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Newspaper discourse: outline of all lessons presented (Newspaper discourse: outline of all lessons presented (AA 2011-12, 2012-13, 2013-14)

LESSON 1

INTRODUCTION TO NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE (RICHARDSON 1-26)

In this course we’re looking primarily at ‘culture’ rather than journalism or ‘communicazione’.

The mediatisation of culture in the past and in the present. ‘News’ = constructions of reality within a mass-mediated public sphere of discourse. ‘Cultural knowledge’ or ‘common ground’ as knowledge that is presupposed in forms of public discourse. ‘News’ is not equivalent to distortion or manipulation. News is a mediatised construction of public opinion that unfolds through subtle, or even barely perceptible, frameworks of interpretation.

Newspaper Types

• Local / National Daily / Weekly / Sunday.

• Upmarket / Quality / Broadsheets

• Midmarket

• Red tops / tabloids

2.

Google: ABC (Audit Bureau of Circulation)

Richardson p.81: Social class of readerships

3.

Key points

Journalistic discourse has:

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1) Specific relations to society

2) Specific types of text production and consumption

3) Specific textual characteristics

3. 1) Specific relations to society

i. Diffusion

(New media language airchson, white book 16) Probably the most read of all written texts (less so today coz of on line newspapers – read in a different way). Media in general: representation of the world . What effect does the news media have on us?

Spatial compression: can view people on the other side of the world (in Australia), or in dangerous places close up even though we’re distanced from them. Hostile, dangerous places are domesticated.

Time compression: the reduction of the time between an event and its reporting. Television news and online newspapers: events can be reported in minutes.

Newspapers discourse is evaluative discourse. Support certain values: nationalism, covert racism. Influence our beliefs, values and ideologies. Person A deliberately kills Person B. Is person A a terrorist or a freedom fighter. Journalists decide these meaning categories for us, and we usually accept these meaning categories without questioning them.

ii. Audience design

Fairclough lanfg and powr 41,128: Newspapers address an ideal reader, somebody who thinks and behaves in a certain way. Actual readers have to negotiate a relationship with this ideal reader. Feeling when reading a newspaper that it’s not addressed to you -- it’s addressed to another kind of reader.

iii. ‘manufacturing consent’ (Chomsky and Herman )

A ruling group of people, powerful gourp like a governement turn the news into a propaganda machine. News = a deliberate distortion of the truth by

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people who want to control our thoughts. Hyperdermic syringe model of newspoapers: (schuson 23 newspapers inject information into a passive readers. Too crude: newspapers don’t control society. Readers are not rewarded for believing what they read, or punished for not believing it. Newspapers don’t determine what the facts are. Instead they exert a subtle cultural influence on our attitudes to information. So subtle that it can be difficult to separate what the facts are and what the journalist’s attitude towards the facts is. E.g., terrorist vs freedom fighter.

4. Key points: Journalistic discourse has:

1) Specific relations to society

2) SPECIFIC TYPES OF TEXT PRODUCTION AND CONSUMPTION

3) Specific textual characteristics

5.

i. Facts versus values

Domains, discourses = different uses of language in different domains, In academic-research domains, in medical Domains, legal domains and in news media domains facts are kept separate from their evaluation values. But in newspapers they exist: there are NEWS values such as (Bell 155) NEGATIVITY (disasters, accidents, conflict, war), RECENCY : news means things that have just happened, UNEXPECTEDNESS (surprise, not routine) PERSONALISATION (who is responsible, or to blame: Costa Captain Schettrino. GOSSIP AND SENSATIONALISM

ii. Objectivity

Journalists nevertheless believe that objective reporting – the separation of facts that can be checked against the world (her cat is black) and values (opinions – her cat is beautiful) is a virtue and realistic goal.

Two things to remember: First, Objectivity is the way journalists represent their knowledge and justify what they do. Readers of newspapers accept this. We wouldn’t read newspapers for news if we didn’t think they were giving us

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at least some factual information. In other words, their credibility depends upon their being seen as objective. Secondly, objectivity is linked to other norms, conventions, standards that define journalists’ working practices and professional code of ethics.

iii. So that’s the next point. PROFESSIONAL CODE OF ETHICS. Professional reporting is seen as objective reporting. Good journalism is objective journalism and yet objectivity can be a technique of persuasion, a rhetorical strategy to make us accept information as fact rather than opinion.

iv. PRESS RELEASES – preformulation of news

Governments or multinational companies give journalists news in a written format that is ready for publishing. Press releases are texts that mediate between the news and the journalist, and these press releases can define the angle, the perspective from which information is viewed. So when the Costa ship sunk, the Costa company gave journalists press realeases in which Costa presented its version of what happened.

v.

FRAMING press releases just one example of FRAMING (“schema2) : of giving an overall coherence to the discourse, of linking it to familiar ideas or prejudices that people already have. Frames allow reader to fit news, new information, into familiar ways of viewing the world, or with common sense.

vi. Functions:

What is the purpose of newspapers? (Conboy)TABLOID newspapers: to present information in terms of the idiom, the register, the familiar language of a working class, popular culture. Disrespect for people who have power and authority (such as politicans), and to simulate a bridge – a connection -- between what happens in the world and the culture to which ordinary people belong. Journalists entertaining.

BROADSHEETS (Stanyer 95, 97) used to see their audience as citizens, as intelligent members of a political community that needed accurate information. This function of broadsheets changed in the 1980s. Broadsheets are now market driven: they look not for information that is the truth but for information that will sell. Audiences are regarded not as citizens first and consmers second, but as first

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and foremost consumetrs who want information, yes, but information that is entertaining. Consequently there is now no longer a clear distinction between factual reporting and commentary. Speak of INFO TAINMENT.

Mid-market in the middle

vii. Mediation: Editing (Selection and emphasis).

News in newspapers is sold on the basis that it collects and reproduces objective truth, and that newspapers are a neutral window thorugh which you see the world. News can be completely unbiased or neutral. News is inevitably, mediated: press releases are only an obvious example of what is happeneing is more subtle ways.

Red Davies 112: ‘All news stories have to represent reality from some particular point of view – just like somebody walking into a room has to view the room from a particular point. Schuson: to say that a journalist’s job is to just to write down facts is like saying an architecxt’s job is just to put one brick on another brick. Its true but it’s missing the point: architect’s also design houses.

Not only framing but also EDITING (= selection and emphasis). Editing is the process by which one text is transformed into another. (Bell 66) .

Production processes shaped by constraints: meeting deadlines, filling space, increasing the number of newspapers sold and increasing money from advertising. .

4. Key points: Journalistic discourse has:

1) Specific relations to society

2) specific types of text production and consumption

3) SPECIFIC TEXTUAL CHARACTERISTICS

i. HEADLINES – function: to get the reader’s attention and to compress information. Linguistic characteristics are firstly, ellipsis of articles, prepositions and other non-content words, and secondly, information density and pre- and post- modification in noun phrases. Richardson 203 interesting

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statistics showing the different percentages of noun phrases and full clauses in newspaper headlines.

‘My big bro wedding hell’ What’s the head in this noun phrase? (hell). How many premodifers are there? What are they doing? Gving info and evaluating the head hell

ii. LEAD: first paragraph which ‘concentrates the news value of the story (177 bell). The story in microcosm (bell 174) and 183 a direc tional summary

iii. INVERTED PYRAMID STRUCTURE: (bell 169) gather all the main points at the beginning and progess through decreasingly important information.

iv. NAMING: should Palestine be called a country. Northern Ireland: sometimes called the North of Ireland, or sometinmes called a region, or province of the UK. Different names or adjectives that qualify those names can lead to different interpretations of what is said. Vu compra or senaglese; mister respectable; mistress not respectable. Foreigner = respectable; immigrant not respectable.

v. INTERTEXTUALITY: in newspapers journalists tell us what other people have said. So they are a good example of how prior texts reside in present texts.

Direct reported speech: using written language to imitate, create a facsimile of spoken language. Use of inverted commas, question amrks and exclamation marks.

INDirect reported speech: paraphrase what somebody said. Often accompanied by verbs of saying, verbi dicendi, He said, he told me, he advised me that…

Also ALLUSION : refer to something in a very indirect way. What hAPPended in Capoterra in October 2008. Flood. Communicate something without saying it.

- (direct vs. indirect) reported speech

- allusion

vi. PRESUPPOSITIONS (Richardson 22).

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The baby cried. The mummy picked it up.

What is the relationship of ‘it’ to baby? What kind of reference. Anaphoric Creates not only COHESION but also COHERENCE : fits into a FRAME we have of babies crying and muumy’s picking them up to comfort and stop them. When did the mummy pick it up? Immediately after it started crying ? Or two years later? But there’s nothing in the sentences to contradict this reading.

vii. PUNS, especially in headlines: (two or more possible meanings. What are they?

Prostitutes appeal to the Pope

viii. On-line newspapers:

modularisation and visualisation of information

MODULARISATION: cutting of information into small chiunks – textual units --- that the reader can choose to click and enter, or not to click and enter. So the reader decides which textual units to read and in which order to read them. SHOW ONLINE GUARDIAN

VISUALISATION OF INFORMATION. Jucker 19, skaffari textual elements have lost their primary status, visual images are equally important.

Conclusion of Lesson 1: Key points

Journalistic discourse has:

1) Specific relations to society

2) Specific types of text production and consumption

3) Specific textual characteristics

LESSON 2

Richardson, pp.26-45

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• Power

• Ideology

• Hegemony

• Critical discourse analysis

• Language produces and reproduces ideologies

• Ideology = «meaning in the service of power» (p.240)

Power (pp.30-32)

• One dimensional concept of power: A has power over B because he can get B to do something he would not otherwise do.

= conscious intention

• Two dimensional concept of power:

BIAS (not necessarily intentional) = Use of language to defend and promote my interests

• Three dimensional concept of power:

Bias not just ad hoc or occasional. It’s systematic.

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• Three dimensional concept of power:

• Bias

• Creation of consensus: ‘the most insidious use of power is to prevent conflict from arising in the first place’

Example (p.33)

• ‘the knowledge driven economy’

• ‘the economy driven knowledge’

• Ideology works through disguising its nature, pretending to be what it isn’t

• People aren’t necessarily conscious of ideology

Hegemony

Journalism can reproduce and reinforce (rather than question) common-sense ideas (ideology)

____________________________________________

Critical discourse analysis

• Fairclough

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• Language influences how people think and behave

• Relations between language and language users (= pragmatics)

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Critical discourse analysis (p.37>)

• Textual analysis

• Discursive practices

• Social practices

•

Textual analysis : 1) compare report and editorial in the Guardian (Syria); 2) compare news report in the Guardian and the Mail (Afghanistan)

LESSON 3

(Richardson pp.46-64)

1. Text analysis2. Discursive practices 3. Social practices

In lessons 3 and 4 we look at ‘Text analysis’ (Richardson 46-74) referring to examples from newspapers.

Text Analysis Richardson (pp.46-64):

• Lexical analysis

• Sentences (syntax and transitivity)

• Sentences (modality)

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• Presuppositons

Lexical analysis of single words and single multi-word units:

• Choice and meaning of words

• Naming and reference

• Predication

Choice and meaning of words:

• pp.47-48: The words FRAME the story in direct and unavoidable ways

• p.48: direct reference to the violence of the Iraqis

British soldiers represented only in terms of movement

Naming and reference:

• Social title: Mr, Mrs, Miss, Ms, Madam

• First name only: Peter

• First name + last name: Peter Smith

• Nickname: Becky

• Professional title: Professor, Doctor

• Formal title: Her Royal Highness…; The Right Honourable MP..

• Assumed name: Tony (for Anthony); Steve (for Stephen)

• Group name: asylum seekers, football hooligans, immigrants

Referential strategies

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• p.49 By choosing one name rather than another, the person is included in one category and excluded from another

A person can be individualised (Paul Smith) or collectivised (a father, an ex-policeman, a foreigner)

Referential strategies

• Establishes coherence relations with the way other social actors are referred to …..

(p.50 reports of sexual violence in The Sun)

Who attacks? Who provokes? Who receives the action?

Referential strategies

• p.51 This illegal immigrant drink driver…

‘illegal’: criminalisation

‘immigrant’: de-spatialisation

Predication

= words to represent more directly the values and characteristics of people p.52:

Adjectives, appositions, comparisons, metaphors, allusions, etc. that are attached to an indivdual or group

Predication: example p.53: Maxine Carr

• Determiner deletion

• Object of possessive construction

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Sentence construction

• Syntax and transitivity (p.54-59)

Who did the action?

To whom was it done?

• Modality (p.59-62)

Syntax and transitivity

• Participants (roles typically realised by noun phrases)

• Processes (verbal, mental, relational, material (transitive /intransitive)

• Circumstances (adverbials)

Transitivity

• Figure 3.1 (p.55)

• Example: Afghanistan article para 2:

‘when their armed fighting vehicle was struck’

Transitivity (p.56) same event can be described in different ways:

• ‘Capital is mobile’ (Relational. Lacks agency) versus ‘Companies move capital around the globe’ ( Material. Transitive).

• ‘Technology can migrate quickly’ (ascribes agency to technology itself rather than to multinational companies)

• ‘Goods can be made in low cost countries’ (Transitive. No agent.)

Transitivity (p.58):

• ‘Five Israeli soldiers and a Palestinian were wounded’

( = Transitive action process. Passive construction without agent)

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• ‘Israeli forces entered Jenin’

( = Israelis are moving into Jenin rather than acting upon its Palestinian population)

Modality (p.59-62)

Truth / Epistemic modality. Degrees of certainty:

- modal verbs

- mental verbs (Afghanistan newspaper article, para 1: ‘believed killed’)

- nouns (‘the probability’), adjectives (probable) adverbs (‘probably perpetrated’, Syria newspaper article para 4)

Modality (p.59-62)

• Obligation / duty (deontic modality)

Syria, editorial, para 4: ‘But it must also be admitted…’

LESSON 4

TEXT ANALYSIS CONTINUED, Richardson, 64-74Rhetorical tropes:

Hyperbole

Metaphor

Metonym

Puns

Narrative

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Rhetorical tropes (64>)

Journalism =

an argumentative discourse genre

represents ‘opinion statements […] embedded in argumentation that makes them more or less DEFENSIBLE, REASONABLE, JUSTIFIABLE OR LEGITIMATE as CONCLUSIONS’

Hyperbole (65>)

‘Bambi turns killer’ (sensationalism in tabloid press headlines)

Disturbances > ‘riots’ / ‘mob war’

Stabbed > ‘hacked down and mutilated in a fury of blood lust’

Metaphor (66>)

An interpretative similarity: Juliet is the sun.

(= Juliet and the sun arouse the same emotions in Romeo)

Metaphor (66>)

A tiger economy / A bubble bursting

Metaphors of war for sport:

Out for the kill / shoot at the goal /slaughtered by the opposition

Metaphors for war:

Games of Saddam (sport)

Salute our brave boys (imperative + diminutive)

Ethnic cleansing (euphemism)

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Little boy = Nagasaki atomic bomb (dysphemism)

Friendly fire (neologism)

Arbeit macht frei (cause and effect)

Metonyms (67>)

= a trope in which one word, phrase or object is substituted for another from a semantically related field of reference:

The White House…

September 11th

Muslims

Neologisms (69>)

= recently created (or coined) word, or assignment of new meaning to an existing word

Repetition: Watergate > Irangate, Lewinskygate, Camillgate

Conversion: Google and ebay as verbs rather than nouns

Blending: (motel = hotel + motorway)

Aristochavs = (aristorcrats + chav (white trash)

Puns (70) especially in Tabloids

Tony’s Phoney War

Prostitutes appeal to the Pope

England expects better than this Becks (sport)

Narrative (71>)

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- Narrative CONTENT (= the real sequence of events)

- Narrative FORM (= sequence in which events are presented)

- Inverted pyramid : ‘Wh’ questions

- Cataphoric reference (example, p.73). ‘The narrative draws the reader in…’.

Narrative form

- (71) 3-part structure (setting, event, outcome) lacking final resolution

- (74) Narratives are not simply 1 thing after another. They establish RELATIONSHIPS between things and create NEWSWORTHY events

END

LESSON 5

THE DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF JOURNALISM (RICHARDSON 75-91)

Plan of lesson:

1. Definition of “discursive practices”2. Conceptualizing the audience 3. Professional practices and ethics 4. Objectivity 5. Writing for the audience

1. DISCURSIVE PROCESSES

‘are the processes through which journalists produce texts, and readers use and understand them’ (75)

The news production process:

Newsgathering

News writing

Story Selection

Editing

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Presentation

News discourse: ‘the processes whereby news organisations select and organize the possible statements on a particular subject’ (76).

News discourse is institutional discourse: ‘it is marked by particular relationships between other agencies of political, judicial and economic power’ (77).

2. CONCEPTUALIZING THE AUDIENCE

The audience as consumer / commodity (77>). A move from: giving accurate and factual information to audiences who are citizens (voters) in a democracy to

catering for the needs of different niche audiences who are consumers

News is a product that must be made appealing to readers.

Entertainment (gossip, gaffes, rows);

From news to views (personal columns, op eds)

Advertising-sponsored news media

Newspapers fear losing audience share

Readerships (see Richardson 80-81)

Broadsheet newspapers (The Times, etc.): the elite and upper-middle classes

Mid-market newspapers (The Daily Mail/Express): middle and lower middle classes

Tabloids (red tops) (The Sun): working classes

Readerships

‘The less money you have, the less choice you have when it comes to buying a newspaper that written with you in mind’ (Richardson 82)

3. PROFESSIONAL PRACTICES AND ETHICS (Richardson 82>)

Journalists work in a field of conflicting loyalties to readers, editors, advertisers, sources, etc.

Ethics (see handout: NUJ code of conduct)

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Seek and report the truth

Act independently of sources and other journalists

Minimise harm

Be accountable for their work

Tensions between these principles (84-85)

4. OBJECTIVITY (86>)

Media objectivity (photographic realism), especially America 1920s (Schudson)

Facts (which are open to independent validation) should be separated from values (preferences and judgments)

Corollaries: accuracy, truthfulness, fairness, neutrality

Values enter into the process of knowing a fact. Example:

«The Tory share of the popular vote ended up only 4 percentage points greater than that won by Michael Howard in 2005» (Independent 8.5.10). Whilst the use of a statistic here evokes a fact that is open to independent validation, «popular», «only» and «greater» have opinion-related meanings that involve connotation, emphasis, and comparison and contrast respectively.

Objective reporting can be a technique of persuasion, a rhetorical strategy (Cohen-Almagor 138)

It’s ‘a way of getting you to accept the journalist’s account by saying “I’m just telling you the way it is…so accept it because this is the way it is”

Evidentiality: (Cotter 256)

= The source of knowledge and the reliability of knowledge.

To whom or to what is information is attributed?

How does the journalist come to know something?

What basis is there for saying something is true?

(87>) News is institutional discourse (again): = language which sets up positions for people to talk from and restricts some people’s access (Thornborrow 4).

Who gets to speak?

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Access to being in the news is a power resource in itself.

Sources routinely reported: celebrities, politicians, councils, police, other emergency services, courts, royalty, diary events (the Olympics), airports, other news agencies (88).

Ordinary members of the public have the least access.

Sources anticipate the criteria of newsworthiness used by journalists and tailor their press releases accordingly:

- Spin (interpreting a news event positively)

- ‘Tony Blair’s government produced 32,766 press releases in its first 5 years – an average of one every 4 minutes, day and night, week in, week out, weekends included. Each cost an average of £80 to produce, making a total of £2.6 million’. (Marr, 180)

5. WRITING FOR THE AUDIENCE (91-2).

News values:

- frequency (daily?)

-threshold (scale or intensity of event?)

- unambiguity (easily describable?)

- meaningfulness (cultural proximity / relevance to readers)

- consonance (expectedness: Black Block > violence)

etc.

END

LESSON 6: THE DISCURSIVE PRACTICES OF JOURNALISM, part 2

(RICHARDSON 91-113)Plan of lesson:

1. News values 2. Linguistic style 3. Intertextuality

1. NEWS VALUES = journalists’ criteria for creating ‘news’ from a mass of daily events.

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Hetherington’s list (p.91): significance, drama, surprise, scandal, sex…. Note the connection with entertainment: information >> infotainment >> entertainment.

Galtung & Rouge’s list (pp.91-92). Harcup & O’Neil suggest these values are not so much characteristics of the event as a product of the way journalists construct the news.

The precise manifestation of what these values mean to journalists sifting news from mere events is wholly dependent on the (imagined) preferences of the expected audience (p.92).

…journalistic meaning is communicated as much by absence as by presence; as much by what is ‘missing’ or excluded [or hidden] as by what is remembered and present (p.93).

Language offers a number of techniques for hiding information: i) the absent quantifier e.g., ‘some/many/the students are gay’ = prejudicial overgeneralisation; ii) nominalisation (the representation of a process (action) as a noun (thing) e.g., ‘panic buying of petrol’; iii) adjectivisation e.g., the ambiguity of ‘AIDS is a student problem’ = AIDS is a problem for students to solve? Or AIDS is caused by students? Or AIDS affects students? (See Partington 2003).

2. LINGUISTIC STYLE

(p.95>) Different stylistic choices can communicate different relationships between journalist and audience:

- formality v. informality

- solidarity v. deference (positive and negative politeness)

- relationship of equals or pedagogic role?

The ‘style guides’ of different newspapers: p.96 Textual regularities can be the outcome of explicit style rules […] that are not timeless and neutral, but that have a history and a politics. Compare the insertions for swearing, prohibited language, and obscenities in these style guides : The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/guardian-editorial-code Daily Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/about-us/style-book/Associated Press: http://www.scribd.com/doc/2664713/Associated-Press-AP-Style-Guide-the-basics

3. INTERTEXTUALITY

p.100: = the principle that all texts are produced and consumed/interpreted in relation to other texts. (Blommaert 1999: 5) ‘Every text incorporates, reformulates, reinterptrets or re-reads previous texts…’. . p.101>: newspaper intertextuality: ‘Prior texts reside in previous texts’. ‘This is particularly the case with newspaper reporting, which must necessarily reproduce the actions and opinions [and hence words] of others’. ‘When we read the instalment of a running story , we do so in the knowledge that this is the latest instalment – in other words, we are aware that the text is a link in a chain’.

Internal intertextuality: (102>)

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- direct quotation

- strategic quotation

- indirect quotation

- transformed indirect quotation

- ostensible direct quotation

- allusion e.g., ‘The British Prime Minister is no Hamlet’. Like ‘Waiting for Godot’.

Grammatical form of: i) direct quotation (inverted commas, possible verb of saying or its nominalized equivalent: e.g., X confessed /X’s confession was “I’m guilty”); ii) indirect quotation (backshifting of tense, more distal spatial and temporal deixis, possible verb of saying or nominalized equivalent: e.g., compare ‘I’m here now’ with ‘He said he was there then’)

106: a continuum from direct quotation to ostensible quotation: the further the quotation is removed from direct quotation the greater is the scope for distorting the quotation.

Press agency copy (e.g., ‘Reuters’ or the ‘Associated Press’) and press releases from companies, governments and other organisations. Examples:

- The News Distribution Service of the UK government: http://nds.coi.gov.uk/

- The ‘newsroom’ of the official website of the UK government: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Nl1/Newsroom/index.htm

These are ‘prior texts’ that already ready for publishing in newspapers as factual news reports. They “instruct” (example of strategic quotation!) journalists as to how they should represent the words and point of view of an organisation/institution.

END

LESSON 7:ECONOMIC, POLITICAL AND IDEOLOGICAL

PRACTICES, AND JOURNALISTIC DISCOURSE (Richardson 114-148)

114-115: The ways in which journalism has an effect on resisting or reinforcing relationships of dominance, discrimination and exploitation

1) Economic practices: local and regional newspaper campaigns (e.g., an appeal for money for cancer research)

116: newspaper campaigns (see Richardson footnote 2, p. 229: campaigns of local regional newspapers are archived at: http://www.holdthefrontpage.co.uk/campaignsindex.shtml

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119: how are “readers” conceptulaised? 120: requirements for a successful campaign 121: purpose of campaigns – encouraging reader loyalty

122: sensationalising a campaign issue125: sentimentality – representing the problem from emotional perspective 126: symptoms not causes

2) Political practices: (e.g., reporting the war in Algeria)How news content is shaped by how and to what extent journalists have access to

information. Compare D. Hirst’s reports on pages 128-9 and 131; and editorials in the Telegraph (p.131). Attributing responsibility; terrorists or the army? The reproduction of stereotypes and misinformation.

3) Ideological practices: newspapers and the division of the British public along class lines 135: why class division isn’t newsworthy137>>: the working class in tabloid reporting: invisible non-persons (e.g., maids) and the

hypervisible defects of persons (e.g., hooligans). Examples from The Sun143>>: the middle class: all those people whose economic and social status is based on

education rather than ownership of capital or property. 144: presuppositions carried in the headline Why you shouldn’t feel guilty about the au pair.

END

LESSON 8:1. RICHARDSON CHAPTER 6 (149-177) : letters to the editor and argumentation LETTERS - 150 Richardson believes letters to the editor are primarily argumentative. - 151 Since letters published are SELECTED, this says something about how the newspaper wants to represent the (different?) opinions of its readers. Letters also have to be edited in accordance with the newspaper’s “style guide” (96-100). - 152 Reader’s letters do not necessarily represent the opinions of the general public. ARGUMENTATION 155> is active, social, a joint process, and adheres to certain standards. 158> Letters may well employ: - at least one of Aristotle’s three types of rhetoric: forensic (the rightness or wrongness of past actions), epideictic (the character or reputation of someone) and deliberative (discussion of the (un)desirability of particular actions). - at least one of Aristotle’s three modes of persuasion: ethos (a person’s wisdom, experience or virtue); pathos (moving the audience to anger, pity, fear, etc); logos (especially the premises that are absent in the enthymeme (162>), inductive arguments that take form of a comparison or an

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analogy with something already known to the audience, and causal argumentation – and therefore possibly transitivity as well). RULES OF REASONABLENESS and FALLACIES (165>)USEFUL SUMMARY: pp.176-77. The above argumentative strategies may also employed by professional journalists.

2. SUMMARY OF BASIC POINTS/QUESTIONS COVERED IN THE COURSE SO FAR.

i) How does the news media use language to set the ‘frames’ (i.e., the ‘cognitive window’ / ‘the schemata of interpretation’) through which public events are seen, discussed and judged?

ii) Frames / schemata of interpretation are the means by which individuals perceive / recognise / identify / categorise public events. Frames involve consistent selection, emphasis and exclusion of units of information. They enable journalists to ‘package’ information for efficient transmission to readers, and they enable readers to process large amounts of information routinely and rapidly. See also point v) below.

iii) Production and consumption of news involves three players: a) journalists (+ others (editors, sub-editors, etc.) who are involved in selection and presentation processes), b) sources of information and c) readers. All three are linked to each other through shared beliefs about society that set the parameters of a broad framework of evaluation : negative / positive; important /unimportant; expected /unexpected, etc. (See Bednarek’s article ‘Evaluation in the news’ in study pack.)

iv) No longer does the broadsheet press see its readers as primarily ‘citizens’, i.e., as members of a democracy who need to be given accurate and factual information on which to base their voting decisions at election time. In contemporary market-driven societies, readers are regarded as first and foremost consumers whose appetite for analytical news is limited. Catering for readers’ various niche interests has become an important way of increasing circulation figures and market-share. There is also a far greater emphasis on mixing ‘facts’ with opinions and commentary about public events that include gaffes, outbursts, scandals and other alleged misdemeanours.

v) Newspaper-reading is an interpretative activity. Readers relate grammatical and lexical features of the text to knowledge-bases in their memory. The study of this involves attention to:

a) headlines (an ‘abstraction’ of the lead that attracts and focuses attention)b) the lead (the microcosm of the story that defines the ‘perspective’/ ‘direction’

from which the event is viewed) c) narrative structure and transitivity (who is doing what to whom?). Richardson

(54>, 71>). d) lexis (naming, reference and predication), modality and presupposition (see

Richardson Chapter 3) vi) Discursive practices (Richardson Chapter 4): what makes news reporting different from

other genres? Answers include:a) news values (91>) (criteria for judging newsworthiness) and defining the audience

(77). b) news processes of gathering information, writing, editing and presentation. c) forms of intertextuality: e.g., press releases and press agency copy, allusion and types of quotation (100, 102>). Reported discourse can be insidious: it can consist of

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words/thoughts that cease to be those of the person to whom they are attributed – even though this is not necessarily obvious. It (reported discourse) therefore provides writers with scope for appropriation and manipulation. Even if the source’s exact words are cited, their insertion in a different context can radically alter the original intended meaning. (See in study pack Bednarek’s article ‘Evaluation in the news’, pp.31-33, for a list of types of reporting/attributing expressions.)

d) codes of professional practice: objectivity (86>): the journalist needs to distance him or herself from the report but this is not the same as removing all value judgements. ‘Objective reporting’ (i.e., the journalist providing the reader with ‘facts’ that are apparently open to independent validation) can itself be a strategy, a technique of persuasion, for getting the reader to accept the writer’s point of view. (See article by Cohen-Almagor in study pack.)

e) news is a genre that has always been preoccupied with establishing credibility – mainly via the attribution of knowledge to sources – and with representing ‘new’ information as true. (Most people wouldn’t read newspapers if they didn’t believe that what they are reading is true.) News is a genre that uses language to answer such questions as: i) who/what is the source of this information? /what is the basis of this knowledge?/what is the evidence for this claim? ii) how reliable/certain is this knowledge? (epistemic modality); iii) does the news-information conform to or deviate from expectations (e.g., ‘expectational’ adverbs such as ‘surprisingly’, ‘amazingly, etc.); iv) is the knowledge limited in some way? (e.g., i) concessive structures introduced by ‘although… / However… etc.’; ii) use of conditionals and counterfactuals (‘if they had been….) to represent hypothetical and imagined worlds rather than real worlds; iii) questions that point to a gap in knowledge.)

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LESSON 9RICHARDSON 178-202 WAR REPORTING

1. War propaganda

178 Typically war propaganda describes ‘conflict in a radically POLARISED way……’

179-80 analysis of the inferential leaps in Tony Blair’s ‘choice’, as presented in pro-Iraq war propaganda.

181> propaganda does not directly repress or censure information (as in Orwell’s 1984). ‘It controls emphasis rather than facts: it balances bad news rather than good’. ‘It is as much about confirming as about converting public opinion’. It exists through consensus rather than through coercion.

2. 182> discursive practices of journalism that assist propaganda campaigns:

(i) ‘our country’. ‘our boys’.

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(ii) information attributed to authoritative sources – this can mean asking permission to access military or governmental sources. This kind of access comes at a price….

(iii) the pressure on a newspaper to be the first with the news.

(iv) the pressure to avoid views critical of ‘our side’.

3. 186> Modes of proof /persuasion in the pre-Iraq war period (up to March 2003)

(i) 187> logos: reasoning.

(ii) 188> pathos: 189> T. Blair ‘I know that many of you find it hard to understand why I care so deeply about this. I tell you: it is fear. Use of prolepsis: = responding to the anticipated objections of one’s opponents. The way Blair transforms the speech act of the imagined antagonist from an assertive (which entails opposition to Blair’s argumentation) to a directive – a benign request (which implies we are amenable to his standpoint. (189-90>) The assertive places the imagined antagonist in a relation of opposing equals… while the directive implies a hierarchical relation.

iii) 193> ethos: the ‘virtuous’ character of the arguer (Colin Powell)

4. 193> ‘embedded journalists’ who lived with the soldiers

Journalists’ identification with the soldiers: bonding. Use of deictic pronoun ‘we’ in news reports

5. 197> Reporting the invasion: action and agency in headlines

- patterns (regularities of meaning) across texts

- participants: (i) absence of the UN (United Nations) as an actor / (ii) actors of unknown nationality referred to with only personal pronouns / (iii) representation of the USA as an agent.

200 negative and positive presentations of ‘them’ and ‘us’. 201 the function of metonymy: the user of the object is replaced by the object itself.

202 negative nominalisations.

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Lesson 101) Processes

see table 7.3 (204)

202> 206 Tabloid versus broadsheets: ratio of noun phrase headlines to those containing full clauses

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204> relational processes in tabloids

2) Circumstances

207 prepositional phrases

209> how the ‘enemy’ are rhetorically constructed : ‘us’ and ‘them’

218 how ‘anti-war’ newspapers maintained opposition to the invasion but support for British troops involved in the invasion.

3) Conclusion to book

220 assumptions about newspaper discouse

222 social practices: points to consider

223 discursive practices: points to consider

224 text analysis: points to consider

4) Summary of lessons 1 – 10.

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