Lexical Comprehensibility as a Criterion for Easy-to-Read Texts: An Experimental Study

Abstract

The easy language makes it possible to observe the rights of people with limited literacy, especially in case of various cognitive or physical restrictions. The methodology of the easy language relies on anthropological linguistics, as well as text theory and translation studies. It is a system of rules for adapting difficult texts for the needs of people with disabilities or limited language comprehension. The study describes a linguistic experiment with the representatives of the target audience who were asked to identify incomprehensible words in texts of different types written in authentic official Russian and Easy Russian. The experiment involved 38 patients (≥ 18 y.o.) of Altai Regional Clinical Psychiatric Hospital with disability categories I and II who were proficient enough in spoken and written communication (November-December 2022). On average, one person read 20 different texts. The authors studied words and phrases designated by the participants as incomprehensible in original and adapted texts. The current methodology of Easy Russian proved effective since the participants did not mark any words as incomprehensible in the adapted texts.

Keywords

• easy language
• easy-to-read language
• plain language
• intralingual translation
• limited language proficiency