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The emotional civil servant: On the multimodal construction of affect in ‘platform of values’ texts of Swedish public authorities
Örebro University, School of Humanities, Education and Social Sciences. (Multimodal kommunikation; Undervisning, lärande, humaniora)ORCID iD: 0000-0002-6396-4240
2023 (English)In: Organizational Semiotics: Multimodal Perspectives on Organization Studies / [ed] Louise Ravelli, Theo van Leeuwen, Markus A. Höllerer, Dennis Jancsary, New York & Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2023, 1, p. 99-121Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]

The contemporary textual landscape of public authorities is flooded with ‘vision and values’ or ‘platform of values’ texts. Some of these texts contain multimodal offers of affects, such as ‘happiness’ or ‘courage’. This chapter presents an analysis of the functions of the ‘affect-driven civil servant’ in multimodal ‘vision and values’ texts of public authorities in Sweden, along with a discussion about the organizational and professional practices of which they are a part. Departing from social semiotics and multimodal critical discourse studies, the analysis draws on Wetherell’s notion of affect as discursive meaning-making and Bhatia’s critical genre analysis in order to discuss the affective aspects of multimodal texts as part of professional practice and culture. The primary data comprise ‘platform of values’ texts of public authorities in Sweden from 2016, which have been matched with secondary data in the form of a video recorded two-hour focus group discussion with seven senior civil servants/managers responsible for ‘value work’ at their respective public authority. The results show how affect as semiotic potential is used to create a new type of identity for the civil servant – as a means of ‘softly’ governing organizations through multimodal texts.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
New York & Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2023, 1. p. 99-121
Keywords [en]
affect, civil servant, Sweden, genre, public authority, platform of values, organizational practice
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Research subject
Swedish Language
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:oru:diva-106014Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85162663370ISBN: 9780367504557 (print)ISBN: 9781003049920 (electronic)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:oru-106014DiVA, id: diva2:1758296
Funder
Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, P15-0119Available from: 2023-05-22 Created: 2023-05-22 Last updated: 2025-01-14Bibliographically approved

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
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Language
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More languages
Output format
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