Discourse analysis and policy formation: a case study of the Queen Elizabeth the Second Arts Council of New Zealand

Abstract

This thesis offers a reading of the Annual Reports of the Queen Elizabeth the Second Arts Council The Arts Council was restructured into the Arts Council of New Zealand Toi Aotearoa on July 1 1994. When I refer to the Arts Council in the period before this change, I will call it the Queen Elizabeth the Second Arts Council., from the first report in 1964 through to 1987. The reading accomplishes two things: it examines the language used in the Annual Reports and how elements of this language are modified and retained through the Annual Reports, and it shows how the language influences policy developed by the Arts Council. In line with this double aim, the thesis is concerned with the critical examination of certain texts, and with some of the practicalities of policy development. It explores the relationship between language and policy, and seeks to show that one of the main influences on policy development comes from the language that is used to present situations and outline problems. The language used to do this "carries within it" the options for the next step and thus policy is implicitly developed in the description of a situation. The process of policy development is, of course, a complex one, and the thesis does not explore in detail how particular policies were developed by the Arts Council. Rather, it uses a broad brush approach that looks at major policies of the Arts Council and how they change over the period of study. The Annual Reports were chosen as the texts to be analysed because they represent the public face of an organisation and provide an easily accessible corporate history. They are presented to an outside public as documents that describe the current state of an organisation, where it has come from and what it intends to do. It is not assumed that the Annual Reports are policy documents, but it is assumed that they are written in the language that is currently being used in the Arts Council and thus informing policy. It is also assumed that the Annual Reports represent a distillation of current and future Arts Council policy. As the Annual Reports are presented yearly to Parliament, they also provide an opportunity for the Arts Council to argue its case to Government. The thesis also looks at the language the Arts Council employs to do this.