Texts as Organizational Echoes Author(s): Peter K. Manning Source: Human Studies, Vol. 9, No.

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Human ? Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, Dordrecht.

Studies Printed

9: 287-302

(1986).

in the Netherlands.

Texts

as organizational

echoes

PETER K. MANNING
Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Wolfson College, Oxford University, Oxford OX2 6UD, U.K.

Introduction the notion of social context has great appeal and is related to a family Although of concepts with enduring explanatory power such as thick description (Geertz, 1973), group and grid (Douglas, 1970), elaborated and restricted codes (Bern? 1979), it remains a rather 1973) and field, tenor and code (Halliday, to It and would reference mercurial vague appear concept. aspects of the social world of the speaker and the hearer which in addition to a mes? psychological stein, sage are a necessary feature of meaningful ed in Levinson, 1983: 23). Conversational communication which analysis, talk, fically concerned to specify the work of context in producing meaningful relies on rather implicit notions, although the work of Sacks includes attention or categorizations to setting specific-meanings 1970; (Sacks and Garfinkel, (see Ochs, 1979, cit? has been most speci?

is obviously crucial in organized settings which daily pro? cess a large number of calls from the public. Calls may be as brief as thirty sec? of information, and yet require rapid decisions onds, provide a bare minimum to a reported of personnel, and resources involving allocation equipment trouble. Because omit non-verbal of communication, in police, fire and emergency signs normally accompanying common-sense knowledge and organizational occupational and infer meanings. These telephone calls which are the primary means speech of behaviour, along with organ? services,

Sacks, 1967). The role of context

culture (Barley, 1983) is used calls and their interpretation are and their analysis should permit a further communication, context-dependent ' to organizational of the context relevance of communications. explication are formally constituted systems for the processing of com Organizations ization-specific to fill in, construct, municational tems of encoding a structure of roles and tasks, sys? units utilizing set technology, and decoding meaning, and interpretative practices (see Man

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288
ning, 1982, the public, From the diversity of messages 1985, forthcoming). produced by must introduce routine, regularity, they consistency; they must convert equivocal and uncertain messages (nature) into organizational? readily ly actionable work (culture). Communicational moires, minimize sembled and aide m?? units, such as messages, records, memos are sanctioned within an organization, to and marked normalized noise and ambiguity. As such, they are selectively as? equivocation, sets of signs or information formed to introduce variation that isman?

records of processing. Written ageable as well as relatively non-problematic calls to the police, the focus here, are texts which have an organizational reality the same communicational stabilized by recursive processing within system. The process transformed of converting everyday language in which calls to the police texts is a matter of seeing these messages into organizational are as

into the system of classifica? encoding these components having components, the messages tion of the organization, through the organization transmitting action outcomes. and producing are assembled, such as a call about a burglary, may on how they are interpreted, commu? and contain several messages depending nicate at several levels. Thus, a burglary of an old and blind woman given a number and priority, may be viewed as a crime, seen as morally disgusting, The written texts which importance as 'good police work', and under? granted a degree of occupational an as stood story (see Eco, 1979: 6). unfolding and connota thus communicate The texts which are produced denotatively and can be seen as stories or narratives tively, at several levels of meaning, ac? this transformational social life brought to police attention. Through are an in to like echo the returned troubles tales and speaker tivity, everyday which words now are heard with new pitch, speed, frequency and volume and source. seemingly from a different Semiotics provides a vehicle for analysis of the context of communication about Using a set of calls from a British police organiza? produced by organizations. the as? I semiotic tion, analysis to identify the units within the messages, apply or signify, and the sociative contexts within which they are made meaningful ways in which these messages are seen as narratives.

Semiotics The of linguis? draws on brilliant reformulations science of signs or semiotics, tics by Ferdinand Saussure (1966) and of logic by C.S. Peirce (1958). The aim or explain how the meaning of semiotics is to derive principles of signification, or shared and reproduced. According talk is produced, of objects, behaviors,

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289
to Peirce (quoted in Eco, 1984: 14), a sign is 'something which stands to some? body for something' implies interpretation or an interpr?tant which connects a 'signified content' (a signifier or an expression), the first 'something', with or the second 'something' (a signified content). The interpr?tant is both a sign signs. This 'standing for' is a process o? signification. Sig? occurs when signs express meaning within dL system of interpretation. A sign, as Peirce first noted, is essentially incomplete because it takes itsmean? a system of relations, and patterns of opposition, ing within similarity, anal? as well as connect signs. The content may link ogy, or contiguity distinguish nification an expression, the word 'red', with a content, 'blood' or 'stop'. The signifying is Because signs are process social, determined and variously conventionalized. of expression and content, as well as being by connections each other, various kinds of signification can occur in any message a in text. messages Semiotics created linked to or set of and a link between

pretation and implied conse? tents, rules or principles which govern their connection, of such are connections. These in connections in so quences theory dynamic as far signs may refer to another sign. 'Red' may denote 'blood', and 'blood' in turn may connote or 'loyalty' at another lev? 'friend', 'family connections', el. Denotations are more limited, proximal or contiguous, whilst connotations are reflexive and similar, guided by cultural codes or principles of interpreta? tion that are wider in reference. A code is a set of rules or principles, tacit, assumed or written, which connect The encoding and decoding of mes? case is seen as organizationally in this sages requires competence, de? and learnt validated. at issue is variable and diverse, al? The rived, competence most a collection of associative possibilities or dictionaries rather than an inde? set of rules or principles for interpreting messages and producing pendent expression which meaning between 1980: 92-100). The associations that obtain 1984; Descombes, are frames which indicate the transi? signs cognitively partitioned by tion from the everyday world to a specialized world of meaning and practice (Eco, and content within a context.

or the search for rules-in-use governing includes pragmatics, inter? and meaning. The quest includes identifying expressions and con?

indicate associative contexts. By (Goffman, 1974; Uspensky, 1983). Frames 'context' is meant that are assumed by speakers but aspects of knowledge which may not be expressed explicitly in the utterance (or communicational for actions, deictic and anaphoric refer? and previous knowledge about how such should be processed 1983: Ch. 2). The context is the messages (see Levinson, tacit or unseen basis for handling or processing calls. These contexts are meta communicational: messages about messages (see Bateson, 1972: 177-200). unit). These may ences, honorifics include expectations (indices of respect),

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290
Texts The notion text which is critical here assumes that readers of organizational provide an interpretative frame in their reading that draws on culturally accept? about how and what to read ed modes of interpretation (codes), conventions or text, and connections which are read into any communication an and drawn between the units of the communication sequence of on-going actions or functions (see Barthes, 1975, 1977; Culler, 1975). The social role of the reader, the associative contexts utilized to cluster and connect as well as dif? from and signs within the text, the contentions in which tutes a communicational unit, and the technology and received all shape a text. ferentiate the relevant Rules about how one does about what the message consti? is sent

1972: rules (Bateson, this, or metacommunicative are to cannot derived from formal be related 1979: but organi? 179; Eco, 154), culture charts of authority, zational procedures, occupational organizational or the law (see Cicourel, 1984; Ericson, 1985). When messages move through or 'mytho? each with ways of adding connotative of organization, an intertextuality or re they acquire logical' (Baxthes, 1972) levels of meaning, (Kristeva, 1981: 15). flexivity in that they refer to other texts within themselves or text within an a a isolated of function is semantically cognitively Message field.2 organizational subsystems Jakob textual analysis derived from formalists (Propp, Shklovski, (1981) identifies three aspects of texts: the se? by Todorov son) summarized or style of messages, mantic, or the meaning of texts, the mode of presentation Classic or the structure of texts. It is the latter that is of concern and the syntactical, here. Structural analysis of texts examines the functional relationships between of the units of the text, the narrative or story, and the modes of combination units (their spatial and temporal ordering). Once the units and the objects are identified one has a unit-system subject, into narrative ideally requires by which units are orchestrated the dic? in text be analyzed. However, analysis, organizational the formats and classification system, the re? tionary of available meanings, sources of natural language (grammar and syntax), as well as roles, interpreta? of texts for the production form an underlying machinery tion and technology and Woolgar, 1981). The plots, figures and 1979; Knorr-Cetina, or modality relations as well as the perspective (the voice of spatial-temporal Given a text, as? constrained. who speaks?) are organizationally the text rules which may order both their pro? sumptions are made about underlying (see Latour duction and their contents. contexts and the narrative The analysis will identify textual units, associative studied.3 types which emerge within one subsystem of the police organization is the sentence with the model of which of acts and consequences, The combinations verb and 1977). object (Fowler,

and sequences that an entire

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291
Method, data and setting

The British Police Department (BPD) is a large urban constabulary employing some 6,500 officers and 1,900 civilians, policing an urban area of some 222,400 of 2.7 million acres, with a population (1980 figures). The communications in Divisional receives communications directed located centre, Headquarters, to the police via either the 999 emergency number, or an eight digit number. A call can be made either to an official agency (the ambulance control, the bus control, the fire brigade), or to the police on a 999 line or a seven or eight digit number. If a call ismade police operators being control call on a direct on a 999 line, it is screened by operators prior to the informed. The ambulance control, fire brigade or bus

line to the Centre to either report what has occurred or to request police assistance. Alarm calls are directly received by operators and to subdivisions for response. allocated answer num? these calls, give them from one to three classification Operators information of within a format which called to elicit the location the event is loosely applied in the caller's name and

bers and take relevant order

about, phone number, and a description of the problems used to classify it and to add remarks if necessary. These data are entered on a VDU as incidents. Incidents, if they require further attention,

are relayed to subdivisions, and processed by are to Some for further atten? officers police sergeants ('controllers'). assigned tion. Some work arises from subdivision in the form of calls, citizens who ar? accounts and self-initiated work of officers. The centralized system for notionally about sixty per cent of the workload, and does not re? cord CID work or assignments. Most traffic work results from incidents pro? cessed at the traffic control centre. The nine calls analyzed here constitute all calls received in one hour (2258-2356 on 25 January 1980) on one subdivision ('Queens' Fields') from the communications centre of the BDP (see Table l).4 rive at the station

Analysis An outline of the transformation of events into records and other organization? al products can be set out. Diverse events in the object-world produce calls about events (many social variables such as class, education, age and culture sources from pattern this) variously organized (roughly from high to low infor? neworks) which are screened by operators who convert some calls in? to messages and then into incidents requiring police attention. Incidents are thus organizationally or classified communicational calls about events units,

mational

into messages. These incidents are then passed on by several chan? nels from operators in the Centre to subdivisional re controllers. Controllers

converted

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Table 1. PC 2. VDU 1. Nine radios incidents to say he from and their sources received by the Queens' Field controller

is taking the Centre number

message

a prisoner to a jail on saying a citizen/caller my a man be stolen has

the subdivision thinks

(radio). that a Mini Metro

parked

in front

of a house 3. VDU 4. VDU 5. VDU (direct 6. VDU house) 7. VDU 8. VDU

without from from

plates

message message message line). message

the Centre: the Centre:

(999 call). reported a stolen rang Centre reports

Bus Control

from Centre:

Ambulance

Control

van (999 call). to report a fight on a bus (direct line). that a man has been taken to hospital outside a community his house of her vehicle centre (and her

from Centre:

woman

reports

a disturbance

(999 call). message message from Centre: from Centre: man reports youth fighting woman reports attempted to report outside theft (999 call). (phone) (7 digit

number). 9. VDU message: Bus Control rang Centre a wounding aboard a bus (direct line).

ceive

incidents

messages, al types: referral public

several channels (VDU, telephone, face to face, written incidents via VDUs of four transaction but manage telex), primarily received from the caller; information given by the caller, information thus stand between the (two way); and action requests. The controllers from

and the operators on the one hand and the officers on the other who ac? take on jobs and write reports when and if they encounter cept assignments, the public. may be oriented to the noise around them, to the field of ac? tivities in the setting, or to the message itself. If they are oriented to the mes? sage, interviews suggest that they first obtain a kind of gestalt, or holistic as? The controllers sessment of 'what it means'. almost

needs, information where

and other actions

specialized personnel Any question of priority, the text into a set of units of follow. They constitute

(Manning, forthcoming). cal to this analysis.5 These

is described else? This logical partitioning simultaneously. The discernible units or syntagms are not criti? relevant of to the associative will contexts in which they for mini

syntagms are only appear, and one (or more) narratives or stories within

these contexts

provide

a basis

the social world

units, the syntagms in this police organization, sociative contexts. These contexts, taking the message kinds. The

of the police. The ten items or can be grouped into various as?

as a whole, are of two first operates on the basis of mere proximity. Calls following each other being seen as like each other inmany ways (time, source and channel are are linked into a metonomic chain. The second operates always communicated)

that sub? by similarity. Calls can be grouped by content similarities within to context. Con? reference with This is done system (in this case, controllers). on in sider five primary contexts based Queens' similarity used by controllers Fields.

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293
The action' first context includes 'action' calls which are in opposition to 'non have discretion about how certain in?

or information-only calls. Police re? be treated, for example, road accidents, hospital/ambulance or a not to them consider and controller 'ac? and may may fires, ports require in the computer memory. A second con? tion',6 and file them for information cidents will in progress, text is a grouping of calls based on whether the event is on-going, as so one could or just completed to still in far could be said be it progress (i.e. know given currently available system information) which contrasts with fin? ished or completed events. A third context includes whether the completed or ongoing context incident (police includes contrast to the event, on call). A fourth activity responding between crime and non-crime calls. The latter is fur?

on the basis of the thirty categories used in the BPD. A fifth context is an expansion of the third context. There are two subcontexts speci? an reconstruct and result. When incident incidents: is reported fying completed ther sub-divided to be completed the controller must reconstruct what was said about what hap? of an certain required (having been reported to him, a characteristic pened a and enter incident to be closed) result using the thirty category BPD classi? fication system (one or more may already have been assigned by the operator). There are three subcontexts work Manning, forthcoming). three, then more mental it perhaps If an for on-going incidents (Elaborated elsewhere, as described in context incident is on-going is required in that he must reconstruct the event

as having imminent features), predict what police action will (seeing be seen to be needed, and speculate about a result that might be forthcoming, sought or potential. The controller seeks to produce a plausible interpretation of the meaning of the incident, given a knowledge of the results expected and he may possess about how types of assignments and jobs the tacit knowledge are produced from incidents there are three subcontexts for on-going incidents. In summary, the signs (or expressions), e.g. 'stolen van' listed in the nine in? or have no use-value cidents (Table 1), are incomplete until linked in one when an associative They became functionally meaningful is discerned cognitively by controllers. (e.g. action versus non-action) are cognitively partitioned That is, all messages from non-messages, and ar? some in are but the five contexts not associative transi? rayed orderly fashion, one must not i.e. follow the context must and pre? tively restraining previous context cede the following context for sorting out calls. Although they do not unfold once they are arrayed horizontally in an algorithm, the messages, into distinc? seen tive numbered and classified to con? tend in be the associative incidents, texts listed until all options are exhausted. So although each context contains oppositions within it (a linking of cognitive domains organized around shared or connotatively, denotative meanings) the con? linking them metaphorically texts themselves contrast with each other metaphorically. They act as a series fashion or another.

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294
of sequentially relevant filters upon action, sets of calls any processed. A which useful text is formed but not all are equally relevant for

by contexts which connect expression level or kind of signification; produces a changing at this point. At the denotative level, expressions references linked

and content

each of be or

an example may such as 'burglary'

car' have denotative 'possible abandoned a at connotative level, they may be also

to the scheme of the BPD; in a context (crime non-crime)

to produce a new text to be read as a whole as 'hurry' or 'no hurry'. The com? bination of denotative and connotative meaning produces a multi-message text within this subsystem in This has Denzin, (see Manning ap? 1985). analysis the structural semantics proached section is to outline the narrative controller subsystem. of messages, while the aim of the following or syntactical structure of messages in the

Mini-narratives These calls as messages, incidents, or transformed possess an apparent struc? or stories. To ture, order and coherence. They are as itwere, 'mini-narratives' state that an incident is a collapsed narrative or mini-narrative is to assume the

them and to gloss them as well for the purposes of anal? operations underlying structure thus contains within it a host of richly contextual ysis. The narrative ized meanings, and expectations of reactions which imputed understandings are used to make sensible the incidents as read. The context of 'on-going inci? dent', however, forms them as stories of a particular type, providing an unfold? ing line of action, outcomes.7 These a set of characters stories can be rendered and plot, central peripheral actions, and or reordered to produce simpler and 1958; and Rumelhart, 1975). (see Propp,

yet more abstract relational patterns In the analysis that follows it is shown that incident stories possess a narra? tive structure based upon the actions of the central figures as seen from the mo?

mutually dality or voice of the police or the third party. There is a protagonist, upon that action. The unit of analysis is the affecting actions and conditions the hero and the others incident. The event or the central crucible transforms through interaction, whilst hero role. Using the material features of these stories. the police play something of an unfinished meta in Table 1, we can attempt to further reduce some

we map the nine calls used as exemplars of the approach into Preliminarily, a grid of types of incidents which are in turn transformed events (reported by to police operators who then send them on). The callers' citizens or officials alarm or the call of an role may be indexed by a mere voice on an automatic official of a company. These represent surrogate victims. An individual victim

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295
Table 2. Incident Incident 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 + = Victim (person 0 + + = Person - = Property 0 = Social order + = Official - = Citizen 0 + type types arrayed Actor by event, actors, targets, Target and call source as seen by controllers source

in the event + + + + + +

in the event + + 0 0

Call

or organization) = Observer

or an observer

else's plight may call. These can be coded as victim or observer as shown in Table 2. The target of the ac? (person or organization) tion reported in the incident about the event can be either a person, social or? of someone source of the call can be either an official combined texts. The or a citizen. con? describe types of incidents or associative axes are the principal causal concerns of the

der, or property. The These three axes when texts for assembling controller.

can be thus typed using the pattern of present or absent attributes given the information known and its construction by the con? troller. These types are shown in Table 2. Further subtypes could be produced if a larger number of calls were to be analyzed. These incidents demonstrate Each of the calls/incidents a specialized body of knowledge and interpretation of human behaviour. They contain a set of figures, motives, and moral expected outcomes implications. Table 3 shows aspects of the cognitive substructuring of common-sense po? lice knowledge in regard to these types of calls on this subdivision. It might be noted that like the idea of 'text' or 'syntagm' what is believed to be known about such events in the object-world is always surrounded by a set of under? stood but not stated premises. teristics assumed or repressed, (1977) terms these 'indices', or charac? not a part of the encoding of the text. The role while suppressing others is played by organiza? Barthes story. It captures the subject of the event, (victim), the villain, their implicit action

of elevating of these meanings tional coding and interpretation.

Each of these types is a summated the object of the event, the observer

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296
Table 3. Police stories as narratives *

Type

5: Property Villain

event/reaction/police

called

(call #2, <r

3, 8) -Citizen/victim

-?Stolen car

A Seek

B Proceed to

I Calls
.D Police

Type

9: Person

event/official

reaction/police Villain

called

(#call

4, 9)

Villain

<->

<->Bus<

->Bus control

ABC
Seek Proceed to

D Calls

E Police

Type

11 :Order

event/observer

initiated/police

called

(calls

# 6, 7)

Police * Types are taken from Table 2.

quences

(observed

car was missing,

requested five (+-) type eight ( + + ) observer of personal offence rings bus control, bus control ) observer of order event (or possible personal rings police and type ten ( 0 offence) rings police (Table 3) illustrate the narrative expansion of Table 2 and lice). Type the calls These in Table narrative 1. substructures of additional

rang police,

for where last parked, checked memory (the po? they came) and the implicit hero or metahero victim of property offence (stolen car) rings police,

are very crude extractions from a large set of a set of subtypes of vil? calls influences. Analysis might produce lain, for example, or callers by motive or more complex action sequences. But it is likely that screening at this point is quite general and gross, and such nuan? ces are merely incidental to the work rather than essential.

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297
All it can be from the police perspective or modality; the calls are mapped that citizens may view the syntactical structure of events rather differ?

assumed

suggested in this preliminary analysis such as the rela? ently. The combinations tions between hero, villain(s), metahero, target and subject within a police story with an on-going plot, story line, climax and resolution requires a much more detailed analysis with additional data as well as an expanded conceptual it properly (see Scholes and Kellogg, 1966). Itwould appear that the sequence of events discussed in this paper is a partial rendition of stages one, two and three in an expanded narrative. For example, a sequence of the following kind might be imagined: framework to illustrate

1. Preliminaries (argument, plan, fight, car

2. Crime event (various sorts) stolen)

3. Event reported officials, police, etc. to

4. Investigation (uniformed branch, branch, specialist CID,

Resolution (closed gation, clearance crime etc.) investi? court, of

squad(s)) Not all empirical events will progress through all the stages listed, the order may follow this precisely, and some of the stages may overlap each other. This is the bare outlines of a formal model of the resolution of a police story. Even the absence of a stage is of course significant, and truncated stories, collapsed sequences and 'failed' or incomplete stories may have importance for elaborat? the possible connection between narrative struc? ing the model and explicating ture, catharsis The analysis and shaping the experience of everyday life.8 of texts which draws on narrative structure of police stories also

of plays, television, novels, fairy tales and tra? draws upon general knowledge stories are a particular ditional folk tales. Police copy of everyday life; any copy risks being bogus, false, deceptive and intrusive in social reality that is not so marked and framed. In one sense police stories represent a reversal of na? ture, or of narratives of everyday life; they are rather a copy of nature in this case defined as culture. Thus, the modelling of everyday life in the text of a police incident and of police narratives should be examined not for veracity or irony, but rather as a specially framed bit of culture (see Barley, 1983).

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298
Comment The question to which this paper has been addressed is the nature of constraint on communication exercised contexts of message by the organizational it iswhat is absent is, if nothing else, assumed knowledge; processing. Context from speech but signalled by it. Garfinkel (1967), following Schutz (1964) has this is that matters taken for granted. This suggested everyday knowledge notion must be paired with assumptions about the social distribution of knowl? is edge, and the bounded nature of the social reality within which knowledge assumed and used. The nature of the transition from one sort of social reality such as the citizens' world to another, the police world, is epistemologically instances, it seems psychologically necessary to mark out the boundaries between the world of everyday experience and a world which has 1983: 140). What is explored here is special semantic significance' (Uspensky, how the framing of a semantic and syntactically specialized world is accom? critical. 'In many plished on the surface and at the level of narrative structure. Studies of natural language which intend to illuminate the concept of context differ from studies in a more formalistic or semiotic mode such as that present? or brief analysis has preferred bits of conversations, phrases from telephone ex? sequences, often taped and transcribed changes. Since by and large conversational analysis is done from transcribed not the of here is addressed: interest the encodation of natural speech, problem sentence
speech into institutional formats, records, and classification systems. In a

ed here. Conversational

speech or institutional talk. It is limited in so far as the first trans? formations of callers' talk into an incident, accomplished is prior by operators, or task. to the controllers' transformation of the incident into an assignment These data reveal second order transformations of natural speech. The first is from a call to an incident and the second, accomplished transformation by the controllers, the ground. is from an incident into an assignment or task for officers on

sense, into organizational

this analysis

is one of translation

and transformation

of natural

Textual analysis is limited by a number of its features. It is guided by a model of language and of the formal syntactical features of narrative forms. It draws heavily on written (or transcribed oral) texts of traditional forms of narrative such as fairy tales, classical or traditional literature (the works of Tolstoy, Dos not only as narratives but and associations in terms of the symbolic oppositions (compare L?vi-Strauss, 1977 and Derrida, between surface 1963, with Barthes, 1976). The connections texts are and deep structure(s) are rather obscure. Organizationally produced constrained in respect to the natural units of analysis (communicational units toevsky and Balzac are favoured) or myths. in units and assembled These texts are analyzed

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299
the police communicative (it does not system), the level of the discourse or series of messages), the range of narrative forms within exceed a message which messages may be cast, and the feedback and negative learning which oc? curs in transactions. These contrast with the static written form of literary within
texts.

The marking and framing of texts within organizations requires a concept of non-text and that which specifically functions to mark the text from the non? text in operational and cognitive terms within is a semantic organization of signs (Uspensky, the organization studied. A text 1983: 5), but it is also physically

framed by the technology by which it is sent, the classification system used to and the roles and ranks of who only members it, assigned classify organization see and process a communicational unit in a particular physical location with a particular of setting-specific duties. social definition That which is not text which is named is organization. Of particular interest, in addition to the processes named immediately above, are the two modes of or proximity groups of texts, by metonomy (roughly order of ap? or by metaphor 1979; Morgan, pearance), (Manning, 1980), These are two texts and groups of texts. The constant sta? modes of cognitively differentiating bilization of such texts, the notion that the 'message' in common-sense terms organizing the same as it passes through the organization, is maintained in part and in part by repetition by the structure of authority within the organization and enunciation The iterative processes which 1985, forthcoming). (Manning, remains the communicational unit remain: technology, roles and classification, tasks and the interpretative practices within the organization. They produce or? are and stability in texts and in contrast to non-textual ele? der, redundancy, ments and uncertainty innovation, in The another fashion as rep? (see Cooper, 1983, 1985). yet or both the internal and the environment resenting perspective, organization, or the external perspective. A text of a citizens' call contains a double referent spontaneity, text can be viewed in that it refers to itself whilst moving through the police communicational of citizens' calls from which it came. Similarly, system and to the environment context produces binding and lasting conventional meanings within organiza? tions at the same time that it is the basis for a socially based generative seman?
tics.

embed

suppressed in the organization. forces are those of diversity, play,

These non-textual

and non-authoritative

Notes
1. Some initial lines of exploration (1986), Atkinson

have been and Drew

charted (1979)

and Wideman

by Cicourel and Heritage

(1968,

1975,

1976,

1984); Eglin

(forthcoming).

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300
2. The term 'field' refers to the social under activities the ecological-spatial domain taking place within the cognitive control of the label 'work' or not. It has a gen? or a setting, and is meant term, a standing pattern of behaviour as the message. activities Also omitted from cognitive designated

of the organization, eral resemblance to contrast message round with is noise, a message. message

whether to Barker's the specific the social From from

delineate

and/or unwanted that may also sur? communication technological an operational and officers must controllers point of view, operators, field and from noise, and since these are background/foreground mat? given other matters untoward such as the other or unexpected for a more forthcoming, events impinging on police work scale or importance and the like detailed discussion of these con? events

ters, they shift e.g. workload, (compare cepts 3. For tively ways upon short and Klapp, their

in salience political relevance

events,

1978; see Manning, to police

communication

these purposes, is set aside in which formats

the procedures by which or bracketed (see Cicourel, talk, whether types, showing

systems). such a structure is produced 1972, 1975, 1976,

and maintained

cogni the

1984). Cicourel

describes

ideas from of various

mediated

or not by technological are mapped devices, it requires a number of assumptions about long and of bits of information, selective attention to mat?

term memory,

the chunking amongst

and coding

ters of prosodie The references. the dictionary articulated 4. The focus

variation structure

Ch. 8). (see Manning, forthcoming: of this analysis is controllers' work for incidents received at this subdivision. and alarm calls are screened out at the Centre traffic calls could arise from (although ceived on the subdivisional number). syntagms Source are: an event). of the original person). call. 1. Time 2.

(or code), and is not here described

and the construction of a deictic and anaphoric speakers, shown here is an implicit ordering of these units; the process by which as a part of a formative the coder and the encoded (messages text) are Traffic calls re?

5. These

(before/after radio of name location

(public/organizational/police) (radio/VDU/telephone/in the event (address/place/site). (or collar number of PC

3. Channel 4. Location 5. Caller's 6. Caller's 7. Persons 8. Actions 9. Direction 10. Descriptive 6. The

calling). box).

(address/place/site/call

acting (one/few/many) of persons in the event. of action term for

in the event.

is required to do concept of 'action' not to send an officer than accept and file the incident, even though a decision or to the scene of a fire or road accident is an action of sorts. made of

in the event. (target) the action(s) (in #8). here refers to whether the controller

other something to the hospital,

7. Assertions herence

1981). Nor other 8. Perhaps calls;

or functionalist co? and cognitive theories about the necessary by advocates sense of these materials to make tales are not required and Feldman, (cf. Bennett are there good reasons to see these as more than 'overcoded' (Eco, 1976: 133-135) they are not mythological of satisfaction renditions of victims of everyday of a police work. be related story and to a lack of their natural fit between experiences of crime may

the absence

structure of the narrative their cognitive model 1963: Ch. 9). in the event (cf. L?vi-Strauss,

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301
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