Project description
Objective
The project is about the research of spoken communication between public authorities and citizen:s. Two questions will be investigated: How does the spoken language of administrative employees influence the satisfaction of citizens? And what differences exist between conversations with people from different social groups?
Background
Public services are important to improve the quality of life and well-being of citizens and to reduce social inequalities. Public employees play a central role in shaping these services. In particular, face-to-face interactions on the phone or in person are important, for example, when answering questions or explaining hard-to-understand cover letters. Nevertheless, there is little scientific evidence on how public authorities communicate with citizen:s in such face-to-face interactions and how accurate citizen-centered communication can be.
Methods
In a first step, the project developed a taxonomy of spoken administrative language. For this purpose, expert interviews were conducted with government employees. An experimental study then showed that differences in spoken administrative language influence the satisfaction of citizens. Currently, a method is being developed to record and analyze direct communication between government employees and citizens.
Disciplines
Linguistics, Computational Linguistics, Public Administration, Political Science
Starting Date
May 2020
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Project partners
Municipality of Konstanz
Chamber of Skilled Crafts Konstanz
Municipality of Rottweil
Municipality of Gießen
City Office Durlach
Municipality of Fintel
Jobcenter Administrative District Mayen-Koblenz
Jobcenter Mannheim
Citizens' Service Office Municipality of Aschaffenburg
Municipality of Singen
Tax Office Singen
Social And Youth Welfare Office Karlsruhe
Municipality of Recklinghausen
Municipality of Tübingen
Municipality of Stuttgart
Jobcenter Berlin Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg
Jobcenter Berlin Lichtenberg
Literatur
Publications
Eckhard, S,, & Friedrich, L. (2024). Linguistic Features of Public Service Encounters: How Spoken Administrative Language Affects Citizen Satisfaction. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory 34 (1): 122–35. https://doi.org/10.1093/jopart/muac052.
Eckhard, S., Friedrich, L., Hautli-Janisz, A., Mueden, V. & Espinoza, I. (2024). A Taxonomy of Administrative Language in Public Service Encounters. International Public Management Journal 27 (1): 60–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2022.2075062.
Espinoza, I., Frenzel, S., Friedrich, L., Siskou, W., Eckhard, S., & Hautli-Janisz, A. (2024). PSE v1.0: The First Open Access Corpus of Public Service Encounters. Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). https://aclanthology.org/2024.lrec-main.1165/
Eckhard, S. Espinoza, I., Frenzel, S., Hautli-Janisz, A. & Siskou, W. (2023). Language and Power. Computational Analysis Can Help Us Understand Inequalities in Communication. In_equality Magazine: Research Magazine of the Cluster of Excellence “The Politics of Inequality” at the University of Konstanz, 2023.
Eckhard, S., & Friedrich, L. (2022). Linguistic features of public service encounters: How spoken administrative language affects citizen satisfaction. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. https://academic.oup.com/jpart/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jopart/muac052/6891178
Siskou, W., Friedrich, L., Eckhard, S., Espinoza, I., & Hautli-Janisz, A. (2022). Measuring Plain Language in Public Service Encounters. Proceedings of the 2nd Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Political Text Analysis (CPSS-2022), 27-35. https://old.gscl.org/en/arbeitskreise/cpss/cpss-2022/workshop-proceedings-2022
Eckhard, S., Friedrich, L., Hautli-Janisz, A., Mueden, V., & Espinoza, I. (2022). A taxonomy of administrative language in public service encounters. International Public Management Journal, 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1080/10967494.2022.2075062
Eckhard, S., Friedrich, L., Hautli-Janisz, A., Mueden, V., & Espinoza, I. (2022). Kommunikation ist alles - Wie gesprochene Verwaltungssprache die Bürgerzufriedenheit erhöhen kann. Behördenspiegel, 08/2022. https://issuu.com/behoerden_spiegel/docs/2022_august