Assuming positions: Organizational change as mediated through metaphors
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Einav Argaman
Her research interests include metaphors, social semiotics, pragmatics, and discourse and text analysis. Her publications include ‘With or without “it”: The role of empathetic deixis in mediating educational change’ (in press).
Abstract
This paper presents the notion that a metaphor is one of the discursive tools whereby people position themselves with regard to a change process. Based on Sebeok and Danesi's theory, I analyze two ‘root’ metaphors (articulated by an interviewee) to illustrate the assumption of positions and counter-positions and the way metaphors mediate this positioning. The paper suggests that in the specific context of organizational change, positioning plays the social role of denoting for people (who are considered members of this new social experience) the expected modes of behavior.
About the author
Her research interests include metaphors, social semiotics, pragmatics, and discourse and text analysis. Her publications include ‘With or without “it”: The role of empathetic deixis in mediating educational change’ (in press).
© Walter de Gruyter
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Articles in the same Issue
- Wounded warriors: Further explorations into a biocultural semiotics
- ‘Reloading’ movies into commercial reality: A multimodal analysis of The Matrix trilogy's promotional posters
- The use of language to create realities: The example of Good Bye, Lenin!
- The narrative semiotics of The Daily Show
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- Semiotic systemity of visual artworks: Case study of The Holy Trinity by Rublev
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- ‘Aller sans mais se sentir avec’ : emplois absolus non-innocents de avec et sans
- An interview with Paul Newman
- ‘Superreader’: Riffaterre revisited
- Application d'une hypothèse de linguistique textuelle : Le génotexte
- Information, semiotics, and symbolic systems
- Assuming positions: Organizational change as mediated through metaphors
- Icon, index, symbol and denotation, connotation, metasign
- Toxic substances, semiotic forms: Towards a socio- and textual analysis of altered senses
- Playing doubles: Derrida's writing
- Paratextology
- Semiotics of space: Peirce and Lefebvre
- Gesture and language
