Scarica Mass Communication Theories: Hypodermic Needle, Functional Theory & CDA e più Sintesi del corso in PDF di Linguistica Inglese solo su Docsity!
CHAPTER 1
COMMUNICATION AND MASS MEDIA CONSTRUAL
The history of human communication has developed through various stages, or rather revolutions, both in the way people interact with each other and the way the information is disseminated. These revolutions, however, were not meant to cancel what already existed but to introduce innovations which were to remain and transform the world as it was known 1.1 EVOLUTIONARY STAGES IN COMMUNICATION Not much is known about the precise origin of the speech since artifacts of a primary spoken language cannot be found to pursue archeological researches. Scientists believe that communication among prehistoric people, which regarded basic information such as dangers, food resources, was exchanged first through senses, then gestures, postures, facial expression, meaning codes like smoke signals and so on. Oral culture began somehow between 60.000 and 100.000 years ago when grunts and cries evolved into meaningful words. The arrival of writing marked another important moment in the history of communication because from then on information could be stored and passed to future generations without having to rely on the human memory. Moreover, according to Ong, the invention of writing was important also because it completely changed the human consciousness, letting humans think, hence create thoughts, the way they do now. The great divide theory assumes that the mind of literate people is more developed than the primitive’s ones thanks to the introduction of writing. In fact, the circuits of the brave which are involved in the reading activity start to change when the person starts to learn how to do so. From its very beginning, reading and writing were activities accessible only to a restricted Church-educated elite, until the Gutenberg printing press in the 15th^ century which permitted the spread of mass literacy. In the 17th^ and 18th^ century newspapers were still addressed to a restricted readership but thanks to the developing techniques, in the 19th^ century newspapers were accessible to an extremely large number of people in the industrial cities, both in Europe and in America. The Print has always had a vital role in guiding and influencing the masses, like during the American Revolution when it was used for spreading propaganda. In the 19th^ century the telegraph was invented which finally freed communication from time and space limits. Information could be exchanged in a very short period of time thanks to this invention which of course led to a revolution of the way both business and wars were conducted, as journalists didn’t have to wait weeks for information anymore. However, the telegraph would not last long as it led to other inventions such as the telephone, the fax machine and the Internet. Despite its short lifetime, the telegraph’s invention stands out as a turning point in the history of communication as it determined the major lines of mass communication. In modern times, the deployment of communications technology and the arrival of the radio, the TV and the internet has engulfed the earth into a “worldwide web” which has compressed the whole planet into McLuhan’s “global village”. In contemporary culture, all these medias still play an active role in influencing the masses when different ideologies of dominant groups are at stakes. The Italian writer Umberto Eco created the hyperreality, or also Absolute Fake, theory according to which technological devices help to create a distort representation of the reality where everything is brighter, easier and more stimulating which appear to be true to the spectator, some examples are Disneyland, Las Vegas, films, advertisements. 1.2 MASS COMMUNICATION THEORIES: AN OUTLINE In this perspective the phenomenon of mass communication has interested several scholars who have developed theories concerning the way in which it is structured and rooted within society. Among the many models which have been elaborated, possibly the more influential ones are the “Hypodermic Needle”, the theory of “the Two- step of communication”, the “Functional Theory”, and the “Spiral of Silence Theory” The theory of the “Hypodermic Needle” was born and developed in the period between the two world wars in the United States and it proposes an assimilation of mass communication to propaganda, on the basis of the diffusion of several media, in particular the diffusion of the radio, that occurred in concomitance with the establishment of totalitarian regimes. This model is based essentially on a critical analysis of the effects that media had on mass society. This last concept was established during the nineteenth century as a product of the industrialization process that caused the severance of social relationships and precisely the creation of a mass, a homogeneous set of individuals without an identity, isolated, and with scarce possibilities of any interaction among each other. According to the theory of the “Hypodermic Needle”, mass media has a great power of persuasion and suggestion that can determine the behaviour of the individual who is considered as an atom that is detached from the others and as a blank sheet on which they can act as they want. Concerning the theory of the “Two-step of communication” the social context plays an essential role in conditioning the individual interpretation of the messages trans- mitted by the media. According to this approach, information is not assimilated in a direct way by the receivers, on the contrary it is mediated by several figures, the opinion leaders, specialized in specific subjects and topics, who in some way filter the news, then divulge them to the other individuals and who can be considered, for this reason, a link between media and population. As a consequence, the communicative flow should be constituted by two steps, one characterized by the transmission of the in- formation through the use of the media, and the other during which the social context and the interpersonal relationships assume a fundamental role in the interpretation of messages. A great attention to the role played by mass communication in the functioning of the social system is given to the “Functional Theory” which considers society as an organism in which all its component parts have to carry out the necessary functions for its maintenance/functioning. According to this approach, the media assumes a social function both in relation to the individual, and
society. They are functional for society since they have the task of giving information relatively to the community and to the world, of indicating power relationships, of explaining and interpreting the meaning of events, of creating consensus, of producing and strengthening the sharing of several values on which society is based, of creating dis- traction and entertainment, so reducing social tension and encouraging, as a consequence, social cohesion. The “Functional approach” sustains, moreover, that the mass media has a social function also concerning individuals, because it is thought to give prestige and notoriety to the persons to which it gives attention, to constitute a possibility of socialization, to strengthen social rules and to encourage social empathy. Anyway, according to the exponents of this theory, the means of mass communication also produce dysfunctions such as the increase of anxiety, an excess of information that would arrive at the so called “narcotizing dysfunction”, according to the hypothesis of the sociologists Lazarsfeld and Merton, that is, a sensation of strong disorientation and confusion. Negative effects produced by the media on society would be, moreover, a tendency toward conformism, standardization, and panic created by alarming news. The Functional approach influenced the development of another theory, the “Uses and Gratification Theory”, which sustains that the role and the effects of the media depend on how individuals use it in order to satisfy their needs. In this case, the receiver is not a passive subject anymore, but acts in an active way on the messages and on the information to achieve his own aims. According to this perspective, the means of mass communication are functional to the satisfaction of several human needs. The theorists Katz, Gurevitch and Blumler, analyse the existing relationship among individual needs, social context in which they develop, and use of the mass media In fact, according to these scholars:
- society produces tensions and conflicts and can create in the human being a feeling of anxiety that can be mitigated by the means of mass communication;
- society, moreover, underlines several problems that attract the attention of the individuals who look for information through the media;
- society generates a set of values on which it is based, whose strengthening is made easier by the use of mass communication;
- society presupposes that the individual knows several topics that he tries to find in the media, in order to relate to his social groups of reference. The concept on which this theory is based is that the approach toward the media is not the same for all members of society, on the contrary it will depend on the use that they make of them to satisfy their own needs and so receive gratification from them. The “Spiral of Silence Theory”, instead, elaborated by Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann sustains that for the individual, not isolating himself from his social context, and from the groups of origin, is more important than expressing his own. Judgement. In fact, according to the German theorist, human beings are induced to express opinions that they consider socially shared, rather than to expose personal ideas that could not be accepted by the rest of the group. This attitude is not justified by the fear of each isolated individual of being excluded. This fear generates conformism of the individuals to the opinions that result as largely accepted by the society in which they live. In this perspective, the system of the media characterized by immediacy and pervasiveness, should contribute to generate dominant and prevailing information in a social context. As a consequence, public opinion would tend to conform to what is spread and transmitted by the media. Those who have different opinions from the rest of the group are rarely listened to. These people can only be closed in their silence. Mass communication is then not only the representation of the scientific and technological transformations of our society, but an undeniable, predominant element in the construction of the perception that the individuals have of reality. In this process the mass media assume a great influence on the social and personal life of human beings as to obtain the capacity of contributing even to the construction of the reality to which we belong. So the shift is from being just technological instruments of representations to medium of ‘construal’ and ‘constructions’ having transformative effects on social reality. 1.3 MEDIA INFLUENCE ON THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY Reality is the product of the action of human beings and their creation of a cultural system. On the basis of their experiences within their own culture, people will use their pre-established knowledge and perception of the world to organize new experiences, events in and data. As a consequence, different cultural expectations and practices affect the way people from different cultures both present and interpret spoken or written information. The media, especially TV, plays a fundamental role in shaping our choices in social interaction. One of the most famous theories about this is Gerbner’s “ cultivation theory” which suggests that exposure to recurrent images on television might influence our perception of social reality. The concept of “social representation” elaborated in 1961 by the renowned exponent of European social psychology, Moscovici, is also crucial in understanding the importance that culture assumes in conditioning the perception that individuals have of reality. Moscovici was particularly interested in the functioning of social knowledge and in the creation of common sense intended as a set of values, ideas and opinions that is produced through communication among individuals. Social representations, then, constitute a reference system through which it is possible to give meaning to events, to situation unexpected circumstances in the world. Social representations are the social product of a com- munity, a form of knowledge socially shared, and their aim is to give order to the world, to facilitate social interaction, to elaborate and generate a common reality. In this way, actors belonging to the same socio- cultural context, create shared meanings that make it possible for them to give a sense to reality and to understand each other.
The twelve factors, and sub factors6 are strictly inter- twined, so that
- The more newsworthiness criteria an event can meet, the more likely it will be registered as news (selection).
- Once a news item has been selected what makes it newsworthy according to the factors will be accentuated (distortion).
- Both the process of selection and the process of distortion will take place at all steps in the chain from event to the reader. (replication). The above-reported list highlights two crucial factors: the more criteria that are satisfied, the more distortion occurs; consequently, the end-product will be a representation of the world «different from what really happened» ; besides, selection criteria are deeply culture- laden, or rather, events and topics are chosen, in Hall’s words, «according to a socially constructed set of categories». News making is finally tightly connected to different social variables including consensus, hierarchy, journalistic conventions, publication frequency and schedule, nature of sources, and so on. In particular, as far as sources are concerned, it must be remembered that the media, when disseminating information, do not reproduce reality, but what someone re- ports has happened, or is likely to happen. Reporters seldom witness events first-hand, but rather rely on account of others, so that the end-product is a sampling of the portrayal of reality of the sources mediated by news organizations. Additionally, reliability is at stake, those in powerful and privileged institutional positions, are given higher credibility given their supposed access to more ac- curate and specialized information on particular topics. Such a phenomenon is what Becker has termed «the hierarchy of credibility». trust- worthiness seems to be hierarchically distributed. The credibility of a statement depends on the social status of the speaker: the higher the social status of the speaker, the more reliable the statement. While reporters and correspondents are «institutional voices», «accessed voices» are the views of those privileged people standing at the very top of the hierarchy, whose status is both accredited and representative. In our examples access becomes a value which entails that those engaged in communication are more (or less) entitled to use special discourse genres or styles, or to participate in specific communicative events and contexts. These people are accredited thanks to their institutional power and/or high prestige and fame (they may be presidents, managers, royalty and nobility, stars, sportsmen, etc.) and representative in that they may either represent the people (given their role as MPs, Ministers), or organized interest groups). Another accredited source may include the ‘expert’; his statements are trustworthy and authorial not because of his powerful position and/or representativeness, but thanks to his detailed, specialized knowledge about the topic in discussion. These institutional spokesmen are highly influential in establishing the initial definition or primary explanation of the topic in question. Once this ‘inferential structure’ has been pictured through the media, it is extremely difficult to modify it and will influence people’s views in quite a determining way. 2.2 MEDIA (SUPPOSED) OBJECTIVITY Journalists, nonetheless, claim for impartiality: though recognizing that the editorial position may actually be expressed through the leader’s column, they maintain that news itself is presented objectively and without any bias. Such an opinion is clearly summarized by The Sunday Times editor Andrew Neill when commenting on his attitude about a notorious miners’ strike which took place in the late ‘90s in the United Kingdom. He maintains: «Our views, however, were kept, to where they belong in a quality newspaper: the editorial column. For us the miners’ strike was above all a massive reporting and analysing task to give our readers an impartial and well-informed picture of what was really happening» However, over the years, particularly thanks to Critical Discourse Analysis(CDA) whose multidisciplinary theories account for the complexities of the relationships between discourse structures and social structures, it has been shown that not only neutrality is not always to be expected in news media fields, but that the self- proclaimed impartiality and objectivity in these fields are illusory and unattainable. Not only are our own ideas moulded in their formulation through language but people’s views are manipulated through discourse as well. 2.3 POPULAR PRESS, QUALITY PRESS AND SPECIALISED JOURNALS The press offers a wide variety of distinct genres, including editorials reviews, financial reports, accounts of parliamentary proceedings and so on. Each paper differs not only in content but presentation as well. Needless to say, differences not only befit the various genres, but more generally echo the social and economic processes which the papers belong to, and are institutionalized in the social structure of the national press of different countries on the basis of readership’s class and education. Socio- economical differences in readerships are, predictably enough, their most significant variation, which reverberate in their content and diverse textual strategies. The main distinction in the wide constellation of newspapers is generally between the so-called quality journalism and popular press. Such a distinction is particularly clear-cut in the UK, where The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and The Financial Times are generally ranked among the quality newspapers, while The Daily Mirror, The Daily Express, The Daily Star and The Sun are regarded as popular press or else tabloids. Basically their main variation lies in the depth of treatment flow: the quality press regularly provide back- ground interpretation and detailed analysis of reported news generally by qualified experts and journalists, while the popular press do not guarantee any in-depth investigation. Differences of style between popular and quality newspapers assume that the same event may be reported in very different ways, adding or omitting different details. Diversity also includes context-dependent grammatical variation of expressions (lay-out, words, sentences). More particularly popular and quality papers are very dis- similar in their typographic styles. News reports in the press similarly have one or more Headlines, a Lead, Main Event Description, Context, Backgrounds, History and Comments, as
formal categories for the organization of specific kinds of information – typically obtained by different news production strategies, sources or professionals. The headline of a news report is a fixed, obligatory category that applies to any news report, whatever its meaning or content. Its function is both semantic and cognitive: it communicates the main topic of the text, which in turn organizes its local meanings, and signals the most important information about an event. In the same vein, number of pages, amount of advertisements, size and number of articles and photos, supplements and font size are important distinction features. The large size, the type and colour of headlines, pictures, the lay-out, advertisements and so on, which are generally to be found in English tabloids such as The Sun, are all marked stylistic items which differ from those displayed in other English broadsheet newspapers, such as The Guardian, which are ranked as quality press. In the quality newspapers articles are longer than in popular press and with regard to the same topics much more detailed, the language is nearly free of vulgarities and slang and the textual expression is more polite. Hints to literary, classical knowledge or even Latin references and scientific jargon are used frequently to denote educated competence and convey a sense of some relevant authority. The popular press on the other hand is characterized by a more colloquial and dialogical style and a more direct involvement with the reader which can be achieved through textual strategies such as:
- the written text often tends to suggest conversation by syntactic contractions and fragmented layout;
- frequent use of rhetorical questions which the reader is implicitly expected to respond conforming to sup- posed shared beliefs;
- colloquialism and vernacular expressions which are meant to construe a ‘plain man’s language;’
- a varied typography suggesting variations of emphasis. A third category is represented by the specialized press, i.e. highly specialized journals devoted to an audience of experts. Such journals convey specialized group knowledge, that is, knowledge shared by the proficient members of a discourse community. Their language is constrained within the prescriptive norms that regulate scientific communication and its specialized genres. As demonstrated by several authors, apart from technical vocabulary, linguistic features which, though not exclusive to Scientific writing are rather typical and recurrent syntactic complexity and completeness of sentences, and impersonal constructions such as passive and nominalization. Whatever their typology, the (print) media function is threefold: educating, shaping public relations, and promoting a particular policy or point of view. As education tools, the media not only disseminates knowledge, but may also promote actions having social utility. As advocacy tools, the mass media helps leaders in setting a policy agenda, shaping debates about controversial issues, and gaining support for particular viewpoints. Finally, as public relations tools, the media assists organizations in achieving credibility and respect among, for instance, stakeholders, or public health opinion leaders, as in the investigated examples. CHAPTER 3 THE POPULAR PRESS AND THE H1N1 VIRUS OUTBREAK 3.1 H1N1 VIRUS OR SWINE FLU: THE FACTS The H1N1 virus was commonly believed to have first appeared in Mexico in March 2009, but in June 2009 The New York Times reported that the virus was born in pigs in Asia and then travelled all the way to North America through humans. Since the virus had symptoms of avian, human and swine influenza, very few people had full resistance to it and in June 2009 when cases were found in 74 countries, the World Health Organization declared that a H1N1 flu pandemic was underway. The disease was also called ‘swine flu’ because it originated in pigs, however, the virus could not be caught from eating bacon, ham, or any other pork product. People could get the virus from other people, which makes it a human flu. The nomenclature was affecting the pork industry which started to protest in order to change the name of the virus. The US Department of Homeland Security and Department of Agriculture wanted the virus to be referred to as ‘the 2009 H1N1 virus’ so that the pandemic would not affect the pork industry. The H1N1 flu virus apparently spread just like sea- sonal flu, since its symptoms were similar to regular seasonal influenza and could include fever, cough, sore throat, runny nose, body aches, headache, chills, and fatigue. Many people with swine flu have had nausea and vomiting. However, only lab tests could definitively con- firm infection. During the peak of the pandemic, these tests were reserved only for patients with severe flu symptoms8. Effective antiviral drugs for treatment and prevention of the swine flu were considered such as Relenza (zanamivir) or Tamiflu (oseltamivir), best taken within 48 hours of the first symptoms. Such medicines could also help prevent serious flu-related complications9. When people who were infected with swine flu coughed or sneezed, they released tiny droplets containing the virus into the air. The virus could be picked up directly from airborne droplets or by touching a surface (such as a doorknob or sink) contaminated by the cough or touch of an infected person. That is the reason why signs advising good hygiene and frequent hand cleaning with soap and water or alcohol-based disinfectants were continuously displayed in all public places to prevent the flu spreading. Wearing face masks or a respirator was also considered protective in crowded public places. Vaccination to prevent influenza was particularly recommended, especially for people who were considered at increased risk for severe complications from influenza. By
Affect which is concerned with emotional reactions and disposition; Judgement refers to meanings which serve to evaluate human behaviour positively and negatively by reference to a set of institutionalized norms. Judgement can be either explicit or implicit and is divided into two broad categories, Social Esteem and Social Sanction. Explicit Judgement is expressed through lexical items overtly carrying the Judgement value like skillfully, lazily etc. while implicit Judgement can be expressed through some author’s tokens which make the sentence appear neutral and whose meaning depend upon the reader’s social, cultural, ideological position. Appreciation relates to positive and negative assessments of material objects (artefacts, work of art, texts, processes, and so on). Depending on the choice of words Attitude may be either Explicit or Implicit. Explicit attitude is expressed by overt evaluative/attitudinal words, phrases or sentences, that is to say utterances which straightforwardly communicate a positive or negative sense. Under implicit Attitude, authors include instances of evaluative/attitudinal expressions, which are not easy to locate: the reader’s particular sets of beliefs and expectations will lead him to interpret and consider the writing as un/true, un/acceptable, un/attractive. 3.3.2 GRADATION Gradation is concerned with values which act to provide grading or scaling, either in terms of the interpersonal FORCE which the speaker attaches to an utterance, or in terms of the preciseness or sharpness of FOCUS with which an item exemplifies a valeur relationship. While Force may be raised or lowered in terms of in- tensity without a problem within gradable categories, Focus signals the preciseness of the semantic categories employed in communication which can be sharpened or blurred. Focus concerns meaning which are grouped under the headings of hedging and vague language. → “he kind’v admitted it; he effectively admitted it, he as good as admitted etc.; a whale is a fish, sort’v” Force concerns values which are generally labelled as intensifiers, boosters, emphasisers etc. such as: − graders (adverbials) → slightly, quite, really, very − (adjectival) → slight, severe − measure → small, medium, large − colour → a bloody awful day − repetition → he laughed and laughed − metaphor → prices rocketed, mired in controversy − quality → the film star was whisked away, they ousted the president − evaluatory → desperate bid, key figure − universalise → the talks went on endlessly, Everyone wants to be rich and famous 3.3.3 ENGAGEMENT Speaker/writer engages in a dialogue in order to respond to other speakers/writers or anticipate possible responses. Such effect plays an important role in text construal and the meaning making processes by which the speaker/writer shares value position, attitudes, beliefs and negotiate relationships of alignment/disalignment. Engagement allows us to explore text-type and discourse type related variations in order to uncover inter-subjective positioning and the rhetorical potential of texts, which can be expressed and negotiated by means of various different resources including: − modals of probability → perhaps, it may..., I think... − reality phrase → it seems − attribution → his alleged..., informed sources report..., − proclamation → In fact, I am compelled to conclude..., it is true, we do have a small black and white cat... − expectation → of course − counter expectation → amazingly Commitment can be expressed by endorsed or disendorsed sentences. Endorsed utterances are generally factual, trustworthy and contain the use of verbs such as to claim or allege. Disendorsed can be expressed by marking the utterance as unexpected or surprising and can reach the point of absolute rejection or denial of the attributed proposition. CHAPTER 4 SELECTED EXAMPLES: AN IN-DEPTH INVESTIGATION Now, the investigation will focus on the lexico-grammatial choices and the modes of textuality which were used by the press and contributed to create into people this unnecessary fear for the swine flu.
4.1 EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE
One of the thing that contributed to spread panic was emotional commitment of the writer’s to the events described. As a matter of fact, journalists would give personalised and individualised comments about/or by the victims which were not relevant to the news. “The death of this girls is devasting for her family and friends” → the adjective ‘devasting’ is meant to amplify the predictable sadness felt by the family and friends of the girl, while the word ‘nightmare’ would be used to give a sense of danger and alert. Such structures would be repeated throughout the corpus and became formulaic. In our case the most frequent NPs are Modifier + Head. In the following examples pandemic can be both the Modifier and the Head Noun itself The determiner can be both the definite or indefinite article, or a demonstrative such as this or that. However in the table below we notice that only the definite article the is used. That happens because the use of ‘the’ suggested that both the writer and the reader are familiar with what is being discussed. These patterns not only are important because they provide a homogenic discourse, hence, stylistic cohesion but because they would generate a panic discourse. This results in Premodified Noun Phrases, where new words are created from elements which also stands by themselves as independent words. 4.2 STEREOTYPED SCENERIOS Such lexicalisation creates a dramatical metaphoric context which spreads panic by using a recurrent vocabulary of alert, danger, pandemic threat and satellite topics. The use of elements such as nouns ( alert, planet, threat ) and modifiers ( red, bleaky, full-blown ) that belong to the semantic area of danger transmits a feeling of uncontrolled and uncontrollable menace and convey the idea of an imminent planetary catastrophe. The use of verbal groups such as warn, face is a device to refer to the predictably and unavoidability of a looming threat. “The tragedy comes days after the World Health Organisation raised the swine flu outbreak to the status of a pandemic” (14 June 09). “The NHS faces CHAOS, with the complete or partial collapse of “some or all hospital infrastructures” (1 May 09). “The shock blueprint warned that THIRTY MILLION of us could get flu”(01 May 09) “There are also plans to use ice rinks as makeshift morgues with Army patrols guarding deliveries of food and drugs” (13 June 09) A powerful rhetoric of animation is enhanced by the use of melodramatic phrase, sometimes evoking situations of conflicts, that contributed to the atmosphere of struggle and turmoil. “The brave teenager lost her fight for life at Yorkhill sick kids’ hospital in Glasgow” (22 July 09).
“Last night Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: «With our vaccine program well under way, we are likely to see a fall in infections
- but that doesn’t mean we can be complacent. I would encourage everyone in the priority groups to take advantage of the offer of vaccination» (05 Dec 09). 4.4.1 PERSONALISATION Another mean which use is twofold is personalisation, which is about making references to persons and their personal information such as their name, address, age, things about their relatives, which are not necessary to spread scientific knowledge but they are meant to promote a straightforward feeling of identification. Many times even references to celebrities are made in order to attract more readers and sound more credible. “A virus-hit mum-to-be - who has not been named - was still critical in intensive care at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock last night” (22 July 09). “Two other victims were yesterday confirmed with having the virus in England. They are a man aged 22 from Barnet, North London, who was last night «responding well» in hospital and a woman of 41 recovering at home in Redditch, Worcs” (30 Apr 09). “Harry Potter actor Rupert Grint was recovering from swine flu yesterday” (6 July 09). “ROBBIE WILLIAMS sparked fears for his health after telling fans about a swine flu scare”(18 Aug 09). 4.4.2 DIRECT SPEECH AND CONVERTIONALISATION Another frequently recurring feature of language which may be often found in a printed popular medium is the use of direct speech suggesting spoken speech, and thus conversationalization. Once again its use aims at simulating intimacy which is needed to acquire consensus or widen credibility. As seen, once an attributed proposition has been included (and hence evaluated as ‘relevant’) it can be further assessed as ‘endorsed’ or ‘disendorsed’ In the popular press the illusion of conversational style is analogously achieved by many other different linguistic features
- simplifications of spelling, or deliberate misspelling in order to draw attention to pronunciation and to evoke spoken language → “Swine phew! A TOP scientist last night dismissed fears over swine flu - claiming its death rate may even be LOWER than normal flu” (5 December 09).
- italics or underlining indicate contrastive stress → “SWINE flu is so out of control there could be more than 100,000 new cases A DAY by the end of next month”(03 July 09).
- lexis or vocabulary tends toward the informal, colloquial, including slang idioms, clichés proverbs and catch-words. Fragmented format and typography and short incomplete sentences,13 can be used to suggest the illusion of oral mode as well, as in the following italicized examples → “The honeymooners Iain and Dawn Askham were today released from hospital and «doing well», said Scotland First Minister Alex Salmond” (30 Apr 09). “Fran, who works as a child minder, said last night: «I called The Sun to see if they could help because me and my son have been out and about all week» (1 May 09). “So far the singer hasn’t updated his blog to let wor- ried fans know he doesn’t actually have ‘pig’”(18 August 09). 4.4.3 JUDGEMENT As we have seen, Judgement is about giving negative or positive evaluations about the human behaviour by having as a reference a set of institutionalised norms. In the modality system it can be expressed through five subcategories: Normality, Capacity, Tenacity which are part of the Social Esteem category and then we have Veracity and Property which are part of the Social Sanction Category. “RUSSIAN crime gangs are making millions by selling fake Tamiflu to paranoid Brits online” (16 Nov 09). “The Government’s containment strategy was not any- thing like as effective as it should have been” (10 July 09).
CHAPTER 5
UNVEILING MEANINGS FROM LANGUAGE FEATURES
The Sun diffusion of disinformation first started with yellow press headlines, such as the one stating that a 15-year-old girl died in hospital, then the newspaper used lexico-grammar structures whose main aim was to spread panic, such as the number of countries attacked by the virus and the number of people who died because of it. 5.1 COUNTERCLAIMING AND SOCIOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES As the time went by, The Sun itself, was forced to admit that unnecessary panic was spread, publishing articles stating that scientists claimed that the death rate of the swine flu was lower than a normal flu and that 80% of the people who were diagnosed as having the bug didn’t actually have it. This episode raises an extremely important problem, which is press reliability. When it came to vaccines, their effectiveness was questioned and it was found put that they could bring serious side effects. The Sun reported that the vaccine reduced the flu of only one day and that it could be harmful for children, causing that to vomit, and that a girl was even fighting for her life in hospital. It was also reported that according to scientists the vaccines were developed too quickly and that some of the ingredients were not tested sufficiently. It was clear that misinformation and unnecessary panic were spread which also led to a mismanagement of money and to accuse the laboratories of having exploited the virus for making money. 5.2 RHETORICAL POTENTIAL OF LANGUAGE STRATEGIES IN NEWS REPORTING The impending and apparently unavoidably danger is presented in THE SUN in a number of distinctive ways which exploit the rhetorical potential of language. The H1N1 virus is "spread" through the following linguistic devices:
- Firstly as a global pandemic spreading in every country, reporting news from all over the world, such as the ones stating the latest country who were hit by the virus or the number of death that it caused.
- Individual cases were reported with melodramatic connotations. The most common cases reported were children infection which were more likely to concern the readership.
- Some articles announced that not everyone could be treated due to the high number of people affected by the virus, and that lottery would be used to choose the lucky ones who could get cured, spreading a pervasive feeling of uncontrollable fear.
- In an alternative way, the issue was presented as an event who could affect the social life of the nations, reporting reactions of people who were unfriendly to those who they feared had the flu.
- Apocalyptic scenarios where it was reported that UK cemetery were too small and that people had to be buried in common graves. 5.3 CONCLUDING REMARKS This study suggests that newspapers, especially The Sun, performed an active role in spreading scare among people because of the swine flu. The Sun is part of the Media Exposition test type, which aims at persuading its readers. The aim of The Sun was to legitimize actions through aligning the reader by evoking assessments of the writer’s competence about the topic and ultimate the
“The new president's speech was elegant and well-woven, sounding a panoply of themes without seeming scattered. A man not known for his silver tongue, he delivered it with an uncharacteristic grace.” However, most of the times the situation happens to be more complicated. That’s because many times the attitudinal position is not given by the use of single words but by phrases or by the interaction of multiple elements in the utterance. “George W. Bush delivered his inaugural speech as the United States President who collected 537,000 fewer votes than his opponent. Without the intervention of a partisan, right-wing Supreme Court to ensure the election of a Republican, Mr Bush would now be a forgotten loser. The Observer considers his election an affront to the democratic principle with incalculable consequences for America and the world. Mr Bush's inaugural attempt to assert his brand of one-nation, compassionate conservatism is bluster and hogwash. He has acted from the moment Al Gore conceded as if he had won a wholehearted mandate. But the Bush cabinet is neither centrist nor compassionate. In home affairs, it is brutalist and reactionary - for tax cuts overtly biased towards the rich, against the protection of consumers, workers and the environment. In overseas affairs, Mr Bush has appointed Cold War warriors from his father's era who do not appreciate the nuances of a transformed international environment.” The extract above brings up another related complication which is the fact that Attitude can be implicit or explicit. “George W. Bush delivered his inaugural speech as the United States President who collected 537,000 fewer votes than his opponent.” In the extract there are no words which clearly indicate how the writer feels about the new President, however, through the context is possible to understand that the assessment of the writer is negative. THE THREE SUB-TYPES OF ATTITUDE As indicated before, there are three sub-types of the Attitude category:
- Affect: the speaker/writer shows how they are emotionally disposed to the person, thing, state of affairs.
- Judgement: assessments about the human behaviour
- Appreciation: assessments regarding the form, composition, impact, significance of human artefacts, natural objects, human individuals, by reference to aesthetics and other systems of social value ATTITUDE/AFFECT The subcategory of Affect is concerned with emotions and it may be indicated through:
- Verbs of emotion – to love/to hate, to bore/to interest – I love/hate chocolate
- Adverbs such as happily/sadly – Sadly the match was canceled
- Adjectives of emotion such as happy/sad, worried/confident – I’m happy you joined the team, I’m sad I didn’t pass the exam
- Nominalisation, happiness/sadness, confidence/insecurity – I was overcome with joy AUTHORIAL Here, the speaker/writer indicate show they have personally responded emotionally to the person, thing or situation being talked about. So the evaluation is totally subjective and lets the speaker/writer create an interpersonal bond with the reader so that the reader can agree, understand or sympathize with their emotional reaction. This can be illustrated in the following extract where an adoptive mother of an Australian Aboriginal baby describes her experience. ‘As an adoptive family we have had pain and trauma, tears and anger, and sometimes despair. There has also been love and laughter and support from friends and extended family. My children have added richness to my life and taught me much about myself.’ The article appeared at a time when Aborigines were calling for a public apology and compensation from the Australian’s government’s previous policy of forcibly taking the aboriginal babies from their families and placing them with adoptive white parents. This policy was described as a form of cultural genocide. The author of the article wanted to show that her experience of raising two Aboriginal children had nothing to do with genocide and had not been grounds for shame and guilt. By appraising events in such emotional terms, the writer wants the audience to share that emotional response or at least to see it as appropriate or understandable. Then, there is the possibility that the reader shares the writer’s emotional response or decides to reject it.
NON-AUTHORIAL
Non-authorial Affect happens when the emotions described are not the author’s one but the author reports the emotions of other people towards the phenomenon which is being considered. ‘No doubt the men want to sleep with her but they also respect, like and trust her.’ Here the author is reporting a positive evaluation made by the men towards the young woman, with the purpose of presenting her to the reader in a positive light. In such extract the individuals showing the emotional response (the men) are also shown in a positive light. As a society, we judge some emotions as praiseworthy and others as blameworthy. In this case, the fact that men respect, like and trust the woman is a positive thing. However, there might still be cases where the evaluation is not endorsed and could be seen as perverse or inappropriate.
2. ATTITUDE / JUDGEMENT The second subcategory of Attitude is called JUDGEMENT. This category is about the language which criticizes or praises the behaviour of human individuals or groups. Some JUDGEMENTS might be about politeness/impoliteness, morality/immorality, legality/illegality, hence they are influenced by the religious or legal context. Examples: immoral, virtuous, innocent, unjust, fair- minded, cruel, brutal, compassionate. Other JUDGEMENTS include evaluations which can lower or raise the person judged in the esteem of the community. Here we have assessments of normality ( eccentric, traditional, conventional ), competence ( skilled, genius, stupid ), psychological disposition ( brave, stubborn, lazy ). It is important to specify that JUDGEMENTS are shaped by the cultural and ideological situation in which they operates. Even the JUDGEMENTS listed above do not always carry the same meaning, their meaning depends on the social and ideological position of the reader and on other JUDGEMENTS that were previously made in the text. Example: the word mean is mostly used in a negative way → ‘don’t be mean to your sister’ However it can also be used in a positive way → ‘You know what I like so much about that player, he’s really mean forward’ → the word mean here is used to give a positive review about the player’s ability in the game to play in an aggressive manner. Judgement can be inscribed, thus, explicit by the use of lexical items carrying the Judgement value such as skillfully, lazily etc. , or it can be implicit by the use of what we call ‘Tokens’ of Judgement. Under these tokens, JUDGEMENT values are triggered by what can be viewed as simply 'facts', apparently unevaluated descriptions of some event or state of affairs. The point is that these apparently 'factual' or informational meanings nevertheless have the capacity in the culture to evoke JUDGEMENTAL responses. Thus a commentator may inscribe a JUDGEMENT value of negative capacity by accusing the government of incompetence' or, alternatively, evoke the same value by means of a token such asthe government did not lay the foundations for long term growth'. There is, of course, nothing explicitly evaluative about such an observation but it nonetheless has the potential to evoke evaluations of incompetence in readers who share a particular view of economics and the role of government. Such tokens, of course, assume shared social norms. They rely upon conventionalised connections between actions and evaluations. As such, they are highly subject to reader position - each reader will interpret a text's tokens of judgement according to their own cultural and ideological positioning. They are also subject to influence by the co-text, and an important strategy in the establishment of interpersonal positioning in a text is to stage inscribed and evoked evaluation in such a way that the reader shares the writer's interpretations of the text's tokens. The distinction between explicit or implicit evaluation is not always clear cut. ‘He entered the room. The class rudely talked amongst themselves’ → this sentence is unproblematically explicit thanks to the word rudely which indicates a negative assessment of those who were talking. ‘Although he had entered, the whole room kept on talking’ → here, there is no word which indicates a positive or negative assessment, however, there is still something accusatory. The term although indicates that the happening in the second clause is someway unexpected, kept on means that the talking lasted longer than was expected or acceptable, whole room makes us understand that the writer is more invested or involved in the utterance than is always the case. Although the utterance contains no values of explicit JUDGEMENT, it does employ evaluative language and these wordings act to direct us towards Judgemental response. We say that in such utterance an inference of a JUDGEMENT value is provoked in the reader/writer. 3. ATTITUDE / APPRECIATION The final subcategory of Attitude is called APPRECIATION. It is about positive or negative evaluations of objects, artefacts, processes and state of affairs; sometimes it might be about human participants too, but when the assessment is not about the correctness or incorrectness of their behaviour. The most obvious values of APPRECIATION are the ones concerning the form, appearance, construction, presentation or impact of objects or entities.
- ‘It was a brilliant plan covering all activities’ → here, the evaluation turns the attention away from the individuals and their behaviour and focuses it on the product of their behaviour (the plan) Of course the textual context helps us to understand whether the evaluation is about JUDGEMENT or APPRECIATION. ‘The cash bonus was part of an evil plan made by Saddam Hussein to capture pilots’ → the evaluation here is about JUDGEMENT as it acts to criticize the behaviour of Saddam Hussein and it also fits into the collocational frame ‘It was evil of Saddam Hussein to plan such an outcome’ 4. INTERTEXTUAL POSITIONING Intertextual positioning is brought into play when a writer/speaker takes a stance towards, decides to quote or reference what other say, meaning that they have a relevance in their current communicative purposes. This is an area which has been widely covered in literature under headings such as attribution , direct and indirect speech, heteroglossia. When the speaker directly or indirectly shows support for or agreement with an evaluation, the evaluation is said to be endorsed. ‘He punctures the romantic myth that the mafia started as Robin Hood-style groups of men protecting the poor. He shows that the mafia began in the 19th century as armed bands protecting the interests of the absentee landlords who owned most of Sicily. He also demonstrates how the mafia has forged links with Italy’s ruling Christian Democrat party since the war, and how the state has fought to destroy the criminal organization despite the terror campaign that assassinated anti-mafia judges, such as Giovanni Falcone’ → the use of the quoting verbs ‘shows’ and ‘demonstrate’ signals endorsement for the attributed author’s observation about the Mafia. A speaker/writer may also show support while distancing themselves from the speaker/writer. ‘The Government has finally conceded that they made a mistake’ → the term ‘concede’ first indicates that the Government reluctantly decided to and was forced to admit that they had made a mistake. Secondly, there is the implication that what is conceded is the truth of the matter. When a speaker takes distances from the utterance or shows complete rejection of it, the evaluation is said to be disendorsed. ‘More recent evaluation in the field convinces me that the ANU team are seriously in error: the age of the burial is considerably less than 62,000 years. In this context, the claim that "this more than trebles the date for humanity's first arrival on the continent" is sheer nonsense.’ → the writer here shows rejection. ‘Tickner said regardless of the result, the royal commission was a waste of money and he would proceed with a separate inquiry into the issue headed by Justice Jane Matthews. His attack came as the Aboriginal women involved in the demanded a female minister examine the religious beliefs they claim are inherent in their fight against a bridge to the island near Goolwa in South Australia.’ → the journalist distances themselves from the fact that the Aboriginal women have religious reasons to oppose the building of the bridge. When the writer/speaker wants to distance themselves from the utterance the use of verbs such as ‘to claim’ and ‘allege’ is very common. ‘Surprisingly, McGuinness is especially scathing about `the chattering classes', of which he has long been a member.’ → another way to show indirectly disendorsement is to characterize the utterance as unexpected or surprising It may also be useful, in some analytical contexts, to consider these and related resources in terms of who is presented as taking responsibility for the utterance under consideration. Does, for example, the author,
- take sole responsibility for the utterance (as will typically be the case for all unattributed material),
- does the author present him/herself as taking NO responsibility for the utterance (as will typically be the case with dis- endorsed attributed material)
- or does the author indicate that he/she shares some responsibility for the utterance with the attributed sources (as typically the case with endorsed attributed material)? Another important issue is concerned with the nature of the source to whom the material is attributed:
- (personalization) whether the source is human or non-human (a study, a report). If the source is a human, it can be a particular human (the Prime Minister) or an institutional source (the Government);
- (identification) whether the source is identified, thus named, (the Minister) or unidentified. When the source is unidentified it can be unnamed (environmental scientist), anonymous (informed sources) or generalized (it is generally believed that…)
- (specification) whether the source is an individual (Staff at my son’s school say they are unhappy with the new policy) or a group/generic (Australians believe that the global warming is a real risk)
- (grouping) if the source is a group, is it an aggregate (40% of Australians believe), a collective ( climate experts believe) or an association (politicians, burocrats and economists believe)
- (status) whether the source is associated with some level of status, authority or power in the current speech community The final issue that concerns us is whether the writer reported to the reader the actual words of the attributed source or if they have been reworked in some way. This distinction separates direct and indirect quotation. The process by which there is a blurring of the distinction between the author’s voice and the external source’s voice is what makes a difference between ‘Direct Speech’, ‘Indirect Speech’ and ‘Free Indirect Speech’. 5. ENGAGEMENT AND DIALOGISTIC POSITIONING In this section, we are concerned with the range of resources by which the speaker/writer adjust or negotiate the arguability of their utterance. Such resources have been grouped under the heading of Engagement and they are: attribution, modality, hearsay, concession, polarity, evidentiality, hedges, boosters and metadiscursives. These means can be used to show how the utterance engages with past, present or future communicative exchanges. Key Engagement resources include meaning which can be grouped under the following headings:
- Disclaim: includes Denial and Counter-Expectation
- Proclaim: includes Expectation and Pronouncement
- Probabilise: includes Likelihood, Evidence, Hearsay
- Attribute The notion of Dialogism What does ‘dialogic terms’ mean and in what ways do these resources achieve such a rhetorical outcome? The following quotation sums up the notion of ‘dialogism’: The actual reality of language-speech is not the abstract system of linguistic forms, not the isolated monologic utterance, and not the
psychological act of its implementation, but the social event of verbal interaction implemented in an utterance or utterances.
Thus, verbal interaction is the basic reality of language. Dialogue is only one of the many forms of verbal interaction. There are other ways that verbal communication can come to life, not only by being vocalised and face-to-face. For example, a book is a type of verbal performance in print, it might possibly respond to something, affirm something, anticipate possible responses and objections, seek support and so on. The resources included within Engagement are all dialogistic' in this sense - they are all means by which speakers/writers represent themselves as engaging in adialogue' to the extent that they present themselves as taking up, acknowledging, responding to, challenging or rejecting actual or imagined prior utterances from other speakers/writers or as
dialogic position. Of course, through such a strategy, by confronting the possibility of rejection, the author integrates that possibility into the text and thereby acknowledges the dialogistic diversity of meaning making in socially diverse social
contexts.
Probabilise Under Probabilise, I include all resources by which the current proposition/proposal is represented as just one of a range of possible propositions/proposals. It includes,
- evidential formulations such as it seems, apparently, the evidence suggests
- forms which represent the proposition/proposal as more or less likely (including modals of probability and related forms such as I think/I suppose, as well as certain `rhetorical' uses of questions),
- hearsay/quotatives such as I hear and It's said. Such formulations have often been classified as
hedges' and have often been seen as indicating that that the speaker is uncertain or tentative. They are seen as indicating that the writer/speaker declines to commit to the truth of his/her proposition. Such interpretations all operate within a framework by which the communicative process is seen as a form of self-expression, a process by which the speaker/writer's primary purpose is to convey their inner thoughts and beliefs to the outer world. Thus, if a speaker frames an utterance with a formulation such asit seems to me', then this usage is seen as necessarily revealing some aspect of the speaker's current state of mind, some condition of the knowledge or beliefs they are seeking to communicate - presumably the speaker's uncertainty or lack of commitment to truth-value.
From a dialogistic perspective, however, we come to see such resources rather differently. We see their functionality in terms of the dialogistic negotiation which all speakers/writers undertake. By the inclusion of an it seems', aprobably' or an `I hear', the speaker actively represents the proposal/proposition as contingent, as located in some individual subjectivity, in some individual assessment of likelihood or of the available evidence. The utterance is thus construed as but one of a range of possible utterances, since different contingencies and different individual subjectivities may well result in different assessments of likelihood and the available evidence. Thus, by the use of values such as It seems..., probably..., I hear... to frame a proposition/proposal, the writer/speaker opens up the space for dialogistic alternation, for a potential response which in some way challenges or differs from the current utterance. such formulations anticipate the affect that the current utterance is likely to have upon actual or potential interlocutors and, as Myers has observed (1989), reveal the writers/readers purposes in negotiating their claims with these interlocutors. Attribution and extra-vocalisation Within Engagement, we distinguish two broad categories of resources for negotiating dialogistic or inter-subjective positioning - what are termed "intra-vocalisation" and "extra-vocalisation". Under extra-vocalisation, we are concerned generally with what has previously been termed attribution, with resources which involve the inclusion in the text of some explicitly external voice (hence the term extra-vocalisation). This extra-vocalisation contrasts with resources in which the voice involved in the dialogistic positioning is an internal voice, that is to say, the voice of the speaker or author or writer. Our concern here, however, is the way that writers/speakers uses extra-vocalisation to position themselves dialogistically with respect to actual and potential communicative partners. “Christian Jacq, perhaps the world's most prominent Egyptologist, has argued compellingly that when it came to backroom intrigue and regional betrayal, the modern Middle East still has a lot to learn from ancient Egypt.” Here we encounter a rhetorical manoeuvre which has two aspects. The first is heteroglossic - a second voice is introduced into the text and that voice is evaluated as highly authoritative and convincing. The second is dialogistic - the proposition that ancient Egypt was a place of intrigue and betrayal is associated with an individual subjectivity (that of the attributed source) and is thereby construed as contingent and hence arguable in the current dialogistic context. The degree of arguability that the writer allows, however, is rather limited as a consequence of the high expertise associated with the source. Thus the rhetorical effect of such a formulation is somewhat akin to that of the Pronouncements discussed previously. There are a number of factors which determine the dialogistic positioning which can result from a given extra-vocalisation. These include the degree of authority which is indicated of the source and the degree to which the writer/speaker endorses (or disendorses) the attributed material. Thus the following involve different dialogistic positionings.:
- As X, perhaps the world's leading authority on Y, has demonstrated, ... (high authority / authorially endorsed, the writer indicates they share responsibility with the source for the proposition/proposal)
- X says that... (neutral with respect to endorsement)
- Some Xs have claimed that...(dis-endorsed, author disavows responsibility for the proposition/proposal) DIALOGISTIC POSITIONING Until now the sub-systems of Engagement have been described as a list, however, in order to apply this system in a useful way for a text analysis, we need to consider what consequences for arguability of a given utterance result from choosing one option over the others. The are two parameters to take into position: dialogistic expansion/contraction and extra-vocalisation/intra-vocalisation. DIALOGISTIC EXPANSION AND CONTRACTION Engagement resources present the speaker/writer as dialogistically engaged. The nature of this engagement can differ according to whether the Engagement value employed presents the speaker as opening up the dialog to more or less divergent positions or as closing it down so as to suppress or at least limit such divergence. Resources grouped together under Disclaim are generally contracting or closing since, while they acknowledge alternative positions within the dialogistic context, they either reject or directly challenge these. In the case of Denial and Counter-Expect, alternative positions are closed down by being directly rejected or by being replaced. Through Expect and Pronounce, the space for dialogistic diversity is contracted by what amounts to a preemptive rhetorical action - the writer/speaker is presented as seeking to constrain possible dialogistic divergence by overtly and strongly indicating their personal investment in the current proposition/proposal. Under Disclaim, then, the terms of arguability are adjusted so that any challenge or questioning of the current utterance puts more at stake interpersonally. Any challenge necessitates a direct confrontation with the speaker writer and in the case of Expect, a confrontation with what is represented as 'common-knowledge' or "public opinion'.
