This project is focused on how the written language has a specific meaning at workplaces where people are working together. Educated people as physiotherapists and pedagogical workers are on a daily basis working with interpersonal matters in relation to the patients or clients they work with, but also in relation to the colleagues that work together at the workplace. This kind of relational work forces the workers to write in specific ways. Writing is a social practice that is embedded in particular cultural contexts, and that is shaped by the purposes writing serve and the activity writing is part of. During the last 10 years the Danish government has tried to convince “people workers”, that being able to reflect on their work, in written language, will improve the quality of the work they are doing. We have seen an explosion of written texts in “people work”. We are talking about evidence, writing documentations every day, making reports and in a written way to qualify the job systematically. (Hjort 2004, Hjort 2005, Laursen 2005, Moos 2005) Clearly, the political focus is to control more areas, and for people workers it means that writing has become a part of their everyday work. My project is concerns how the written language is treated at workplaces, and how the written language treats the workplace. I am investigation the demands that society and the government place upon “people-workers”, and also the concrete written languages that is developed as discourses at different workplaces. My research questions are empirical questions that all have theoretical implications: a.What kind of typical written genres are to be discovered at a workplace for educational workers (social workers) and at a workplace fore physiotherapists? b.How do the professional workers at these workplaces write when they have to write and when they want to write? c.How are workers positioned in everyday workplace texts, and how do they position themselves? d.The written language is in itself involved in the construction of reality. In what way does the written language produce knowledge upon the interpersonal part of the work, and what kind of potentials can be analyzed through the written language? e.How can the written language be described at these workplaces? These questions imply that linguistic theory and workplace theory is brought together. The main part of the project reflects the view that the way into understanding the written language at workplaces lies in the study of texts. I am using Systemic Functional Linguistic (SFL) to provide an understanding of socially framed theories of the practising of writing. SFL offers terminologies and a system to analyse interpersonal and textual stands of meaning in the workplace writings. I use SFL as a part of my method of analysis, to point out how words and sentences are not randomly placed in a written text, but serves different purposes at the workplace. The study is carried out within the framework of social theory and theories of language as a functional social matter.

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