IRONY AND THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF CONTRADICTION IN THE HUMOR OF A MANAGEMENT TEAM

The thesis I explore in this essay is that organizational members use humorous remarks to discursively construct and organize their cognitiv e and emotional experiences in and of their organizations. My assumpti ons are that: (1) organizations are socially constructed through disco urse about them (especially managerial discourse), (2) humorous discou rse provides a contradiction-centered construction of organizations th at operates in the domains of both cognition and emotion, and (3) inte rpretation of the text of ironic remarks will suggest the processes by which contradictions and their cultural and emotional contexts are so cially constructed through discourse. In this essay I use a form of an alysis that I developed in relation to humor theory (Mulkay 1988), the ories of irony (Brown 1977, Weick and Browning 1986) and Rorty's (1989 ) concept of the ironic disposition to interpret spontaneous humorous exchanges observed during the regular meetings of a group of middle ma nagers. My interpretations of ironically humorous remarks indicate tha t the managers in my study constructed at least some of their cognitiv e and emotional experiences in contradictory ways including: possible/ impossible, great/horrible, comic/serious, and upto-date/unprepared, T he interpretations also suggest how, in constructing contradiction, th e managers reflexively constructed themselves in relation to their org anization. The analysis points to a paradoxical understanding of organ izational stability and change and informs a contradiction-centered vi ew of organizations.