The presentation will outline the conceptual framework, methodology, and research design of the thesis study entitled Informative texts on Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder written for laypeople: alternatives for textual and terminological accessibility. The study analyzed the complexity of texts written in Brazilian Portuguese and verified the efficiency of simplification strategies suggested by the authors. Regarding theory, they used concepts of Plain Language, Natural Language Processing, and Corpus Linguistics. As for methodology, they analyzed the language metrics collected through Coh-Metrix Dementia; among the indexes analyzed were the Flesch Index, type/token ratio, latent semantic analysis, and lexical density. They also used the multidimensional approach to verify the different complexity levels for laypeople with a low education level. Results indicated that the texts are potentially complex for the intended readers: they show a broad range of vocabulary (which is not adequate for the implied reader) and specialized terminology. The texts are considered highly complex regarding semantics and language structure, and unneeded information. The authors suggested and analyzed a series of simplification guidelines concerning text syntax and lexicon, which provided evidence that the efficiency simplification rate was high through data quality metrics. Some of the recommendations include finding the reader profile, using simpler words, organizing ideas by topics, reducing adjectives and adverbs, avoiding long sentences and paragraphs, eliminating remissive information and unnecessary information. The lecture will also show that the guidelines proposed can be applied to English texts by comparing excerpts of the same text genre and providing ways to make them plain and objective to implied readers.     

1 Asafe Cortina - Ph.D. student in Linguistics (the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul, PGP-Linguistics, Porto Alegre, RS) asafe.davi@pucrs.br

2 Heloísa Delgado - Ph.D. in Language Studies (the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, PGP- Linguistics, Porto Alegre, RS) heloisa@maish.com