Cite this article as: Sheshi, T. D., & Alfa, B. A. (2026). From eloquent silence to actionable directive: A critical discourse analysis of uptake failure in policy briefs. Sokoto Journal of Linguistics and Communication Studies (SOJOLICS), 2(1), 210-216. https://doi.org/10.36349/sojolics.2026.v02i01.018
by
Theophilus Danjuma Sheshi
National Institute for Policy and
Strategic Studies, Kuru – Jos
theosheshi@gmail.com
08039294884
&
Bala Alhaji Alfa
Department of Languages,
Federal Polytechnic Bida, Niger
State
alfabalaharuna@gmail.com
08036380154
Abstract
While sophisticated policy research
too often remains unused by public administrators, constituting a critical
failure for evidence-informed governance, this paper explores the proposition
that a key, yet under-examined, explanation lies not only in political and
institutional constraints but also in the language of the recommendations
themselves. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis of elite policy briefs,
employing Nigeria’s National Blue Economy Strategy as a primary case and
drawing selectively on Nigeria’s National Health Policy as a comparative
reference, this study identifies a pervasive discourse of technocratic
abstraction. The analysis demonstrates how grammatical choices, particularly
the nominalisation of processes, the suppression of identifiable agents, and
the attenuation of obligation through weak modality, serve to assert authority
while potentially introducing cognitive and practical barriers for time-pressed
executives. While such linguistic features perform important institutional functions,
including consensus-building and the mitigation of political risk, their
cumulative effect may contribute to implementation deferral by obscuring
responsibility and diluting directive force. The paper does not advance a claim
of linguistic determinism; rather, it proposes that these discursive patterns
may constitute a mediating layer in the broader dynamics of policy uptake. It
concludes by advancing a linguistically grounded framework for Actionable
Drafting, advocating a discursive shift towards restoring agency, clarifying
obligation, and sequencing action in ways that facilitate implementation.
Keywords: Critical Discourse Analysis; Systemic Functional Grammar;
Research–Policy Gap; Policy Briefs; Nominalisation; Transitivity; Modality;
Implementation
1. Introduction:
The Stakes of Silence in the
Corridors of Power
In the quiet archives of
governance, one encounters shelves lined with documents that stand as eloquent
testaments to problems ostensibly solved. These are the policy briefs produced
by prestigious institutions, forged through rigorous analysis and the deliberations
of expert communities. Yet, for all their intellectual sophistication and
apparent authority, such documents frequently meet a curiously muted fate: they
are received with polite acknowledgement, circulated within administrative
systems, and subsequently consigned to institutional memory. Their
recommendations rarely provoke outright rejection; instead, they dissipate into
what may be described as an eloquent silence.
This silence is not merely an
administrative inconvenience; it reflects a deeper and more consequential
failure within the architecture of governance. At stake is the translation of
knowledge into action, a process central to the functioning of modern states.
When carefully produced policy advice fails to inform decision-making, the
result is not only inefficiency but also the erosion of the very premise of
evidence-informed governance (Cairney, 2016).
The persistence of the so-called
research–policy gap has generated extensive scholarly attention. Conventional
explanations tend to locate the problem in external factors: insufficient
political will, competing fiscal priorities, or bureaucratic inertia. While
these explanations are both plausible and empirically grounded, they share a
common analytical tendency: they externalise the problem, situating the failure
of uptake outside the knowledge artefact itself. In doing so, they implicitly
assume that policy advice, once produced, is communicatively transparent and
functionally adequate.
This paper explores a complementary
and comparatively under-examined proposition. It suggests that a significant
dimension of the problem may reside within the linguistic and discursive
construction of policy advice itself. Specifically, it investigates how the
language of elite policy briefs—characterised by abstraction,
depersonalisation, and attenuated directive force—may shape the ways in which
such documents are interpreted, prioritised, and acted upon within
administrative settings.
Policy briefs are typically
designed to perform a dual function: to demonstrate analytical rigour and to
facilitate decision-making. In practice, however, these functions may be in
tension. A document that succeeds in projecting technical authority through
dense abstraction and cautious formulation may simultaneously impose a
significant interpretive burden on its intended audience. For policymakers
operating under conditions of urgency and informational overload, the effort
required to translate such discourse into concrete action may itself become a
factor contributing to deferral.
The present study adopts an
exploratory analytical approach. It examines Nigeria’s National Blue Economy
Strategy as a primary case, complemented by selected evidence from Nigeria’s
National Health Policy as a secondary point of comparison. The intention is not
to establish statistical generalisability but to provide a theoretically
informed illustration of recurring discursive patterns within elite policy
environments.
The inquiry is guided by three
research questions:
i. First,
what specific linguistic features characterise the discourse of elite policy
briefs?
ii. Second,
how do these features construct social relations and agency between the
producers and users of policy advice?
iii. Third,
how might these discursive constructions shape the pathway from recommendation
to administrative action?
In addressing these questions, the
paper advances three contributions. Analytically, it reframes policy uptake not
solely as a political or institutional problem but as one that may also be
linguistically mediated. Methodologically, it demonstrates the value of
integrating Critical Discourse Analysis with Systemic Functional Grammar in the
examination of policy texts. Practically, it proposes a framework for
Actionable Drafting that seeks to realign the language of policy advice with
the requirements of implementation.
2. Literature Review: Bridging Theory and the
Communicative Gap
The literature on the
research–policy divide has long acknowledged the complexity of translating
evidence into action. Early models of policy development assumed a relatively
linear progression from knowledge generation to policy implementation. More recent
scholarship, however, has emphasised the contingent and politically mediated
nature of this process, highlighting the roles of institutional interests,
ideological positioning, and administrative constraints (Oliver & Cairney,
2019).
Within this body of work,
policymakers are consistently portrayed as operating under conditions of
bounded rationality. Faced with time pressures and competing demands, they rely
on heuristics, trusted intermediaries, and simplified representations of complex
information. In such contexts, the usability and clarity of policy advice
become critical determinants of uptake.
Policy briefs have emerged as a
principal instrument intended to bridge this divide. Best-practice guidelines
emphasise brevity, clarity, and the provision of actionable recommendations
tailored to executive audiences. In theory, the policy brief functions as a
translational genre, mediating between the epistemic norms of research and the
pragmatic demands of governance.
Yet, despite the widespread
adoption of these guidelines, the effectiveness of policy briefs in shaping
decision-making remains uneven. This suggests that existing approaches may
insufficiently account for the role of language itself in structuring communication.
Much of the literature implicitly treats language as a neutral conduit,
assuming that clarity of intent naturally translates into clarity of reception.
Critical Discourse Analysis offers
a useful corrective to this assumption by conceptualising language as
constitutive rather than merely representational (Fairclough, 1992). From this
perspective, policy texts do not simply convey information; they actively
construct social realities by defining problems, allocating responsibility, and
delimiting possible courses of action. However, while CDA has been applied
extensively to public and media discourse, its systematic application to
internal policy instruments, particularly at the level of grammatical analysis,
remains comparatively limited.
This study addresses that gap by
focusing on the micro-linguistic features of policy texts. It does not claim
that language alone determines policy outcomes. Rather, it proposes that
linguistic form constitutes a mediating layer through which broader institutional
and political dynamics are enacted.
3. Theoretical Framework: Linguistic
Foundations of Technocratic Discourse
The analytical framework employed
in this study combines Critical Discourse Analysis with Halliday’s Systemic
Functional Grammar. Within this framework, language is understood as a resource
for making meaning, structured through choices that reflect and reproduce
social relations.
Three concepts are central to the
analysis. The first is nominalisation, which involves the transformation of
processes into abstract nouns. While this allows for the condensation of
complex ideas, it often results in the suppression of agency and temporality.
The second is transitivity, which concerns the grammatical encoding of action
and responsibility, including the identification of actors and affected
entities. The third is modality, which expresses degrees of obligation and
certainty, thereby shaping the perceived force of recommendations.Together,
these concepts provide a systematic means of examining how policy discourse
constructs action, responsibility, and obligation.
4. Methodology: A Linguistic Discourse
Analytic Approach
This study adopts a qualitative,
exploratory design centred on the analysis of policy texts. The primary corpus
consists of twelve priority recommendations and fifty-four implementation
strategies drawn from Nigeria’s National Blue Economy Strategy. To strengthen
analytical robustness, selected formulations from Nigeria’s National Health
Policy are incorporated as a comparative reference.
The analysis proceeded in three
stages. First, linguistic features associated with nominalisation,
transitivity, and modality were identified within the corpus. Second, these
features were interpreted in terms of their discursive effects, particularly with
respect to the construction of agency and obligation. Third, these patterns
were related to broader institutional practices of policy formulation.
Across both cases, a consistent
pattern emerged: a high density of nominalisation, the predominance of
institutional actors, and the frequent use of low-value modal verbs. These
features were not treated as isolated stylistic choices but as elements of a
coherent discourse.
It is important to emphasise that
this study does not empirically examine how policymakers interpret or respond
to these texts. Rather, it identifies linguistic features that may plausibly
shape interpretation and action.
5. Analysis: The Grammar of
Inaction in Policy Discourse
The analysis reveals a pervasive
pattern of nominalisation across the corpus. In the Blue Economy Strategy, for
instance, expressions such as “the establishment of a National Blue Revenue
Expansion Framework” transform dynamic processes into static entities. A
comparable pattern is evident in the Health Policy, where phrases such as “the
strengthening of primary healthcare delivery systems” similarly abstract action
into nominal form. In both cases, the grammatical structure removes explicit
actors and obscures the temporal sequence of implementation.
This tendency is reinforced by
patterns of transitivity. Agency is frequently assigned to institutional
entities, as in formulations such as “FMF in collaboration with FMMBE” or “the
Federal Ministry of Health in collaboration with relevant stakeholders.” While
such constructions reflect organisational realities, they diffuse
responsibility by foregrounding institutions rather than identifiable
individuals.
A further feature is the pervasive
use of weak modality. Recommendations are frequently framed using modal verbs
such as “should,” as in “the government should establish” or “the government
should ensure.” Such formulations encode a recommendation rather than an
obligation, thereby introducing a degree of interpretive flexibility that may
weaken the directive force.
Taken together, these features
produce a discourse in which action is abstracted, agency is diffused, and
obligation is attenuated. The result is not necessarily ambiguity in the sense
of incomprehensibility, but rather a form of structured indeterminacy that may
complicate translating analysis into action.
6. Discussion:
From Grammatical Design to the
Social Practice of Inaction
The linguistic patterns identified
in this study are not merely stylistic artefacts; they reflect broader
institutional logics. Abstraction facilitates consensus by avoiding premature
specificity, while depersonalisation mitigates political risk by diffusing
responsibility. Weak modality allows for flexibility in implementation,
accommodating shifting priorities and constraints.
However, while these features are
functionally valuable within the context of policy production, their cumulative
effect may be less compatible with the requirements of policy execution. For
decision-makers operating under conditions of urgency, the absence of clearly
defined actors, actions, and obligations may increase the cognitive effort
required to translate recommendations into practice.
The inclusion of a second case
reinforces this interpretation. The recurrence of similar patterns across both
economic and health policy domains suggests that technocratic abstraction is
not sector-specific but reflects a broader discourse of elite policy
formulation. This consistency strengthens the analytical claim that linguistic
form constitutes a relevant, if often overlooked, dimension of policy uptake.
7. Conclusion and Recommendations
This study has explored the
proposition that policy uptake failure may be partially mediated by the
linguistic construction of policy advice. It has identified a recurring pattern
of nominalisation, institutionalised agency, and attenuated modality across two
policy domains.
In response to the research
questions, the analysis demonstrates that elite policy briefs are characterised
by specific grammatical features that construct depersonalised relations of
responsibility and attenuate directive force. These constructions may contribute
to implementation deferral by increasing interpretive burden and reducing
clarity of obligation.
The paper does not suggest that
language determines policy outcomes. Rather, it proposes that language
constitutes a critical mediating layer within the broader dynamics of
governance. Recognising this layer allows for the development of more effective
communicative practices.
To this end, the paper advances the
concept of Actionable Drafting, which emphasises the use of active verbs, the
specification of responsible actors, the strengthening of modality, and the
sequencing of actions. Such an approach seeks to realign the language of policy
advice with the practical requirements of implementation. In moving from
eloquent silence to actionable directive, the challenge is not to abandon the
analytical rigour of policy discourse, but to ensure that such rigour is
communicated in a form that supports, rather than inhibits, action.
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