Plain language and natural order of things in modern recruitment (on the example of job advertisements)

Abstract

This article describes the communication (cultural) transformations of the last decade and their influence on plain language in the Polish utilitarian communication. The analytical material is 83 job advertisements of various companies, institutions, and organisations. They serve as examples to show the differences between the old non-plain manner of writing texts, the traditional plain language, and the contemporary plain language. The contemporary plain language reaches to the deep structure of a text, is guided by the recipient’s semantics and pragmatics, applies a cognitive–communicative strategy called the natural order of things (NOOT). At the same time, both the sender and the recipient must allow for diversity management in public communications, which is not compliant with the NOOT and makes the text non-transparent. The combination of these differences and correlations gives rise to a new version of job advertisements. Keywords: traditional plain language – contemporary plain language – cognitive-communicative strategies – natural order of things – utilitarian text.