The importance of national language as a level of discourse within individuals’ theorising of leadership — A qualitative study of German and English employees

Abstract

This article adds to the leadership discourse literature as it explores the so far neglected role of national language as a level within an individual’s order of discourses, its relation to other discourses and its possible impact on the individual’s action theory of leadership. It does so by building upon and integrating several existing approaches to linguistic relativity hypothesis, discourse analysis and individual action theories. This article further analyses data from a qualitative study in the German and UK chemical industries to show that national language is an important discourse affecting an individual’s action theory of leadership. National language is argued to be setting boundaries to an individual’s sense-making of leadership through its fundamental influence on an individual’s conversational repertoire.

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