VAGHEZZA, INDETERMINATEZZA E INCERTEZZA NEI FOGLIETTI ILLUSTRATIVI DEI MEDICINALI IN INGLESE E IN ITALIANO

– This paper analyses vague words and expressions contained in 8 Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) of over-the-counter medical products (4 sold in the U.K. and 4 in Italy). More precisely, the article focuses on qualifying adjectives describing scale of “seriousness” together with the recommended “dosage”. It also looks at epistemic modal verbs (Halliday 2004; Palmer 1986), as well as adverbial adjuncts (Halliday 2004). “Vagueness is a form of unclarity – specifically, an unclarity about the boundaries of things” (Raffman 2014, p. 2). As a consequence, a concept or word is vague if it allows borderline cases (Smith 2008, p. 1; Van Deemter 2010, p. 8). PILs (and not only) are rich in vague expressions: sometimes they are “necessary” (Encott 200), but at other times they can be omitted so as to make a text more comprehensible for the addressee. For example, is it really necessary to use multiple adjectives such as “bad”, “severe”, “serious” within the same PIL or in several PILs, instead of using only one, perhaps the most common and understandable, for example the word “bad”?