<TITLE: Text, Bild och Samhälle
ACADEMIC DOMAIN: humanities
DISCIPLINE: Swedish philology
EVENT TYPE: conference presentation
FILE ID: CPRE02B
NOTES: continuation of and continued in CDIS020, session also includes presentation CPRE02A

RECORDING DURATION: 23 min 18 sec

RECORDING DATE: 16.8.2002

NUMBER OF PARTICIPANTS: 25

NUMBER OF SPEAKERS: 1

S3: NATIVE-SPEAKER STATUS: Danish; ACADEMIC ROLE: research student; GENDER: male; AGE: 31-50

SU: unidentified speaker

SS: several simultaneous speakers>


<S3> i'm terribly sorry to have to disappoint you i will not be speaking danish </S3>
<SS> oh @@ why not </SS>
<S3> i think i would er my my excuse is that i would (xx) er finnish audience (xx) but <P:27> alright erm i i think that i should say something about the title as it appears er in the programme because er it struck me that that that that when i saw it first in the internet and later in the programme erm that something went wrong in the translation process between a danish version of microsoft word and finnish danis- er ve- version of microsoft words and i have this title called when authorities communicate and then i pro- produced a a dash and then came the er er subtitle democracy and local regional authorities and the thing is that in programme it's a question mark , and i thought er should i correct it and i decided against it because i thought this is really great because it is a question whether or not in my project at least whether or not authorities do communicate so i just left it there because then i had this great opportunity to actually er make notes for it than try to er erm try to er say something about it to you now , what i should tell you about my project is that it is very much erm a work in progress i'm trying to kind of make er an overall erm if that is possible which it of course isn't er discourse analysis of a specific pamphlet from er a county in denmark er called ringkøping (xx) er which is in the westernmost part of the er country erm , so er any er comments are naturally very welcome erm , i'll try to er to use them er in my further work erm . i i'll say a little bit a- about the er project later as well , the the the whole reason why i wanted to start to er to talk about authorities communicating and especially er er about erm administration communication er is the reas- i- is because i was once employed as head of communication in er er in in a small er council in er in denmark and er i had there two years of er intense communication with the erm er with the citizens i thought er <SS> [@@] </SS> [because what] i had to do was i had to produce all kinds of for example pamphlets and leaflets and so on and i never heard anything back er from the er from the citizens so naturally i thought that this was because i had laid the ultimate pamphlets and <SU> [@@] </SU> [leaflets] but then it dawned upon me that it mi- there might be one other reason and that reason of course might be that people didn't read my pamphlets <SS> [@@] </SS> [of the] two unexplained reason i'm trying to find out whether or not that could have been the case erm so that's my reason for wanting to er to to to look into this er the council that i'm working with erm er the the the county council that i'm working with are also at least the administrative staff are also interested in er in in knowing whether or not people actually read what they send to them and er they have the same not very nice feeling that perhaps people don't really erm er read what they er publish so and this is the project er i'm trying to make a reception analysis of service information pamphlets of the county of ringkøping in the western part of denmark for those who are er geographically interested erm , i will be making and i am in the process of making some qualitative interviews with members of the primary target population what i've done so far is that i've erm talked to er er i made it er i have about ten hours of interviews and i will make about ten hours more erm and since this is a a qualitative study i have been talking to a mere four people so far and i will be talking to i think about four more and that will be the enter the end of it erm , so far er i have only been be- be- been talking to people that are actually affected by the pamphlet in question later i will try to talk to people er who have children that are affected by the er er information in the pamphlets and of course what i want to know is what do the intended receivers have to say about the pamphlets if anything , erm and i would like to do that in this part of my project er in terms of democracy of participation because i would very much like to to know does the pamphlet do anything to you so that you feel well i have to talk to somebody about this i have to tell er my member of the council that thi- this doesn't work or this is a very good thing or whatever and also in terms of the need or usefulness of the pamphlets is this really necessary do i get more information about my situation by reading the pamphlets or do i already know what this is all about . er and since i am er a linguist er in terms of linguistic preferences er there is a tendency of talking about erm especially public communication in terms of ease of er ease of reading for example we want to make it a- as accessible to everybody as possible is this an example of accessible text and if they are is it a good idea if they are not what then . again , er the project the er pamphlets that i'm working with are published by the department for education and social matters and i'm trying to make discourse analysis of course using CDA as er everybody seem to be doing er these years of the er pamphlet entitled service for people with speech hearing and seeing disabilities erm and i've been er speaking to people with erm hearing disabilities erm making them my er focal groups er i've also of course made interviews with the administration to have kind of a an idea a a broad overall idea of what does the ad- administration want these pamphlets to do er and i've talked to the central administration as well as people working in the various institutions of providing people with for example hearing aids and so on and then of course which is the main part of my study interviews with the receivers er and erm my interviews will also er encompass er a er er , an analysis of whether or not an alternative service information would be a good idea , er i will try to er i try to work the alternative service information differently than er than the original , erm . the legislation is like this the law says <READING ALOUD> the council shall state the contents and scope of the services offer a plan to be offered to the citizens of the county the statements should be given at least every two years and in addit- in addition the statements shall inform the citizens of the goals formulated by the council </READING ALOUD> now this is of course basically a very broad erm kind of er legislation already so it's a background for producing pamphlets because it doesn't say anything about er producing pamphlet it doesn- it doesn't say that every two years you must produce a pamphlet and tell people about the services that you offer them it is said that we have to er that that the councils have to inform and that's interesting because everybody produces pamphlets i was producing pamphlets in my former job , erm and people er in ringkøping are producing pamphlets all the time and they're using a lot of time producing pamphlets and even finding pictures er er to er try to illustrate er various things for example er that they have great discussions about a picture that should er kind of er give the impression of er a a drug and alcohol addicts i don't know what kind of picture you use er for (indicating) that in in in in a nice way so er , so there is no law that tells us that we should actively produce pamphlets but people do that there is no law that tells us that pamphlets should be like this or like that but most pamphlets are the same er because of course people er talk to each other er across er for example county barriers and so on erm and one of my er county informants of course told me that she looked at what other people had done and what she and and and that she got calls from other people wanting to know what she had done , erm , i mentioned before that er i deal with an original text i have tried to er decontextualise my texts if that is at all possible er by just working with texts that look er superficially like each other so the original text is not the real pamphlet which is a nice glossy pamphlet er a flyer type pamphlet erm but it is just when i present them to the er to to my er to my interviewees it's just er er some A4 sheets of course i show them the pamphlet to ask them have you ever seen this before and when they then answer no they haven't i give them the text to read so i'm trying to actually er and thi- thi- this is wha- what's interesting here er in in this very conference i'm trying not to (deal with) pictures er that's really er er that that's really er remarkable here at least er so the original is a text in passive voice there are nominalisations there is no direct address so there will be sentences like the effected person will be offered for example , er i have a second version er which has active voice few nom- nominalisations and has direct address we will offer you a hearing aid for example , and then i have a a version three which is like version two but with dialogic headlines such as what do i do when my child cannot hear , erm . in in danish hear also means listen so er that that really is a great thing because everybody has a kid who doesn't want to listen but <SS> [@@] </SS> [that's something quite different erm] so what i want to know with the er i should just go back and leave it there for a while what i want to know here is i want to know whether or not the original is a good text in relation to the target group there is no er doubt that in relation to all the literature that's written er in the area this is not good everybody says this is bad don't use passives don't use nominalisation do use direct address but does it work very often what we get from er the authorities seem to be er so much er as it were down to earth that we can't really er accept it as er an authoritative document and you have to do that but it seems that people or or my er my my interviewees er accept this text or they like this and they don't know really what to do with the last one . and then i would like to talk about this in respects or in relation to democracy because a main question to me is to what extent can a pamphlet be seen as democratic tools now they are thought as democratic tools but do they work that way furthermore do they enhance participation is it so- er is it so that upon having read this you just have to call somebody er do they encourage er participation so if you haven't at all er been participant before will you be it after having read the pamphlet . also i think that it's a nice thing to try to to find out how does this fit within kind of er contemporary thinking about democracy and giddens talked about the deliberative democracy where we discuss this stuff where we really are are on the same level and he talked about transparency as a prerequisite for er the deliberative er er democracy he also talked about dialogic democracy and he says that that should be based on common interest i mean i mean thi- this is er an area where we could say well this is a common interest these people all have problems hearing so they have a common interest and they might have common interest with the authorities as well that they can discuss this but does it work . also of course i will have to deal with the discourse theory because erm erm <NAME> mentions the er notion of conversationalism erm , well we can say that the use of er conversational tools enables us to address the receiver on her own premises . but at same time it transgresses the boundaries between the private and public spheres , and at the same time it also blurs the relation between sender and receiver administrating (this a bit) citizen let's just go back and take a look at what giddens said he said transparency so er in fact in trying to be dialogic we might lose transparency . erm . in order to be able to communicate to be we have to make what we are communicating to them relevant for them , so , erm what i would like the texts to say something about is whether or not the er pamphlets give the erm readers a subjective feeling of relevance or whether they are the answer to a subjective feeling of relevance or a subjective feeling of need for information the difference is that relevance er the need for information can be for example that we just happen to be interested in the area er whereas subjective feeling of relevance means that you have a feeling that this is by definition relevant to you so i want to change the focus from er the administration i want to change the focus er from the administration's feeling that we have to communicate to people that have er problems with hearing because it must come from er the people themselves i try t- to think it into er <USING POWERPOINT> oh sorry about that it's just there's three kinds of relevance erm this of course will be developed thi- this is thi- this is very er er a very new idea so i i just brought it to be able to s- say that i have been reading some <NAME> erm <SS> @@ </SS> also there is er brenda dervin who has a sense-making approach which is very interesting in this respect because it tries to track people's er er personal reality er or for example the usefulness of something to an individual to try to track people's er sense of the world and that is a very good idea er and therefore the messages must be part of the individual's understandings of the world in order to work (xx) work and then er for some , er reason the reason is i am a linguist and i wanted to use grice er i i'll just skip him because er he is er it's very okay but it's not er too interesting sperber and wilson basically say what dervin says but from a linguistic point of view and they say this very important thing they say every act of a extensive communication communicates a presumption of its own optimal relevance for the receiver and that is again a change in focus from what dervin says we have to go from the receiver er here we have a claim that whatever i say up here i claim is relevant for you erm which it of course is but <SS> [@@] </SS> [nonetheless] erm so . the result so far is er er is an interesting thing to take a look at the interviewees don't see the original pamphlets as an invitation to conversation deliberation dialogue with the authorities , and that of course er is a problem in terms of erm democracy because then they won't use them as a stepping stone for er er for saying anything in er the the democratic deliberations , i can see where i am here we are , erm there will also be a relevance problem because they don't find them relevant basically er they don't see that the er pamphlets give them any new information and they don't want to er go into a dialogue with the authorities because the er pamphlets are written in an authoritative way so they don't make room for a dialogue , i found with my own texts that they find them conversational i even had er one informant who try who who said that he he he would not want to judge between the two texts he started discussing with my text and that's really interesting so there can be dialogue in (xx) basically the light er the alternative version's better than the original not knowing which was which . er still we have a problem er and i'll just er give the problems here the conclusion so far is that pamphlets might not be the optimal way of communicating and as i er suggested in the beginning perhaps they're not communicating at all dialogic communication (makes things to you ease) what to partake in a construction of communication , now that's important i know that of course my interviewees er were forced to into into this er dialogue but er they wanted to go into dialogue with the text and that's good it just it just doesn't er it just doesn't su- suggest that we should use pamphlets er dialogic communication seems to be a good starting point for deliberative or dialogic democracy er and there is perhaps might seem like some kind of overgeneralisation but nonetheless it here it is erm but still we don't know where to start we don't know anything else than the pamphlets are not what we should be using that's it </S3>
<APPLAUSE>
