Name: Abdul Basit

ID: 12689

Topic: Media discourse analysis

Assignment: Major
The content:

1- Introductory part
2- Why we study media discourse
3- How has printed media being studied
4- How has spoken media being studied
a) Pseudo intimacy
b) Linguistic corpus
5- Language of media
a) Reports
b) Internet
c) Interviews
6- Conclusion

What is discourse: discourse can be defined in three ways.

1- Language beyond the level of a sentence.

2- Language behaviors linked to social practices.

3- Language as a system of thoughts.

Discourse can be spoken as well as written.

What is media: the main means of mass communication (TV, radio, newspaper)

What is media discourse: refers to interactions that take place through a broadcast
platform, whether spoken or written in which the discourse is oriented to non-
present, listener, or viewer. Anne O’Keeffe (2011)

Types of media discourse:

- Written /printed media includes such as: newspapers, magazines

- Spoken / broadcast media such as: TV, radio.

- Social network sites such as: face book, twitter, YouTube.

Types of news:
 Hard news: refers to stories based on -5 w- who? What? Where? When?
Why/how for example war, accidents, crimes, law.
 Soft news: focus on people, places, issues that affect the reader life. For
example: the death of the president U.S.A Kennedy.
 His story (soft news)
 His daily life ,work ( hard news)

Why we study media discourse

 The importance of media as a source of data for the study of some language
features.
 The interesting way in which media uses some language features.
 The effect of media on language in different societies.
 Media language is a mirror that reflects culture and society.
 The effect of media on people s opinion and attitude toward a culture, issues, people
or ethnic groups and how they may be misrepresented.
 Media language is more available and easier to collect than conversations.
 Media helps in developing a critical thinking.

How have printed media been studied?

Linguists identify the language of newspapers, as one of the four major registers
in language with (spoken conversation, academic writing, and fiction). In addition to
that much attention is given to genre analysis in studying newspapers i.e. what
makes the language of print media different from other genres. What can be noticed
here is that linguists aim to understand the individual genre characteristics. linguists
also seen the newspaper media as a distort of reality .i.e. away from
reality ,something unreal.

How has spoken media being studied

Spoken media discourse:
conversation analysis has been the prevailing methodology in the study of spoken
media discourse, that is, radio and television .And CA focuses on how conversations
are structured and organized locally turn by turn and studies social interaction rather
than language, this makes it suitable for the study of many social
interaction ,including media interactions .so, we will used it in study some radio
phone conversation. In radio phone conversation the identification and recognition is
carried out by the presenter who builds a pseudo intimate relationship with their
audience that means by talking about themselves as if they are ordinary friends with
ordinary lives. So, from this example we can get some of the pseudo intimacy
markers:
Presenter: its Wednesday morning Ann good morning to you
Caller: good morning Gerry how are you?
Presenter: oh well (yawning) I’m good a little bit of sunshine this morning
Caller: oh, well that’s good.
Presenter: it had a positive effect on me anyway dunno about every.
Caller: well I think it has on everybody hasn’t it?
Use of first name: Anna, Gerry……………
Informal non-verbal behavior: presenter yawning
Reciprocation and repetition of discourse markers; oh, well……………….
The use of linguistic corpus:
The study of turn structure and organization is the main means of looking at spoken
media discourse within the frame work of CA. It allows us to analysis some amount
of interaction .SO, let us take for example opening and closing at a small corpus of
radio phone conversation.
1- Opening:
Presenter: and next we have west colm good afternoon to you
Caller: am good afternoon Miriam
Presenter: colmmc carthy now you are involved can you tell me how are you got
involved in inis mor and what you’re opening up a new heritage centre on Inis Mor
the largest of the Aran Islands am based on the story of Aran sweater…………
-In turn1, the presenter addresses the audience: And next we had west, giving them
a deictic orientation as to the location of the next caller. The vocative becomes the
footing colm good afternoon to you.
-The repetition of the vocative in line 3 followed by the discourse marker now
indicates the moves into the ‘business of the call phase. ,i.e, entering in the core of
the subject .so, we can summarize that by saying we find that the audience is
addressed first, then the footing is changed to the caller by the use of discourse
markers and the vocatives.
2- The closing patterns:

Presenter: well well I suppose one way or the other I I I’ve suspicion that people
want certain things to go away but something just wont<laughs>am some things
have to be forced anyway there you go. ah listen Bishop Donal Nurry thank you very
much indeed for talking to us
Caller: not at all. Thank you very much.
Presenter: okay all the best cheers bye bye.
-The presenter uses discourse markers to signal closing (well)and he uses a
discourse marker plus the vocative to introduce the thanking phase .notice the use
of the pronoun us in turn 1to signal the change of footing back to the audience .The
presenter does not say thank you very much indeed for talking to me (us)
-In closing analysis we find that 67% of all closing us is used and we (presenter +
audience)is used of all closing.
The canonical structure of a given dialogue is the sequential order of turns
between two or more people. The canonical stages can be summarized in:
Summons-answers, identification-recognition, greeting then sequence
If there is an intimate relationship between the interviewee and the interviewer the
canonical stages are shortened (there may be only two stages: answers +greeting)
whereas in a pseudo-intimacy or unmarked relationship the canonical stages are
more likely to be long.

Language of media:
a/Language of headlines: is the short summary which introduces the story at the
beginning of a TV or radio, news broadcasts, or articles in newspapers, websites.

 Headlines should be in a simple structure, easily readable, choice of words.

 Headlines tend to avoid finite verbs , auxiliaries , adverbs (for not to create
ambiguity)

Language features:

Omission of words: we can omit Function words that (carry intrinsic

meaning) ,determiners ( some, this) ,pronouns( relative pronouns), auxiliaries ,
tittles .

Short words: aid =assistance

Loaded words: wealthy = rich

The use of nouns phrases: cars, people.

Gimmicks: words that make ambiguity ,to take attention.

E.g. she is a skillful pilot whose career has really taken off.

The use of puns: playing on words via a humorous way.

Homonyms: same sound different spelling.

E.g. the two sisters went to parties too much in two day .

Homonyms: a men has been killed beside the bank.

Intersexuality: referring to familiar phrases. The germen team

E.g.: ‫الماكنات االلمانية‬

Metaphor: describing one thing, drowning in money

E.g.: it is raining cuts and dogs. Time is running out.

Alliteration: repetition of sounds.

The worst wide world phenomenon.

Rhyme: crime of the time.

B/ reports

What is a report: it is a piece of written or spoken information in the form of

document, with evidence after investigation, with a clearly structured format. Making
use of sections and headlines.
Language of reports:

-language is reported in an interesting way with object.

-we notice the use of passive voice (more formality) in order to make suspense, to
make the reader involved.

-the use of synonyms.

-the use of formal language (correct spelling+ vocabulary + grammar)

-precise language.

-the non use of apostrophes.

a) Internet

The language of the internet: The internet has had and continue to have a great
impact on our lives ,with it we are able to access to new ideas ,more
information ,unlimited possibilities ,and a whole new world of communities .Because
of this development a whole new vocabulary is developed to talk about all these
issues.
The vocabulary of internet:
We can divide the vocabulary in two main groups:
1- Words that are created to talk about the internet.
2- The old ones which are used in new words.
3- Nouns: We have net and World Wide Web which refer both to the internet.
4- Adjectives: the most useful adjective is online and offline
5- Prefixes: we can use prefixes to create words like E-mail E refers to
electronic so it is electronic mail, also, we have the word web like in website
or webpage this means that they can be found in the internet .
6- Verbs: we use phrasal verbs to talk about connecting to the internet .like log
on and log off and we find the verb serf which means searching in the
internet.
7- Abbreviations: are short forms of words or phrases .abbreviation are often
used in chat rooms because they are easy to type and save time, here are
some common abbreviations which can help you to translate today’s texting
?4U: I have question for you.
10X: thanks
2EZ: too easy
2MOR: tomorrow
Totes: totally
Pic: picture
B2W: back to work

End