This dissertation develops an Indigenous rhetorical praxis of futurity, whichserves as an anticolonial methodology to activate indigeneity as a condition of possibility within communication studies. This approach seeks to apprehend and expose the persistence of colonialism and imperialism, particularly as these structures continue to shape and impact Indigenous lands and lives. It is promiscuous in practice, building from Indigenous political and cultural domains while simultaneously traversing the networks of colonialist ideologies to rearticulate rhetorical theoretical and methodological practices that are infused in anticolonial consciousness. To illuminate this praxis, I analyze three Indigenous speculative fiction novels authored by Indigenous people: Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger (Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas), The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline (Georgian Bay Métis), and The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones (Blackfeet). I concentrate on two primary aspects within the novels studied, including the authors’ articulations of spatial and affective relations as they inform Indigenous futurity. My focus on spatiality interrogates how the authors redefine colonial spaces and their impacts on bodies, identities, communities, and kinship formations. The analysis of affect explores how Indigenous desires, intimacies, and sensual embodiments are employed to dismantle liberalism, democracy, and discourses of rights and recognition. These examinations uncover the productions of indigeneity, colonialism, and sovereignty to enhance an understanding of the modes of dispossession through which subjectivities are constructed and deconstructed. Overall, this dissertation carves a space for Indigenous futures in communication studies and makes contributions to critical rhetorical studies, queer intercultural communication research, and the emerging subfield of Indigenous communication studies.

The Philippine Sea refers to the East and West Philippine Sea that are within the sovereign territory of the 7,641 islands of the Philippine archipelago. Historically, Spain, the United States, and Japan have colonized the islands, and the United States and China continue to maintain imperial interests in the area. Filipino/a/x diasporic activists in the U.S. and allies have participated in the anti-imperial struggle in support of demilitarization of the Pacific and of neo-colonized states across the globe. Responding to the problematics of anti-imperialism and solidarity, this dissertation advances the concept of agos or moving relations to attune to the sea as an analytic in theorizing activism, communication, and performance. This project was written on the unceded ancestral homelands of the Onk Akimel O’odham and Xalychidom Piipash, was inspired by the works of Black and Indigenous communities and scholars, and was influenced by Kale Fajardo’s notion of crosscurrents and Loma Cuevas-Hewitt’s concept of archipelagic poetics. Across critical organizational communication, critical intercultural communication, and performance studies, agos theorizes the relationalities of movements and the movements of relationalities. Utilizing critical qualitative, rhetorical, and performance methods, this project develops three instantiations of agos. In “Whirlpool Organizing,” the processes of anti-imperial organizers’ relationship and coalition building are examined to demonstrate the liquidities that animate dialectics and differences. In “Anchored Relationality,” U.S. diasporic Filipino/a/x’ varied and complex reconnections with Philippine waters are explored to illustrate the fluidities of positions and relations. In “Archipelagic Performance,” the staged production of “What sounds do turtles make?” is analyzed to showcase the flows of a decolonial and relational mode of performance.

Employee voicing facilitates positive changes and experiences for organizations and employees. However, despite a plethora of research on voice in different disciplines, our understanding of the process of employee voicing is still limited. This study seeks to (a) identify the phases that characterize the voicing process and (b) uncover the communicative strategies that characterize the different phases of the voicing process in the renewable energy industry in Kenya. The study utilized a qualitative approach. Namely, semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-three renewable energy workers in Kenya who reported to have engaged in voicing. Data were analyzed using a grounded theory approach. The findings revealed five core phases that characterize voicing: idea formation, planning, initial enactment, reflexive enactment, and outcome. Further, the findings uncovered a variety of communicative strategies that are used in the different phases of voicing. These strategies emerged from the perspectives of different actors such as voicers, voicers’ peers, and recipients and their peers who are involved in the voicing process. The findings of this study advance voice theory by reconceptualizing voicing as a process that is highly interactive. Additionally, the findings extend voice theory in three other ways. First, the results demonstrate that power and status disparities in organizations produce hierarchies that inhibit voicing, especially among low power and status employees. Participants discussed how they communicatively navigate these disparities. Second, the results shed light on the ways voicers navigate different risks associated with voicing such as idea stealing and retributions. Third, the findings illustrate the specific ways that positive communicative relationships between peers, and between supervisors and subordinates facilitate voicing. Both supervisors and peers are highly involved in all phases of the voicing process and thus, contribute to the development and enactment of the ideas. Finally, the findings offer practical ways for cultivating and fostering voicing to voicers, voicers’ peers, voice recipients, and organizations in the renewable energy industry.

The field of intercultural communication emerged from demonstrated need in the public sector and has roots in cultural anthropology. There is continued need in academic and practitioner domains for improved ways to effectively engage across cultures. To do so, it is necessary to develop approaches that enable a person to take the emic perspective of an intercultural Other. Worldview is a promising concept in several fields, such as anthropology and cross-cultural psychology, but remains undeveloped in the field of intercultural competence. In addition, existing conceptualizations and approaches to identify worldviews are too comprehensive or ambiguous to be useful. The purpose of this project was to propose a novel worldview framework synthesizing existing literature. The resulting construct is constituted by the composite universals, morality, agency, and positionality (MAP). Worldview MAP was applied to intercultural interactions between members of two distinct sociocultural groups working together on a two-week global management project in a multinational organization in Japan. Three research questions focused on identifying intercultural difficulties, worldview assumptions of each party, and relationships between the difficulties and worldviews. Inter-rater reliability was calculated for three morality subdimensions most underdeveloped in the literature. Findings include worldview descriptions for both culture groups across MAP and ways in which worldviews are interconnected with and illuminate three complex intercultural difficulties. Further, five meta-level worldview findings show how implicit worldviews were indirectly revealed in narrative data. Limitations of the study and implications for future work are discussed.

The biohacker movement is an important and modern form of activism. This study broadly examines how positive-activist-oriented biohackers emerge, organize, and respond to social crises. Despite growing public awareness, few studies have examined biohacking's influence on prevailing notions of organizing and medicine in-context. Therefore, this study examines biohacking in the context of the 2016 EpiPen price-gouging crisis, and explores how biohackers communicatively attempted to constitute counter-narratives and counter-logics about medical access and price through do-it-yourself (DIY) medical device alternatives. Discourse tracing and critical case study analysis are useful methodological frameworks for mapping the historical discursive and material logics that led to the EpiPen pricing crisis, including the medicalization of allergy, the advancement of drug-device combination technologies, and role of public health policy, and pharmaceutical marketing tactics. Findings suggest two new interpretations for how non-traditional forms of organizing facilitate new modes of resistance in times of institutional crisis. First, the study considers the concept of "pop-up maktivism" to conceptualize activism as a type of connective activity rather than collective organizing. Second, findings illustrate how activities such as participation and co-production can function as meaningful forms of institutional resistance within dominant discourses. This study proposes “mirrored materiality” to describe how biohackers deploy certain dominant logics to contest others. Lastly, implications for contributions to the conceptual frameworks of biopower, sociomateriality, and alternative organizing are discussed.

This dissertation examines the communication of U.S. Corporate executives in quarterly conference calls and in public forums at the World Economic Forum. Using grounded theory, the executive's core conceptual framework is identified and analyzed in the conference calls. Broadly speaking, it was found that an underlying aggressive orientation to the organization conceptualizes the executive as being the source of organizational activity. It places the executive in a causal-force relation to other organizational groups, which at once, inflates the role of the executive and poses a dilemma with respect to executive status and the communicative vitality of the organization. This project of organizational communication is situated within the broader areas of ideology, critical organizational scholarship, and communicative constitution of communication. The set of data consists of communication of executives of U.S. corporations in the S&P500 in 171 conference calls with shareholder agents. Grounded theory is used to identify the executives' conceptual view of the organization as it emerges from the data analysis. The findings from the analysis of the conference call data are presented in relation to two core categories, a causal-driving force and an ultimate objective category, including sub-categories that form an overall conceptual framework. An exploration of executive communication at the World Economic Forum extends these findings by demonstrating how it is transformed and mediated in a public venue in the presence of other stakeholders. One important finding from the study involves the emergence of a rival concept that poses an organizational dilemma for the future of the executive's communicative framework. And lastly, the issue of ideology is applied to the findings. This examination uses the sensitizing concepts of reification and fetishism drawn from the literature on ideology, which is developed into a systematic algorithm. The application of the findings to the model adds new insight into the relation between the executive and organizational communication. The results from this examination reinforce and highlight the conceptual dilemma the executive faces in relation to the organization and its future implications on organizational communication.