Cooperation or Aid? A Corpus-Assisted Critical Discourse Analysis of Finland’s Development Policy

Abstract: The current Finnish development policy, published in 2016, follows the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 sustainable development goals. With the help of a few tools from corpus linguistics, this study conducts a critical discourse analysis of the policy, using Norman Fairclough’s three-dimensional method for CDA as its methodologicalframework and post-development theory as its main theoretical background. The study focuses on the definitions of development and its implementation as put forward by the policy, and how the policy text relates to its production and consumption as well as to the social and political context in which it is situated. Rather than working toward cooperation and participation which it promises, the policy reinforces the image of top-down aid dictated by institutions of the global North. It juxtaposes Finland as a giver and saviour with countries in the global South as vulnerable receivers of aid, granting little agency for the institutions,let alone the people of its development partners.