Deontic Modality in the GDPR Based Finnish Privacy Notices in the Light of the Transparency Principle

Abstract

Since its inception the General Data Protection Regulation has introduced a number of rights and obligations that relate to the personal data processing. As the Regulation requires that all information about data subjects’ rights be conveyed in a clear and plain language (transparency principle), this study focuses on the linguistic means of expressing rights and obligations in the GDPR based privacy notices. The article aims at scrutinising the features and context of deontic expressions which may influence the clear message. The research corpus consists of fourteen privacy notices of Finnish design companies which were analysed in order to identify deontic expressions. They were juxtaposed with the GDPR text and some discrepancies were found in their frequency and modal patterns. The qualitative analysis of the expressions with the help of Easy Language Meter criteria for Finnish revealed that privacy notices show simplifying tendencies like choice of modal expressions, the use of certain subjects and the way of addressing the reader. These comply with the Plain Language principles and thus the transparency principle highlighted in the GDPR.