What do people think about the way government talks? Attitudes to plain language in official communication

When official publications supposed to inform the public do not do their job well the consequences can be serious, impacting for example on someone’s income because they did not know they were entitled to benefits. Campaigners argue that official communication should be written in plain language to make it more understandable. This seems to be largely accepted by Government and yet plain language has not become everyday practice. The public conversation about plain language invokes a range of ideas about what plain language signifies, suggesting that there may be more complex reasons for the maintenance of non-plain communication than simply laziness of the writers. For spoken language, language attitude studies have been used to provide empirical evidence of the beliefs people have about different language varieties, drawing on these for explanations as to why languages change or are maintained. Drawing on the language attitudes field, a matched-guise study of plain language was therefore carried out to consider if readers and writers of official communication had particular attitudes towards plain and non-plain language in official communication. Participants were found to judge organisations producing plain texts to be less professional and less credible than those producing plain texts, but more approachable and more down-to-earth, with values at or approaching statistical significance. It is suggested that non-plain official communication continues to be produced because it is the prestige variety. Factors that affect peoples’ attitudes to plain language are also discussed, including the content of official information, characteristics of participants, and what people expect from language in this very particular context

Children (Scotland) Bill Stage 1 Written Evidence

First paragraph: Our submission is based on our academic studies on children’s participation in family law proceedings, particularly when their parents divorce or separate. These studies involve cross-national research and networks, empirical studies in Scotland, and legal and social-legal analysis. We have concentrated here on children’s participation rights

Scottish Government Call for Evidence: Women in the Justice System – a strategic approach

First paragraph: This response is from three academics with substantive research experience in areas of: domestic abuse; the criminal and civil justice system; and women and children’s rights. Our response draws on our collective research expertise. It also provides an overview of new and emerging findings from ongoing research with ASSIST and EDDACS on court advocacy services for women and children affected by domestic abuse in Scotland. This new research is part of CAFADA (Children and Families Affected by Domestic Abuse) a wider programme of research. CAFADA examines social care responses to children and parents affected by domestic abuse in Scotland and England. It explores innovations in social care relating to domestic abuse - how innovative services have developed, been implemented and their effectiveness. Our research is ongoing, but we base our submission below on emerging findings from an initial stage that includes interviews with practitioners who provide advocacy for women and child victims and witnesses of domestic abuse. Qualitative interviews were carried out with practitioners (n=9) during 2021. These interviews focused on the challenges posed by the pandemic for women and child victims of domestic abuse involved with the criminal justice system. We also refer to wider research, exploratory discussions, attendance at relevant webinars and engagement with relevant professionals

Children (Scotland) Bill Stage 1 Written Evidence

First paragraph: Our submission is based on our academic studies on children’s participation in family law proceedings, particularly when their parents divorce or separate. These studies involve cross-national research and networks, empirical studies in Scotland, and legal and social-legal analysis. We have concentrated here on children’s participation rights

Domestic abuse and child contact in Scotland: the perspectives of family law practitioners

It is now well-established that children are adversely affected by domestic abuse, and that domestic abuse does not always cease following parental separation. However, the issue of post-separation child contact in the context of domestic abuse remains contentious, with some commentators arguing that contact may not always be in the ‘best interests’ of the child. In Scotland, the nature and extent of child contact applications remain under-researched, and little is known about the processes of argument and adjudication in contact decisions. This article draws on a survey of family law practitioners in Scotland undertaken to examine how, if at all, developments in domestic abuse proceedings and changing definitions in the context of criminal law in Scotland, inform the handling of child contact cases in the civil courts. The findings reveal that, whilst most respondents were of the view that information about domestic abuse strengthens the position of the party against child contact, there is a clear absence of systematic ways to gather and make available information about domestic abuse where it has occurred (or is still occurring) in cases involving child contact. The practice and policy implications of this for determining the ‘best interests’ of the child are discussed

Scottish Government Call for Evidence: Women in the Justice System – a strategic approach

First paragraph: This response is from three academics with substantive research experience in areas of: domestic abuse; the criminal and civil justice system; and women and children’s rights. Our response draws on our collective research expertise. It also provides an overview of new and emerging findings from ongoing research with ASSIST and EDDACS on court advocacy services for women and children affected by domestic abuse in Scotland. This new research is part of CAFADA (Children and Families Affected by Domestic Abuse) a wider programme of research. CAFADA examines social care responses to children and parents affected by domestic abuse in Scotland and England. It explores innovations in social care relating to domestic abuse - how innovative services have developed, been implemented and their effectiveness. Our research is ongoing, but we base our submission below on emerging findings from an initial stage that includes interviews with practitioners who provide advocacy for women and child victims and witnesses of domestic abuse. Qualitative interviews were carried out with practitioners (n=9) during 2021. These interviews focused on the challenges posed by the pandemic for women and child victims of domestic abuse involved with the criminal justice system. We also refer to wider research, exploratory discussions, attendance at relevant webinars and engagement with relevant professionals

Accommodation or political identity:Scottish members of the UK Parliament

Phonetic variation among Scottish Members of the UK Parliament may be influenced by\ud convergence to Southern English norms (Carr & Brulard 2006) or political identity (e.g.,\ud Hall-Lew, Coppock & Starr 2010). Drawing on a year’s worth of political speeches (2011-\ud 2012) from ten Scottish Members of the UK Parliament (MPs), we find no acoustic evidence\ud for the adoption of a Southern English low vowel system; rather, we find that vowel height is\ud significantly correlated with political party: Scottish Labour Party MPs produce a higher\ud ‘CAT’ vowel (Johnston 1997) than do Scottish National Party MPs. The results contradict\ud claims that Scottish MPs acquire ‘Anglo-English’ features while at UK Parliament. Rather,\ud we suggest that the variation indexes political meaning, with a subset of individuals drawing\ud on that indexicality in production

Apologies and the police

This thesis describes how the police apologise, primarily through lexical and syntactic analysis of explicit apology language in letters written by the Scottish police. The unique contribution of this thesis is the identification of two distinct speech acts using apology language; one is an act of payment for an evidenced failing and another is an act of validation of another person’s perspective. This thesis suggests that these two acts may have developed in police use of apology language to manage conflicting pressures on the police, such as to be polite to the multiple audiences for their apologies. Discursive approaches to politeness research often focus on immediate recipient responses as evidence that language is evaluated as (im)polite. This approach is not well suited to written language, where the recipient(s) may be at a distance in both time and space. I amend Terkourafi’s (2005) frame-based analysis, taking insights from scholarship on writing, to develop the application of politeness research to written language. I collected letters written by the Scottish police containing their final decision on complaints made about the police by members of the public. The first stage of my analysis, to detail the production of these letters, establishes that evaluation and opportunities for editing take place among the many writers involved in producing the letters; repetition of particular linguistic forms in particular contexts may be taken therefore as a police institutional understanding that such forms are a polite use of language in particular situations. My analysis of the letters identifies first that the police use apology language where they have been acquitted of wrongdoing, in contrast to public perceptions that the police do not apologise. They distinguish in linguistic form between such situations and where there is evidence of failings, leading me to delineate one act of validation of an addressee’s claim to respect and another in ritual payment for an evidenced failing. The form and function distinctions of these acts lead me to suggest that ‘apology’ needs to be reconsidered as a concept, not a single speech act but a cluster of related acts