Thesis (Ph. D.) University of Washington, 1997. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [278]-291).

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The Beating of Wings is a polyphonic novel comprised of multiple interior monologues, inspired by the historical development of the fairy tale as a literary genre. Characters are based upon key writers within this movement: Charles Perrault, Rabbi Nachman, Flora Annie Steel, and J M Barrie; as well as associated figures, including the Franco-Scottish miniaturist and calligrapher, Esther Inglis, the Duchess of Polignac, and Edwina Mountbatten. The subject of this vocal fugue is an ostensibly authorless fairy tale, The Golden Tree and the Moth, handwritten in a seventeenth-century miniature manuscript. Within an omniscient frame modelled after the ancient Indian collection of fables, the Panchatantra (circa 200 B.C.), a succession of first-person narrators chronicle the passage of the fairy tale through time, via the 'beating wings' of its woven narrative threads, back to its source. As each narrator ventriloquises the voice of a previous owner, the matryoshka doll narratives engage concurrently with questions of adaptation and appropriation, narratology, paratext, the Barthesian concept of the 'death of the author', and literary ventriloquism. Ultimately, the novel aspires to culminate in a fictional rebirth of a defining voice, founded upon gynocritical theory and the silencing of women within the patriarchal canon during the early modern period. This origin of the tale that was neither 'already written', nor 'already read', is borne of Esther Inglis (1571-1624). My critical essay considers specific theoretical influences of the novel: predominantly literary ventriloquism, as well as Inglis's corpus. A marginalised figure in the context of early modern women's writing, prior to recent academic enquiry Inglis was dismissed as a skilled copyist, whose manuscripts were notable only for her virtuoso calligraphic replication of religious verse in miniature. To this discussion, I introduce Gérard Genette's concept of paratext as a viable means of interpretation. I argue that this strand of literary analysis is imperative to our understanding of how Inglis sought to materialise an authentic authorial voice through the paratextual space of her manuscripts, mobilising the trope of literary ventriloquism to facilitate her complex construction as a literary icon. By applying Genette's taxonomy, I suggest that Inglis emerges as an incisive, progressive, and ingenious publisher and author, who successfully manifested Her word upon the patriarchal page during an era when women writers were silenced or forced to write anonymously.

Urban planning plays an essential role in preparing cities to handle and counteract the climate changes – and connected consequences – of today and the future. Municipal ecologists are specialists in environmental protection and therefore carry a crucial role when developing contemporary and future cities. However, the literature on municipal ecologists’ partaking in contemporary urban planning in a Swedish local planning process has not been extensive. This study explores how municipal ecologists experience and view the main challenges when seeking to contribute with their expertise in local planning processes in Stockholm County, Sweden. The study also explores what kind of strategies municipal ecologists implement to handle these challenges. This study uses an explorative qualitative methodology and a thematic analysis applied to empirical data from semi-structured interviews. To revisit the research field, a focus group discussion of the result was conducted. Key findings from this study are that the main challenges municipal ecologists face are i) the organisational difficulties and capacity for prioritising ecological issues in municipal planning, ii) lack of regulatory framework and political support, and iii) stress due to tensions in local planning processes. The ecologists handle this challenging context by implementing strategies such as speaking through others’ legitimacy, creating authority, and articulating the values of ecology. This study contributes to the understanding of how ecologists struggle to contribute with their expertise in local planning practice. This implies the challenge of including environmental perspectives in local planning practices. Therefore, this study points to important aspects of where it is necessary to focus future efforts to better integrate an ecological perspective in urban planning.

L’étude de la gestion du changement s’attache à identifier ce qui peut être agissant dans l’organisation, la faisant évoluer dans un sens favorable ou défavorable aux objectifs définis par ceux qui en ont la charge. La présente étude a pour objet de comparer les propositions d’une approche ventriloque de la communication, telle qu’elle est formulée par François Cooren dans Action and agency in dialogue (2010) avec deux ouvrages traitant du changement organisationnel : The knowledge-creating company (Notaka & Takeuchi, 1995) et La Danse du changement (Senge, 1999). L’objectif est d’examiner dans quelle mesure la perspective ventriloque permet une meilleure compréhension de la nature et des contributions de ces différentes formes d’agentivité. A travers cet examen comparatif, l’ambition de ce travail est aussi d’offrir un point de vue sur la ventriloquie elle-même qui mette en exergue ses aspects les plus novateurs et démontre ainsi l’avancée représentée notamment par l’agentivité non humaine et la dislocalité de l’interaction. / The study of change management intends to identify what can be active in an organization, making it evolve in a direction that follows or resists to the goals defined by those in charge. This study wants to compare the propositions put forward by a ventriloqual approach to communication, as defined by François Cooren in Action and agency in dialogue (2010), with two works dealing with organizational change : The knowledge-creating company (Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1995) and The Dance of Change (Senge, 1999). The goal is to understand how this ventriloqual perspective allows a better understanding of the nature and contributions of these different forms of agency. Through this comparative inquiry, the ambition of this work is also to offer a perspective on ventriloquism itself, by highlighting its most innovative aspects, in order to demonstrate the progress constituted in particular by nonhuman agency and the dislocality of interaction.

Referring to an employee as “the face” of an organization suggests that an individual worker’s actions may transmit information about the kind of organization they represent. Mascots in a baseball stadium make that metaphor material by wearing an organizationally prescribed mask and performing in the name of the organization (Keller & Richey, 2006; MacNeill, 2009). This study investigated how one baseball mascot, Spike of the Round Rock Express, embodied his team’s identity through the activation of organizational routines by analyzing video recordings, autoethnographic field notes, and stories (Heath & Luff, 2013). Recognizing the highly symbolic work of a mascot work has implications for the performer, audience members, and organizations who rely on mascots to enhance the stadium experience. Additionally, this research provides suggestions for future mascot performers on how they might come to “know your role and play it to the hilt” (Devantier & Turkington, 2006). Organizational routines combine three recursive dimensions: the ostensive, understandings an employee brings to his or her work, the performative, actions an employee takes while doing his or her work, and the artifactual, material objects an employee uses or creates in order to facilitate work tasks (Feldman & Pentland, 2003). This research begins with an exploration of how I developed occupational and organizational role expectations. In order to know my role, I had to learn Spike’s identity: what he must do, may do, and can do (Strauss, 1959; Enfield, 2011). I specifically recognize the ways I came to understand my role as someone who embodies the mission of the organization through the preparation of artifacts for performance and protection of the audience for whom I am performing. The performative dimension is explored by identifying instances when my performance challenged established understandings of Spike’s identity, specifically in instances where I was unprepared for a scenario or chose to protect one group’s interest over another’s. In these unanticipated moments, I often found myself turning other participants in the stadium event, like fans and coworkers, into co-performers and relied on their improvisational offerings to inform my ongoing performance (Eisenberg, 1990; Meyer, Frost, & Weick, 1998). / text

This thesis comprises six new musical works composed between 2008 and 2015: ‘Struction (how I attempted to get the thoughts in my head into your head using only five instruments, five instrumentalists, metronome sound and MIDI') for amplified ensemble and pre-recorded soundtrack (2011); ‘My Life in Ventriloquism' for solo clarinet and pre-recorded soundtrack (2012); ‘Nightmusic' for solo violin (2012); ‘Replaceable Parts for the Irreplaceable You' for ensemble, pre-recorded soundtrack and video (2013); ‘Espial', a video work featuring string quartet (2014); and ‘Elbow Room' for amplified ensemble, pre-recorded soundtrack and video (2014). The works are presented in this thesis as musical scores (and other performance materials), accompanied by audio-visual documentation of performances. As a whole, these compositions reflect a period of practice-as-research into the role of metapraxis in musical performance and how it can be used to help convey non-musical thought through instrumental music. A commentary on this portfolio of new compositions begins by discussing two influential works — Mauricio Kagel's ‘Match' (1964) and ‘Failing: A Difficult Piece for Solo String Bass' (1975) by Tom Johnson — before examining each new work in detail in order to explicate the research and creative processes that led to their composition, to exteriorize a personal working practice and to document the reflection-on-practice which has furthered this research. The commentary details how I was able to write music on a variety of topics, including authority, technology and place, and concludes with some ideas for further research.

L’objet de cette thèse est d’explorer comment, dans le cadre de l’implantation d’un programme de valorisation de la diversité ethnoculturelle, les membres d’une organisation en arrivent à s’approprier (ou non) l’ensemble des principes, des idées et des valeurs qui orientent et structurent la mise en place de telles initiatives. Par appropriation, nous entendons toute action visant à rendre une chose propre à soi. En l’occurrence, l’appropriation peut-être vue comme une forme d’adaptation qui permet de donner une signification particulière à la situation dans laquelle les membres de l’organisation se trouvent. Nous avons, tout au long de cette thèse, mobilisé l’approche ventriloque de la communication afin de dévoiler les figures (principes, valeurs ou idées) qui facilitent ou, au contraire, entravent l’appropriation du programme par les acteurs organisationnels. D’un point de vue méthodologique, ce travail de thèse repose sur une étude de cas longitudinale menée sur une période d’un an avec une grande entreprise panquébécoise. Le caractère particulièrement innovant de cette recherche tient en sa démarche méthodologique, laquelle a consisté à suivre le devenir d’une initiative de diversité ethnoculturelle, depuis son lancement jusqu’à sa complétion. À travers la réalisation d’enregistrements de réunions et d’entrevues pré- et post-initiative, nous avons pu répertorier et analyser les multiples formes d’appropriation qui ont mené à l’appréciation ou, parfois au contraire, à la désappropriation de telles initiatives. Le lien entre l’appropriation des initiatives de diversité par les acteurs du changement et la communication organisationnelle a jusque là été peu étudié. Cette thèse se veut donc une illustration empirique, via l’analyse des différentes formes d’appropriation, permettant de combler certaines lacunes dans la littérature portant sur le diversity work et la communication organisationnelle. / The main purpose of this thesis is to explore how, in the context of implementing a new initiative to promote ethnocultural diversity, members of an organization come to appropriate (or not) principles, ideas and values that guide and structure the implementation of such initiatives. In this context, appropriation shall mean any action aimed to adapt something to oneself. Therefore, appropriation can be seen as a form of adaptation that gives particular meaning to this new situation in which organizational members find themselves in. Throughout this thesis, we mobilized a ventriloquial approach to communication in order to reveal the figures (principles, values or ideas) that facilitate or on the contrary hinder the appropriation of the program by organizational actors. From a methodological point of view, this thesis is based on a longitudinal case study conducted over a one-year period with a large pan-Quebec company. The particularly innovative nature of this research lies in its methodological approach, which consisted in monitoring an ethnocultural diversity initiative, from its launch to its completion. Through the recording of pre- and post-initiative meetings and interviews, we were able to identify and analyze the multiple forms of appropriation that led to the appreciation or, sometimes, on the contrary, the misappropriation of such initiatives. The link between appropriation of diversity initiatives by change actors and organizational communication has so far been little explored. This thesis is therefore intended as an empirical illustration, through the analysis of the different forms of appropriation, to fill certain gaps in the literature on diversity work and organizational communication.

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Parmi les relations qui traversent l’univers de l’entreprise, celles entre gestionnaires et fournisseurs occupent une place de premier ordre, dans la mesure où ils permettent d’obtenir les produits et services dont l’entrepreneur se servira pour faire de l’argent. Mais dans un contexte de relations humaines, il est inévitable que d’autres liens, affectifs ou émotifs, se nouent au fil des communications. Ces liens, ou attachements, se tissent par l’entremise de conversations, de documents et de pratiques et, par la dimension performative de la communication, deviennent un aspect constitutif de l’identité des parties prenantes, individuelle et collective. À partir d’une étude qualitative réalisée auprès d’un entrepreneur propriétaire d’un café montréalais, ce mémoire tente de comprendre, au moyen d’une entrevue, de conversations avec l’entrepreneur et d’enregistrements de certaines interactions, la manière dont les attachements se manifestent dans les relations entre lui et ses fournisseurs, le rôle que ces derniers jouent dans lesdites relations et l’impact qu’ils peuvent avoir dans l’entreprise et sa trajectoire. Suite à une analyse ventriloque de six interactions, les résultats de cette recherche dévoilent que les attachements jouent effectivement plusieurs rôles dans les relations entre entrepreneur et fournisseur, notamment en permettant de garder le contact en période de tension, en protégeant certaines relations et en agissant comme garde-fou relationnel. Ces rôles ont, par ailleurs, des effets sur l’entreprise elle-même, car ils peuvent agir sur l’identité même du café et sur la manière dont les décisions importantes sont prises. / Among the relationships that permeate the world of business, those between managers and suppliers are of the utmost importance, as they are essential to provide the products and services that the entrepreneur will use to make money. But, in a context of human relations, it is inevitable that other bonds, affective or emotional, get enacted in the course of interaction. These bonds, or attachments, are forged through conversations, documents, and practices and, through the performative dimension of communication, become a constitutive aspect of the stakeholders’ individual and collective identities. Based on a qualitative study conducted with the owner of a Montreal café, this dissertation seeks to understand, through an interview, conversations with the entrepreneur and recordings of certain interactions with some suppliers, how attachments manifest themselves in these relationships, the role these attachments play in these same relationships and the impact they can have on the company and its trajectory. Through a ventriloquial analysis of six interactions, the results of this research reveal that attachments do indeed play several roles in the relationship between entrepreneur and supplier, including maintaining the bond in times of tension, protecting certain relationships, and acting as a relational safeguard. These roles also have an impact on the company itself, as they can influence the very identity of the business and the way in which important decisions are made.