The Work of the Symbolic (1)

The following sentence was recently published in a major management journal. (The reference is part of the sentence.)

Qualitative-constructivist methodology has a unique advantage for exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes as it stresses the embodiment of experience in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices (Berger & Luckmann, 1966).

If it is true, here are two sentences that must be also be true:

Qualitative-constructivist methodology stresses the embodiment of experience in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices.

Qualitative-constructivist methodology is uniquely suited to exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes.

An in-line reference in a sentence is an implicit claim about the cited work. It should therefore also be possible to construct a sentence about Berger & Luckmann's The Social Construction of Reality. But this is actually a bit trickier. After all, the following is probably not true.*

Berger and Luckmann (1966) have argued that qualitative-constructivist methodology has a unique advantage for exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes as it stresses the embodiment of experience in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices.

Their work is probably being cited to support a characterization of a social ontology (constructivism), not a methodology (qualitative research).

Berger and Luckmann (1966) have argued that experience is embodied in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices.

In this context, it is of course taken for granted that Berger and Luckmann were right. So the original sentence could actually be rewritten as three:

Experience is embodied in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Qualitative-constructivist methodology stresses the embodiment of experience in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices. It is therefore uniquely suited to exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes.

This makes the argument clear, but it is also easy to see why the author didn't want to leave it like that (it's a bit clunky). We can tighten it up:

Experience is embodied in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices (Berger and Luckmann, 1966). Because qualitative-constructivist methodology stresses such embodiment, it is uniquely suited to exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes.

And from there it is, some might argue, a short step to the single sentence we began with.

But all this assumes that there is some obvious link between "exploring the work of the symbolic in institutional processes" and "the embodiment of experience in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices". If we grant that the link between exploration and experience is indeed obvious here, we can conclude that

The work of the symbolic in institutional processes is embodied in shared sociolinguistic meanings and practices.

Let's keep at it. More on Friday.

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*Update: It definitely isn't true. Berger and Luckmann leave methodological issues explicitly out of the book (page 25-26 in the Penguin edition).