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INGLESE
LEZIONE #1 20/09/
Language engineering and media management strategies in recent wars
How the military tries to condition the perception of events Ideology of consensus – institutional actors make an interest to have us perceive the news in a certain way The role of language
THE SYSTEM OF LANGUAGE ENGINEERING
1999: the Kosovo war is the first war with internet – effect: having available in computer format the transcriptions of press conferences. Shay: NATO director of communication and Kosovo war spokesperson.
9/11 changed the world: escalation of the US trying to defend their role. Who took advantage of 9/11? The Bush and Bin Laden families: the Bush family owns an hedge fund trading in weapons and based in Switzerland. 2002: meeting in Geneva to share the earnings.
THE ROLE OF LANGUAGE IN SHAPING ITS SOURROUNDINGS
According to the Hebrew Kabbalah, God was almighty, but without the language he couldn’t create the world. Language can create but at the same time it separates the light from the darkness. After the first day God has just realised how language can be powerful.
Kabbalists asked themselves a question: what was God doing before creating the Universe?
1997: for the first time Austin describes language as a tool (“Doing things with words”).
LEZIONE #2 21/09/
Language engineering: discovering the rules and tricks used by the military to convey consensus. Language works through emotions and repetitions – it creates reality and can install ideas.
The Kosovo Was was labelled by journalists as an “humanitarian war” – though it is an oxymoron. Actually, this had never been used in conferences, the word “humanitarian” was repeated frequently but it was paired with words other than “war”.
According to Kabbalists, before creating the universe God was contemplating the letters of the alphabet, each one asking him to be chosen to create the universe. The letters were passing in front of him in the reverse order. He chose B: Bereshit.
The brain generates mental frameworks in order to simplify its perception and knowledge.
M. Conoscenti - Visual metaphor vs Verbal Metaphor. Trump and the International Relations Conceptual Metaphors in the Financial Times Editorial Cartoons
Is it America that shapes Hollywood or vice-versa? CFR The West Wing
Frank Luntz, American right-wing spin doctor, “Words that work - It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear” –
LEZIONE #3 22/09/
Spinning – to tell different stories about an aspect; diverting the attention and underlying a certain aspect of reality in order to sell a different story. It is a form propaganda – military propaganda used to target the enemy up until the Vietnam war, when the target moved to the public opinion.
Spin doctor – term introduced in the American dictionary in 1984; the person responsible of ensuring that others interpret an event from a peculiar point of view.
MOC (Media Operation Centre) personnel during the Kosovo war remained behind the scenes (Alastair Campbell - Tony Blair’s spin doctor - is very famous for his work of language engineering – he was the one suggesting Blair to use the expression “Princess of the People” on the aftermath of her death – was rarely seen and went off the radar after 2004), but there is evidence of the intervention of spin doctors: according to the Geneva convention, POWs have special rights and can’t be considered an enemy. By defining POWs as EPOWs (Enemy Prisoners of War – an oxymoron) the American military was spinning the language.
Spin doctors can be compared to marketing managers – what is the product they sell?
If they sell the truth, it implies that someone else will buy it: us. They need buyers in order to be effective.
Spinning techniques https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(propaganda)#Techniques
Cherry picking - selectively presenting facts and quotes that support one's position Non-denial denial – saying something and then stating the opposite immediately after. It is a technique used to confuse people. (Ex. I don’t want to talk about X / Latin praeteritio?) Non-apology apology Distancing language (“Mistakes were made”). o “15 students killed” > emotionally distanced headline o “15 students killed by the police” > the students may be in a way responsible for their own deaths o “The police killed 15 students” > Trying to avoid the question or burying bad news (distracting public opinion) Repetition (ex. Humanitarian war) Packaging and distribution: marketing is vital. In order to be sold, an item must have an affordable price and a nice package, and it needs to be available to the market
What is news? What do newspapers/TV/social media sell?
THEY SELL THE READERSHIP/THEIR TARGET AUDIENCE
We are the target of marketing managers: the primary business of newspapers and tv channels is selling advertisement.
[NEWS] Source (reliable) > Journalist (reporter) > Reader.
Internet allowed sources to skip the presence of journalists: source (not necessarily reliable) > public
news.
Press conferences are the best way to understand how the sources are manipulating information. (chapter 2,3,4)
A leak can be used to test the people ( ballon d’essai ). It is intentional in a way that it is distracting.
You have to buy time so that you can sell a different story.
LEZIONE #6 04/10/
BBC documentary – How the war was spun
Jaimie Shea describes the communicative strategy of the Kosovo War.
LEZIONE #7 05/10/
In order to understand how the language has been engineered we need to know the target.
LEZIONE #8 06/10/
Before going to war, the US need to know how many casualties the American public opinion is willing to tolerate.
Words create reality; dictionaries are ideological: you choose to use a certain word instead of another one.
We tend to believe that something’s real if it’s on tv, otherwise it’s not – principle of spin doctors.
Some things always touch the spiritual part of people: children, religious symbols (symbols strike through the brain).
Meme theory: just like we transfer genetic information through DNA, we can transfer ideas and behaviours through the process of imitation.
There are certain conflicts where people that are at the centre of the conflict are afraid of it ending: what will their identity be once the conflict is over? Ex. Israel/Palestine
Those who win a war are always on the right side of history.
“The war of future is nuclear terrorism”: from 1996 the White House stared to instil in us the idea that the next war would be centred around ideology and religion – 1996 Huntington’s book.
LEZIONE #9 11/10/
Connections between language use and unequal relations of power
Jamie Shea holds power because of asymmetrical relations of power. In order to understand what he says in press conferences common sense assumption are not enough: we need to understand the role of ideologies (something taken from granted is a typical ideological assumption).
CRITICAL LANGUAGE STUDY (CLS)
Discourse is a social practice: coordination in fundamental in order to achieve a task; language is a coordinated action – discourse is the way ideas and ideologies are expressed. Language is a socially determined and society is linguistically determined.
CLS conceives language as a form of social practice (not just words and phrases) – certain words hold a specific meaning to a specific group of people only.
Language is a social process that requires switching to a certain code. Conventions play an important role in this process; conventions are imposed by those who have power.
Social conditions shape the way in which texts are produced and interpreted – perspectives change all the time through the exposition to new contexts.
Marxist analysis explained the relation between capital and power (power dynamics in social media
- Facebook can choose not to spread certain messages); relations of power shape discourses and the ideologies which they embody - discourses are the favourite vehicle of ideology. Just like class relations define the nature of society role relations define the nature of a discourse (they are both characterized by unequal power relations.
Discourse is used in order to achieve social control; claims are a display of power.
CLS is a matter of helping people to become conscious of opaque cases and consequences of their own discourse – and the discourses they are subject to.
How is discourse used to achieve power? How can power guarantee someone the authority to produce discourse?
Power in discourse – you have the power to select information, but the other has the power to pick the pieces of information they need Power behind discourse – journalists are instructed to ask questions in a specific order. Ex. Power relation between journalists and Shea – power participants control and constrain the contributions of non-powerful participants (ex. Encounter between a local and an immigrant – different cultural and linguistic background)
Power is never definitely held by a single person - power dynamics are always changing.
Forms of hidden power (mass media discourse) – participants do not alternate between being the producers and the interpreters Mass media discourse is designed for mass audiences – why should press conferences be shown to the general public? Some press conferences are designed for mass audiences – people are manipulated by it and sometimes actively think they can outsmart hjkdhjsdhffghghs Media discourse is then able to exercise a pervasive and powerful influence (power holders try to impose specific interpretations)
Ex. Russian Troll-gen something – how Russia is influencing European politics and internal political debate. Lega is influenced both by Russia and US Republicans.
Power is a matter of cultural capital – our system of class relations establishes who has more “language power” (cultural capital gives access to powerful positions – in England the way you speak English tells people where you were educated – Watching the English, Kate Fox; she defines the concept of “deadly sins” = words that will reveal one’s social class). Formality is another contributing factor in keeping access restricted Social struggle in discourse – people fight for power and those who hold power will have to constantly reassert their power, as the powerless are “always liable to make a bid for power” – discourse is part of this social struggle. Power is won, exercised, sustained, and lost in the course of social struggle
Ideological common sense is common sense in the service of sustaining relations of power – there is a constant endeavour of those in power to try to impose an ideological common sense (Ex. “these are the values that we all share…” “siamo tutti Americani” – post 11/09).
There is always some degree to ideological diversity and indeed struggle – ideological struggle takes place in language.
Ideology ≠ political party
While much of the journalism being produced by legacy news organizations is of value to younger readers, it does not entirely speak their language nor fully reflect their lives.
Emphasis on processes and methods rather than tools; today people will offer you technology as a solution – people misuse social media because they don’t know what it was made for Audience architecture, language engineering The language of the neighbourhood (physical people around someone or those in their social media sphere) The ecosystem Regularities of the language
Assumptions:
They are able to profile audiences and audiences’ behaviours BUT How can they refine the way to get in synch with their “customers”? – the military are completely out of synch when compared to big companies
Goal:
Complement your diverse analytics capabilities Improve responsive platforms
THROUGH REVERSE LANGUAGE ENGINEERING
Reverse language engineering can generate maps to develop better memetic writing that resonates with audiences’ expectations of a responsive and customized narrative experience (cookies). We start from unmet needs and their manifested effects.
Populists offer wrong answers to the right questions.
Cookies, visual ads, traditional communication and the alike will soon be considered the language of a baby – they are obsolete.
LEZIONE #11 13/10/
As digital languages develop, “ joining the conversation ” is more and more complex. Through the so- called “troll factory” the Russians are very good at it. How? They are very good at aligning communication (they introduce new topics by using the same language – real decision markers for a given target audience (if you want to engage with someone you need to know their language).
Small Data VS Big Data
Big Data represents the tipping point (when something passes from being unnoticed to being popular). Analysts need to understand where the tipping point is – the only way is to understand small data. When is something becoming important? Small data building up to generate the tipping point.
First goal: micro segmentation must consider the dynamics of subconscious behaviour and develop specific and proper natural language. How? Exploit advances in: o Netnography ; o Cognitive sciences ; o Corpus linguistics (finding regular patterns); o Multimodal analysis.
OBSERVED
COMMUNITY
These four aeras can help to storytize (something that will tell you elements that are very important to be discussed – to make a story starting from an element that is part of a group) compelling narratives by means of the language of the neighbourhood > making the ecosystem a responsive experience. We will have an audience that does not perceive anymore the language as a barrier to the specific interaction they are looking for.
Is it true that the supply chain of language is only 15 key words or phrases?
Natural language is an index of trends : the 15 key words are the result of big data.
Reverse language engineering techniques and audience architecture are the basis of the “new cookies”
for storytizing and mirroring.
Mirroring = to replicate something you see someone else doing.
“Our eyes must be focused on the daily shaping of conversation and communities”
1 st^ dimension – words/dictionary 2 nd^ dimension – collocations (how words combine together – we need to look at how groups tend not to mention certain words) 3 rd^ dimension – regular patterns (regular phrases and statements that are used in a certain community)
If you analyse a community, you can have predictive patterns by looking at past patterns.
Evidence #1: building the Axiological Proximization Network through collocations, regular patterns, and raw data from targeted variables
Advantages of this approach:
A flexible approach that can be adapted from time to time
Someone who is able to engineer the language is someone who is able to impose meanings on words.
Critical discourse analysis in practice
Discourse is made up of three elements:
Text Interaction Social context
Critical language study is based on three level of analysis:
Discourse in social change
Capitalism brought up new social tendencies; just like that, tendencies of discourse are a part of the social change that we experience:
a. Advertising creates new cultural communities building relations, images and consumers through ideology b. Bureaucracy is so powerful that it will invent new rules to protect itself > increased control over people o Discourse technology o Synthetic personalisation (Is everybody always in touch?)
CLS and social emancipation
It can help to increase consciousness of how language contributes to the domination of some people by others, because consciousness is the first step towards emancipation. The development of a critical consciousness among children of the orders of discourse of society (critical language awareness).
Ex. German babies always sleep in a separate bedroom – early shaping of the autonomy of that child? – we have to help people to develop their personality and awareness.
A new pedagogical model will enable students to identify the social origins of language and perhaps transform the dominant order of discourse.
Europe at the Centre...
Audience Architecture...
https://thegrayzone.com/2021/10/08/nato-cognitive-warfare-brain/
THE KOSOVO WAR
World wars and the Vietnam war – media management was simply a selection of topics to be passed to the press. Technology was very poor and the news cycle very slow (daily). Newsreel – real movie cameras needed time to be developed. By the time the material was received for the news the news was not so new anymore. The impact of public opinion (P.O.) was limited – since the Vietnam war the US military stared to apply a formula that could predict how many casualties the P.O. could tolerate. News and journalists stared to be seen as enemies. 1 st^ Gulf war – the final weapon: television. First live televised war , satellite tv broadcast live the first attack on Baghdad ( CNN effect – war that is televised live). War becomes a business: each tv wants to show a better footage on tv, Effects on diplomacy: satellite tv is used by the USA and Iraq in order to send messages to each other. Media management switches to a pool system before press conferences. What was once called propaganda is now called public (opinion) diplomacy - General Norman Schwarzkopf was the head of the Desert Storm operation > if you let information that is supposedly reserved be broadcast on tv you are using public diplomacy. The 1st^ Gulf war, along with the Kosovo war and the 2nd^ Gulf war, set the standard for modern media management during wars.
Birth of hotel journalism: because the war is fought in remote places and because of the pool system information is directly sent to news headquarters from local hotels. Those who are reporting the war are following the agenda of those in power (?).
Collateral damage and friendly fire : for the first time the Americans define collateral damage as something separate form side effects. During the 1st^ Gulf war collateral damage meant killing you own soldiers – the effect of friendly fire is collateral damage.
LEZIONE #13 19/10/
First case of fake news : Iraqi soldiers breaking into hospitals and killing babies (?). In order to make sense of this there was an hearing at congress – a young Kuwaiti girl said she saw soldiers in the hospital, though it came out that she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador hired by a team of spin doctors. The most important wars that we fought in the last decades were all based on lies, there was no real casus belli – even the Kosovo war. Kosovo War , 1999, known as humanitarian war. Public diplomacy is paramount: it’s the first time the military understands how important it is to control public opinion. Propaganda equals information: Shea himself declared (“How the war was spun”) that for the first time the intent of NATO was to influence the intern public opinion ( propaganda effect ).
NATO’s actions in Kosovo were defined unlawful; yet the International court was told to rely on press conferences to know NATO’s actions – everything they did had been said on tv. Are we supposed to assume that those conference were reliable? The information given during the press conferences was propaganda. Press conference time – 15 CET
Language engineering on casualties = killed people (post i.e. statistically, the unlucky ones); people are not mentioned. May 7th, 1999 – bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade (it would mean world war three today); unbelievable, it’s clear that it was intentional.
For the first time internet is available and transcript are available for the public opinion - NATO trusted so much their language engineering process that they made them open to everyone (with the exception of those that were later removed as they contained information that could be used against NATO?).
Legitimate target : If they destroy and it’s not a legitimate target, they could be asked to pay for it.
LEZIONE #14 20/10/
9/11 and Afghan War - the war immediately moved from an emotional local attack to an international war – we move to NYC to Afghanistan (a country that had been on the secret services’ strategic map for ages) What you see on tv is not the same thing someone form the other side of the world sees on tv. The corpus will be divided in two parts : 9/11 – 10/11 (invasion of Afghanistan); after the invasion of Afghanistan. The US had a very precise communicative strategy in the first 24 hours after 9/11 – isn’t it a bit strange? Just like the Americans left early the Wuhan laboratory where Covid started. Mobile phones, satellite mobile phones, digital compact cameras > free roaming journalists , directly broadcasting from Afghanistan. This is the worst situation for the USA – they can’t control what is being said about the war anymore, the military loose control. Completely different policy: language engineering and media management.
conferences and declarations after 9/11 – troops, democracy, necessary, threats, terrorism…). Since the very beginning Iraq was the target country – they are already mentioning Iran, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Afghanistan, North Korea, Sudan… They are already mentioning weapons of mass destruction A regional threat becomes a global threat by attacking the US – there’s no such logic as this Embedding policy – embedded journalists vs unilaterals. Embedded journalists = journalists living with and following the military anywhere Unilaterals = journalists that don’t subscribe to embedding programs – it is a negative definition; they are stigmatized as those who don’t want to collaborate
Palestine Hotel Episode – the Americans shoot both the Palestine Hotel, where the unilaterals were staying, and Al Jazeera headquarters in Baghdad. The Palestine attack was a threat to the independent press – you can’t blackmail journalists publicly stating that it’s a threat not to stay with the US army. This is a clear message to journalists all over the world: either you are embedded, or you are just like civilians (you could be killed).
Alliance of the willing Prisoner of war vs Enemy prisoner of war, or, how the spinning machine is powerful. According to the Geneva Convention POW are entitled of several benefits: the images of yourself being captured can’t be showed anywhere and you should be treated humanely ad with respect
LEZIONE #16 26/10/
Analysis of word coupling – death.
Death and casualties go together – though the deaths of children and civilians were never mentioned in press conferences.
C-score: index of probability, likelihood or unlikelihood of words being close or together.
Similar case – talking ideology of consensus – we vs them.
LEZIONE #17 27/10/
Speeches are always pre-prepared.
a. 2003 Colin Powell UN Security Council address regarding weapons of mass destruction. Ideology of consensus – never give precise figures (“a lot of effect” - what is the effect? How much is a lot for me?) How much 9/11 influenced the development of the US communication strategy Repetition and emphasis on ryhtm (“we have an obligation…we wrote…”) “Iraq is not so far” – from where? “In 45 minutes they could strike London”
Were the US prepared before 9/11?
Documents with restricted access – if there are too many information then people will start to link all the dots and figure out what happened ???????????????????????????????????????’
Analysis of word coupling – humanitarian.
Very clever use of humanitarian: humanitarian relief, drops (usually goes with bombs), missions, packs (the real object that should be dropped).
There is a crossing of terminologies: they are mixing two types of terminology – military terminology relapses with humanitarian terminology – thus making the war humanitarian.
b. Against the Iraq War – Dominique de Villepin Old Europe vs Young America The Americans are making a gross mistake France had a lot of petrol concessions in Iraq – it was a human case but driven national interest as well
Interactional Sociolinguistics of Media Reception
Everything that we are analysing here is the result of military doctrine Political and public relations considerations become inextricably bound with military tactics and strategy – how victory is won is almost important as victory itself One of the purposes of the course: we argue that NATO press conferences are the kind of interaction among social practices which underlie all forms of mediated discourse – the press conferences work so well because they are a mirror of everyday conversations NPCs are analytical quite problematic – written-oral-written What identities and membership does one signal by spealing in a way rather that another? How is the spectacle of television appropriated as a part of the mediated action – it’s called press conference, but it is for the public Timeliness is the most critical news element for electronic media Conflict is another key element – viewing conflict first-hand on television could make an audience remember a conflict for ever
What are the principal receptive discourse identities to be found in news and other forms of public discourse? Are viewers ever addressed in NPCs? What are the news? Are NATO Press Conferences news? They became news the moment they were broadcast on tv – along with being the source of the news according to the NATO point of view
LEZIONE #18 02/11/
News are social interactions among journalists which are carried on as a spectacle on behalf of the watchers Identities are not taken for granted (the relation between Shea and journalists is negotiated from time to time) – they are established through discursive means which delegate not only identity, voice, and rights to topic, but also status and position within the general journalistic discourse In the press conference the journalist is powerless : he is entitled to ask questions but he needs the permission from the spokesperson NPCs are rich of authorial complexity Even within a single story there is a wide range of social institutions involved, all contesting each other for position and voice Good journalists ask difficult questions to those in power Back to the definition of news: news is what an authoritative source tells a journalist
Yes! Ex: lessons have a particular meaning when delivered at a specific time
A community of practice is a group of people who, over a period of time, share some set of social practices geared towards some common purpose. Everyone is simultaneously a member of multiple COPs
The persons are constructed in ongoing social interactions in which identities are ratified by reciprocal claims and legitimations (Shea vs journalists).
While the claims are quite familiar in studies of face-to-face interaction, it is important to see that they are also operative in such mediated forms of discourse as TV news and NPCs.
TEXT ANALYSIS/CORPUS LINGUISTICS
Word token : any string bounded by separatory characters. The total of word tokens in a text is the word count Word type : unique word form. The total of word types in a text is its vocabulary , or the total of different word forms in the text Hapax legomena records the number of words occurring only once ; they are both tokens and types Hapax dyslegomena records the number of words occurring only twice Collocation: words that occur near to any item in the selected word list. Collocations are measured by the Z-score.
LEZIONE #19 03/11/
KOSOVO WAR PRESS CONFERENCES CORPUS ANALYSIS
Kosovo War NPCs corpus: almost half a million words; NPCs vocabulary: around 14 000 words
Hapax legomena represent 41% of the vocabulary of NPCs; hapax dyslegomena account for 14% of the vocabulary – thus NPCs are made not to be easy to understand. Does NATO not want to be understood? The formulation of content is used in such a way that is difficult to understand – by giving out a lot of complex information you are eager to retain the parts made simple by repetition. Type/token ratio: 0. One new word for every 31.
INDEXES: The Carrol TTR divides the types by the square root of twice the tokens in order to reduce the difference between texts of different sizes, but in general these ratios are very sensitive to the text size. Yule’s characteristic K was developed to estimate vocabulary richness independent of text size. In a brief text, new words occur often, but the longer the text, the more words repeat themselves. A description of vocabulary richness depends not just on the ratio of word types to word tokens but also on the degree to which words concentrate in a limited range of frequencies. That is, on the spread of words among frequency ranks between the highest frequencies and the hapax legomena. Z-score is a standard measure of the likelihood or unlikelihood that each word occurred near the selected words purely by chance ( likelihood or unlikelihood of association ).
The highest ranked collocations normally belong to the connotative field of the selected word list. You can use this table to know how an author colours the meaning of the selected word list.
In the beginning spin doctors use repetition a lot more: the want the people to assimilate the concept As the conferences continue, they start to use repetition at a “ maintenance level ” – they know people would reject it As something big happens (bombing of the civilian convoy in Gjakova and bombing of the Chinese embassy) they start once again to emphasize the whole humanitarian war concept
We have been dealing with the issue of readability : the level of difficulty of a given message. Several ways to measure readability: a. Sentence length – the longer, the more difficult b. Concentration or number of multisyllable words – most English word are monosyllabic or disyllabic
One common readability index is the Fog Index : in a 100-word sample from a message:
- Calculate the average number of words per sentence in a given message
- Count the number of difficult words, or those with three syllables or more
- Add those number together and multiply them by?
- The resulting number is the number of years of education required to understand the text
According to the Fog Index, one would need a junior high school level of education in order to properly understand NPCs.
What makes a lesson, as well as a press conference, interesting?
The personal voice is a necessary, but accepted, illusion. How do we form the illusion?
The basic task of the writer/speaker is to word institutional statements (those of the newspaper and those of its sources) in a style appropriate to interpersonal communication (> most of the time it is colloquial). Journalists/readers/watchers are individuals and must be addressed as such.
The task is not only stylistic, but it is also ideological. Institutional concepts have to be translated into personal thoughts. We can see this process as narrowing the gap between bureaucratic and personal discourse. One you narrow the gap, a discursive norm is achieved for the medium as a whole, a sense of “neutral” language embodying “normal” values. The fundamental device in narrowing the discursive gap is the promotion of oral models within the mediated text. It gives an illusion of conversation in which common sense is spoken about matters on which there is consensus.
Consensus is centred about common sense.
LEZIONE #20 08/11/
TRANSFORMING AN EVENT INTO A FINISHED NEWS ITEM:
It has to do with the way an item is coded by the media into a particular language (Marshall McLuhan – “the medium is the message”)
Positive, legitimating values Negative, illegitimate values
Legality Illegality Moderation Extremism Compromise Dogmatism Co-operation Confrontation Order Chaos Realism Rationality Impartiality Responsibility Fairness Firmness Industriousness Freedom of choice Equality Self-reliance
Ideology Irrationality Bias Irresponsibility Unfairness Weakness Idleness Monopoly/uniformity Inequality Dependence
LEZIONE #21 09/11/
IDEOLOGY OF CONSENSUS / CONTRADITION
If everyone accepts the list of positive values, how is it possible that the negative exists? These are the stuff of news reports.
The apologies of consensus can cope with this problem in two ways:
- If departures from the norm are not too extreme they affect a kind of tolerant pluralism – the contradiction is resolved by accommodating variety within consensus (agreeing to differ)
- The second strategy is a dichotomising practice – construction of “them” and “us”; “deviant” people are subjected to marginalization and repression.
The contradiction returns , there are people outside of consensus
However, the list of the beliefs defining the positive side of consensus (legality, moderation, compromise) is hardly a good source for captivating news stories. A more powerful set of news values dictate preferences for the event which is:
a. A large scale rather than modest proportions b. Unusual rather than mundane c. Elite rather than ordinary d. Negative rather than positive
The ostensible morality of the consensual model is thus denied by the desire for the negative on the part of journalists and their consumers.
Why are the images/photographs of the victims of a mass murderer shown/printed in a row? Is it to express the pathos and horror of the crime or to satisfy a fantasy experience of the attacks?
Because consensus is so problematic an immense amount of discursive work has to be devoted to the maintenance of the illusion.
Communication is laden with system of belief , system of categories, “discriminating grids”, which represent the world according to the needs of the societies within which the communication takes
place. > the first thing to do is to make a list of the vocabulary of the corpus – understanding what the way reality. topics, news, are represented.
LANGUAGE AND LEXICON
Language , among the many human media, is a highly effective form of encoding representations of experience and values. Lexicon stores ideas and sets structured around entire formal, logical relationships such as: oppositeness, complementarity, inclusion, equivalence > these 4 variables make it possible to analyse the sets of The vocabulary of a particular language sorts concepts into strictly defined categorical relationships Terminologies are developed for key concepts and relationships , and the terms are mentioned in a systematic way in linguistic usage It is not just the taxonomic structure of the key vocabulary, which is important for categorising clearly; it is also vital that the systems of meaning are kept alive and familiar , by being uttered regularly in appropriate contexts – if you repeat the concept people will appropriate them - this is where conversation has a major function. These principles are hard to discern in a system so abstract, and so well camouflaged, as a cluster of political ideas like “consensus” or “law order”. Where the reference of a terminology, the associated objects, and processes, are visible and practical they are very much clearer.
Example
Lexicon analysis - Timber Tools: saw, drill… - basic-level terms , usually short, native in origin, frequently used. It appears to be cognitively important for each section of a lexicon to possess a clear set of basic-level terms; the meaning is more easily taught, learned, and remembered. The objects and their relationships are more readily recognised. Saw: handsaws, backsaws, special-purpose
Each of the oppositions listed in the table has associated with it a set of propositions, the truth of which is assumed to be generally agreed. The actual statements which do occur in the new texts and NPCs are phrased in terms of a vocabulary of categories.
Journalists and politicians use a recognisable vocabulary of key terms which are mentioned as if they are basic level terms, natural categories.
o Adopting a conversional style has partly to do with the construction of an illusion of informality, familiarity, friendliness o Ideological function of conversation: naturalise the terms in which reality is represented, and the categories those terms represent
CONVERSATION IMPLIES:
A. Co-operation B. Agreement C. Symmetry of power D. Knowledge between participants
If you address someone in a conversational mode, you are assuming, unconsciously, agreement between the two of you concerning the basic reference points to which the conversation is anchored.
