has explored the processes and mechanisms by which communication constitutes organizing (as ongoing efforts at coordination and control of activity and knowledge) and organizations (as collective actors that are 'talked' into existence). We highlight differences between existing theories and analyses grounded in communication-as-constitutive (CCO) perspectives and describe six overarching prem…
The coproduction of organizational presence: A study of Médecins Sans Frontières in action
In this article, we develop an analytical perspective to examine how an organization's mode of being is constituted and experienced through ongoing processes of communication. To show the use and implications of this perspective, we analyze how members and partners of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, a.k.a.`Doctors Without Borders'), a renowned humanitarian organization, coproduce and problematize the presence of their organization in the Democrati…
Leadership as the Hybrid Production of Presence(s)
Leadership scholars and lay actors often attribute a certain presence to great leaders in describing a commanding style or a charismatic personality. However, leadership presence and its mirror concept, absence, have been difficult concepts for researchers to study. This article proposes to redress this short coming using actor-network theory (ANT). In ANT, the focus is on human and nonhuman agents, their hybrid forms, networked socialaction, and…
What makes communication 'organizational
Communication as Ventriloquism: A Grounded-in-Action Approach to the Study of Organizational Tensions
Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicati…
Having to be: The possessive constitution of organization
How does an organization act? Can it be considered an actor on its own or does it need organizational members who act on its behalf? We would like to suggest our own take on the issue by suggesting a genuinely communicative approach to the issue of organizational action. Using the narratology of AJ Greimas to make apparent in talk some of process philosophy's tenets, we show how organizations act by being attributed actions. The detailed study of…
The Haunting Question of Textual Agency: Derrida and Garfinkel on Iterability and Eventfulness
In this article, I propose to broaden and deepen the concept of agency by focusing on what is called textual agency, the capacity of texts to do things in specific settings, and from that analysis, I draw implications for the way one conceives of how interaction works. This concept is drawn from complementary elements in Derrida's (1988, 1994) and Garfinkel's (1967, 2002) work in which deconstruction shows that for order to be found in situ, for …
Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening language studies to textual agency
Spacing Practices: The Communicative Configuration of Organizing Through Space-Times
This article pursues the constitutive premise of communication line of inquiry; using a space-time perspective to examine the ways that communication is constitutive of organization. Articulating a Communicative Constitution of Organizing approach with postmodern geography theories, it proposes a concept of space as an ongoing construct of multiple and heterogeneous sociomaterial interrelations. This results in an unfolding vision of organization…
A humanitarian organization in action: Organizational Discourse as an Immutable Mobile
Following Alvesson and Kärreman's (2000) influential essay on the modes and interpretation of organizational discourse, this article reports on a longitudinal study of naturally occurring interactions that took place before, during, and after a meeting between representatives of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), a well-known humanitarian organization, and representatives of local health centers in a region of the Democratic Repu…
Arguments for a Plurified View of the Social World: Spacing and timing as hybrid achievements
This article shows how the structuration of space and time occurs through the articulation of different agents' doings, whether these agents are human, technological or textual. Spacing and timing should therefore be considered hybrid achivements. This reflection then leads us to a reconceptualization of societies' and organizations' modes of being. Far from reifying these forms of life, that is to say, to transform them into things, this approac…
From agency to structure: Analysis of an episode in a facilitation process
In this article, we analyze an exercise in a facilitation process by showing that the structuring of this episode can be studied just by highlighting how different forms of agency (human and non-human) articulate with each other. The objective of this study is threefold: first, it aims at demonstrating that structuring effects can indeed be identified through a bottom-up approach without resorting to any form of duality or dualism, as it is commo…
Translation and articulation in the organization of coalitions: The Great Whale River case
This article presents a new method of analysis that enables us to study the strengths and weaknesses of the associations created during the organization of coalitions. Based on a case study, this model shows that organizing a coalition consists of making different agendas compatible by establishing a series of translations between them. As illustrated in this article, these translation activities are enacted through narrative forms in which actor…
Ventriloquie, performativité et communication: Ou comment fait-on parler les choses
Cet article introduit la notion de ventriloquie , conçue métaphoriquement comme le processus par lequel des interlocuteurs animent ou font parler des figures (le nom que les ventriloques utilisent pour parler des mannequins qu'ils manipulent), des figures qui sont elles-mêmes censées animer ces mêmes interlocuteurs en situation d'interaction. Ventriloquiser des figures (par exemple, des valeurs, des principes, des règles, des faits etc.), c'est s…
The work of conflict mediation: Actors, vectors, and communicative relationality
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this artic…
Communication as Incarnation
Implicatures: A Schematic Approach
Incarnation, sensation and ventriloquism: For a sensitive and constitutive view of pragmatics
My Attitude Made Me Do It”: Considering the Agency of Attitudes
Toward another ideal speech situation: A critique of habermas’ reinterpretation of speech act theory
With incredible daring Habermas has reinterpreted speech act theory in a way that poses a foundational challenge to rhetorical scholars
Figures of communication and dialogue: Passion, ventriloquism and incarnation
Actes de langage et semio-narrativite: Une analyse semiotique des indirections
Dans cet article, nous proposons une nouvelle maniere de rendre compte des dimensions illocutoires et perlocutoires des actes de langage a partir d'une hypothese de depart empruntee a Greimas, a savoir qu'il est possible d'analyser les actions comme des transformations d'etat qui mediatisent des objets. Apres avoir rapidement presente les critiques de Derrida et Livet qui sont a la base de notre travail de reconceptualisation, nous montrerons les…
Actes de langage et argumentation
Cooren François. Actes de langage et argumentation. In: Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Quatrième série, tome 95, n°3, 1997. pp. 517-544
Actes de langage et semio-narrativite: Une analyse semiotique des indirections
Dans cet article, nous proposons une nouvelle maniere de rendre compte des dimensions illocutoires et perlocutoires des actes de langage a partir d'une hypothese de depart empruntee a Greimas, a savoir qu'il est possible d'analyser les actions comme des transformations d'etat qui mediatisent des objets. Apres avoir rapidement presente les critiques de Derrida et Livet qui sont a la base de notre travail de reconceptualisation, nous montrerons les…
Actes de langage et argumentation
Cooren François. Actes de langage et argumentation. In: Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Quatrième série, tome 95, n°3, 1997. pp. 517-544
What makes communication 'organizational
Toward another ideal speech situation: A critique of habermas’ reinterpretation of speech act theory
With incredible daring Habermas has reinterpreted speech act theory in a way that poses a foundational challenge to rhetorical scholars
Translation and articulation in the organization of coalitions: The Great Whale River case
This article presents a new method of analysis that enables us to study the strengths and weaknesses of the associations created during the organization of coalitions. Based on a case study, this model shows that organizing a coalition consists of making different agendas compatible by establishing a series of translations between them. As illustrated in this article, these translation activities are enacted through narrative forms in which actor…
Implicatures: A Schematic Approach
Speech Timing and Spacing: The Phenomenon of Organizational Closure
This article examines how communication contributes to the achievement of spatio-temporal closures through the interactional enactment of sequences called ‘schemata.’ Human and nonhuman interactants not only bring into being but also contribute to the opening, development and closing of organizational sequences, which constitute and circumscribe what gets done collectively. Timing and spacing thus consist of creating and sometimes interrupting wh…
Textual Agency: How Texts Do Things in Organizational Settings
Research on organizational discourse typically reduces it to what members do when producing and using texts in organizational contexts, but fails to recognize that texts, on their own, also seem to make a difference. This essay shows that one way to approach discourse is to analyze the active contribution of texts (especially, but not only, documents) to organizational processes, that is, to what extent texts such as reports, contracts, memos, si…
Alternative Perspectives on the Role of Text and Agency in Constituting Organizations
Organizational discourse analysis, as an area of research, has grown in the past decade. Most scholars posit that language, regardless of the discursive form, is critical to the very nature of an organization. This article contends that discourse is more than an artifact or a reflection of an organization; rather it forms the foundation for organizing and for developing the notion oforganization as an entity. The articles in this volume present d…
Arguments for a Plurified View of the Social World: Spacing and timing as hybrid achievements
This article shows how the structuration of space and time occurs through the articulation of different agents' doings, whether these agents are human, technological or textual. Spacing and timing should therefore be considered hybrid achivements. This reflection then leads us to a reconceptualization of societies' and organizations' modes of being. Far from reifying these forms of life, that is to say, to transform them into things, this approac…
From agency to structure: Analysis of an episode in a facilitation process
In this article, we analyze an exercise in a facilitation process by showing that the structuring of this episode can be studied just by highlighting how different forms of agency (human and non-human) articulate with each other. The objective of this study is threefold: first, it aims at demonstrating that structuring effects can indeed be identified through a bottom-up approach without resorting to any form of duality or dualism, as it is commo…
Organization Studies: The Fourth Organization Studies Summer Workshop: “Embracing Complexity: Advancing Ecological Understanding in Organization Studies” 5—7 June 2008, Pissouri, Cyprus
A humanitarian organization in action: Organizational Discourse as an Immutable Mobile
Following Alvesson and Kärreman's (2000) influential essay on the modes and interpretation of organizational discourse, this article reports on a longitudinal study of naturally occurring interactions that took place before, during, and after a meeting between representatives of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders), a well-known humanitarian organization, and representatives of local health centers in a region of the Democratic Repu…
The coproduction of organizational presence: A study of Médecins Sans Frontières in action
In this article, we develop an analytical perspective to examine how an organization's mode of being is constituted and experienced through ongoing processes of communication. To show the use and implications of this perspective, we analyze how members and partners of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, a.k.a.`Doctors Without Borders'), a renowned humanitarian organization, coproduce and problematize the presence of their organization in the Democrati…
Between semiotics and pragmatics: Opening language studies to textual agency
Constitutional Amendments: “Materializing” Organizational Communication
This essay aims to “materialize” organizational communication in three senses. First, we seek to make the field of study bearing this name more tangible for North American management scholars, such that recognition and engagement become common. To do so, we trace the development of the field’s major contribution thus far: the communication‐as‐constitutive principle, which highlights how communication generates defining realities of organizational…
The Haunting Question of Textual Agency: Derrida and Garfinkel on Iterability and Eventfulness
In this article, I propose to broaden and deepen the concept of agency by focusing on what is called textual agency, the capacity of texts to do things in specific settings, and from that analysis, I draw implications for the way one conceives of how interaction works. This concept is drawn from complementary elements in Derrida's (1988, 1994) and Garfinkel's (1967, 2002) work in which deconstruction shows that for order to be found in situ, for …
Leadership as the Hybrid Production of Presence(s)
Leadership scholars and lay actors often attribute a certain presence to great leaders in describing a commanding style or a charismatic personality. However, leadership presence and its mirror concept, absence, have been difficult concepts for researchers to study. This article proposes to redress this short coming using actor-network theory (ANT). In ANT, the focus is on human and nonhuman agents, their hybrid forms, networked socialaction, and…
Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, incarnation and ventriloquism
What happens when people communicate or dialogue with each other? This is the daunting question that this book proposes to address by starting from a controversial hypothesis: What if human interactants were not the only ones to be considered, paraphrasing Austin (1962), as “doing things with words”? That is, what if other “things” could also be granted the status of agents in a dialogical situation? Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, incarn…
For a constitutive pragmatics: Obama, Médecins Sans Frontières and the measuring stick
This paper proposes to explore the mechanisms by which speaking, writing and, more generally, interacting pragmatically contribute to the mode of being and acting of social forms, whether these forms be identities, relations or collectives. Such an approach to pragmatics, which we propose to call constitutive, amounts to showing, both theoretically and empirically, that human interactants are not the only ones who should be deemed as “doing thing…
Figures of communication and dialogue: Passion, ventriloquism and incarnation
My Attitude Made Me Do It”: Considering the Agency of Attitudes
Ventriloquie, performativité et communication: Ou comment fait-on parler les choses
Cet article introduit la notion de ventriloquie , conçue métaphoriquement comme le processus par lequel des interlocuteurs animent ou font parler des figures (le nom que les ventriloques utilisent pour parler des mannequins qu'ils manipulent), des figures qui sont elles-mêmes censées animer ces mêmes interlocuteurs en situation d'interaction. Ventriloquiser des figures (par exemple, des valeurs, des principes, des règles, des faits etc.), c'est s…
Having to be: The possessive constitution of organization
How does an organization act? Can it be considered an actor on its own or does it need organizational members who act on its behalf? We would like to suggest our own take on the issue by suggesting a genuinely communicative approach to the issue of organizational action. Using the narratology of AJ Greimas to make apparent in talk some of process philosophy's tenets, we show how organizations act by being attributed actions. The detailed study of…
Communication as Incarnation
Sociology (34 works) · Philosophy (32 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Psychology (22 works) · Computer Science (20 works) · Political science (20 works) · Linguistics (19 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (19 works) · Linguistics and Discourse Analysis (14 works) · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies (12 works)