g&l (print) issn 17476321

g&l (online) issn 1747633x

Article

Representing affective labour and gender

performativity in knowledge work:
a multimodal critical discourse analysis

Ian Roderick

Abstract

This paper argues that a multimodal approach to critical discourse analysis

makes visible how contemporary office design and furnishings prescribe gender
performativities crucial to the labour of communicative capitalism. Examin-
ing online promotional material produced by multinational contract furniture
producers, a critical analysis is offered of the ways in which the open-plan office
is represented as a wellspring of affective labour. First, attention is turned to
detailing the kinds of social actors and their actions depicted in the representa-
tions of office work. Second, the kinds of interactional meanings produced in the
videos are documented. Having established how these idealised representations
of knowledge work highlight particular embodiments and actions, the paper
then argues that the promotional materials are in fact constituting those bodies
that matter to communicative capitalism. Ultimately, these videos depict how
the female knowledge worker must cite a normative feminised affective worker
so as to be recognised as a viable employee.

keywords: multimodality; gender performativity; emotional labour;

office design; knowledge work

Affiliation
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada.
email: iroderick@wlu.ca

g&l vol 10.3 2016 386411 doi: 10.1558/genl.v10i3.32040

2016, equinox publishing
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 387

Introduction
The Face to Face Love Seat is the centrepiece in a concept workplace col-
lection designed by PearsonLloyd for multinational office furniture manu-
facturer Teknion. Based upon the tte--tte or courting chair popular in
the nineteenth century, the Love Seat is presented as a workplace meeting
space. At first blush, a love seat certainly seems incongruous with an office
environment in which all interaction is expected to take place between
productive co-workers rather than distracted paramours. After all, the pre-
eminent sociologist of bureaucracy, Max Weber, saw the office as a site of
disciplined, rational activity, separating the official or bureaucrat from the
distractions of the private or domestic sphere:
The purely impersonal character of office work, with its principled separation
of the private sphere of the official from that of the office, facilitates the officials
integration into the given functional conditions of a fixed mechanism based upon
discipline. (Weber 1946:208)

However, PearsonLloyd are able to reconceptualise the Love Chair as part

of the furnishing of a productive office because of an apparent paradigm
shift in contemporary office work. As they explain, in contrast to the ratio-
nal bureaucracies described by Weber:
The modern workplaceis no longer driven strictly by functional,technological
and economic factors. Itis also a social space, a place where peoplecome together
to share ideas andinformation, to create new knowledgeand build intellectual
capital. (Teknion undated)

In short, the designers justify the office-alisation of the otherwise inap-

propriate courting chair by pointing to an increasing acknowledgement of
role of affective labour in the contemporary workplace.
While the Love Seat is presented as a concept piece, manufacturers
also offer much more mundane pieces such as benches and meeting tables
that equally promise to optimise employee interactions. Whereas at one
time the open plan office was designed so as to organise and segregate
individual workers into the familiar cubicle form, todays office spaces are
designed with even fewer obstructions to lines-of-sight and more common
work areas and meeting spaces. These changes in design cannot simply
be accounted for in terms of changing fashion. Rather, these new ways of
furnishing and organising workspaces materialise changes in discourses on
management and performance.
Using office furniture promotional materials as the object of analysis,
this paper offers an exploration of how neoliberal ideologies, rather than
being blind to affective labour, increasingly extoll its importance for nur-
388 Ian Roderick

turing a work environment that is now seen as primarily collaborative.

Furthermore, it argues that the value of affective labour is highlighted in
the promotional materials by representing affective labour as the perfor-
mative work of gendered subjectivities. Accordingly, office furniture does
not simply function representationally to give expression to certain styles,
attitudes and even ideologies about work. Contract furniture manufactur-
ers sell their wares and services on the claim that office design actively
shapes employee performance in the workplace. In this respect, office fur-
niture is promoted not only with the promise of producing an idealised,
productive workspace but, with it, ideal labouring subjects suited to that
environment. Just as Flusser (1999:44) comments that factories are places
in which new kinds of human beings are always being produced, by exten-
sion, it can equally be claimed that open plan offices, as privileged sites
of knowledge work, are places where new kinds of labouring subjects are
always being produced.
To foreground the ideological linkages being forged between office
design, employee performance, and worker subjectivity, this article focuses
principally upon representations of knowledge work and the workplace
produced by multinational contract furniture designers and producers.
The paper proceeds by applying a multimodal discourse analytic approach
to online promotional videos so as to develop a critical account of the ways
in which the open-plan office is represented as a wellspring of affective
labour. Accordingly, attention is given to detailing the kinds of social actors
and their actions depicted in the representations of office work. Having
established how these idealised representations of knowledge work high-
light particular embodiments and actions, the paper then argues that the
promotional materials are in fact constituting those bodies that matter
(Butler 1993) to communicative capitalism. The association of affective and
emotional labour with both women and knowledge work along with the
neoliberal requirement to self-manage, thus leads to gendered construc-
tions of the contemporary office worker.

Multimodality, representation and performativity

In her call for a feminist discourse praxis, Michelle Lazar (2007:142) argues
that the workings of gender ideology and asymmetrical power relations
in discourse are presently assuming quite subtle forms in (late) modern
societies and that so-called postfeminist discourses depend upon, if not
collude with, a blindness to the ways in which frequently taken-for-granted
gendered assumptions and hegemonic power relations are discursively
produced, sustained, negotiated, and challenged in different contexts and
communities. Such subtlety finds expression in in the ways in which we
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 389

furnish and design workspaces since, as Theo van Leeuwen (2011:117) has
proposed, Contemporary culture and cultural communication is as much,
if not more, in the props and settings of our everyday practices as in the
texts that we consciously and concentratedly interact with. Appropri-
ately, this paper applies a multimodal approach to critical discourse analy-
sis to make visible how these more subtle forms of neoliberal and gender
ideologies are not just realised at the foreground through talk and text, but
also how they disappear unproblematically into the background of social
action yet remaining nonetheless constitutive. In this way, the organisa-
tion and aesthetics of open plan office design do not simply represent ideas
about work, they actually promote specific work practices.
Multimodal critical discourse analysis (MCDA) presupposes that dis-
courses are realised through the articulation of semiotic resources across
multiple semiotic modes. If meaning potential can be found anywhere then
equally, ideology is potentially invested everywhere. In this way, MCDA
not only attends to how social reality is represented in texts themselves
but how those ideologies and discourses that constitute social reality are
embedded in our everyday lived environments. This has implications for
more than just matters of representation. Since discourses are themselves
socially determined resources for knowing and acting upon some aspect
of reality, their realisation in the most mundane of settings and minutia
of detail does matter. The ubiquity and everydayness of multimodal dis-
course means, therefore, that MCDA is not limited to inquiring into how
social phenomena come to be represented. A multimodal approach to dis-
course analysis also affords consideration of how those realities come to
be realised through the actions of social actors. In other words, we can
explore how actors come to know social reality but also how they come to
perform it as well.
Butlers (2004:33) conceptualisation of gender performativity is called
upon here to account for the ways in which office workers are expected,
in their desire for recognition as viable workers in the neoliberal work-
place, to turn to the gendered norms of that workplace in order to enact
a sense of choice and autonomy even though those norms are not actually
of their own choosing. Beyond employee handbooks and memos, these
gendered norms are equally semiotised in those workplace props and set-
tings depicted in the promotional videos. Quite simply, the workplace and
its designs function as a horizon and the resource for any sense of choice
(Butler 2004:33) that the workers might have.
Accordingly, by attending to the expression and articulation of specific
sets of semiotic resources as they occur in the representation of office work,
I propose to demonstrate the ways in which particular gendered practices
390 Ian Roderick

and identities come to be represented as being viable for the neoliberal

workplace. More specifically, I am interested in how contemporary office
design and knowledge work are represented in these promotional materi-
als as being productive of presumably recognisable gender performativi-
ties that are conducive to those immaterial forms of labour exploited by
communicative capitalism.

Analysis: the semiotics of knowledge work

In the following analysis, I examine some of the characteristic ways in
which knowledge workers and their activities are represented in the pro-
motional videos. A total of sixteen international vendors were identified
and their video libraries available on their corporate websites and YouTube
channels were then reviewed. Particular attention is given to those videos
that presented the office furniture in use since they incorporate pre-
scriptive representations of how knowledge work should presumably be
performed.
In any text, how actors are depicted will realise both representational
and interactional meanings. Analysing how actors are depicted transitively
addresses the system of resources that realise how actors and their actions
are semiotised as representations. Examining the resources used to repre-
sent actors interactionally, in turn, entails detailing how social relations are
semiotised through the exchange function of the text. Together these two
systems of meaning, the representational and the interactional, constitute
the relationality as well as the reality of knowledge work in the promo-
tional videos.
To better understand how knowledge work is semiotised in the videos,
I first consider the depiction of represented social actors and the types of
processes that these actors perform as workplace activities. Having estab-
lished the kinds of actors and actions that are used to represent the labour-
ers and labour of knowledge work, I then describe the ways in which the
interactions between workers are depicted as evidence of productivity
and the generation of value. These interactions are thus understood here
as emotional (Hochschild 1983) or immaterial (Fortunati 2007) forms of
labour that are now made visible and rendered compulsory in the collabor-
ative workplace. In this way, the videos represent the work of knowledge
work as largely freely given.

Representing actors
Representationally, the kinds of participant being portrayed can be anal-
ysed in terms of three sets of semiotic resources:
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 391

1. individualisation or collectivisation;
2. categorisation; and
3. non-representation (Machin 2007:118).
Participants can, of course, be represented as individuals or in groups and
this has important implications for connecting the viewer to the interest and
experiences of the participants (Machin 2007:118). The degree to which a
participant is visually represented as a distinct individual can be modulated
through distance and detail, while as groups, participants become collec-
tivised the more the group comes to appear as homogenous and/or generic
types. Categorisation can be applied to both individualised and collectivised
participants. Machin (2007:119) proposes that categorisation is realised
visually as cultural, biological, or a combination of the two. Typical cultural
markers such as attire, hairstyle and ornamentations have the potential to
realised cultural categorisations. On the other hand, physiological markers
(often stereotyped) such as physique, pigmentation, physiology and also hair-
style, have the potential to realise biological categorisations. Finally, some
participants may not be visually represented at all. For example, Machin
(2007:121) notes how the in portraying Iraqi civilians, western media never
depict middle-class people. Together these resources afford ways of includ-
ing participants so that they can be made to be seen as unique and distinc-
tive, or as generic types, or not at all.

Individualisation/collectivisation
When viewing the videos, it is immediately obvious that individualisa-
tion is less frequently used than collectivisation, but it can be most readily
observed in the Another Workday Begins dramatisation by Global Contract.
The opening establishment shots of the principle character getting ready
for the workday along with the close-up shots of the various characters
reacting to each others efforts in the work project afford a greater sense of
distinct individuals being represented for the viewer. Similarly, in the other
videos individualisation also occurs in speaking and reaction shots when
depicting dyads and small groups of workers are interacting. The way in
which individualisation is realised on a cline is most obvious in the scenes
that depict knowledge workers removing themselves from the open collab-
orative work environment in order to concentrate on a specific task. In such
instances, individuated workers are either shown detached in a populated
common area (weak individualisation) or alone on the screen, segregated
in a small hoteling workspace (strong individualisation). However, because
there is an industry-wide emphasis upon designing workspaces that not
only facilitate, but also actively stimulate collaborative work practices, such
scenes are far outnumbered by scenes of happy and presumably productive
392 Ian Roderick

interactions between workers. Indeed, in the few instances where a worker

is depicted alone in a segregated workspace, it is typically in a glass-walled
and therefore visually permeable space in which they are in communica-
tion with another geographically remote co-worker (see Figure 1; Herman
Miller 2011a). More often, though, when workers are individualised it
is the weaker variety, in common areas, and the scene will often unfold
with another worker arriving and striking up a conversation (see Figure
2; National Office Furniture 2014). It is worth noting then that in either
version of individualisation, the worker is always at some level available
to others and therefore always carries the potential to be (re)collectivised.

Figure 1: Herman Miller Design Yard 1:36.

Figure 2: National Office Furniture Creating Spaces 2:21.

 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 393

Collectivisation is, by far, the more typical way in which workers are rep-
resented in the workspace. The videos are promoting workspaces that are
supposed to foster collaboration and will often include designers explain-
ing how contemporary knowledge work is primarily done collectively in
conjunction with others. The Herman Miller video Working Together, for
example, declares that 70 per cent of the day is spent working together
(Herman Miller 2011b). As such, workers are most frequently shown inter-
acting in pairs, small groups and sometimes, also, in large groups such as
in meetings and video conferencing. Since the value of the office designs
and furnishings is their ability to promote collaborative work, the videos
include frequent portrayals of workers in groups or joining groups where
plenty of smiling and talking is accomplished. Collectivisation is, of course,
realised not only by presenting people in groups but also by establishing
commonalities in other ways such as clothing, actions, poses, and even
generic types, as with knowledge workers in this instance the greater the
homogenisation, the stronger the collectivisation of the participants.
By and large we see groupings of workers all dressed in what is com-
monly called business-casual but at the higher end. Almost no ties, for
example, are to be seen in the videos and, although Nationals Creating
Spaces is unusual for the number of workers seen to be wearing sport
jackets, open neck shirts are seemingly de rigueur for the male knowledge
worker along with perhaps a nice jumper or sweater vest. Female workers,
similarly, are most often attired in dress pants, tailored shirts, and some-
times complimented with fashionable knitwear. This business-casual style
is worn by older as well as younger workers and therefore adds to the sense
of common identity. At the same time, there is considerable variety in
clothing options being worn by the workers in terms of colour, cut, materi-
als and so on. In keeping with the fact that individualisation and collecti-
visation are on a continuum, the differences in actual attire moderate the
homogenisation of the knowledge workers. Rather than the uniformity of
the business suit, we see that the groups of knowledge workers are always
composed of individuals who have the freedom to express themselves in
their dress and their work and are presumably rewarded for it.
Clearly the video producers are interested appealing broadly to the
global marketplace, so attention is also given to representing gender and
racial diversity in the workplace. Large groups of workers are always
depicted as being gender dimorphic while smaller groups of typically
three to four can be gender homogeneous though often such groupings
are also gender dimorphic. Representing the workers as being diverse in
terms of racial constructs also further moderates homogenisation. While
the great majority of represented workers are white, other racial groups are
394 Ian Roderick

represented in the workplaces and people of colour are often made to be

present so as to be one of each. Finally, while individual workplace groups
tend to be fairly homogeneous in terms of age, by and large the workplace
is represented as bi-generational; comprised of both younger and senior
workers with younger workers clearly being in the majority. At the same
time, medium-sized groupings are often made up of workers of approxi-
mately the same age, thus appearing to be made up of equals. The upshot
is that knowledge workers tend to be represented in groups that are made
up of young women and men and so are rather homogeneous in terms of
age but primarily white in terms of racial constructs. Ultimately, the effect
is to represent the workplace as conflict-free and synergistic because it is
a place in which differences are minimised.

Categorisation
The common dress style discussed above can be said to function as a cul-
tural categorisation. The shared trend savvy fashion options in attire and
hairstyle of particularly the younger sets of participants all mark them as
categorical young knowledge workers: in other words, knowing the cues,
we can extrapolate from their appearances that they represent aspiring,
career and project-oriented, creatives. Another related but biological cate-
gorisation that is potentially realised here is that of the generational cohort
oft referred to as Millennials.
The depiction of so many of the office workers as young employees
enthusiastically finding their place within the organisation clearly draws
upon the preoccupation with retaining the Millennial worker. In various
reports, promotional literature, and as well many of the videos, refer to the
office designs as being a means of attracting and retaining so-called Mil-
lennial employees who are seen as on the one hand essential to reinvigo-
rating companies with new talent and at the same time fickle and just as
apt to quit if the workplace cannot adapt to their generational dispositions.
Following from the voiceover comments of Angie Lee (workplace practice
leader, SmithGroupJJR), the open, lively, collaborative office design is a
recruitment and retention tool. Multiple generations now are occupying
the workplace and everyones agenda and expectations are so different that
your workplace in sense also become away that you can recruit and retain
your employees (SmithGroupJJR 2012).
Accordingly, as one Herman Miller research document states:
Millennials are happier, more motivated, and more efficient in a well-designed
workplace. They seek open, dependable work communities where knowledge is
shared, the pace is rapid, and new ideas are openly sought. Ideally, they want the
freedom to select the location of their work with no set boundaries, with access to
technology expected. (Herman Miller 2010:5)
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 395

Correspondingly, many of the videos also seek to explicitly represent

moments of mentoring in which one or two junior employees are able to
converse with and learn from someone more senior in the more casual
environment brought about by the new workspaces (see Figure 3; Herman
Miller 2011b).

Figure 3: Herman Miller Working Together 0:39.

Older, more senior workers are present but they are never represented
in groups larger than three and they are always out-numbered by the
younger workers. More typically, senior employees will appear together
in dyads or trios or in slightly greater numbers in larger meetings but
otherwise single senior employees will be depicted in small mentoring
interactions. While the knowledge workers are also represented as being
gender dimorphic, the attention to representing malefemale gender
parity in the videos tends to diminish gender as a significant categorisa-
tion. Accordingly, the videos, by and large, represent the relatively homo-
geneous office workers engaging one another in a youthful, dynamic,
vibrant, visually stimulating, and, of course, highly collaborative environ-
ment in which all interactions are positive and affirming. The workplace
is therefore represented as emotionally and intellectually rewarding - for
the younger workers as they work together and learn from their more
experienced co-workers and for the older workers as they share their
gained wisdom. But of course, by extension, the workplace is ultimately
being represented as highly productive and therefore profitable for the
company actually procuring the furniture through such mentor-mentee
labours.
396 Ian Roderick

Non-representation
In addition to analysing how actors are represented, it is equally impor-
tant to consider those meaningful absences which equally underwrite the
homogeneity/solidarity being produced through categorisation. Thus, in
keeping with the representation of the workplace as collaborative and
team-based rather than structured by a hierarchical chain of command,
one notable non-representation in the videos is that of the manager. As
already noted, there are senior people depicted in the videos and they
of course shown to be readily and frequently interacting with junior
employees but as mentors and collaborators. None of the represented
workers plays the role of a directing manager and everyone freely speaks
and listens to one another. This can be contrasted against US Bureau of
Labor statistics, which predict an 8 per cent growth in administrative
services managers, a 9 per cent growth in advertising, promotions and
marketing managers, and 15 per cent for computer and information
systems managers while only a 7 per cent average growth is predicted for
occupations across the board (US Bureau of Labor 2015b). Again, this
misrepresentation is very much in keeping with notions of a Millennial-
friendly workplace:
They are more drawn to projects that connect with their strengths and abili-
ties and favour managers that support them through training and development.
Menlo Innovations has built a strong culture in part because they dont have
managers, only leaders and thus have eliminated the command and control envi-
ronment that millennials dislike. (Schawbel 2013)

In this way, the non-representation of managers signals the absence of

strict top-down hierarchies and a work environment that is assumed to be
more participatory than in traditional bureaucratic organisations. Appro-
priately, in only one video is anything resembling the traditional corner
office of management ever shown (Knoll 2015). Instead, in many of the
case study videos senior personnel are recorded enthusiastically extolling
the virtues of the redesign and transformation of their workplace in open
spaces and common areas rather than in an office.
Of course, management is also a very highly gendered occupational field
with the majority of those in management being men.1 Consequently, the
absence of managers ends up further obfuscating this imbalance by rein-
forcing the illusion of equity through the non-representation of a male-
dominated occupation. Claims to having entered upon a post-feminist
period in which personal empowerment can be found and exercised
through career development seemingly carries weight when the reality of
glass ceilings are made invisible.
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 397

Managers, however, are not the only actors not represented in the
videos. Also invisible are the clerical and support workers that one would
normally expect to find in an office workplace. Many of these positions
have traditionally been thought of as pink collar jobs and, for example,
according to the US Bureau of Labor, 82.2 per cent of file clerks in the US
in 2015 were women. Likewise, 90.6 per cent of receptionists and informa-
tion clerks were women and 94.5 per cent of secretaries and administrative
assistants were women (US Bureau of Labor 2015a). Again, their omis-
sion may be in keeping with the representation of the workplace as a level
playing field and so these highly feminised forms of labour are omitted.
However, the absence of clerical workers could also reflect the uploading
of their duties onto other employees and the growing reduction of clerical
positions in many organisations all in the name of economising. At the
same time though, also missing are the workers who stock and maintain
the lavish coffee stations shown in the work lounges. Likewise, we might
also wonder why no custodial staff are to be seen in these workplaces.
Again, this might be about maintaining the appearance of a collaborative
workplace but it also speaks to a certain kind of fetishism of the workplace
in which the actual workers and the material means necessary to sustaining
such environments are rendered invisible.

Actions and agency

Finally, the actions and agency of represented actors can be analysed by
attending to exactly what types of activities they perform. As van Leeuwen
(2008) has proposed, representations of social action do three principal
things at once:

1. they represent actions or activities as types of processes;

2. they identify (or obscure) actors; and
3. they allocate agency among represented actors.

Based upon the work of Halliday (1985), representations of social action

can be divided into six principal categories or process:

material (processes of doing);

mental (processes of sensing);
relational (processes of being);
behavioural (processes of physiological and psychological behaviour);
verbal (processes of saying); and
existential (processes of existing or happening).
398 Ian Roderick

Given that performativity entails a reiterative and citational practice which

constitutes the identity it is purported to be (Butler 1990:25), attention
here is primarily upon the ways in gendered identities and attributes are
realised through material, mental, behavioural, and verbal processes rather
than relational and existential ones.
Material processes, as acts of doing that effect some sort of material
change in the world, connote greater agency than other processes such
as behavioural ones. Machin and Thornborrow (2003), for example, have
noted in their transnational study of Cosmopolitan, representing women
engaged in behavioural rather than material processes has the potential of
connoting energy and agency while at the same not actually affording them
the potential to effect any real changes in their world. Thus, by attending
to the manner in which actors and their actions are represented, we can
describe how texts constitute particular identities, allocate them roles, and
establish social relations between the represented participants (see van
Leeuwen 2008:32).
Given that material processes represent processes of doing something
in the world and these are videos purporting to represent the world of
work, one could be forgiven for expecting that material processes would
dominate. Instead, however, one of the immediately striking features of the
videos is how few material processes are actually depicted. By and large,
the material processes that are depicted tend to be rather trivial, mundane
acts that are not connected explicitly to any particular work process. Cer-
tainly, actors are depicted doing such actions as turning pages, tapping
a pen on a notebook, adjusting furniture, and so forth but these actions
never seem to contribute directly to the process of getting things done in
the workplace. Instead, the processes that are represented in the videos are
largely behavioural and verbal ones.
So for example, in Working Together (Herman Miller 2011b), after the
words, GOOD MORNING a series of twenty-one lexemes appear as text
overlays, each representing a different work process that is occurring in the
video. All the overlay words appear in non-transactive form, making them
almost seem like workplace behaviours (or even behavioural processes),
however, at the same time, the video does depict almost all of the processes
as interactions between actors. As processes, the lexemes represent the
activities of work as being pre-eminently communicative. Words such as,
BRIEFING, EMAILING, WRITING, TALKING, MENTORING, CRI-
TIQUING, ASKING and DISCUSSING are obvious verbal processes. At
the same time, behavioural processes such as TYPING, SHARING, LIS-
TENING, LEARNING and COLLABORATING are all visually depicted
as being embedded in and enacted through communication between
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 399

workers. In all, only three of the overlays (CLICKING, SKETCHING and

CREATING) could be said to represent material processes and SKETCH-
ING is depicted as being performed in conversation within a meeting. The
emphasis upon collaboration in the video is such that even the one mental
process, THINKING, is presented as communicative. By presenting it as
an overlay to a scene in which a seated female and male worker are discuss-
ing the workpiece on the screen in front of the female worker, THINKING
becomes a collective and collaborative activity.
The video Another Workday Begins (Global Contract 2012) also depicts
remarkably few material processes in its representation of knowledge
work. The video begins in the residence of a young female worker as she
gets ready for work. Having gotten dressed and made-up and assembled
a breakfast-to-go, the worker texts her co-workers from the subway train
announcing that she has a great idea to share. Once at work we see her plug
her charger into the built-in electrical receptacle at her workbench and file
a project folder. From that point on, the majority of the actions depicted
are verbal and behavioural (looking, smiling, laughing). The few significant
material processes that are enacted are largely limited to showcasing some
of the modular elements of the workbench system: adjusting a bookend
system and at one point two male workers move a shelf/divider together to
another station at the shared workbench.
The video also uses text overlays with two word clusters representing
the collaborative work process. The first cluster forms around the mate-
rial process SHARE with the goals of ABILITY, IDEAS and VISION in
smaller type. However, because the process verbally lacks both actor and
recipient, I would argue that the process-cluster has been abstracted from
the actual represented actors and instead function as behaviours associ-
ated with the office form. The second word cluster is centred on ACHIEVE
with the associated metonyms, REACH, ACCOMPLISH and ATTAIN in
the smaller type. Although each has the potential to function as a material
process, they lack actors and also goals, so again I would argue that they are
in effect abstracted from the visually represented actors and instead have
the potential to function as promised behaviours to be brought about by
the affordances, if not agency, of the office furnishings. At the same time,
the four lexemes also have the potential to evoke mental states on the part
of works and thus function as mental processes. Achieve, reach, accom-
plish and attain can all equally represent affection processes that a senser
(the workers) experience in response to the phenomena of a completed
project. Overall then, the emphasis in this promotional video is upon dem-
onstrating how well the team works together to complete a project at the
stylish shared workbench and this is largely accomplished by depicting
400 Ian Roderick

positive interactions between workers rather than the production of any

specific work piece.
On the whole, the most notable actions taken by actors in the videos
are verbal and behavioural. Much of the time, the videos present actors
in working pairs or groups and when an actor is alone, he or she is usually
moving to join a group. As workers pair up or join groups, there is always
an exchange of smiles and greetings. On the one hand, this emphasis on
the sociability of the workers can be accounted for by the difficulty of rep-
resenting knowledge work since it largely entails the creation of immaterial
objects. Seeing office workers perform these actions gives the impression
of energetic and productive workplaces but, as already noted above, does
not actually afford the workers the kinds of agency associated with affect-
ing real material change (Machin and Thornborrow 2003). On the other
hand, it also points to the increasing acknowledgement of the importance
of affective or immaterial labour to the operations of any organisation.

Interactional meanings
Visually, interactional analysis focuses upon the constructed viewer-
participant orientation which in turn realises three types of interaction:

1. between the interactive participants;

2. between the represented participants; and
3. between the represented participants and the interactive participants.

One key semiotic resource for constituting interactional meaning is the

orientation of the viewers gaze. This entails analysing how the text, as an
exchange between interactants, orients the viewer in relation to the repre-
sented participants and, in doing so, also attitudinally orients the viewer.
The other resource for semiotising interactional meanings to be addressed
here are the poses that represented participants are seen to adopt. Poses
afford cues regarding the relations between participants, allowing the
viewer to infer interpersonal orientation and social status among repre-
sented actors. Together these two systems of resources are analysed here to
better describe how interactional meanings constitute knowledge worker
as emotional labourers.

Orientation of gaze
One way in which the relations between these interactants are thus realised
is through the organisation and orientation of gaze into three primary
semiotic resources: contact, distance, and point-of-view. Contact refers to
the kind of interaction between represented and interactive participants.
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 401

Depending upon whether or not the represented participant(s) return the

look of the viewer, the image is said to be either demand (gaze returned) or
offer (gaze absent). The idea here is that the degree to which a represented
participant meets the viewers gaze, can be experienced as an interaction
by the viewer and thus creates a sense in which something is required on
the part of the viewer. Conversely, an offered participant suggests that the
depicted participant is being made available but cannot require anything
of the viewer. Distance refers the social distance between the participant(s)
and the viewer and is largely realised through the size of the framing of the
participant(s). Close up images connote familiarity and intimacy whereas
long shots connote distant and impersonal social relations. Finally, point-
of-view entails the way angles of horizontal and vertical perspective are
employed to realise degrees of involvement and power respectively. It is
important to remember, however, that these resources are part of a simul-
taneous system that functions together rather than additively to produce
interpersonal meanings (Kress and van Leeuwen 2006:148).
As depictions of the workplace in action, the majority of the videos
tend to employ offer rather than demand shots of the depicted knowledge
workers. Almost invariably, involvement and interactions are structured
between represented participants. When demand shots are used, it is to
structure the relationship between viewer and the designers who are often
included to explain the rationale and efficacy of the office design being
showcased. The one video that tells a dramatised story, Another Workday
Begins (Global Contract 2012), does differ by sometimes adopting cine-
matic conventions in portraying dialogue and so makes more frequent use
of demand shots. Otherwise, the videos try to employ a more documen-
tary style in which scenes depicting workers are staged but presented as if
real or in few cases taken live from workplaces in action. In these videos,
the viewer is given the fly-on-the-wall perspective and made to be more
observer than participant.
Socially intimate close-up shots are used in the video to punctuate the
positive working relationship between two workers (see Figure 4; Herman
Miller 2011a), often in the form of reaction shots. Generally, the shots
of workers tend to be taken at more median social to distant impersonal
shots. Since the aim of videos is to depict vibrant and exciting work envi-
ronments in which collaboration is spurred on, medium to long shots are
more typical. Too many close-ups would mean little opportunity to actu-
ally see the office space and how the workers occupy it. At the same time,
distances between interacting participants are almost social to intimate
in distance. The close physical proximity between workers affords a great
sense of close and productive working relationships.
402 Ian Roderick

Figure 4: Herman Miller Design Yard 1:04.

Figure 5: Herman Miller Design Yard 0:51.

In terms of point-of-view, one striking feature is the consistency in the use

of neutral horizontal planes such that almost all shots are taken at eye-level.
This goes for both the viewer-participant perspective and the sight-lines
between participants. Thus, although one would expect workplaces to be
comprised of hierarchical relations, the way vertical angle tends to be used
has the potential to suggest relations that are largely egalitarian (see Figure 5;
Herman Miller 2011a). The use of horizontal angles, of course, varies much
more as viewer involvement with the represented knowledge workers tends
to be dynamic. One common pattern is to represent groups of workers with
reduced involvement while individual workers, when speaking, are more
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 403

likely to be depicted with higher degrees of involvement. What is of par-

ticular interest then, is the ways in which together these three systems of
interactional resources afford participant-to-participant relations that can
be construed as highly intimate, interactive, and largely egalitarian while
viewer-participant relations afford a more detached but no less democratic
gaze upon the world of the knowledge worker.

Poses
If the use of distance and point-of-view tends to produce interactional
meanings that are suggestive of a relative equality between represented
participants, a closer examination of the use of pose reveals how as a semi-
otic resource it can moderate those egalitarian meaning potentials. Machin
(2007:27) adopts Barthess (1973) account of poses as a resource for con-
noting ideas about represented participants, and points out how poses, as
a semiotic mode, are also a resource for realising interactional meanings
as well. Consequently, the six qualities of poses that Machin and Mayr
(2012:756) identify for analysing connotative meaning potential prove
equally useful for this purpose. Thus when studying at the poses adopted
by the participants in the videos, we can consider the following continua:

1. The degree to which a participant does or does not take up space.

2. The degree to which a participant is viewer-oriented or self-contained.
3. The degree to which a participant is relaxed or intense.
4. The degree to which a participant is opened or closed to others.
5. The degree to which participants mirror each other.
6. The degree to which participants socially close.

By analysing the poses adopted by the represented participants along these

dimensions, claims can be made about the allocation of status and agency
among the participants as realised through their interactions.
Invariably, the videos emphasise relations between workers that are pos-
itive, open, guileless and affable. At each meeting, the workers appear gen-
uinely pleased to see each other. Every encounter between workers begins
with an exchange of smiles, nods and relaxed, open bodily comportment.
While this is more difficult to convey in larger groups, the videos will often
overcome this problem by having one worker join the larger group and be
greeted by the most immediate members. When one worker speaks, the
others smile and nod in affirmation. There is also a great deal of mirroring
which is of course suggestive of social cohesion. Generally, seated workers
interact with seated workers and standing workers interact with standing
workers. Overall, the videos depict workplaces where there are no conflicts
and everyone is eager and willing to get down to work with everyone else.
404 Ian Roderick

Not surprisingly however, there are frequent gendered differences in

the poses adopted by the participants in the promotional videos. There are
multiple incidences of where male participants readily occupy and take up
space while their female colleagues either occupy only the space actually
needed or in some cases actually reduce the amount of space they occupy.
For example, in Accela Case Study (Knoll 2015), one scene consists of three
workers shown seated at a table in the common lounge. The male worker
reclines with his legs outstretched, crossed at the ankle, and his feet resting
on the table. The two female workers sit reclined but with their legs tucked
up into their chairs. The two women appear to be mirroring each other
in how they sit at the table while the man does not. Additionally, the two
women have positioned their chairs to be in closer proximity while the man
sits opposite and is as distant as possible without actually leaving the table.
Similarly, in another scene four men and one woman are seen seated at
another table discussing a work project. One of the men draws on the table
surface while the others in the group watch and share in the discussion. All
three men are shown seated with their knees and elbows apart while the
woman sits with her knees and elbows tightly together (see Figure 6; Knoll
2015). What the two scenes reproduce is the masculine privilege to take
up space and to claim corporeal comfort. While in the first scene all three
workers seem to have adopted relaxed positions, the posture of the woman
does seem decidedly less relaxed in the second scene. Seeing the three men
mirroring one another while the woman sits in a more closed position with
her hands clasped together further sets her apart despite their close social
distance.

Figure 6: Knoll Accela Case Study 0:45.

 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 405

The gender politics of space are particularly pronounced in collaborative

workspaces since private space has been significantly reduced from what
would be found in traditional offices. Furthermore, the turn to benching
in place of desking means workers work in closer proximity to one another
and the boundaries between workspaces become less well defined. This is
most obvious in Another Workday Begins, when it focuses upon the team
at work around a shared bench. While the female workers remain seated at
their terminals, the male workers stand above them and sit on the edges and
corners of the bench (see Figure 7; Global Contract 2012). While female co-
workers may stand over the other female workers, they do not encroach on
their workspaces as the male counter-parts seem to feel free to do.

Figure 7: Global Contract Another Workday Begins 1:42.

These representations of knowledge work as non-material or, better

yet, immaterial processes semiotise the growing centrality of affective
labour to organisational life. The emphasis placed upon emergent forms of
knowledge work and corresponding collaborative work practices means a
growing need for workers to form cohesive bonds in the workplace. This
cohesion is to come not from bureaucratic structure but rather from the
cultivation of informalised affective relations between co-workers. Repre-
sentationally, differences between the masculine and feminine genders in
the workplace are clearly obfuscated by blending them in working groups
and depicting workers of both sexes performing the same kinds of pro-
cesses that realise immaterial forms of labour. Yet, as Hochschilds (1983)
pioneering work demonstrates, affective labour is profoundly gendered.
Likewise, Tyler and Cohen observe that
406 Ian Roderick

women tend to be equated with the embodied and emotional aspects of organiza-
tional life, so that female employees especially are required to manage their pre-
sentation of self in such a way as to engender a particular emotional or aesthetic
experience in others. (Tyler and Cohen 2010:179)

This is realised in the videos through the gendering of reactions and affir-
mations, which in turn reproduce gendered norms of emotional labour. By
and large, women are more likely to perform acts of listening and reacting
while men are more likely performing as speaking subjects. For example,
in Another Workday Begins, even the though female protagonist has texted
her co-workers to let them know that she has a great idea and calls the
meeting, for the most part she is depicted smiling, laughing, and nodding
and generally affirming the work done by the three male co-workers in the
video. Similarly, in Herman Millers Design Yard it is the two male employ-
ees who principally talk while the female employee smiles and listens (see
Figure 5). Thus, it is again largely women who are responsible for the affec-
tive labour that contributes to the production of cohesion and camaraderie
in the workplace.
As such the unpaid care-giving and emotional labour of so-called pink
collar service work, which has hitherto largely been unacknowledged or
simply just expected, is now understood as being a sign of a productive
work culture. Ironically, as affective forms of labour come to be visible in
discourses on knowledge work, its visibility functions only to symbolise
other more valued work that cannot be so easily represented. Quite simply,
it is still not real work, it is just a sign that work is happening. Further-
more, while men are increasingly expected to also perform affective work,
the proverbial lions share of this work is still expected of those to whom it
supposedly comes natural.

Gender performativity and the viable employee

Just as Hancock and Tyler (2007:514) have argued with regards to images
of corporate recruitment brochures, the promotional videos are not only
representational but also performative since they function to compel or
enchant particular ways of doing gender according to organisational
imperatives. Quite simply, the videos validate specific gendered subjectivi-
ties and performances of affective labour that are conducive to collabora-
tive forms of knowledge work. In neoliberal workplaces where top-down
bureaucratic structures have been replaced by an ethos of flexibilisation
and deregulation, in order to be recognised and validated workers must
become self-managing and able to cite or enact the gendered corporate
norm.
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 407

Obviously, it is Judith Butlers account of gender performativity and

the relationship between the representational and the performative that is
most pertinent here. Butlers theorisation of subjectification departs from
Althussers (1972) conception of interpellation whereby the subject (mis)
recognises herself in the hailing of the ideology by stressing the perfor-
mative in relation to the representational. Accordingly, Butler (2004:33)
proposes that [o]ur very sense of personhood is linked to the desire for
recognition and, in seeking recognition, we must turn to the realm of
social norms that we do not fully choose, but that provides the horizon and
the resource for any sense of choice that we have. The longing for recogni-
tion, to be acknowledged and validated by others as a viable subject, means
that underpinning our performance of gender is the desire to project a
coherent and compelling identity (Tyler and Cohen 2010:179). In this way,
gender is not a static quality or role taken up by the individual but rather, as
Hancock and Tyler (2007: 515) elaborate, something that is always becom-
ing through the subjects own un/doing gender as a practice of citation
whereby that very subject produces its coherence at the cost of its own
complexity (Butler 1993:115; see also 232).
In un/doing immaterial forms of knowledge work, the female knowl-
edge worker must cite a normative feminised affective worker in order
to be recognisable within the organisation as a viable employee. Recogni-
tion is thus sought in what Jodi Dean (2005: 54) has termed communica-
tive capitalism wherein the market is conceptualised as the mechanism
through which actors may fulfil their democratic aspirations. Accordingly,
liberal feminism gives special status to the workplace as a site in which
gender equality can be won by following a successful career path. In this
sense, the workplace is conceived of as a privileged site in which the patri-
archal constraints placed upon women in the domestic sphere are lifted as
they enter the public sphere of work. Womens professional success in the
workplace is therefore taken as evidence of a more democratic and merit-
based set of social relations.
It is important to note however, that this notion of seeking validation in
the market place is not done simply out of choice or even false conscious-
ness. The subject seeking recognition as being viable does not simply make
choices to act in accordance with the norm. Returning to Butler:
Femininity is thus not the product of a choice, but the forcible citation of a norm,
one whose complex historicity is indissociable from relations of discipline, regu-
lation, punishment. Indeed, there is no one who takes on a gender norm. On
the contrary, this citation of the gender norm is necessary in order to qualify as
a one, to become viable as a one, where subject-formation is dependent on the
prior operation of legitimating gender norms. (Butler 1993:232)
408 Ian Roderick

Thus, in order to qualify as a viable employee, the knowledge worker is

compelled to cite the norm of the good worker who cares for the well-
being of her team through the provision of uncompensated added-value
emotional and affective labour.

Conclusion
This paper demonstrates how the representation of social actors and
action can textually (re)organise the labour process so as to constitute new
workplace subjectivities that matter to the new collaborative workplaces
of communicative capitalism. By analysing how knowledge work is repre-
sented in promotional videos produced by multinational office designers
and furniture manufacturers, this paper highlights how affective forms of
labour are increasingly becoming central to the new discourses on work-
place management. Whereas in the past, affective labour and emotional
labour in particular, went largely unacknowledged in terms of its contribu-
tion, affective labour and the creation of intimacy in the workplace is now
brought to the fore and highlighted as means of organisational success.
However, in the videos, the new visibility of affective labour functions only
to symbolise other more valued work that cannot be so easily represented.
In promoting their goods and services, the contract furniture suppli-
ers extoll the collaborative workplace as the new way of work and knowl-
edge work as the new dominant mode of production. The videos represent
knowledge workers as invariably enjoying their work and the company of
their co-workers. Their collaborative workplaces are presented as being
fluid and egalitarian rather than rigid and hierarchical. Representationally,
biological categorisation of knowledge workers into male and female is less-
ened by their seemingly equal agency and their individuation. The power
differences between the masculine and feminine genders in the workplace
are clearly obfuscated by blending them in working groups and depicting
workers of both sexes performing the same kinds of processes that realise
immaterial forms of labour. At the same time, interactionally, there are
important gendered differences that come to the fore particularly when
analysing differences in posture that male and female knowledge workers
are sometimes seen to adopt. Furthermore, while social semiotic and sys-
temic functional analysis has traditionally separated interactional meaning
from representational meaning, the concepts of emotional and affective
labour problematise this seemingly easy division. Not only do processes
represent kinds of social action but clearly some processes such as verbal
and behavioural are implicated in the reproduction of social relations and
so contribute to the realisation of interactional meanings between repre-
sented participants.
 Representing affective labour and gender performativity in knowledge work 409

Finally, it is argued that the videos do not simply represent knowledge

workers but are in fact performative insofar as they oblige particular ways
of doing gender. As idealised renditions of highly effective workplaces,
the videos vindicate specific gendered subjectivities and performances of
affective labour that are determined as viable in the context of collabora-
tive forms of knowledge work. Following from the work of Butler, it can be
proposed that, in the workers desire for recognition, she must turn to nor-
mative gender formations that are not of her own choosing but nonetheless
must cite. Like femininity, the viable, productive, and dedicated employee
is not a product of choice but the compulsory citation of a norm. Ulti-
mately, the knowledge worker, in seeking recognition as a viable employee,
must, through citation, produce her own coherence at the cost of her own
complexity (Butler 1993:115).

About the author

Ian Roderick is an associate professor in communication studies at Wilfrid Laurier Uni-
versity, Canada. He has recently published Critical Discourse Studies and Technology:
A Multimodal Approach to Analysing Technoculture (2016) as part of the Bloomsbury
Advances in Critical Discourse Studies series.

Acknowledgement
I wish to thank the reviewers of an earlier draft of this paper for their generous reading
and insightful and constructive comments.

Note
1 Notable exceptions are advertising and promotions managers (53.6%), public rela-
tions and fundraising managers (59.2%), human resources managers (73.3%), edu-
cation administrators (65.7%), medical and health services managers (73.7%), and
social and community service managers (67.4%) (US Bureau of Labor 2015a). These
are of course sectors that employ women in higher numbers and tend to be more
closely associated with the kinds of emotional labour described by Hochschild
(1983).

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