The utility of narrative voices in the federal procurement contract

Federal procurement contracts incorporate multiple narrative voices representing a range of individual and organizational interests. We examine these contract voices as they act in, and speak from, a range of roles relevant to federal procurement, such as marketplace participants, taxpayer-citizens, chief adjudicator, and sovereign. Like tapestries, federal procurement contracts are made from textual threads that are woven, cut, tailored, and embellished to depict a particular cast of characters acting in accord with an underlying script. Recognizing this yields insight into the governmental values depicted within each contract’s formally structured, deliberately crafted pages.