Acting in the Name of Others: How to Unpack Ventriloquations

In organizational communication scholarship, ventriloquism depicts how additional voices can partake in interactions through what we say. More specifically, the notion illustrates how someone or something can talk or act in the name of someone or something else, which presumes an interdependent connection between the two: when I speak in the name of something, I can only do so because the very same thing enables me to speak in its name. In this chapter, we spell out and illustrate four functions that this connection can have and provide guidance on how to analyze datasets ventriloquially.