This special issue of Journal of Language and Discrimination brings together research on how people can be and are discriminated in the health and medical fields based on their age, and how such bias emerges linguistically from the discourse(s) expressing or surrounding it. Ages which see frequent and common singling out, for both objective and subjective reasons, are the old and the younger (children, adolescents) periods in life. The term 'ageism' is often associated with discrimination against older people (Phelan 2018), due to the prevailing contemporary exaltation of youth, productivity, individuality, typical of Western cultures (Bellini forthcoming 2022). However, there may be cases in which other life stages are singled out, whether in a negative or a positive light. For instance, the so-called middle age and the adult age in general are not normally considered socially weak moments in a person's life and, as such, are ignored and therefore automatically suffer from exclusion from consideration. One may want to think of entrance tickets to facilities and attractions, where children, seniors and other categories are entitled to discounts, but all the rest fall within the 'adults' group, who may only get reduced tickets based on, e.g., disability or low income, in both cases in relation to their economic (im)productivity. Positive discrimination may be incurred, on the other hand, by pregnant women, while the move from the fertile to the infertile Affiliation

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This study examines the Stamina case, one of the most controversial mediatic incidents of the last years in Italy, from an applied linguistic perspective. Through the analysis of a small corpus of texts published on the online version of Nature (Nature.com) between 2013 and 2014, it investigates how scientists, political and health institutions, the media, the patients and the public interact when faced with (pseudo)scientific news that may be relevant from a public health perspective. Based on selected sociological models of science communication (Bucchi 1998; Bucchi and Neresini 2008; Trench 2008; Hetland 2014; Metcalfe 2014; Neresini 2015), combined with methodological tools from critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 1995, 2003; Eisenhart and Johnstone 2008; Wodak 2013), argumentation theory (van Eemeren et al. 2004), and making reference to science popularisation studies (Calsamiglia 2003; Garzone 2006), the qualitative analysis shows how the communication pattern of scientific news with public health relevance is changing. Power relations are on the move and so are the aims, the communicative strategies and the genres employed. These are in fact influenced by a growing interaction between bottom-up pressures (patients, families, the public, the media) and a topdown diffusion of information (scientists, political and healthcare institutions, the media) with the latter prevailing over the former. From the data collected, it seems crucial that the dissemination and popularisation of scientific issues should be further spread. Scientists must counter propaganda and hysteria on (social) media, as well as engage more directly with people (Hunter 2016) in order to oppose pseudoscience.