Webpage Instability and Utility Content: Citizen’s Rights and the Law on Gov.UK
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2018.i12.344Keywords:
linguistics, legal language, multimodality, website usability, interdiscourse, knowledge disseminationAbstract
The mission of the UK Ministry of Justice is to assist citizens with “making sense of justice,” the law and their rights (http://open.justice.gov.uk/). Its website can thus be seen as a seat for asymmetric mediation of knowledge in the legal field (Engberg and Luttermann 2014), intended to deliver good value both to lay users and institution: fast and satisfactory online responses to citizens’ qdfgdfueries are handy for the citizens and reinforce their willingness to give credibility to Ministry and the government as the principal organization and institution behind the website (Petitat 1998; 2004; Marková, Linell and Gillespie 2008). In this context, we carry out a qualitative study into knowledge representation (Kastberg 2010; Ditlevsen 2011) on the Your rights and the law pages of the UK government (https://www.gov.uk/browse/justice/rights) in order to discuss whether and to what extent citizens have quick and easy access to the information they are looking for – or basic support with the knowledge and documentation that they need to behave prosocially and responsibly. To this purpose, we integrate notions from research on website usability, layout arrangements and visual organization of knowledge (Nielsen 1995, inter alios) with notions from research on interdiscursive and interlocutive dialogism (Bres 1985; Bres and Nowakowska 2005; Loffler-Laurian 1983; Jacobi 1987; Adam and Herman 2000).References
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Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press, 1977.
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Bertlin, Alison. “What Works Best for the Reader? A Study on Drafting and Presenting Legislation.” The Loophole 2 (2014): 26-49.
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Bres, Jaques. Dialogisme et polyphonie. Approches linguistiques. Bruxelles: de Boeck-Duculot, 1985.
---. and Aleksandra Nowakowska. “ Dis-moi avec qui tu “dialogues,” je te dirai qui tu es… De la pertinence de la notion de dialogisme pour l’analyse du discours.” Marges Linguistiques 9 (2005): 137-153.
Cacchiani, Silvia. “The Voice of the Law on Gov.uk and Justice.gouv.fr: Good Value to Citizens and Institutions?” Popularization and Knowledge Mediation in the Law. Eds. Jan Engberg, Silvia Cacchiani, Karin Luttermann and Chiara Preite. Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. 117-148.
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Calsamiglia, Helena, and Teun A. van Dijk. “Popularization Discourse and the Knowledge about the Genome.” Discourse & Society 15.4 (2004): 369-389.
Ditlevsen, Marianne G. “Towards a Methodological Framework for Knowledge Communication.” Current Issues in Specialized Communication. Eds. Margrete Petersen and Jan Engberg. Bern: Peter Lang, 2011. 187-208.
Engberg, Jan, Silvia Cacchiani, Karin Luttermann, and Chiara Preite. “Studying Popularization in Legal Communication: Introduction and Overview.” Popularization and Knowledge Mediation in the Law.
Münster: LIT Verlag, 2018. ix-xxv.
---. and Karin Luttermann. “Informationen auf Webseiten als Input für Wissenskonstruktion im Recht.” Zeitschrift für Angewandte Linguistik 59.1 (2014): 63-87.
---. and Carmen D. Maier. “Exploring the Hypermodal Communication of Academic Knowledge Beyond Generic Structures.” Discourse in and Through the Media. Recontextualizing and Reconceptualizing Expert Discourse. Eds. Marina Bondi, Silvia Cacchiani, and Davide Mazzi. Cambridge upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015. 46-65.
Enkvist, Nils E. “Experiential Iconicism in Text Strategy.” Text 1.1 (1981): 97-111.
Farrell, Susan. “FAQ’s still Deliver Great Value.” (2014).
http://www.nngroup.com/ articles/FAQs-still-delivergreat-value/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
---. “An FAQ’s user experience deconstructed.” (2015).
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/an-FAQs-userexperience-deconstructed/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
Goffman, Erving. Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face-to-Face Behavior. New York: Pantheon Books, 1982.
Gotti, Maurizio. “Reformulation and Recontextualization in Popularization Discourse.” Ibérica 27 (2014): 15- 34.
GDS-a. Government Digital Service. “Digital Service Standard.” https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/servicestandard. Last Visited January 30, 2018.
---. “Service Manual.” https://www.gov.uk/service-manual. Last Visited January 30, 2018.
Haiman, John. “Conditionals are Topics.” Language 54 (1978): 564-589.
Jacobi, Daniel. Textes et images de la vulgarisation scientifique. Bern: Peter Lang, 1987.
Kastberg, Peter. “Knowledge Communication. Formative Ideas and Research Impetus.” Programmatic Perspectives 2.1 (2010): 59-71.
Kong, Kenneth C. “A Taxonomy of the Discourse Relations between Words and Visuals.” Information Design Journal 14.3 (2006): 207-230.
Kress, Gunther. Multimodality. A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Routledge, 2010.
Kurosu, Masaaki and Kaori Kashimura. “Apparent Usability vs. Inherent Usability: Experimental Analysis on the Determinants of Apparent Usability.” CHI ’95 Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York: Association for Computer Machinery, 1995. 192-193.
Lemke, Jay L. “Travels in Hypermodality.” Visual Communication 1.3 (2003): 299-325.
Linell, Per. Approaching Dialogue: Talk, Interaction and Context in Dialogical Perspectives. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1998.
Loffler-Laurian, Anne-Marie. “Typologie des discours scientifiques: deux approches.” Etudes de Linguistique Appliquée 51 (1983): 8-20.
Loranger, Hoa. “Great Summaries on ‘About Us’ Pages Engage Users and Build Trust.” (2015).
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/about-us-summaries/?lm=about-us-presenting-companyinformation&pt=report. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
Marková, Ivana, Per Linell, and Alex Gillespie. 2008. “Trust and Distrust in Society. Trust and Distrust. Sociocultural perspectives. Eds. Ivana Marková and Alex Gillespie. Carlott: Information Age
Publishing, 2008. 3-27.
Martinec, Radan, and Andrew Salway. “A System of Text-Image Relations in New (and Old) Media.” Visual Communication 4.3 (2005): 337-371.
Merlini Barbaresi, Lavinia. Markedness in English Discourse. A Semiotic Approach. Parma: Edizioni Zara, 1988.
Meyer, Kate. “The Aesthetic-Usability Effect. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/aesthetic-usability-effect/.
Last Visited August 30, 2017.
Mortureux, Marie-Françoise, ed. "La vulgarisation." Langue française 53.1 (1982).
Nielsen, Jacob. “10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design.” (1995). http://www.nngroup.com/articles/10-usability-heuristics-for-user-inter. Last visited 30 March 2016.
---. “How Users Read on Web.” (1997). http://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-web/. Last
Visited March 30, 2016.
---. Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity. San Francisco: New Riders, 1999.
---. “Top 10 Design Mistakes of 2003.” (2002). https://www.nngroup.com/articles/top-10-web-designmistakes-of-2003/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
---. “Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design.” (2011). https://www.nngroup.com/ articles/top-10-mistakes-webdesign/. Last visited 30 March 2016.
---. “Usability 101. Introduction to Usability.” (2012). http://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-101-
introduction-to-usability/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
Petitat, André. Secret et formes sociales. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1998.
---. “La confiance racontée.” Conflits, confiance, démocratie. Eds. Anna Krasteva and Antoni Todorov. Sofia: Nouvelle Université Bulgare, 2004. 179-194.
Ramsay, Violeta. “The Functional Distribution of Preposed and Postposed ‘If’ and ‘When’ Clauses in Written Discourse.” Typological Studies in Language 11: Coherence and Grounding in Discourse. Ed. Russell S. Tomlin. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1987. 338-408.
Sherwin, Katie. “University Websites: Top 10 Design Guidelines.” (2016). https://www.nngroup.com/articles/university-sites/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
Scollon, Ron, and Suzanne W. Scollon. Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.
Tognazzini, Bruce. “First Principles in Interaction Design (Revised & Expanded).” (2014). http://www.nngroup.com/articles/first-principles-in-interaction-design-(-revised-&-expanded-)-asktog.htm/. Last Visited March 30, 2016.
Whitenton, Karin. “Flat vs. Deep Website Hierarchies.” (2013). https://www.nngroup.com/articles/flat-vsdeep-hierarchy/. Last Visited August 30, 2017.
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