Language is the strongest link between citizens and institutions, the main tool to make administrations’ logics and instruments accessible. Yet language is at the same time a tool potentially limiting this access, able to isolate and discriminate those who do not own the right codes.

The last issue of “Parole Publique”, the official magazine of the Association Française de Communication Publique, is mainly - but not only - about this paradox. Thanks to the contributions and remarks of university experts, writers, governmental officials, sociologists and semiologists, the magazine explores the problem of the correct linguistic register – syntactic, grammatical and lexical – to be adopted in the public sphere, by sharing direct experiences, researches and analysis.

Born to give the right space to the growing relevance of public communication, the magazine “Parole Publique” addresses all those actors involved in the institutional sphere: communication officials, decision makers, scholars but also teachers and students of the field.