Language policy in web-mediated scientific knowledge dissemination: A case study of risk communication across genres and languages

The use of English as a scientific and research language in Europe has greatly extended its potentialities in the context of the World Wide Web. Language choice becomes a key issue in European agencies in charge of communicating scientific knowledge at national, supranational and international level. The chapter looks at the language policies adopted by one of these agencies and at the strategies implemented to disseminate specialized knowledge through the different genres of its website. The case study proposed is that of EFSA (European Food Safety Authority) and the issue chosen for the case study is that of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). The chapter explores the genres constituting the thematic sections of the website – moving from scientific reports to guidance documents to website news and popularizing videos – as well as forms and functions of expressions of ‘risk’ in matters of food safety. The focus is on the interplay between language choice and communicative genres in the dissemination of expert scientific knowledge, where English is the dominant language in the most technical sections and translation into other languages is only involved in the introductory and news sections. A small-scale study of translation issues is presented on the basis of a parallel English-Italian corpus of news.