Elementi di semplificazione nella comunicazione finanziaria in lingua tedesca: il caso dei KID e delle raccomandazioni d'investimento

The paper investigates forms of simplified language in two text genres of German financial communication: the so called KID (Key Information Document), a mandatory document providing basic pre-contractual information for the retail investor, and stock recommendations in investment magazines. These two text genres are characterized by specialized vocabulary and highly complex linguistic structures such as nominalizations and hypotaxis. Nevertheless, surprisingly, some typical features of Easy German language can be found: extreme parataxis and ultra short cataphoric comments consisting in an elliptical structure closed by a colon. The analysis of a large text corpus shows that even for highly competent readers aids for the extraction of relevant information are of utmost importance.