Archival principles, like the principle of provenance, are applied to documents in archival custody. Archival professionals see many reasons for this, but the significance of the principles and why they are applied to some documents has not been fully explicated. Despite many definitions, there is also no full agreement on what are “records”.
The study examined archival principles and archival concepts in the light of speech act theory, J. R. Searle’s theory of the construction of social reality, and some ideas in sociolinguistics and studies of organizational communication. It had three research questions: 1) in what way do archival documents (records and personal papers) differ from other documents, 2) what is achieved by following archival principles in archival work, and 3) why is it necessary to follow archival principles when archival documents are in question? The method used was theory derivation and analyses of archival documents and writings in archival literature.
The study shows that the selected theoretical background was a good starting point for research. The findings suggest that documentary context preserved by archival principles tells about functional levels and context of the speech act. This may help a document user to understand and reconstruct the speech act in an archival document.
In archival literature it is often stated that the importance of archival principles lies in communicating contextual information. The novelty is to show that concepts in the speech act theory and sociolinguistics can be used to analyze what information is conveyed via documentary context. This allows us to create new hypothesis about why and when applying archival principles to documents is necessary.
Previously it has been noted that there is a connection between records and performatives: archetypal records (e.g. wills and court decisions) are often acts of speech in which ‘saying makes it so’. The study introduced the concept of a “rule-bound speech act”, which is an ideal-type of a record–creating speech act. The study suggests that a common feature of rule-bound speech acts is that they have deontic consequences. Different conceptions of record differ when it comes to the significance and duration of deontic consequences and nature of the rules making them possible.
Strong sense records create new “institutional facts” and/or have otherwise long-term, objective consequences for the society (e.g. change the ownership of a real estate, nominate a new president, or assign a husband’s status and obligations to a person). An act in a weaker sense record, on the other hand, has only temporary and local importance: for instance, it may determine, what is the next step in the organizational process, who should take it, or signify the fulfillment of personal obligations (if the person was obliged to make the speech act).
Rule-environment governing the rule-bound speech acts may vary. In some cases, there may be many kinds of rules (what roles there are, who may make a speech act, what is made by it, what are the consequences of the speech act), in other cases only some. Also the degree to which the rules are explicit, formalized, sanctioned, and accepted may vary. In the case of strong sense records, rules tend to be very formal and explicit, breaking them is rigorously sanctioned, and it is hard to question the validity or existence of the rules because they are published as laws. In creation of weaker sense records the rules may be less explicit and formal, they have only limited validity (e.g. inside an organization), questioning them may be possible, and breaking mildly sanctioned or even tolerated. This makes drawing a line between “records” and “nonrecords” difficult.
The concept of a rule-bound speech act explains why additional information about the context and functional levels of the speech act may be required. What kind of act there is and what outcome it should (or should not) have does not depend alone on the linguistic expression in a document but on the factors exterior to it. Identification of the context and functional levels in the speech act becomes important, because there may be no proper illocution (e.g. “decision” or “command”) unless the act is executed by a right person and takes place in the proper context and at the right moment of time. The act may have deontic consequences only when it is addressed to a certain person or institution. The perlocutionary act may be something required by the rules or, on the contrary, something that should not have happened. One act may also have different consequences for the different professional groups in an organization.
