Producing Discourses in Swiss Federal Administration: Practices of Entextualisation, Institutional Control and Political Interests
Type
presentation
Date Issued
2011-11-03
Author(s)
Abstract
It is the aim of my dissertation to investigate how current socioeconomic transformations affect the role that language and culture play for the postmodern nation-state. In this context, I am particularly interested in how and why Swiss multilingualism and cultural diversity emerge as key promotional arguments in the Swiss State's governmental discourses on the promotion of Switzerland's image abroad.
In order to understand how and why political actors produce a specific discourse on the promotion of Switzerland, my analysis draws on various institutional documents, i.e., textual data (such as minutes, reports, federal acts, memoranda, interpellations) that represent the textual materialisation of the investigated discourses.
The choice of textual data is not arbitrary. First, the promotional discourses were produced in the past and the only way to access these discourses is through their textual materialisation. Second, this textual approach is insofar relevant for the analysis of discourses produced within the Swiss Federal Administration (in line with other bureaucratic institutions) as institutional texts are the principle instrument for the institution to fix the knowledge produced within its borders, to become visible for the public, to produce an account of their daily activities as well as to govern their citizens.
By raising some methodological questions, in this paper I will problematise the status of the textual data I am working on. Relying on a linguistic anthropological understanding of the production of discourses in institutions of power (Baumann & Briggs 2003; Blommaert 2005; Duchêne 2008; Gal 1989), I will argue for an analytical approach to institutional texts that goes beyond an analysis of decontextualized discursive products, but which is interested in institutional texts as part of an organizational logic, i.e., as involved in organizational actions. Consequently, I will argue that in order to understand their organisational function (how and why these texts take the form they take and how and why they emerge at a specific moment in history of an institution), we seriously have to take into account the institutional processes conditioning and constraining the emergence of a particular text as well as the institutional interests and logic underlying the discourse production. With this perspective, the following research questions will structure and guide my argumentation:
a) Which institutional strategies regiment the production of discourses within the Swiss Federal Administration?
b) How do these institutional strategies exert control over the production of discourses within the Swiss Federal Administration?
Therefore, in order to highlight how institutional texts are linked to their conditions of production, it is the aim of this paper to propose an analysis of a specific institutional text, i.e., a dispatch. In line with my research on the promotion of Switzerland's image abroad, I will apply my analysis to the following dispatch: Botschaft über die Neuorientierung und Verstärkung der Koordinationskommission für die Präsenz der Schweiz im Ausland (Dispatch on the Reorientation and Enhancement of the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad [own translation]) which was adopted by the Swiss Federal Parliament in 2000.
The dispatch is an institutional document which is annexed to a federal act (in this case the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad). Its function consists in introducing and explaining the federal act. In other words, the Dispatch on the Reorientation and Enhancement of the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad is the product of an entextualisation process (Silverstein & Urban 1996), i.e. the reconstruction of the history of the production of the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad. In doing that, it is supposed to propose a legitimate interpretation of the federal act by highlighting its significance and purpose and to enable members of the parliament and other actors affected by the legislative text (judges, layers, municipalities, citizens, collaborators of the Federal Administration, scientists) to understand its function. The dispatch is thus emblematic of the methodological argument proposed here. Given its central function in the legislative process (the dispatch is the main document on which the parliamentarian and public deliberations draw) and in order to enable a quick understanding of the general idea of its content and of the diverse reports, minutes, drafts and expertise on which the production is based, the dispatch has to be clear, short and argumentatively simple. Furthermore, the dispatch is supposed to reconstruct accurately the historical phases of the emergence of the federal act, but, at the same time, to erase the conflicts and tensions that characterise any process of legislation by aligning the multiple diverging and conflicting voices, interests and ideologies into an official position of the institution, i.e., the Federal Administration. Any institutional entextualization process is never neutral but subjected to a high level of standardisation, control and regimentation. Accordingly, the Swiss Federal Administration has produced a series of manuals outlining the production rules of a dispatch. Consequently, an analysis of the dispatch as detached from institutional functions and logics would completely miss its political and ideological character.
My analysis will highlight these aspects of dispatch production in showing how these regimenting documents exert control on the dispatch (and its production) and how they enable the (anonymous) authors to silence certain voices of previous debates and, thus, to reduce heteroglossia. Moreover, through this regimented act of entextualisation, the Swiss Federal Administration manages to neutralise the tensions emerging in the context of the production of the Federal Act. These tensions revolve around what/who counts as Swiss and who counts as an expert on Switzerland.
In other words, the dispatch has to be conceived as an authoritative text that bases its legitimation on the fact that it is produced by an institution of power, i.e., the Swiss Federal Administration, which imposes a specific version of the history of the emergence of the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad - excluding others. A focus on the conditions of production of the dispatch enables me to situate them in a specific institutional and ideological context determining its emergence. Furthermore, it allows me as an analyst to understand who profits and who loses from the specific form the authoritative takes.
In order to understand how and why political actors produce a specific discourse on the promotion of Switzerland, my analysis draws on various institutional documents, i.e., textual data (such as minutes, reports, federal acts, memoranda, interpellations) that represent the textual materialisation of the investigated discourses.
The choice of textual data is not arbitrary. First, the promotional discourses were produced in the past and the only way to access these discourses is through their textual materialisation. Second, this textual approach is insofar relevant for the analysis of discourses produced within the Swiss Federal Administration (in line with other bureaucratic institutions) as institutional texts are the principle instrument for the institution to fix the knowledge produced within its borders, to become visible for the public, to produce an account of their daily activities as well as to govern their citizens.
By raising some methodological questions, in this paper I will problematise the status of the textual data I am working on. Relying on a linguistic anthropological understanding of the production of discourses in institutions of power (Baumann & Briggs 2003; Blommaert 2005; Duchêne 2008; Gal 1989), I will argue for an analytical approach to institutional texts that goes beyond an analysis of decontextualized discursive products, but which is interested in institutional texts as part of an organizational logic, i.e., as involved in organizational actions. Consequently, I will argue that in order to understand their organisational function (how and why these texts take the form they take and how and why they emerge at a specific moment in history of an institution), we seriously have to take into account the institutional processes conditioning and constraining the emergence of a particular text as well as the institutional interests and logic underlying the discourse production. With this perspective, the following research questions will structure and guide my argumentation:
a) Which institutional strategies regiment the production of discourses within the Swiss Federal Administration?
b) How do these institutional strategies exert control over the production of discourses within the Swiss Federal Administration?
Therefore, in order to highlight how institutional texts are linked to their conditions of production, it is the aim of this paper to propose an analysis of a specific institutional text, i.e., a dispatch. In line with my research on the promotion of Switzerland's image abroad, I will apply my analysis to the following dispatch: Botschaft über die Neuorientierung und Verstärkung der Koordinationskommission für die Präsenz der Schweiz im Ausland (Dispatch on the Reorientation and Enhancement of the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad [own translation]) which was adopted by the Swiss Federal Parliament in 2000.
The dispatch is an institutional document which is annexed to a federal act (in this case the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad). Its function consists in introducing and explaining the federal act. In other words, the Dispatch on the Reorientation and Enhancement of the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad is the product of an entextualisation process (Silverstein & Urban 1996), i.e. the reconstruction of the history of the production of the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad. In doing that, it is supposed to propose a legitimate interpretation of the federal act by highlighting its significance and purpose and to enable members of the parliament and other actors affected by the legislative text (judges, layers, municipalities, citizens, collaborators of the Federal Administration, scientists) to understand its function. The dispatch is thus emblematic of the methodological argument proposed here. Given its central function in the legislative process (the dispatch is the main document on which the parliamentarian and public deliberations draw) and in order to enable a quick understanding of the general idea of its content and of the diverse reports, minutes, drafts and expertise on which the production is based, the dispatch has to be clear, short and argumentatively simple. Furthermore, the dispatch is supposed to reconstruct accurately the historical phases of the emergence of the federal act, but, at the same time, to erase the conflicts and tensions that characterise any process of legislation by aligning the multiple diverging and conflicting voices, interests and ideologies into an official position of the institution, i.e., the Federal Administration. Any institutional entextualization process is never neutral but subjected to a high level of standardisation, control and regimentation. Accordingly, the Swiss Federal Administration has produced a series of manuals outlining the production rules of a dispatch. Consequently, an analysis of the dispatch as detached from institutional functions and logics would completely miss its political and ideological character.
My analysis will highlight these aspects of dispatch production in showing how these regimenting documents exert control on the dispatch (and its production) and how they enable the (anonymous) authors to silence certain voices of previous debates and, thus, to reduce heteroglossia. Moreover, through this regimented act of entextualisation, the Swiss Federal Administration manages to neutralise the tensions emerging in the context of the production of the Federal Act. These tensions revolve around what/who counts as Swiss and who counts as an expert on Switzerland.
In other words, the dispatch has to be conceived as an authoritative text that bases its legitimation on the fact that it is produced by an institution of power, i.e., the Swiss Federal Administration, which imposes a specific version of the history of the emergence of the Federal Act on the Promotion of Switzerland's Image Abroad - excluding others. A focus on the conditions of production of the dispatch enables me to situate them in a specific institutional and ideological context determining its emergence. Furthermore, it allows me as an analyst to understand who profits and who loses from the specific form the authoritative takes.
Language
English
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
HSG Profile Area
SHSS - Kulturen, Institutionen, Maerkte (KIM)
Refereed
No
Event Title
Aossociation for Business Communication ABC Europe 2011 International PhD Colloquium & PhD Research Mentoring Programme
Event Location
Milan, Italy
Subject(s)
Division(s)
Eprints ID
125974