Plain Language - a Panacea of Linguistic Quality Assurance?

Abstract

This article questions the use of a set of principles or guidelines, often referred to as language policies or language guides, which proliferate in companies and organisations as a means of harmonizing and modernizing corporate discourse. The language guide recommendations promote certain syntactic and lexical features which seem to have been inspired by the plain language campaigns conducted in various countries with the purpose of setting up a framework for a simplification of the public-sector discourse from administration to citizens. The problem of applying theses principles as an overall instrument of assuring the linguistic quality of private companies has been pointed out on various occasions. However, the argumentation has until now been made on an impressionistic or introspective basis. The article demonstrates that the inventory of linguistics in fact offers a range of possibilities to give a theoretical and empirical support to the arguments. Based on a set of language guide recommendations from Danish companies, it is illustrated how variations in discourse elements, i.e. purpose, domain and audience, conventionally call for variations in the linguistic devices used. In other words, from a discoursal point of view, the set of plain language-like recommendations for paradigmatic stylistic choices cannot be expected to cover every instance of business communication. Furthermore, it is argued that certain intralingual and interlingual features require empirical research in order to establish a stylistically adequate framework of this instrument of language management in companies.