Language note

Lecture 1

Modern English Newspaper Discourse: communicative and cognitive perspectives

Introduction

Plan

1. Newspaper discourse as a part of media discourse
2. Communicative basis of newspaper discourse
3. Cognitive basis of newspaper discourse

Newspaper discourse as a part of media discourse

Discourse is a French term that was first introduced in 1952 by Zellig Harris who used it for the analysis of connected speech or writing. This notion has undergone multiple interpretation since then and is still under consideration of many researchers. One of its definitions is the use of language in communication, how language is used to shape social reality.

From cognitive-communicative perspective we define discourse as a complex communicative and cognitive event that includes texts and the actual conditions of their construction and reconstruction. By conditions we mean the system of knowledge about the world, assumptions and expectations of the addressee due to which the author’s conception can be realized. So, discourse is a text immersed in life. Discourse presupposes dynamic character of the text, the process of its creation.

Discourse – system of communicative practices that are integrally related to wider social and cultural practices, and that help to construct specific frameworks of thinking. From this perspective discourse is a process of making meaning but not a fixed position (Macdonald Exploring media discourse: 8).

There are different types of discourse.

This course of study brings into view the world of media and media discourse which is directly connected with everyday human activity.

The word media is most often used to refer to the communication of news and in this context means the same as news media.

Language note

Media - the means of communication that reach large numbers of people, such as television, newspapers, and radio (Abby)

Various forms, devices and systems that make up mass communications considering as a whole, including newspapers, magazines, radio stations, television channels and Web sites. Before alphabetic writing the media for communicating information were auditory and pictographic. Writing facilitated the creation and storage of printed texts. Later print technology made such texts available to masses of people. Marshall McLuhan called the social world in which the use of printed texts became widespread the Gutenberg Gallaxy after the German printer Johannes Gutenberg who is traditionally considered the inventor of the movable type in the West.

Usage

When media refers to the mass media, it is sometimes treated as a singular form, as in: the media has shown great interest in these events. Many people think this use is incorrect and that media should always be treated as a plural form: the media have shown great interest in these events

Media can be singular and plural

Mass-media is also spelt with a hyphen

Media discourse is a verbal and visual reality created by language and technical means (Potapenko S.I.). This reality is opposite to real reality (Luman 2005: 38) and its research has in view the interaction of different media: images, language and channels of communication.

Media discourse is the process and result of activity of means of mass communication, aimed at production, preservation, spreading and consuming of semiotized material (Potapenko S.I.: 11)

Mass communication is a communication system that reaches large numbers of people. Actual process of designing and delivering media texts to media audiences.

Means of mass communication are like language which is a means of obtaining, processing, preservation and operating the knowledge. Interaction between language and discourse.

Communication is the activity or process of giving information to other people or other living things, using speech, body movement, etc (CCELD: 279).

Communication is a process by which people exchange information or express their thoughts and feelings (LDCE: 307).

Communication is the process and result of human cognitive and speech interaction with the world the main purpose of which is the exchange of information.

Modern media discourse is connected with other social practices (Potapenko 2009: 11) and is divided into subtypes. There is a connection between media discourse and political, scientific, business and others that is revealed in media texts on corresponding topics. Types of media discourse include newspaper, film, television, radio (Pocheptsov 1999: 76-99) and internet discourses.

The media are increasingly converging and the term media is now so extended as to include:

The globalized, the regional, the national, the local, the personal media; the broadcast, the interactive media; the audio, the audio visual and the printed media, the electronic and the mechanical; the digital and the analogue media; the big screen and the small screen media; the dominant and alternative media; the fixed and the mobile media; the convergent and the stand alone media

(Silverstone 2007, p. 5)

To what London street the British press is referred and where no national newspaper is produced nowadays?

Of our particular interest is newspaper discourse that can be defined as the totality or the whole amount of newspaper texts with their particular use of language, special grammar, lexis and rules of word building. It is a valuable type of discourse as ‘Nothing but a newspaper,’ wrote de Tocqueville, ‘can drop the same thought into a thousand minds at the same time.’

Distinctive features of ND:

- a gap between an author and reader in space and time (but now it reduces and we may observe convergence of newspapers and their integration with other media content as a sign of struggle for survival; reinforcement of television, web and newspaper covering different aspects of an event);

- written (printed form);

- written style of expression though it starts losing some of its features and acquiring those of colloquial style;

- attention is paid both to form and content;

- its vocabulary comprises about 20000 nominative units;

- collective production (one item can be worked on by more than 8 people including editors, authors and proofreaders); individual style is leveled;

- potentially harmful as it brings danger of manipulation with human consciousness consequently the problem of a pathogenic text arises.

Conventionally English newspapers are divided into 4 different types:

1) upmarket, broadsheet or qualities (this now includes compact or midi-sizes);

2) middle market also known as popular or black top;

3) downmarket, tabloid or red top;

4) alternative to the main stream, radical, underground

These four types are subjects to different interpretations and hybridization as for example broadloid

These are traditional differences between newspapers and their narrowing leads to the flexible way of presenting the news.

2. Communicative basis of newspaper discourse

Why do we talk about newspaper discourse? What brought it into being? The main reason is the human inherent need to communicate ideas of different kind.

The essence of ND is determined by the things/ideas that are communicated and how they are communicated. How is communication achieved?

In the center of ND is an event i.e. something that happening, taking place in some place and time.

ND communicates events and depending on the purpose of their presentation different newspaper genres have been established. Among them the most popular and called-for are news texts, editorials and opinion articles. The main subject of the news text/item is the representation of the event itself, giving information about the event in the most objective and real way. Though the main purpose of the news item is to inform Who? What? Where? When? Why? did something its representation of the event is still mediated by its interpretation and retelling of the journalist who talks to witnesses or is a witness himself/herself.

Newspapers run or carry articles or stories. Articles other than those that are most important are called pieces.

A more subjective view of an event is given in an editorial or an opinion article. Editorial is an article or column in a newspaper or magazine written by the editor or under his or her direction, giving opinions about a subject or event. In a quality newspaper the most important editorial is the leading article or leader. Opinion article is even more subjective as it gives and idea of a more or less independent author about what happened, why and what are the possible solutions and ways out.

All newspaper genres/texts have to this or that degree the following components which influence the way communication is achieved through the newspaper discourse:

- informational

- entertaining

- analytical (argumentative, emotional, evaluative)

In accordance with the given above characteristics we may place newspaper genres on the scale from the most objective to the most subjective.

Being considered as the most objective news lose their descriptive form and become tendentious, the direct advocacy of a specific course (human interest stories concentrating on the extremes of human behaviour and experience), more and more sensational, wrapped in entertainment values.

But much of the information is now presented differently to how it was even two decades ago: it is presented in an entertaining way. Some people have termed this new style ‘infotainment’. This style has transformed not only the writing style of much newspaper prose over the past decade, but also the topics chosen. For example, ‘human interest’ topics are very popular today—tales of ordinary lives and everyday activities in the culture they represent. This ‘infotainment’ trend has also ensured that articles have become shorter.

The first and second components prevail in the news items and the third is characteristic of the editorials and opinion articles.

Daily Mail is considered to be the first English newspaper for which the word “news” lost its old meaning of facts which a reader ought to know (written in 1939).

The news are considered to be mostly of informational character because they are based on the 5 Ws – such questions as who? What? Where? When? Why? and sometimes how?

Journalists tend to feel most at home with who? What? Where? When? Why? questions and leaving out the why? questions and saying nothing about, for example the causes of the incident. The why factors are often complex and may be missed out.

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