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A large number of Swedish public authorities produce 'platform of values' texts that present core values. This article presents a study of how such texts and practices, including the core values they revolve around, are legitimized. Using Van Leeuwen's legitimation framework, three different data sets are analysed: 47 'platform of values' texts, a focus group discussion with seven senior HR officers, and a quantitative questionnaire study answered by civil servants at three public authorities. The analysis shows how the existence of 'platform of values' texts and practices is legitimized through rationalizations, above all by describing the texts as concrete means for reaching specific ends and, with regard to the choice of core values, through a custom-conformity type of authority. Thus, this article addresses discursive transformations of contemporary organizations with a particular focus on available discursive space for critical thinking in the wake of New Public Management and related developments.

All non-fictional prose (’sakprosa’ in the Scandinavian languages) is multimodal, and this paper discusses how the study of non-fictional prose relates to research on multimodality. In doing so, the paper answers two research questions: How can research on non-fictional prose and multimodality enrich each other? and How does Nordic research on non-fictional prose relate to the wider field of multimodality? In order to answer these questions, the trajectories of the multimodality tradition are outlined as well as the genealogy of the concept sakprosa. Drawing on older as well as contemporary Nordic research on non-fictional prose, the article argues that the prefix sak­ ­has at its potential to inform multimodality research, primarily because it conceptualizes text as an utterance about the reality within a specific institution. Accordingly, the article argues that the interplay between language and other semiotic (e.g. visual; spatial; auditive) modes needs to be fore fronted in the study of non-fictional prose. This, finally, points to the importance of paying attention to how different affordances, i.e. the possibilities and constraints in different semiotic materials, are employed in different contexts. Thus, the suffix prose also becomes relevant, as it draws attention to the qualities of the expression.

This study presents core values at public authorities in Sweden and discusses them in relation to the legal foundation for the public administration. A corpus-based approach is allpied in order to overview the texts where the core values are presented, and to promote an understanding of how ambiguous core value words might be understood, paying particular attention to the high frequent core value openness. Results show that public authorities tend to emphasize the principle of efficiency and service in their assignment, and often choose core values related to that principle, such as helpful, reliable or goal oriented. The principle free formation of speech, on the other hand, a privilege confirmed in the Swedish constitution, is not present among the chosen core value words. The word openness primarily refers to a personal quality or a workplace atmosphere and is both promoted and restricted in the texts. Only in a few instances do openness refer to flow of information, and in those instances, it is restricted. The constitutional right for a public servant to voice his or her opinion freely is thus not emphasized in this type of policy texts. 

Students in upper secondary school write in a number of different genres, and do this in school contexts as well as in their spare time. The study presented here is an overview of this activity and the genres concerned. The theoretical framework of the study is that of genre theory whereby genre is understood as a socially situated concept.

The study is based on 2 000 texts gathered from students on different study programmes all over Sweden in the school year of 1996-97. The texts were written in different situations. The most important distinction made here is between test texts (i.e. texts from national tests) and self-chosen texts, which may come from schoolwriting or spare-time writing.

The texts are categorized according to genre. This text inventory shows a repertoire of 33 different genres in the text material. A small number of genres, such as story, book-review and expository essay dominate the school writing. The test genres differ from this pattern in that they clearly imitate texts with a genuine communicative intent.

The most frequent genres are studied further and each of them is demonstrated by an interpretative reading. This reading shows that the genres differ considerably with respect to genre character and stability of text structure. A quantitative study of text length and variation in vocabulary further shows that texts written by two categories of students, those on vocationally oriented programmes and those on programmes preparing for higher education, differ significantly.

Reference cohesion is studied in a smaller sample of the texts. This lexico-semantic mechanism of cohesion proves to exhibit an interrelation with variation in vocabulary as well as with text type. One particular cohesive tie, inference, shows different patterns in texts written by the two categories of students mentioned above.

Drawing onobservations in texts from the national test in Swedish, the report discusses tworelated questions: 1) whether students develop their writing abilities betweengrades 5 and 9, two measuring points in the system of national tests in Swedish,and 2) how this development might be measured. In the study, two samples ofschool texts – from grades 5 and 9 respectively – were compared in terms of textlength, sentence length and genre match at a macro level. A more detailedanalysis of lexical concentration and text structure was performed on a narrowersample of twenty texts from each school grade. The comparison showed that theolder pupils write longer texts, with longer sentences and a more varied textstructure. The younger children, however, produce texts with higher lexicalconcentration – which might be construed as a higher degree of textual content –and they follow the given genre instructions more closely.