Project website: https://www.fsd.uni-lj.si/raziskovalno_in_razvojno_delo/projekti/aktualni_projekti/2023122109272783/
Project type: Basic research project
Code: J5-50169
Beginning: 01.10.2023
End: 30.09.2026
Funding: Slovene Research and Innovation Agency
Collaborating organisations:
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Social Work
University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Arts
Jozef Stefan Institute
Coordinator: University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Law
Leader: doc. dr. Ana Marija Sobočan (UL FSD)
Associates:
doc. dr. Ana Marija Sobočan (UL FSD)
Keywords:
law, social rights, social protection, social security, poverty, social exclusion, welfare state, social work, language, legal language, official language, normative language, colloquial language, communication, law-making, government responsibility
Summary:
Understanding the legal language is one of the prerequisites for active and equal participation in any democratic community. It enables individuals to know or be aware of their rights and obligations in various legally regulated areas of life and thus become active legal entities or agents. In this respect, effective access to social rights or rights from the social security system, which are stipulated in several articles of the Slovenian Constitution (Article 50, which regulates the right to social security, Article 51, which regulates the right to health care, Article 52, which regulates special protection for persons with disabilities, etc.) and which are based on its central principle of the legal and social country, stated in Article 2, enables the individual and his or her family members to actively and equally participate in market democracy, which provides them with an adequate level of public income protection and provide them with much-needed economic security in times of need.
The research project is based on the assumption that the legal language used in the field of social security (as a subsystem of the social security system) is too complex and so vague that it can be adequately understood by the common, legally ignorant beneficiary, and that explanatory texts (as manifestations of normative or official language in this field) published online by the government or competent ministries, are not adequately (or at all) simplified in a way to give the general population easy and thus effective access to a range of social rights. The same applies to the official forms and language used before social work centres or in e-supported social security claim procedures. The use of language and the way of communication thus create a crucial barrier that prevents the access of rights from the social protection system, which can increase the level of social stratification of society and the level of (unidentified) poverty and social exclusion throughout Slovenia.
Typically, however, such language-based misunderstandings of rights and obligations are the result not only of a (intentional) lack of clear and high-quality law-making (principles and norming techniques that take into account relevant methodological, structural and linguistic criteria) by the state or government, but also of a lack of a socially inclusive and proactive approach to public information or communication of sectoral rights and obligations, or more broadly, the rules of social security law in general. The research group, consisting of lawyers, linguists, computer scientists and social work experts, will analyse the linguistic accessibility of social assistance rights in Slovenia and the ways in which these legal rights are communicated by various government entities to the wider population as potential beneficiaries by the state (social context of law). As part of the research project, the group will produce linguistically adapted normative texts used by the government and other authorities, (computer) models for future linguistic adaptations of these texts and socio-linguistic models for the effective dissemination of legal knowledge, as well as socio-linguistic guidelines on the use of the language of public officials in social administrative procedures.