Records, rules and speech acts Archival principles and preservation of speech acts

Abstract

Väitöskirja tarkastelee asiakirjoja ja niiden säilyttämisessä noudatettuja arkistollisia periaatteita kielitekoteorian ja John R. Searlen ajatusten valossa. Siinä osoitetaan, että asiakirjojen säilyttäminen alkuperäisessä järjestyksessä toiminnassa syntyneinä kokonaisuuksina (ns. provenienssiperiaate) saattaa säilyttää käyttäjälle tietoa asiakirjalla tehdyn kieliteon eri tasoista ja komponenteista; asiakirjan paikka arkistossa voi kertoa esimerkiksi kieliteon tekijän, aiheen, johon kieliteko liittyy tai teon illokuution (päätös, käsky, jne.).

Toiseksi väitöskirjassa esitetään, että asiakirjoissa tehdyillä kieliteoilla on yhteisiä piirteitä, jotka selittävät sen, miksi tietojen säilyttäminen asiakirjojen kontekstista provenienssiperiaatteen avulla on tärkeää.

Yleensä asiakirjoiksi mielletään juridisesti merkittävät tai organisaatioiden toimintaan ja prosesseihin liittyvät dokumentit. Kieliteot näissä dokumenteissa muuttavat sitä, mikä on yhteiskunnassa tai organisaation tehtäviin liittyvässä roolissa pakollista, kiellettyä, sallittua tai toivottavaa. Muutokset tapahtuvat vain jos kieliteko tehdään oikeassa kontekstissa: esimerkiksi henkilön toimesta, joka on sen tekemiseen oikeutettu, tai henkilölle, jonka tehtäviin kuuluu reagoida tiedoksi tulleeseen asiaan. Jotta voidaan arvioida, mitä seurauksia kieliteolla on ollut, tai mitä seurauksia sillä olisi pitänyt olla, käyttäjän on voitava olla selvillä kontekstista. Asiakirja voi sisältää tästä jotain tietoa, mutta asiakirjan paikka arkistossa kertoo siitä silloinkin, kun dokumentin sisältö ei siitä kerro tai se on harhaanjohtava.

Archival principles, like the principle of provenance, are applied to documents in archival custody. Archival professionals see many reasons for this, but the significance of the principles and why they are applied to some documents has not been fully explicated. Despite many definitions, there is also no full agreement on what are records .

The study examined archival principles and archival concepts in the light of speech act theory, J. R. Searle s theory of the construction of social reality, and some ideas in sociolinguistics and studies of organizational communication. It had three research questions: 1) in what way do archival documents (records and personal papers) differ from other documents, 2) what is achieved by following archival principles in archival work, and 3) why is it necessary to follow archival principles when archival documents are in question? The method used was theory derivation and analyses of archival documents and writings in archival literature.

The study shows that the selected theoretical background was a good starting point for research. The findings suggest that documentary context preserved by archival principles tells about functional levels and context of the speech act. This may help a document user to understand and reconstruct the speech act in an archival document.

In archival literature it is often stated that the importance of archival principles lies in communicating contextual information. The novelty is to show that concepts in the speech act theory and sociolinguistics can be used to analyze what information is conveyed via documentary context. This allows us to create new hypothesis about why and when applying archival principles to documents is necessary.

Previously it has been noted that there is a connection between records and performatives: archetypal records (e.g. wills and court decisions) are often acts of speech in which saying makes it so . The study introduced the concept of a rule-bound speech act , which is an ideal-type of a record creating speech act. The study suggests that a common feature of rule-bound speech acts is that they have deontic consequences. Different conceptions of record differ when it comes to the significance and duration of deontic consequences and nature of the rules making them possible.

Strong sense records create new institutional facts and/or have otherwise long-term, objective consequences for the society (e.g. change the ownership of a real estate, nominate a new president, or assign a husband s status and obligations to a person). An act in a weaker sense record, on the other hand, has only temporary and local importance: for instance, it may determine, what is the next step in the organizational process, who should take it, or signify the fulfillment of personal obligations (if the person was obliged to make the speech act).

Rule-environment governing the rule-bound speech acts may vary. In some cases, there may be many kinds of rules (what roles there are, who may make a speech act, what is made by it, what are the consequences of the speech act), in other cases only some. Also the degree to which the rules are explicit, formalized, sanctioned, and accepted may vary. In the case of strong sense records, rules tend to be very formal and explicit, breaking them is rigorously sanctioned, and it is hard to question the validity or existence of the rules because they are published as laws. In creation of weaker sense records the rules may be less explicit and formal, they have only limited validity (e.g. inside an organization), questioning them may be possible, and breaking mildly sanctioned or even tolerated. This makes drawing a line between records and nonrecords difficult.

The concept of a rule-bound speech act explains why additional information about the context and functional levels of the speech act may be required. What kind of act there is and what outcome it should (or should not) have does not depend alone on the linguistic expression in a document but on the factors exterior to it. Identification of the context and functional levels in the speech act becomes important, because there may be no proper illocution (e.g. decision or command ) unless the act is executed by a right person and takes place in the proper context and at the right moment of time. The act may have deontic consequences only when it is addressed to a certain person or institution. The perlocutionary act may be something required by the rules or, on the contrary, something that should not have happened. One act may also have different consequences for the different professional groups in an organization.

Archives, records, and archival activities can be looked at from many perspectives, most of which cannot be easily combined with the speech act theory. Nor can all the information carried by documentary context be analyzed in the light of it. Although the speech act theory proved to be a good starting point for the study, it has limited applicability when documents are viewed from another domain (e.g. as evidence of events that have taken place in another time and place), which is customary in archival studies. The reasons for applying archival principles to personal papers remained unclear, but the study suggests new ideas for examining it.

The findings give new conceptual tools for analyzing archival documents, concepts, and practices. Connection of records to legal sphere, different conceptions of recordness, difficulties of defining records in practice, the necessity of applying archival principles to archival documents, some arguments used to defend archival principles, the need to preserve the original appearance of records, and partially concepts used in connection of records (transaction, accountability, reliability) appear as different aspects of the same issues: that archives deal with rule-bound speech acts and archival principles help to keep functional levels and context of speech acts recognizable.