Easy Language - Plain Language - Easy Language Plus : Balancing Comprehensibility and Acceptability / Christiane Maass.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Maass, Christiane, author.

Series:

Easy - Plain - Accessible.

Easy - Plain - Accessible

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Language and languages--Variation.

Language and languages.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (305 pages).

Other Title:

Easy Language – Plain Language – Easy Language Plus

Place of Publication:

Berlin : Frank & Timme, 2020.

Summary:

This book shows how accessible communication, and especially easy-to-understand languages, should be designed in order to become instruments of inclusion. It examines two well-established easy-to-understand varieties: Easy Language and Plain Language, and shows that they have complementary profiles with respect to four central qualities: comprehensibility, perceptibility, acceptability and stigmatisation potential. The book introduces Easy and Plain Language and provides an outline of their linguistic, sociological and legal profiles: What is the current legal framework of Easy and Plain Language? What do the texts look like? Who are the users? Which other groups are involved in the production and use of Easy and Plain Language offers? Which qualities are a hazard to acceptability and, thus, enhance their stigmatisation potential? The book also proposes another easy-to-understand variety: Easy Language Plus. This variety balances the four qualities and is modelled in the present book.

Contents:

Intro

Table of Contents

0 Introduction and motivation: Easy

Plain

Accessible

1 Accessible communication

1.1 General outlines

1.2 Barriers in communication

1.3 Features of accessible communication: an overview

1.4 A closer look at the individual pairs of features

1.4.1 Facilitate retrieval through retrievability

1.4.2 Facilitate perception through perceptibility

1.4.3 Facilitate comprehensibility and recall through comprehensibility and linkability

1.4.4 Facilitate acceptance through acceptability

1.4.5 Facilitating action through action-enabling potential

2 Easy and Plain Language in Germany

2.1 Easy and Plain Language as part of communicative accessibility

2.2 Questions of terminology: "Easy Language" / "Plain Language"

2.2.1 "Easy", "Plain", "Simple": The problem of connotations

2.2.2 Easy-to-Read or Easy Language?

2.2.3 Beyond "Easy-to-Read": Non-reading information input

2.3 The legal situation of Easy and Plain Language in Germany

2.3.1 Impulses from the UN Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities (UN CRPD)

2.3.2 The situation of accessible communication / Easy and Plain Language in German legislation

2.4 A lot of good will and unexpected pitfalls

3 Easy Language

3.1 Easy Language: The practical guidelines

3.1.1 The German version of the Inclusion Europe guidelines

3.1.2 The guidelines of Netzwerk Leichte Sprache ("Network Easy Language" 2009)

3.1.3 Appendix 2 of the Accessible Information Technology Regulation ("Barrierefreie-Informationstechnik-Verordnung", BITV 2.0)

3.1.4 Overlaps and differences between the practical guidelines 3.2 Easy Language: The scientifically founded rulebooks

3.2.1 Why scientifically founded Easy Language rulebooks?

3.2.2 The first scientific rule book ("Leichte Sprache. Das Regelbuch", Maaß 2015)

3.2.3 The Duden Leichte Sprache ("Duden Easy Language")

3.3 The features of Easy Language

3.3.1 General remarks

3.3.2 Characteristics of Easy Language

3.3.3 Word level

3.3.4 Syntactic level

3.3.5 Text level

3.4 The symbolic function of Easy Language

3.5 Quality assessment for Easy Language

3.5.1 Text assessment

3.5.2 Assessment of the production process 4 Plain Language and its equivalents

4.1 Is Plain Language the solution?

4.2 Plain Language approaches on an international scale

4.3 A typical example: A Plain English Handbook (1998)

4.4 Citizen-oriented Language ("Bürgernahe Sprache") in Germany

4.5 Plain Language approaches in Germany

4.6 Strategically dosing comprehensibility: Plain Language as a "chest of drawers"

4.7 A short summary on comprehensibility enhanced varieties in the German context

5 Easy and Plain Language: Text creators, text users and bystanders.

Notes:

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.