ELSEVIER Journal of Pragmatics 27 (1997) 409-438 What makes communication 'organizational' ? How the many voices of a collectivity become the one voice of an organization ~ James R. Taylor*, Franqois Cooren Ddpartement de Communication, Universitd de Montrdal, C.P. 6128. Succ. Centre-ville, Montreal. Qudbec H3C 3J7. Canada Received May 1995; revised version March 1996 Abstract How is an organization constituted as an actor? This article explores the property of com- munication that explains how organization is able to enter the field of discourse, express an intention, and be accorded a voice there. The paper argues that communication becomes explicitly 'organizational' when a collective agency finds expression in an identifiable actor, and the actor is recognized by the community as a legitimate expression of such agency. This is comparable to Searle's 1995 view of the institutional basis for the construction of social reality. The article develops its argument through an analysis of two contrasting theories of action in speech, one bottom-up and linguistic in inspiration, the other top-down and socio- logical in spirit. We show that both versions of action-in-speech are to be found in uncom- fortable propinquity in John Austin's original presentation of speech act theory (Austin, 1962) and that the continuing debate between the bottom-up and top-down positions, notably enun- ciated by Bach and Hamish (1979, 1991), and Searle (1989, 1995), can be traced to contrast- ing visions of communication, either person-centered or group-centered. Implications for organizational research are briefly discussed. 1. Introduction: The problem stated This article addresses a question which arises in the field of organizational com- munication (at least among those theorists who take seriously the idea that an orga- '~ We wish to acknowledge the very helpful suggestions of our anonymous reviewers, and in particu- lar one of them on whom we have drawn freely in the exposition of the objectives of our research. His or her comments served as a useful corrective coming from someone obviously deeply versed in prag- matics, and directed to the authors whose primary allegiance is to communication science, and made it possible for us, we hope, to better situate our approach in a way that would be comprehensible to read- ers of the Journal of Pragmatics. * Corresponding author. E-mail: taylor@ere.umontreal.ca 0378-2166/97/$17.00 Copyright © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved PII S037 8-2166(96)00044-6