Ventriloquial Moves in CEO Open Letters: Modulating Multiple Voices for the Rhetorical Construction of Commitment

CEO open letters are typically studied as monovocal texts whose persuasive force derives from the formal authority of CEOs. This paper challenges that premise. Drawing on Cooren’s ventriloquial theory, it characterizes these letters as polyphonic artifacts in which CEOs modulate multiple voices. Specifically, it introduces the notion of ventriloquial move (a configuration of ventriloquial effects that fulfills a unitary persuasive function within the text) to argue that the persuasive force of these letters depends neither on the CEO’s formal position nor on the accumulation of ventriloquial effects, but emerges from an architecture of ventriloquial moves that unfolds across the text. To develop and illustrate this concept, I analyze the open letters of three CEOs –Larry Fink (BlackRock), Wael Sawan (Shell), and Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase)– published under a shared communicative pressure: the ESG controversy in the United States during 2022–2023.