Language Research: Language and Media

Media penetrated deeply our society; it is necessarily to discover the types and nature of influence.
These researches involve discussion of the linguistic type in relation to media.

Escamillas, Barbie Ann R.

In recent decades; the media have seen an unprecedented amount of change, in quantity, technology,
and wider public participation. New media modes have come to the forefront; newspapers and radio
have been joined by television and the internet. The speed of transmission has increased, and many
more readers/viewers participate both positively, and actively. Relatively few have investigated the
language of the media in any dep’t—surprisingly perhaps, since language is at core of media
communication.

Even visual modes, such as television and billboards, are interwoven with speech, writing and sign. But
all this is changing. The overall aim is to explore current day media language, and how it has changed, or
is changing, and how this affects our view of the world. Also, to look at the reverse at how the media
may be affecting language. Of course, in all this, language is inevitably interwoven with broader trends
and issues.

Media linguistics investigates the relationship between language use and public discourse conveyed
through the media. According to Prof. Dr. Aleksandra Gnach, Wibke Weber and Deborah Harzenmoser
of ZHAW School of Applied Linguistics using ethnographic field approaches, collecting and transcribing
data. Analyse editorial office mission statements and corporate wording using document analysis and
engage in situation analysis through participant observation of exactly what people do at their places of
employment and while travelling. Create ethnographies using guided interviews and document every
keystroke and mouse click. Record follow up discourse, such as editorial meetings and consulting
sessions.

Cameron suggests that discourse styles have spread across different cultures, even when separate
languages are used. An appearance of friendliness and informality seems to be a goal which transcends
the languages concerned. Lakoff discusses whether political and other types of public discourse have
grown coarser and less civil. Concern has been expressed, particularly in America, over apparently
deepening levels of bitterness between members of each political party and their adversaries. A growing
number of issues are found in which one side feels that the other is unwilling to listen, and words felt to
be vulgar are thought to be on the increase. Taking a hostile position is perceived to be smarter and
more interesting than seeking out mutual agreement. When these concerns were examined, Lakoff
found that hostile confrontations were by no means new, though the style in which these hostilities
were expressed had shifted in recent years.
Snoddy examines a number of widespread beliefs about the media which turn out to be groundless
myths. For example, he debunks the predictions that traditional newspapers are about to fade away,
that English will become the dominant language of the internet, and that globalization will lead to
sameness. Conboy investigates the language of the tabloid press. He outlines the development of a
vernacular idiom and the compression of the world into over simple conceptual and linguistic categories
such as punks, nuts and perverts.

Globalization and medicalization processes have led to an increase in communication efficiency and
speed. The aim was to facilitate communication, to make it faster and less costly. Whereas most media
were originally designed for business purposes only (i.e. to be used by a limited number of people for
certain designated purposes), they have clearly lost that status by now. These technical means are used
just as much, if not even more, for private communication. This may be called the exaptation of these
means of communication, meaning that a medium originally designed for a specific purpose is
transposed to another contex.With the expansion of these new media, patterns of communication have
also undergone great changes.

A general observation on language change is that a language tends to throw out numerous different
variants, in a ‘multiple births’ situation (Aitchison 2001). Then these get whittled down. This is normal,
linguistic behavior. The multiple descriptions spawned by the terrorists’ attacks have now been
narrowed down to an agreed way of talking about them, which has only slightly shifted the language
from what it was. The events may have reminded readers of some ‘catastrophe’ words which were
rarely used, such as apocalypse, cataclysm. The word outrage figured prominently, partly because it was
used in two senses: the attack itself was an outrage, and people felt outrage (anger) at what had
happened. The phrase Ground Zero is likely to have become more widely known, though with the label
attached to a particular location. And the description of major catastrophic events by the date may
become more likely. These are minor alterations. The overwhelming final feeling of many is that words
are unable to do justice to the emotions aroused by the events. As the nineteenth-century writer
Samuel Butler once wrote: “we want words to do more than they can . . . we expect them to help us to
grip and dissect that which in ultimate essence is ungraspable as shadow. Nevertheless there they are;
we have got to live with them”. (Butler, quoted in Crystal 2000: 188)

Works Cited

Aitchison, J. (2001) Language Change: Progress or Decay? 3 rd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. ---- (2003) Words in the Mind: An Introduction to the Mental Lexicon, 3 rd edn, Oxford: Blackwell---
and Lewis, D. M. (in press)’Polysemy and bleaching’, in B. Nerlich et al(eds) Polysemy: Patterns of
Meaning in Mind and Language, Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Haiman, J. (1985) Natural Syntax; Iconicity and Erosion, Cammbridge: Cambridge University Press.

Halliday, F. (2002) Two Hours that Shook thye World, September 11, 2001; Media and Language,
London: Saqi Books

Nanny, M and Fischer, O. (eds) 1999) Form Meaning: Iconicity in Language and Media, Amsterdan: John
Benjamin.