Scripts, talk and double talk

This paper is about the role of talk in the creation, development and instating of a new script within an organization. For a long time I have been interested in how we recognize the patterns of behaviour that we have become accustomed to, how we sustain them and how, if we so choose, we modify them. Elsewhere I have made extensive use of the metaphor of the theatre in characterizing these processes, depicting the social world we inhabit as a place of settings, scenes, acts and scripts and ourselves as dramatists/dramaturges, performers, audiences and critics (Mangham, 1978, 1987, 1988; Mangham and Overington, 1986). In my work with members of organizations, I have utilized this frame to invite them to step back from their own performances, appraise them, rewrite them, try out the new scripts and work towards a long run of their new creations. Here I report on the role of talk in one such intervention.