Entextualizing diversity: Semiotic incoherence in institutional discourse

This article examines processes by which diversity is differentially entextualized and partially circulated in higher education discourses. Diversity is entextualized most coherently among administrators, both academic and non-academic, where it is routinely construed as standardized, measurable units, i.e. persons. In these discourses, its spoken and written uses map neatly onto each other coherently with its uses in discourses of institutional advancement, where embodiments of diversity are coherent with neoliberal concepts of person. Its enregisterment across these fields is relatively coherent. By contrast, among faculty acting as faculty, diversity is variously conceptualized and entextualized in discipline-specific discourses, leading to less coherent enregisterment. This discrepancy plays an important role in the growing hegemony of a neoliberal interpretation of diversity.