Myndigheder og borgere – modstandere eller samarbejdspartnere?

Borgeres oplevelser af to versioner af et brev om sygedagpenge

Resumé

How do public authorities communicate with citizens finding themselves in a vulnerable phase of their life because of illness or the like? Moreover, how do different ways of expressing citizen rights and duties in letters from the authorities affect these citizens’ perceptions of the authority, of themselves and of their options? In this paper, we argue that successful communication between citizens and public authorities is not merely a question of reading comprehension, even though there have been strong tendencies to focus primarily on this dimension within the reception-oriented approaches to plain language research. Instead, we argue that reception analyses of texts from public authorities should have a broader scope and include aspects such as how texts affect readers’ perceptions of their life situation, of their options and of the relation between the citizens and the text sender. The data for this study was gathered by thinking aloud protocols, and taking positioning theory as our theoretical point of departure, we examine how two different versions of a standardized letter concerning sickness benefits are perceived by citizens. Based on the citizens’ readings of the two versions of this letter, we discuss if and how these letters contribute to citizen empowerment, and furthermore we discuss possible practical applications of the study when writing letters to citizens.