Lingua inglese

Evaluation and attribution in media discourse

Aims of course

• By the end of the course you will have gained• Awareness of text features• Knowledge of metalanguage• Experience of text analysis • Analytical skills

• Greater English language competence

Media language

• English language media discourse is an important resource for political scientists

• To be able to use this resource is an asset • English language newspapers and television

news provide language practice and political content

• Data collection from these sources can be an important research tool

English media discourse: the language of evaluation and attribution

• This course aims to introduce students to the English language resources of evaluation and attribution in media texts (broadsheets and TV news).

• Students will be introduced to examples of media discourse research and will practice and develop descriptive and analytical skills using media texts.

• You need to be exposed to English to learn it• The more you are exposed the more you

assimilate• Exposure means reading and listening• You are students of politics and need to

understand a variety of text types

• This course aims to give you experience of media texts in English, news discourse: TV and press.

• It aims to raise your awareness of two particular text types

• But also provide a metalanguage to describe aspects of the discourse and a methodology for analysis

• It aims also to introduce you to English language research which is of some relevance to political scientists.

• You will also practice data gathering and data analysis

• And improve your language skills.

Politics is nearly all done by language

• There are two things non-native speakers find very difficult:

• to understand stance, that is to say subjective attitudes expressed in discourse

• and to understand who is taking responsibility for any one particular statement

• this why we will be concentrating on evaluation and attribution

Course structure

• A. 4 credits 40 hrs lessons; reading; tasks

• B. 6 credits 40 hrs lessons; reading; tasks+C. 8 credits 40 hrs lessons; reading;tasks++

Tasks

• Information about the various tasks and course outline will be given next time.

• Non frequentanti need to consult the information on line:

• Lesson slides and other materials: materiali disponibili a questa pagina

• http://docenti.lett.unisi.it/frontend/?rr=BD_19

Levels of language description

• Morphology• the study of word structure• Syntax• the study of how words combine to form larger units• Semantics• the study of meaning• Discourse analysis• the study of larger patterns of meaning• Pragmatics• the study of language in use

• Language has varieties: there are regional and social varieties.

• The technical term for those varieties which depend on differences of social use is register.

• Register can be divided into field of discourse (subject matter: chemistry, linguistics, music) tenor of discourse (sometimes referred to as style, e.g formal, informal, intimate) and mode of discourse (medium of the language activity, spoken, written, face to face, twitter).

Domain and text type

• Language is used in a variety of domains (public, personal, occupational, educational). The interplay of contexts and domains has brought about the development of recognisable genres or text types

• There are regular variations of form according to register and genres develop from register used for a particular purpose.

We are primed for certain features

• We learn to recognise genres by being exposed to them, we are primed by the texts we have encountered and have expectations.

• The way we read a text depends on how many similar texts we have read before and the expectations we have about such texts. Most texts show the distinctive features of the language variety or genre they belong to:

Graphic features

• Graphic features: the general presentation and organisation of the written language, defined in terms of such factors as distinctive typography, page design, spacing, use of illustrations, and colour; for example, the variety of newspaper English (headlines, columns, captions)

Orthographic or graphological

• Orthographic or graphological features: the writing system of an individual language, distinctive use of the alphabet, capital letters, spelling, punctuation, and ways of expressing emphasis (italics, bold, underlining) eg. English vs. American newspapers, advertisements (Beanz meanz Heinz), websites and names e.g. weblingu@; text messages: U r, gr8

Lexical features

• Lexical features: the vocabulary of a language • defined in terms of the set of words and

idioms given distinctive use within a variety; • for example, legal English employs such

expressions as heretofore, alleged and Latin expressions such as sub judice

Grammatical features• Grammatical features: the many possibilities

of syntax and morphology, defined in terms of such factors as the distinctive use of sentence structure word order, and word inflections;

• for example, religious English makes use of archaic second person singular set of pronouns (thou, thee, thine)

• Informal English uses contracted forms

Discourse features

• discourse features: the structural organisation of a text, defined in terms of such factors as coherence, relevance, paragraph structure, and the logical progression of ideas;

• for example, a journal paper within scientific English typically consists of a fixed sequence of sections including the abstract, introduction, methodology, results, discussion and conclusion

• Often the distinction is not so much between written and spoken but rather between whether a text is produced in a context dependent situation and whether it is planned or unplanned

• a political speech• a conversation in a

shop• an academic lecture• a phone call to a

friend• a joke• TV news broadcast

• a novel• a sign e.g. ‘no

bicycles’• a magazine article• chat• a letter• a form

Can you you place these texts on the continuum?

Unplanned

Context dependent

Planned

Context independent

And more…

• Some useful study material

• http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic6a/variation_register/8variationreg.htm

• http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/projects/stylistics/topic1a/1advertising2.htm

• You will be analysing texts on these different levels for the resources of evaluation and attribution

• Some choices are predictable by the text type• Others may be more marked

Text work

• We will be analysing texts in class on a regular basis here is the first example:

Evaluation

• Evaluation is the engine of persuasion. • Persuading with language

Evaluation is…

“the indication that something is good or bad” (from the point of view of the speaker/writer)

Hunston 2004: 157

Evaluation as persuasion

The persuader uses evaluative language to convince his or her audience that their own opinions are good, alternative ones are not

good, that their proposals are worthy and logical (that is, good), those of their opponents illogical or dangerous (that is, bad), that they themselves arehonest and trustworthy (good) and maybe that others who disagree with them are not (bad).

• signalling one’s evaluation has two major functions. First of all, it expresses group belonging by (seemingly) offering a potential service to the group by warning of bad things and advertising good ones.

• Moreover, it can assure an audience that the speaker/writer shares its same value system. In this way it helps ‘to construct and maintain relations between the speaker or writer and hearer or reader’ (Thompson and Hunston 2000: 6

• The goodness and the badness can, of course, come in many forms, we can use a two-term Linnaean-style binomial notation in describing prosodies, for example:

• [good: pleasurable], [good: profitable], [good: being in control]; [bad: dangerous], [bad: difficult], where the colon is to be read ‘because’.