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Introduction to English Linguistics: Theoretical Approaches and Discourse Analysis, Slide di Linguistica Inglese

Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma (UNINT)Linguistica Inglese

Appunti di linguistica inglese del primo semestre (da settembre a dicembre 2021).

Tipologia: Slide

2021/2022

Caricato il 12/12/2022

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Prima lezione di linguistica inglese 08/10/21
Theoretical approach
Applied Critical Discourse Analysis to various text types:
- HOWS and possible WHYS of language use in longer stretches of naturally occurring
language (text),
- Texts are analysed according to various levels of context: we are interested in what is both
inside and outside the text (the specific genre, production factors, society, history, and
culture of text production, etc.),
- A “critical” approach to text analysis is adopted, operating under the assumption that
language is a powerful tool for (re)producing social practices (both positive and
negative),
- Powerful speakers (and writers), such as politicians, journalists, media organisations,
representatives of legal institutions, international organizations, etc., wield power and
ideology through text production and propagation.
Powerful speakers
Powerful speakers (and writers) wield power and ideology through text production and propagation:
-Politicians: Presidents and Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of Congress,
Local politicians, etc.,
-Journalists & media: Newspapers (print and online), Online news sites, New media, TV
news, All-news stations (e.g. CNN, Fox News),
-International organizations: the European Union (EU), the United Nations Organisations
(UN), FAO, NATO, OECD, etc.,
-Members of the judiciary: Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, expert witness (struggle between
professional vs. non-professional (lay) knowledge of the legal system and the language
used therein).
Typologies/discourses
Different text typologies (discourses) and genres:
A. Language of newspapers and broadcasting (media discourse): news reports, news analyses,
editorials, special topic news, evening news, etc.
B. Language of politics and political institutions (political discourse): political speeches, debates,
parliamentary debates, press conferences, etc.,
C. Language of the law and the judiciary (legal discourse): contracts, wills, statues, court
proceedings, lawyer consultations, jury instructions, judgements, etc.
CDA: Norman Fairclough 1
According to Fairclough, one of the founders of the CDA movement, the aims of CDA are to:
systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a)
discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and
processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and ideologically shaped
by relations of power and struggle over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships
between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony.
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Prima lezione di linguistica inglese 08/10/ Theoretical approach Applied Critical Discourse Analysis to various text types:

  • HOWS and possible WHYS of language use in longer stretches of naturally occurring language ( text ),
  • Texts are analysed according to various levels of context : we are interested in what is both inside and outside the text (the specific genre , production factors, society, history, and culture of text production, etc.),
  • A “critical” approach to text analysis is adopted, operating under the assumption that language is a powerful tool for (re)producing social practices (both positive and negative) ,
  • Powerful speakers (and writers), such as politicians, journalists, media organisations, representatives of legal institutions, international organizations, etc., wield power and ideology through text production and propagation. Powerful speakers Powerful speakers (and writers) wield power and ideology through text production and propagation:
  • Politicians : Presidents and Prime Ministers, Members of Parliament, Members of Congress, Local politicians, etc.,
  • Journalists & media : Newspapers (print and online), Online news sites, New media, TV news, All-news stations (e.g. CNN, Fox News),
  • International organizations: the European Union (EU), the United Nations Organisations (UN), FAO, NATO, OECD, etc.,
  • Members of the judiciary : Judges, prosecutors, lawyers, expert witness (struggle between professional vs. non-professional ( lay ) knowledge of the legal system and the language used therein). Typologies/discourses Different text typologies ( discourses ) and genres : A. Language of newspapers and broadcasting ( media discourse ): news reports, news analyses, editorials, special topic news, evening news, etc. B. Language of politics and political institutions ( political discourse ): political speeches, debates, parliamentary debates, press conferences, etc., C. Language of the law and the judiciary ( legal discourse ): contracts, wills, statues, court proceedings, lawyer consultations, jury instructions, judgements, etc. CDA: Norman Fairclough 1 According to Fairclough, one of the founders of the CDA movement, the aims of CDA are to: systematically explore often opaque relationships of causality and determination between (a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes; to investigate how such practices, events and texts arise out of and ideologically shaped by relations of power and struggle over power; and to explore how the opacity of these relationships between discourse and society is itself a factor securing power and hegemony.

CDA: Norman Fairclough 2 “The analysis of texts is concerned with the linguistic forms of texts, and the distribution of different linguistic forms across different types of texts. One might attribute casual effects to particular linguistic forms (or more plausibly to a strong tendency to select one form in preference to other alternative forms in a significant body of texts), but… one has to be cautious and avoid any suggestion that such effect work mechanically… They depend upon meaning and context. For example, a linguistic form which is heavily used in accounts or narratives about the “global economy” is nominalization : instead of representing processes which are taking place in the world as processes (grammatically, in clauses or sentences with verbs), they are represented as entities (grammatically, through nominalization, i.e. transforming a clause into a nominal or noun-like entity). EXAMPLE: Tony Blair: “The modern world is swept by change ”. One common consequence of nominalization is that agents of processes, people who initiate processes or act upon other people or objects, are absent from texts. For instance, a different way in which others might formulate the process Blair is referring to is: “Multinational corporations in collaboration with governments are changing the world in a variety of ways”. In this case, agents are textualized. CDA: Teun Van Dijk “Crucial for critical discourse analysts is the awareness of their role in society. Continuing a tradition that rejects the possibility of a “value-free” science, they argue that science and especially scholarly discourse, are part of and influenced by social structure, and produced in social interaction. Instead of denying or ignoring such a relation between scholarship and society, they plead that such relations be studied and accounted for in their own right, and that scholarly practices be based on such insight. Theory formation, description, and explanation, also in discourse analysis, are socio-politically constructed”. CDA: FAIRCLOUGH & RUTH WODAK (1997) Main tenets of CDA:

  1. CDA interested in social problems,
  2. Power relations represented and expressed through discursive practices,
  3. Discourse embody the notions of what society and culture are,
  4. Discourse is ideological, and it does ideological work,
  5. Discourse is to be understood historically,
  6. The link between text and society is mediated,
  7. Discourse analysis is interpretative and explanatory,
  8. Discourse is a form of social action. What is language? Edward Sapir (1884-1939) Sapir’s view of language embraced not only cultural studies but a whole range of human science including psychology, sociology, and philosophy. “ Language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols”.

It’s me or John and me saw a good film (typical of informal standard English): a nominative (subject) form is said to be “logically” required in both cases, but choice between I and me depends on syntactic environment and level of formality. Whom are you calling? / Who are you calling? Descriptive linguistics attempts to describe languages without the preconceived notions of what a language should contain and how it should operate. Descriptive Linguistics Descriptive Linguistics investigates the form and function of language, applying theoretical approaches to the analysis of descriptive and socio-linguistic data. Contemporary theoretical linguistic investigations often make use of quantitative/computational tools, methods, and models to support and enhance qualitative scholarly interpretations of the language phenomena being studied. Core principle: each language constitutes an autonomous system, which must be described in its own terms. Modern descriptive linguists carry out detailed empirical surveys on a language. After collecting language samples from speakers, they analyse the data so as to identify the components of the system and the principles that underlie its organization. Main turning point for Descriptive Linguistics was the so-called structuralism turn in the early 20th century: Ferdinand de Saussure articulated a theory in which language is seen as a system of meaningful oppositions > each language should be described in its own terms based on the empirical observation of “structures” internal to its system (rather than on categories imported from other, often prestigious languages). Levels of linguistic analysis I SOUNDS : “Linguistic rules at this level describe how sounds are pronounced in various contexts”, PHONETICS : concerned with the physical production and perception of speech sounds (sound- making): articulation , acoustics , etc., PHONOLOGY : concerned with the sounds of a language that are distinctive in creating meanings ( phonemes; distinctive features; minimal pairs ). Pin – pen – pan – pawn Big – pig - wig Seconda lezione di linguistica inglese 15/10/ The relationship between speaking and writing is not one-to-one:

  • Each letter ( grapheme ) does not necessarily correspond to a single sound,
  • Some words have fewer sounds than letters: that means that there is no sound associated with some of the letters,
  • Some words have a one-to-one correspondence between letters and sounds, e.g. drunk,
  • Sometimes the number of sounds is the same as letters, but the relationship is not clear, e.g. cube > k j ub,
  • Sometimes there are more sounds than letters, e.g. Cuba > k j ub e. A NOTE ON English orthography 2 ORTHOGRAPHY is both the set of symbols used in any particular writing system as well as the rules for writing symbols (punctuation, spelling, capitalisation, etc.) Orthography vs. Phonology in English : 44 phonemes/26 letters:
  • 1 sound can be represented by a variety of letters: meat meet city key ceiling evil quay,
  • 1 letter can represent a variety of sound: damage educate picked ,
  • Letter(s) can represent no sound at all: honour psychologist knee receipt,
  • 2 or more letters can represent 1 sound: throne chain edge nation ,
  • A letter can sometimes be used to indicate the quality of a neighbouring sound: diner / dinner – dine / din,
  • A single letter can indicate more than one sound: /ks/ taxi,
  • Some sounds have n graphic representation: universe one. A NOTE ON orthography 3 Aspects of language that writing can express but speaking cannot
  • Historical changes in the language, older pronunciations which are preserved only in the spelling, e.g comb, gnat, taught,
  • Separate words vs. single words: nitrate/ night rate, syntax /sin tax, homemade /home aid ,
  • Homophones : bear / bare, meat / meet, maid / made
  • Related words : photograph, photographer, photographic, photography ; past tense suffix - ed, rated/ walked / robbed
  • Greater range of vocabulary , more complex syntax, more refinement of style,
  • No “ performance errors ”,
  • Standard language vs. dialect differences,
  • It remains as a permanent record. Levels of linguistic analysis II MORPHOLOGY : is the study of the internal structure of word; rules of morphology focus on how words and parts of words are structured, MORPHEME is smallest unit of meaning in language. Morphology is interested in INFLECTION: syntactically motivated word formation, e.g. go – goes – went / play – plays – played , DERIVATION: creates new lexical items, e.g. boy – boyhood; mature – immature , GRAMMATICAL VS LEXICAL WORDS: grammatical or functional words viewed as syntactic units vs lexical or content words. Form, function, meaning We cannot only rely on meaning in order to recognize word classes. It is best to see the definition of a word class as a combination of form, functions, and meaning. FORM : we can determine a word class partly by looking at its stem and affixes:
  1. derivation suffixes are characteristic of certain word classes, e.g. electric-ity (noun); electr-ify (verb), electric-al (adjective),
  2. inflectional suffixes can be added to change the word from (according to grammatical function): boxbox-es; workwork-ed; talltall-er,
  3. rarely there are inflections that change some part of the word: man – men, sing – sang, go – went. FUNCTION : we can tell the class of the word by the way it occurs in certain positions or structural contexts, e.g. The cook does not actually cook the meat.

Discourse analysis : the use and development of theories and methods which elucidate how meaning and cohesion is achieve > DA is concerned not only with language but with all elements and processes which contribute to communication. DA embraces all aspects of language in use, eclectically developing insights from a variety of traditions to arrive at a rounded and rich interpretation of language in use. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) investigates how language use many affirm and reproduce the perspectives, values, and ways of talking of the powerful, which may not be in the interests of the less powerful. The relationship between language, power, and ideology is a crucial focus point. CDA consists of an interdisciplinary set of approaches which attempt to describe, interpret, and explain this relationship. Describing English grammar: Word classes (Verbs) VERBS : express actions or states. Action (dynami c) – verbs that show qualities capable of change: physical, mental, perceptual, social, Stative – states of being or processes in which there is no obvious action. Some verbs can have both a dynamic and a stative meaning. Lexical (verbs) – express meaning in the verb phrase and can function only as the main verb, and they carry the real-world and semantic meaning. Auxiliary (verb s) – used to construct different timescales, questions, and negatives, as well as to add emphasis or give information about the mood or attitude of a speaker/writer; they are the helping verb. Describing English grammar: Word classes (Modality) MODALS – convey a range of attitudes and mood about the likelihood and/or necessity of an event taking place. Generally divided into two groups: one to do with degrees of certainty or necessity ( epistemic ) and others to do with obligation or freedom to act ( deontic ) He must be there by now. // He must be there by tomorrow at noon. Possible meanings Ability (He can speak English almost fluently.) Intention (I think I will go to the movies tonight.) Necessity/obligation (You have to be here by 9AM.) Permission ( May I go to the toilet?) Prediction (That could be Tom. He was supposed to call at this time.) Possibility (He may arrive on time.) Palmer defines modality as “semantic information associated with the speaker’s attitude or opinion about what is said”.

Language provides the means for signalling the factual status of a proposition. Modality includes the ideas of necessity and possibility, as well as actuality, validity, and believability. English uses the modal auxiliaries as well as the adverbs to express modality. Modals are world-creating, i.e. they set up a belief context or possible world for use in judging the content of a proposition. According to Chung and Timberlake modality is the way a language encodes the “comparison of an expressed world with a reference world”. Both epistemic and deontic modality can be divided into necessity and possibility. Epistemic necessity “It must be raining outside” > In all worlds consistent with my beliefs, it is raining outside. “When you add vinegar to baking soda, it should frizz” > In all worlds consistent with my reasoning about chemical properties, vinegar added to baking soda fizzes. Epistemic possibility “It may be raining outside” > In at least one world consistent with my beliefs, it is raining outside. “The doctor has said, they can go to the bathroom”. In at least one world consistent with the doctor’s assessment of their physical capabilities, they go to the bathroom. Deontic necessity “It must rain this week” > in all worlds consistent with my desires, it rains this week. “You should drive under the speed limit” > in all worlds consistent with the rules for proper driving, you drive under the speed limit. Deontic possibility “It may rain this week” > In at least one world consistent with my desires, it rains this week. “The teacher has said, they can go to the bathroom” > In at least one world consistent with the teacher’s rules for the classroom, they go to the bathroom. Describing English grammar: Word classes (Verbs) PRESENT vs. PAST TENSES Present – used to describe states of affairs and events that occur on a regular basis; also used in sports commentaries, proverbs, and sayings, Past – actions that took place in the past; sometimes used to record indirect/reported speech, or something that is supposed to be happening FUTURE TIME Simple present Modal Be going to To be plus present participle (present continuous) Future perfect

Common Proper Abstract Concrete Count vs. Non-count (uncountable) Plurals Regular Irregular Possessives Describing English grammar: word classes (ADJECTIVES) ADJECTIVES : provide extra information about nouns by giving details of physical quantities like colour and shape and of psychological qualities like emotions, and by providing evaluative judgements. Attributive Predicative GRADING Superlative Comparative Describing English grammar: word classes (ADVERBS) I ADVERBS : are difficult to define but they give information about time, place, and manner. They can modify: a) verbs b) adjectives and other adverbs c) Sentences (as linking words ) disjuncts ( attitude or stance adverbs ) – express speakers’ attitudes, conjuncts ( connecting adverbs ) – like sentences Describing English grammar: Word classes (PRONOUNS) PRONOUNS Personal Object Possessive Reflexive Demonstrative Interrogative

Relative Indefinite Describing English grammar: Word classes (DETERMINERS) DETERMINERS : function words which are used to specify the reference of a noun, Articles Possessive Demonstrative Indefinite Numbers Cardinal Ordinal Terza lezione di linguistica inglese 22/10/ Traditional Grammar 1 “Loose “umbrella term” covering a range of approaches to the study of language” (Coffin & O’Halloran) > focuses more on single sentences than on sentences combined into texts, Historically based on classical descriptions of Greek and Latin grammar, The main goal of creating traditional grammars was to reform and standardize language, which led to codification “official rules for grammar, orthography, pronunciation, and vocabulary”, Criticism is directed primarily at the prescriptive recommendations of authors, as opposed to the descriptive emphasis of linguistic studies. Traditional Grammar 2 Some “rules” of prescriptive English grammar:

  1. Don’t start a sentence with a conjunction (and, but etc.),
  2. Don’t end a sentence with a preposition: “Who did you talk to?” vs. “To whom do did you talk?”,
  3. Use the predicative nominative form of the pronoun: “This is him” vs. “ This is he ”,
  4. Avoid split infinitives: “Are you sure you want to permanently delete the files?” > “to delete permanently…”
  5. That vs. which (restrictive/non-restrictive clause): “ that ” can also be used in non-restrictive clauses. Structural linguistics 1 Developed in the 1930s in both North America and Europe as an empirical, scientific , and objective approach to the study of language and linguistic features in terms of structures and systems, Describes languages without the preconceived notions of what a language should contain and how it should operate ( prescriptive vs. descriptive grammar ),

Part of the “functional” turn in linguistics, which considered language , text , and context as being systematically tied together, Focus more on how language is functioning, what semantic meanings it is making and the overall communicative effect , Language is considered as a system of choices from which speakers/writers select elements, The notion of register to highlight 3 aspects of the social context, i.e. 3 situational variables:

_- Field,

  • Tenor,
  • Mode._ Systemic-functional linguistics 2
  • Field = the type of social activity taking place, it links to the function of language to represent experience,
  • Tenor = the social roles and relationships between the participants, it links to the interpersonal relationships between speaker/listener, writer/reader,
  • Mode = aspects of the channel of communication like how interactive or spontaneous a text is and how close or distant in time to the event represented, it links to the function of language to organise field and tenor in a cohesive manner. Systemic-functional linguistics 3 Grammar creates meaning through metafunctions that are related to phenomena outside language:
  • The ideational metafunction is concerned with the “ideation” of grammatical resources for construing our experience of the world around us and inside us,
  • The interpersonal metafunction is concerned with the interaction between speaker and addressee(s),
  • The textual metafunction is concerned with the creation of text, with the presentation of ideational and interpersonal meanings as information that can be shared by speaker and listener in text unfolding in context. Systemic-functional linguistics 4
  • Interpersonal metafunction includes the grammatical resources for enacting social roles in general, and speech roles in particular, in dialogic interaction, i.e. for establishing, changing, and maintaining interpersonal relations,
  • Ideational metafunction can be expressed through TRANSITIVITY, the resource for construing our experience the flux of “goings-on”, as structural configurations; each consisting of a process, the participants involved in the process, and circumstance attendant on it,
  • Textual metafunction : one of the major textual systems is THEME, the resource for setting up a local context for a clause by selecting a local point of departure in the flow of information. Thus the spatial location is given thematic status in the example analysed for TRANSITIVITY above. SFL: ideational metafunction & transitivity A major component of the ideational metafunction is transitivity:
  • In SFL it is much more than the traditional distinction between transitive and intransitive verbs > it is concerned with the type of process involved in a clause, the participants implicated in it, and, if there are any, the attendant circumstance,
  • The study of transitivity is concerned with “how actions are represented; what kind of actions appear in a text, who does them and to whom are they done” > “transitivity form the very heart of representation, describing the relationships between participants and the role they play in processes described in reporting”. SFL: interpersonal metafunction & modality A major feature of the interpersonal metafunction is that of modality.
  • Modality forms the counterpart of transitivity: it refers to judgements, comment and attitude in text and talk, and specifically the degree to which a speaker or writer is committed to the claim he/she is making,
  • Similar to modality we have evaluation (with respect to what is desirable or undesirable, good or bad) > what people commit themselves to in terms of both modality and evaluation is an important part of how they identify themselves (the texturing of identities),
  • Evaluation: “the aspect of text meaning that has to do with values. It includes both explicit evaluative states and value assumptions. Values in texts are mainly assumed rather than explicit”. Discourse analysis 1 Discourse analysis focuses on knowledge about language beyond the word, clause, phrase, and sentence that is needed for successful communication. It looks at patterns of language across texts and considers the relationship between language and the social and cultural contexts in which it is used. Discourse analysis also considers the ways that the use of language presents different views of the world and different understandings. It examines how the use of language is influenced by relationships between participants as well as the effects the use of language has upon social identities and relations, it also considers how views of the world, and identities are constructed through the use of discourse. Discourse analysis 2 Some important notions of DA:
  • The relationship between language and context : e.g. how people know from the situation that they are in, how to interpret what someone says (writers),
  • DA and Pragmatics: pragmatics is concerned with how the interpretation of language depends on knowledge of the real world, and it is interested in what people mean by what they say, rather than what words, in their most literal sense, might mean by themselves,
  • Discourse structure of texts: DA interested in how people organize what they say, in what do they typically say first, and what do they day next, etc.,
  • Cultural ways of speaking and writing: greater cultural context(s) of speech situation. Critical discourse analysis 1 Critical Discourse Analysis draws upon a range of approaches: linguistics (specifically SFL & Critical Linguistics), social theory, sociology, ethnography, psychology, history, etc. It aims to analyse texts and it sees discourse as not only a product of society, but also as an important force in (re)shaping social practices, both positively and negatively, In CDA, since language (text) is seen as a site of struggle, one of its goals is to bring about change in the social structure itself. Critical discourse analysis 2
  • Even when stories are scrambled, texts retain their cohesion and coherence by means of the tense system and other markers that indicate the time at which events take place relative a) to one another and b) to the time of writing or speaking. Superstructure 2 – Van Dijk Schematic superstructures are conventional forms that characterize a specific discourse genre. They order textual sequences of sentences and assign specific functions to such sequences. They are not directly related to words or sentences (or their meanings), since they organize higher level units such as “episodes”. Since many participants in Western culture are regularly confronted with news discourse in the press (or on television), such news articles perhaps also can be assigned a conventional superstructure. Theme and rheme 1 Clauses consist of a THEME, which establishes what the clause is about, and a RHEME, which says something about it. In English the THEME is at the beginning of the sentence, while the RHEME is everything that follows in written English we signal thematic status by putting it first, but of course it does not always correspond to the grammatical subject of a sentence. Tom likes dancing Smoking is harmful for your health Suddenly, it started to rain. Theme and rheme 2 There are various ways to bring things into focus ( FRONTING DEVICES ). How does the THEME change what is being implied by the speaker? Newspapers – background Newspapers differ according to geographical reach and readership : In UK there are generally “quality/elite” such as The Times and The Guardian , and “popular” such as The Sun and Daily Mirror. There is not such a division in the US, with the exception of The New York Post , which is similar to a UK tabloid. The function of newspaper language is
  • To inform and entertain people,
  • To present them with a particular ideology and interpretation of events, even in articles that might appear to be objective. Tabloids and broadsheets In the UK there is a traditional distinction between tabloids and broadsheets; the former sells many more copies.
  • Tabloids : The Daily Mail; The Daily Express; The Daily Mirror; The Star; The Sun ,
  • Broadsheets : The Guardian; The Independent; The Daily Telegraph; The Times; The Financial Times.

The news and power structures 1A “The news stories we read or hear are structured in a certain way, following a set of reporting, writing, and editing rules that mainstream journalists by and large follow as a matter of course, rules of communicative practice that are taught explicitly in the classroom and the newsroom and reinforced implicitly through daily doing” (Coleen Cotter) The news and power structures 1B Specific constrains of newspapers affect the structure. Journalists take into consideration audience and how to interact with them

  • Whom to talk to,
  • What to talk and report about,
  • What is relevant to the community of coverage. This also affects the structure and language attitudes. The news and power structures 2 News is usually selected by journalists and editors, on the basis of the interests and priorities of the target readership. Journalists (and editors) decide what to leave in or leave out of the news thereby legitimating the existing power structure and ways of doing things.
  • News reporting reduces a complex series of events into a story, imposing a narrative order upon them,
  • While news stories are generally based on things that were really said or happened, journalists play an important role in representing those speech acts; importantly they can decide exactly what to include in their stories and what to exclude,
  • Editors also play a role in deciding what should be written/reported about. The news and power structures 3 The media, according to Fairclough, “is a predominantly establishment view of the world” and what discourse analysis aims to do is “to show how language is instrumental in constructing this view and to challenge it through deconstruction”. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) generally views media discourse from the perspective of a unidirectional flow of powerful and dominant discourses of news outlets to a compliant readership. By analysing media discourse we uncover how existing power structures are legitimized as a reflection of underlying social, economic, and ideological values. Recontextualization The news reports themselves rely on extensive recontextualization of elements taken from other texts, genres, and discourses. News texts are remediated, remixed, and transformed from one context to another. The choice of these elements is determined by the goals, values, and interests of the journalist and newspaper ( text producer ), This produces a sort of “ layering ” effect that calls on earlier events according to the priorities of the current situation.
  • Editorial,
  • Comment and opinion,
  • Letter,
  • Reviews,
  • Obituaries,
  • Personal advertisements,
  • Weather report,
  • Commercial advert. General characteristics of newspaper language There are a number of general features that characterise all of the language of newspapers:
  • Brevity,
  • Attribution and use of quote,
  • Story structure,
  • Importance of the lead,
  • Stylistic consistency,
  • Rhetorical accessibility. Genre of news reports Prototypical genre of newspaper text: Relatively short, factual account of the news:
  • Hard news (recent up-to-the-minute news about crimes, accidents, disasters, wars, political and diplomatic events ),
  • Or, less often, soft news (issues and events which are not as time-bound as hard news and deal with background information or human-interest stories ). Presented as narratives : interconnected sequences of actions or happenings that the newspaper considers to be important:
  • Typical structure : a) HEADLINE (PLUS SUBHEADLINE) b) LEAD SENTENCE OR PARAGRAPH c) MAIN BODY (consisting of satellite paragraphs) d) WRAP-UP. News report vs. editorial News reports generally report on and assert what readers already know. Editorials provide a manifest evaluation of often troublesome events aimed at gaining the support of readers as well as the establishment. The editorial page in print media located in the central part of the newspapers to signal its difference from the rest of the news “whereas the other pages are dedicated to reporting news as accurately and dispassionately as possible, the editorial page offers views and opinions of the newspaper”.
  • On-line located at the side or in the middle of the main page Genre of editorial

Purpose > “to evaluate events, to establish the corporate view and to elicit the support and agreement of a readership – at the very lowest level, for financial or political reasons – and it uses lexis as well as structure to achieve this end”. Ideological role:

  • Forming and formulating public opinion,
  • Criticize, support, or provide advice to authorities on the other,
  • Traditionally used to promote a certain ideology (espoused by the newspaper) to propagate the corporate view and to induce support and agreement from its readership. Newspaper’s ideology: “clarified and re-established, reasserted in relation to troublesome events”. Function of editorials > “accusation” or “recommendation” vs. Function of news report > “assertation” Features of editorial 1 Use of certain discourse-linguistic features “to create favourable or unfavourable bias”. Four-move discourse structure: case, argument, verdict, and action. Three-move structure: initiation (situation), response (development) and follow-up (recommendation). Features of editorial 2 Linguistic features: predominance of present tense, time adverbials, discourse adjuncts (for topic introduction and contextualization), modal forms, etc. Pronouns: can establish and maintain an institutional voice of the newspaper; create closeness and solidarity with the reader, or “signal explicitly to the readers that they have switched from fact- based reporting to purely opinion writing”. Headlines 1 Headlines have three main functions, but in a limited amount of space (which explains their peculiar characteristics):
  • To attract potential readers,
  • To indicate the topic of the story (often with a small summary),
  • To provide the approach that will be taken to the relative event reported, in terms of tome evaluation, ideological slant, etc. Headlines 2 Some characteristics of headlines:
  • Geographically larger, but also different colours and fonts:
  • Grammatical “simplifications” as in other forms of “block language” (notices, titles, adverts, slogans, etc.) which can create a “telegraphic” effect:
  • Article,
  • Copular/auxiliary verbs,
  • Connective,
  • Possessive. Headlines 3 Lexis is relatively short and dramatic, which combine brevity with effectiveness.