Language usability
Stefano Rastelli · 2024
This chapter explains plain language in the light of the concept of “language usability”. According to this concept, plain language is language that can not only be processed but also acted out easily. In order for language to be acted out easily, “who is doing what to whom” must be clearly recognisable and memorisable. Usability can be tested empirically by asking participants to act out a sentence verbally. In such experiments, the readers are asked to provide a verbal response that may or may not be expected – that is, adequate to the purpose for which the sentence was written. However, acting out is not easy to test because there are many intermediate stages between language comprehension and action planning and because the same sentence may allow different interpretations.