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The Concepts of Risk, Safety, and Security: Applications in Everyday Language

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  • Max Boholm
  • Niklas Möller
  • Sven Ove Hansson

Abstract

The concepts of risk, safety, and security have received substantial academic interest. Several assumptions exist about their nature and relation. Besides academic use, the words risk, safety, and security are frequent in ordinary language, for example, in media reporting. In this article, we analyze the concepts of risk, safety, and security, and their relation, based on empirical observation of their actual everyday use. The “behavioral profiles” of the nouns risk, safety, and security and the adjectives risky, safe, and secure are coded and compared regarding lexical and grammatical contexts. The main findings are: (1) the three nouns risk, safety, and security, and the two adjectives safe and secure, have widespread use in different senses, which will make any attempt to define them in a single unified manner extremely difficult; (2) the relationship between the central risk terms is complex and only partially confirms the distinctions commonly made between the terms in specialized terminology; (3) whereas most attempts to define risk in specialized terminology have taken the term to have a quantitative meaning, nonquantitative meanings dominate in everyday language, and numerical meanings are rare; and (4) the three adjectives safe, secure, and risky are frequently used in comparative form. This speaks against interpretations that would take them as absolute, all‐or‐nothing concepts.

Suggested Citation

  • Max Boholm & Niklas Möller & Sven Ove Hansson, 2016. "The Concepts of Risk, Safety, and Security: Applications in Everyday Language," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 36(2), pages 320-338, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:riskan:v:36:y:2016:i:2:p:320-338
    DOI: 10.1111/risa.12464
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Peter Blokland & Genserik Reniers, 2019. "An Ontological and Semantic Foundation for Safety and Security Science," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(21), pages 1-25, October.
    2. Roberta Ingaramo & Luca Pascale, 2020. "An Interpretative Matrix for an Adaptive Design Approach. Italian School Infrastructure: Safety and Social Restoration," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(20), pages 1-22, October.
    3. Robert L. Heath & Jaesub Lee & Michael J. Palenchar & Laura L. Lemon, 2018. "Risk Communication Emergency Response Preparedness: Contextual Assessment of the Protective Action Decision Model," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 38(2), pages 333-344, February.
    4. Roberta Troisi & Gaetano Alfano, 2019. "Towns as Safety Organizational Fields: An Institutional Framework in Times of Emergency," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(24), pages 1-18, December.
    5. Max Boholm, 2019. "Risk and Quantification: A Linguistic Study," Risk Analysis, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 39(6), pages 1243-1261, June.

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