What is a Report? A Lexicographical Answer; Standardization of the Product "reports" in the OECD Health Unit (1977-2014)

This communication aims at summarize the progressive formalization of reports as a genre, through the study of OECD (Organization of Economic and Cooperation Development) reports on health between 1992 and 2001 on the one hand (Serie “Studies of Health Policies”), and 2001 and 2015 on the other hand (Serie “Health at a Glance”). Those twe series of reports constitute the leading publications of the OECD on health. Their modifications through time will be objectivized using the software Iramuteq. We aim through this inquiry at establish 1) Invariants of the argumentative structure of considered reports 2) Modifications of indicators presented on the period 3) the “reader’s inscription” devices (Auerbach, 2012) and the central themas of policies advocated by OECD on health. Finally, we aim, through the comparison between the results of the lexicographical inquiry and health policies finally enacted in France, Great-Britain and Germany, to empirically verify the power frequently given to numbers in the literature (Porter, 1995; Desrosières, 2014), and to objectivize the framing of health policies around themas shown in the reports.