Environmental Engineering Reference
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independently from the material power of economic actors and their skill
in persuasion (Rydin, 2003).
Another way of considering the inter-relationship between language
and actors' interactions with one another is to see language as also con-
stitutive of the incentives facing actors - the costs and benei ts (monetary
and otherwise) that they take into account in deciding on their behav-
iour. For example, researchers have suggested that reputation can be a
key factor shaping behaviour (Ostrom, 1990; Chong, 1991). Actors may
seek to promote and protect a good reputation and avoid behaviour that
is going to expose them to public shame and blame. But reputation is a
social variable constructed through social communicative interactions.
The detailed language of interactions will be central to assessments (by the
actor concerned and others) of whether a reputation is being damaged or
enhanced.
And third, as well as understanding policy actors and the dynamics
of policy processes more fully, the discursive dimension allows the pos-
sibility for devising new modes of communication to achieve normatively
better policy outcomes. There has been a lot of emphasis on creating
more inclusive and deliberative spaces for communication (Burgess et al.,
1998; Hillier, 1998; Healey, 1999; Mason, 1999). Much of the literature on
these policy innovations has arisen from an engagement with the notion
of policy as an inherently discursive process. There has, however, been a
tendency towards an overly procedural approach in devising new spaces
for communication. Graham Smith is one of the most insightful writers on
deliberation but in his discussion of institutional design and deliberation
(2003), he concentrates on procedures and decision rules, specii cally how
to ensure equality of voice, defence of deliberation against strategic action
and sensitivity to the scope, scale and complexity of environmental issues.
But how do these procedures and decision rules change the communica-
tion within deliberation? This can only be understood through considering
the detailed language of that communication. The lesson of the linguistic
turn is that communication between actors is not just a matter of how that
communication is arranged. The language of the interaction also needs to
be considered.
Even more restrictively, deliberation is often equated with communica-
tion as if this not only characterizes deliberation but distinguishes it from
other types of policy intervention. This fails to see the communicative
dimension of all policy work (Majone, 1989) and, furthermore, the linguis-
tically mediated nature of all social activity. Language does play a pivotal
role in deliberation, but it is also implicated in many other institutional
arenas. This can provide insights into how language expresses values and
enables or disables agreement, including consensus.
