The Ventriloquial Configuring of Communication: International Communication Association Presidential Addresses as Legitimizing Rituals

Adopting a discursive perspective rooted in the Communicative Constitution of Organizations (CCO) tradition, we analyze 35 presidential addresses delivered at the International Communication Association (ICA) to show how they contribute to legitimizing the communication discipline. Drawing on Cooren’s ventriloquial framework, we argue that these addresses give voice to a range of figures, from specific events and the field’s “founding fathers” to a polysemous “we.” These addresses assemble figures into four performative configurations that suggest a course of action for strengthening disciplinary legitimacy: cooperation, subdisciplinarity, relevance, and reflexive theorizing. Conceptualizing disciplinary legitimation as resulting from such (re)configuration provides discursive granularity to theories of legitimation. It also advances CCO scholarship by showing that ventriloquism is not only about adding figures but also about creating qualitatively different configurations and by linking microtextual analysis to broader temporal trajectories.