Riflessioni sul linguaggio della divulgazione parascientifica: Il caso della pubblicistica vegana

The paper aims to study some linguistic features of para-scientific language, by analysing seven brief texts, published online, which are linked to veganism and try to explain the benefits of this way of life to their readers. First of all, peculiar traits of the scientific language are discussed, in order to underline the differences between this particular kind of language, which is based on a full application of the scientific method, and the para-scientific one. The textual corpus shows quite clearly that the authors make specific and regular choices which deal with the lexical, syntactic, semantic, stylistic and rhetorical levels of the language. These choices, moreover, seem to be quite similar to those usually present in the language of deception and in fake texts in general, as both kinds of texts share a common target, i.e. avoiding the traits that are commonly expected in scientific language.