‘Keep distance’: Risk communication as conduct of conduct in mid-pandemic public transport in Denmark

Abstract

The paper explores how the action-directing speech act hold afstand (keep distance) was used to conduct passenger conduct in Denmark during the COVID19 pandemic. Combining insights from studies of governmentality with speech act theory and ethnomethodology, the paper scrutinises how the speech act was utilised as a technology of government in risk communication. In this, the paper draws on a tran-situational data corpus that consists of passenger-directed information texts and video recordings of how passengers respond to the texts in situ. The paper firstly analyses the action-directing potential of the speech act and its use by a regional transport company as they attempt to conduct the conduct of passengers. Secondly, it tracks how the speech act was accomplished, negotiated and resisted in passenger interaction on trains and buses as passengers attended to the appropriateness of their own conduct. Thereby the paper contributes to research in risk communication with a particular focus on how such communication contributes to the conduct of passenger conduct in public transport.