Texts in official guise
Many people seem to regard institutional language as poor and bureaucratic, as officialese which is difficult to understand. This general conception was, in fact, one of the reasons why the researchers of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland first became interested in institutional texts and language. However, the research project undertaken to study institutional language at RILF at the turn of the 21st century was not based on contempt of the linguistic form.
The aim of our research was to analyse what certain institutional texts are like and why they are like that. For this purpose, we combined linguistic analysis with social analysis, and the investigation of institutional language with the investigation of institutional work and culture. Our research articles on institutional texts have been published in several books, and the research is still being continued.
In the book Teksti työnä, virka kielenä [Text as work, language as bureaucracy] (2000), we considered assumed genres, such as agendas, minutes, administrative rules, annual reports, equal opportunities plans, reports of competitiveness development, and day-care admission decisions. Further, we analysed interviews of officials and a questionnaire survey carried out in a government office.
In Virkapukuinen kieli [Language in official guise] (2002), we investigated communications strategies, press releases, job vacancy announcements, newsletters, annual reports, multi-recipient letters, and environmental programmes by KELA, the Social Insurance Institution of Finland. We also analysed children’s conceptions of institutional language and discussed the way this linguistic form is perceived in language planning.
The book Tekstien arki. Tutkimusmatkoja jokapäiväisiin merkityksiimme [Everyday lives of texts. Journeys of exploration to our everyday meanings] (2005) explored texts that can also be regarded as institutional: road signs, instructive signs in buses of the local transportation services, and official forms. Ulla Tiililä’s forthcoming doctoral dissertation (to be published in 2007) will investigate the processes and circumstances that govern the decisions on public transportation services and study what types of laws, written and unwritten, guide the decision making and the drafting of the decision texts.
Researchers of institutional texts often have to answer the question:”So, what is institutional language really like?” The person asking such a question is probably not happy with a woolly and roundabout explanation about the multiplicity and variation of language. It is highly likely that s/he has a very clear preconception of institutional language. S/he will say that institutional texts are filled with long words and sentences. That there are loads of texts but they do not have much to say. That institutional language is abstract and loaded with incomprehensible concepts. That the structures are complex. That the most important issues may be said in subclauses or that they must be read between the lines. That the texts never say who is doing what; instead, things are simply “done” or they just “happen”. That you can never decide who has written the institutional texts and to whom. That the tone is laconic.
In order to be able to give any answers about the nature of institutional language, researchers need to make generalizations, exaggerations and summaries. Researchers discuss the regular features of institutional language, such as the dominance of nominalisations, the length of determining elements, and the frequency of conjunctions and lists. They will say that institutional texts are full of what are called grammatically metaphoric forms: actions are expressed by nouns (such as control, monitoring), instead of using verbs, which would sound more natural (somebody controls, somebody monitors”). Opinions may also be presented as if they were generally acknowledged truths.
Although researchers know that texts, in fact, only allow the interpretation of certain types of meanings, they try to describe the typical meanings in institutional texts:
* a world where plans, memos and other texts act; a world which is governed by systems, models and other abstract entities and organizations, more often than people; where the relationships between things are more important than concrete actions
* a textual reality where previous conversations and texts are wrapped up and alienated from the producers and readers of the texts; a reality based on assumptions that are left unwritten; where new topics are taken up as if they were already familiar
* interaction where the author appears as a superior expert and where the readers of the texts come out either as peer experts or as readers submitting themselves to the meanings determined by the author.
Even if meanings in institutional texts occasionally escape the readers and although institutional language is often accused of being incomprehensible, institutional texts are written for a purpose. They are written by people who observe and experience things and have fluent language skills. Institutional texts do not lack history, nor was institutional language born randomly. The current communicative needs are varied, and they seem to be turning more and more complex: this is one of the reasons why new types of texts are considered. It seems that institutional texts are far too numerous as they are, yet there is need for more!
According to M. A. K. Halliday and J. R. Martin, language turns a person’s experience into meanings. Whether we speak or write in Finnish, English, Chinese or any other natural language, we combine our internal experiences with our observations of reality when we use language. We could take this idea further to cover the contexts and cultures of usage of texts. Institutional texts can be considered to illustrate what ways of constructing meanings are seen as appropriate in institutional culture. But what is appropriate for whom?
Whilst analyzing institutional texts, we have aimed to see through the texts in two directions: towards the system of language (often called ’language’ or ’grammar’) and towards the conventions of language use (described by words such as ’work’, ’culture’, ’society’). Our research project has been based on the detailed analysis of individual texts. In this analysis, we have paid attention to the physical character of the text and its situation in the flow of information, as well as the linguistic choices in the text and the semantic entity that emerges from these choices.
We have also touched upon several other themes and perspectives in our analyses, e.g.:
- the multiple elements in institutional texts (e.g., legal and financial discourse) and the merging of genres (or, more generally, intertextuality).
- language and work, language planning and work planning
- texts and power (the multiple meanings of power) and language use by politicians
- plain standard language and plain language
- citizens’ risk of alienation and “boundless language”
- general language awareness and people’s textual skills.
A consideration which is always present in our research is that of the comprehensibility of institutional texts – or, more generally, of the grounds of institutional work and the relations between government offices and citizens. Vesa Heikkinen analyzed the comprehensibility of tax guides in his article in the language planning journal Kielikello (3/2005). The following may perhaps also apply to institutional texts more generally:
”The basic problem of understanding tax guides may be that expert authors seem to assume that the readers, too, are experts of some kind. This assumption is based on the attempt to offer equal and legal information to all taxpayers on everything that possibly has something to do with taxation.
Tax guides therefore end up describing a world of such concepts and texts that cannot be accessed without proper studying of taxation and the related regulatory texts. Interpretation is also made easier if the reader is used to unwrapping the meaning packages of other institutional texts.
Tax texts construct interaction, which turns taxpayers even concretely into taxed subjects. As subjects, they are obliged to study the secrets of taxation. You can only understand these secrets if you are ready to learn the language of the taxman.”
We have often referred to our study of institutional texts as “critical”. We aim to be critical in a constructive way: we try to ask questions and to be thorough in our research. We have often also been tempted to consider our own role in relation to the people whose texts we have been studying.
Vesa Heikkinen discussed what it means to be critical in the introduction of Virkapukuinen kieli [Language in Official Guise].
”Being critical means exploring the backgrounds and objectives of one’s research. (…) However, critical research also entails analyzing the axioms of the chosen theory and method. (...) Research is critical when researchers choose to study material and research problems that are important not only from a societal perspective but also for them as individuals. Seen from another perspective, we could say that certain material and research problems are made socially important through research. (...) In individual analyses, critical research means that we analyse the choices, especially the issues that are presented as if they were taken for granted in the individual linguistic products. (...) A critical research approach requires that researchers comply with the following order of analysis:
* description of the choices made in the texts
* interpretation of the possible meanings
* explanation of the visible and less visible relations of the text to other texts, textual conventions and other social conventions
* evaluation of the purpose of the text
* evaluation of the text in relation to, e.g., questions of power and ideological meanings
* attempt to affect, through the analysis, the producers and readers of the text
* attempt to achieve changes in the linguistic community and society.”
Our research into institutional language has been widely commented on in Finland. The critiques have been mostly positive. Our studies have also drawn attention on the international forums. This is how Richard Foley evaluated our book Teksti työnä, virka kielenä [Text as work, language as bureaucracy]:
A distinctive strength of the book is the range of materials it analyzes. Rather than taking for granted the social relevance of genres such as agendas, plans, and reports, it establishes their significance through detailed qualitative analyses of the texts in full socio-semiotic scope. (...) On balance, however, in embracing theory and practice as well as it does, the book has much to offer any reader willing to embark on a dialog with one or more of the (con)texts it analyzes. The English-speaking community would certainly gain much from a translation of the work or any of its component studies. (Richard Foley, International Journal for the Semiotics of Law, 15/2002; Convention as intention – the institution in all of us.)
Tables of Contents
* Teksti työnä, virka kielenä [Text as work, language as bureaucracy]
1 Hiidenmaa, Pirjo: Työ ja kieli [Work and language]
2 Hiidenmaa, Pirjo. Poimintoja virkakielen rekisteristä [Extracts from the register of institutional language]
3 Heikkinen, Vesa: Tekstuaalinen pirunnyrkki [The textual burr puzzle]
4 Heikkinen, Vesa: Teksteihin tunkeutuvat todellisuudet [Realities invading texts]
5 Tiililä, Ulla: Tapaus päivähoitopäätös [Case day-care decision]
6 Heikkinen, Vesa: Konvention kentillä – kertomuksia kielitöistä [In the fields of convention – tales of linguistic work]
7 Heikkinen, Vesa: Virallisen ideologiaa [Ideology of the official]
* Virkapukuinen kieli [Language in Official Guise]
Introduction
Heikkinen, Vesa: Virkakieli lumoaa ja pelottaa [Institutional language fascinates and frightens]
I Tieto ja tiedottaminen tekstein
[Information and informing as texts]
Heikkinen, Vesa: Tietoa tuotteesta, jolla on visio, imago ja profiili. Millainen teksti on kunnan viestintästrategia?
[Information about a product with a vision, image and profile. What is the municipal communications strategy like as a text?]
Kankaanpää, Salli: Tiedottamisesta imagomarkkinointiin. Viraston lehdistötiedote ennen ja nyt
[From informing to image marketing. Press releases of an office now and then]
Komppa, Johanna: Me tiedotamme – kenelle? [We keep informing – whom?]
Laaksonen, Marianne: Palveluvirasto hakee tietopalveluassistenttia. Viranhakuilmoituksen monet tehtävät
[The Services Office seeks an Information Service Assistant. The many functions of a job vacancy announcement]
II Kohtaamisia kirjoituskulttuurissa [Meetings in the written culture]
Julkunen, Verna: Ystävällisesti Kansaneläkelaitos [Yours sincerely, The Social Insurance Institution]
Mustamo, Taina: OLA, AMOR, HENTTU jne. Kirjoittaja lyhentää – lukija putoaa [OLA, AMOR, HENTTU etc. Writers abbreviate – readers can’t follow]
Honkanen, Suvi: Päämäärien valtakunta. Välttämättömyys ja toiminta viraston ohjailevissa kirjeissä [The realm of objectives. Necessity and action in the letters of guidance by a government office]
Solin, Anna: Arvot vai ohjearvot? Ympäristönsuojelun merkityksistä hallinnon teksteissä [Values or normative values? On the meanings of the protection of the environment in administrative texts].
III Lapsi purkaa selviön [Children unravel axioms]
Heikkinen, Vesa: Niin kuin esim. Kyllä sir. Koululainen järkeilee, mitä virkakieli on [Like, e.g., Yes, Sir. The way school children see institutional language]
Tiililä, Ulla: Homekorva kirjoittaa homeesta vai esittelijä määrärahoista? Lasten tulkintoja esityslistasta [People with moldy ears write about mold, or an introducer writes about budget funds? Children’s interpretations of an agenda]
IV Kielentutkijat ja -huoltajat kertovat kokemuksistaan [Linguists and language planners tell about their experiences]
Tiililä, Ulla: Byrokratian tutkija byrokratian pyörityksessä [Researcher of bureaucracy caught up in bureaucracy]
Hyvärinen, Riitta: Kolme katsetta virkakieleen [Three glimpses of institutional language]
Heikkilä, Elina & Viertiö, Annastiina: Keskustelua, kouluttamista ja konsultointia. Kielitoimiston ja Kelan yhteistyö esimerkkinä 2000-luvun kielenhuollosta [Discussions, training and consultancy. The Cooperation between the Language Planning Office and the Social Insurance Institution as an example of 21-century language planning]
Translated by Marja Heikkinen
