Plain Language Communication for Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Italy: Language Improvement or Linguicide?

Language as a whole is a complex vehicle of communication and proves to be a crucial factor for individuals to live in harmony. In this light, clarity in communication represents an essential means of democracy, equality, and respect. Everyone should have the right to access information, particularly in those fields affecting their daily lives. However, as argued by Castorina and Gagliardi (2008), in many cases this seems to be impracticable due to “pompous, hard, foggy words and phrases”. Therefore, a few questions arise: have we got a right to a clear, understandable, and accessible language? What is the appropriate way to achieve it? Finally, could this kind of language improve communication? This paper aims to address these questions, drawing on the “accessibility” construct for textual analysis by De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981), as well as on the principles of the Plain Language Movement and the Fight the FOG campaign of the European Commission. In particular, through the critical discourse analysis of an excerpt from the English version of an Information booklet for refugees and asylum seekers released by the Italian Ministry of the Interior, the paper provides a more accessible reformulation of the said version. The resulting text in plain language seeks to be a valuable reference on how any (official) document can be produced in terms of conciseness, intelligibility, and accessibility.