Gli atti direttivi nei foglietti illustrativi dei medicinali tedeschi

Abstract

In this paper I analyze the directive speech acts of a corpus of German patient information leaflets for prescription medications. In particular, I  escribe them with particular attention to their different linguistic realizations and degree of directiveness. As a result, it can be stated that the imperative and sollten are the typical linguistic expressions of directiveness in this text genre, in contrast with other genres of the instructive category, which are characterized by the use of the infinitive form. Most importantly, a tendency to the desemantisation of canonic forms of directiveness can be observed. It thus emerges that the difficult comprehensibility of information leaflets is determined not only by lexical and syntactic but also by pragmatic aspects.