Linguistic Accessibility of Social Assistance Rights in Slovenia

Understanding the legal language is one of the preconditions for an active and equal participation in any democratic society. It allows individuals to be aware of their rights and obligations in different spheres of life, thus becoming active legal subjects and agents. In this respect, effective access to social security rights, stipulated in several articles of the Slovenian constitution (Article 50 on the right to social security, Article 51 on the right to healthcare, Article 52 on the rights of persons with disabilities) and grounded in its basic social state principle (germ. Sozialstaatsprinzip) from Article 2, allows the individual and their family members to actively and equally participate in a market-based democracy since they guarantee an appropriate level of public income protection and provide them with much needed economic security in times of need.The research project stems from the presumption that the legal language used in the field of social assistance is too complex and not plain enough for the average beneficiary to understand and that the explanatory texts (as manifestations of normative or official language in the field) published online by the government or competent ministries do not simplify it sufficiently (or at all) in order to allow for a facilitated and thus effective access to distinct social rights by the general population. Same applies to the language, used in front of social work centres, official forms and e-suppored mechanisms of claiming social assistance rights. Such use of language and communication may create a significant barrier to accessing these rights and may increase the level of social stratification as well as (unidentified) poverty and social exclusion accross Slovenia. Commonly, these language-comprehension inabilities result not only from the state’s or government’s (intentional) lack of clear and quality legislative drafting (consideration of appropriate principles and techniques of norm formation from the methodological, structural and linguistic point of view) but also from a lack of a socially inclusive and proactive approach towards public communication of social assistance rights and obligations or, in wider terms, the social security law itself to its addressees. The i research group, composed 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 state-actors to the general population as potential beneficiaries. In the course of the research project, the group will produce linguistically adapted normative texts used by the government and other state-actors, (computer) models for future linguistic adaptations of these texts and socio-linguistic models for effective dissemination of legal knowledge, alongside socio-linguistic guidelines on the use of language by public officials within social assistance claim procedures.