"Texts That Have Power: A Linguistic Analysis of Government Programmes of Finland"

Urpo Nikanne, Åbo Akademi University

A democratic society is organized by different texts: laws, decisions, 
reports, strategies, etc. Some texts have more power than others. In 
Finland, government programme is a very powerful text: it is a 
strategy text in which the government expresses its goals and 
policies. In an open democratic society, the government programme as 
well as other texts produced by the government are by the rule public 
and they can be found online. Dr. Nikanne will focus on the Strategic Programme of Prime Minister Juha Sipilä’s Government (29 May 2015) and analyze it from the point of view of transparent decision-making, which is one of the cornerstones of democracy..