Transcript British Newspaper Discourse The discourse structure of the news story and editorials.

British Newspaper Discourse
The discourse structure of the
news story and editorials
• The discourse structure of news stories
• Types of news articles
“Journalists do not write articles, they write
stories – with structure, order, viewpoint
and values”
Bell 1998
Inverted pyramid
The structure of the news story
• The ‘lead’ (US) or ‘intro’ (UK)
– Who?
– What?
– When?
– Where?
– Why?
– How?
Found: prehistoric rodent that was as big as a bull
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 16 January 2008
The fossilised skull of a giant rodent that grew to the size of a bull
has been discovered in South America, where it lived about four
million years ago alongside sabre-toothed cats, huge flightless
"terror" birds and giant ground sloths.
Scientists have found the almost complete skull of the extinct rodent,
which weighed about a ton and grew about 5ft tall and about 9ft long.
[…]
Tokyo: Two ‘sake’ brewers were seriously ill
after being overcome by fumes when one
fell in a half full vat and the other was
trapped trying to rescue him. Reuter.
(from Bell 1998)
Deportation setback
• Storms over Iceland delayed the
deportation from Norway yesterday of 12
American anti-abortion activists who had
allegedly planned to stage demonstrations
during the Winter Olympics and were
detained by police when they arrived in
Oslo’s airport.
• (From Bell 1998)
News reports - revision
• Structure
• Attribution: source (byline/agencies), place,
time
• Abstract: headline, lead(or intro)
• Story: episodes (1-n), events (1-n), attributions,
actors, actions, settings (time, place),
• follow-up (consequences, reactions),
commentary (context, evaluation), background
(previous episodes, history)
Headlines are summaries,
• their main functions are to:
• Attract the reader’s attention to the story
(or paper, if on the front page)
• Tell the reader what the story is about by:
– summarising the content of the story
• indicating the evaluation of the story
• indicating the register of the story
• indicating the focus of the story
News reports: the abstract
• Headlines are powerful framing devices
and prepare the reader by priming their
expectations as to evaluation
• The ‘lead’ (US) or ‘intro’ (UK) tells us:
• Who?What?When?Where?Why?How?
Inverted pyramid structure
• Beginning of text
Greatest amount of information (Headline
and lead)
• As text progresses less really new
information , more detail, background,
commentary
•
Pope cancels trip in Rome over security
By Malcolm Moore in Rome, Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 16/01/2008
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The pope has been forced to cancel a visit to a university in Rome because of fears for his
safety.
Benedict was due to address students at La Sapienza University, but called off his trip at the last
minute because of a sit-in protest.
The last papal trip to be cancelled for security reasons was in 1994, when John Paul II was due to
visit Sarajevo. However, the pope has never been unable to tour Italy in modern times.
Angry students had threatened to blast dance music at the pontiff, and also to dress up as nuns.
According to sources close to the Vatican, there had also been "more serious threats".
The official newspaper of the Holy See, L'Osservatore Romano, said that "this is a dramatic threat
against the papacy, culturally and civilly".
The controversy began after 67 professors at the university signed a letter saying the pope should
not be allowed to give the inauguration speech for the academic year.
The professors accused Benedict of being opposed to science, and cited a speech he gave two
decades ago. They argued that the pope would have supported the Church's 17th century trial
against Galileo for claiming the earth revolved around the sun.
Although there is little evidence in the speech to support their claim, the students lent their support
to the cause, and occupied the dean's office, waving banners which said: "The Pope has occupied
La Sapienza. Free the Intellectuals!"
The Italian Bishops' Conference said they were "worried" about the state of the university, which
was founded by the Vatican seven centuries ago. "There seems to be part of the secular world
which does not argue, but demonises and which does not discuss, but creates monsters," said a
spokesman for the bishops.
Students rejoiced when the Vatican finally conceded and cancelled the trip, shouting "Get the
Pope out !"
However, Renato Guarini, the dean of the university, said he was "bitterly upset" at the tension on
campus.
Romano Prodi, the Italian prime minister, also condemned the students' actions, saying that it had
been "unacceptable".
Exploring stance
• How speakers and writers pass
judgements on people generally, on other
writers and speakers and their utterances,
on material objects, on happenings and
states of affairs and thereby form alliances
with those who share these views and
distance themselves from those who don’t
reporting ‘v’ commenting
News reports will usually contain some
aspect of subjective evaluation revealing
stance
The selection of the story to be told
The way the story is framed
The selection of details included
The choice of attributions
Transitivity choices
commentary
stance is a refracting and
structuring medium
• Different newspapers and news
broadcasts report differently, both in
content and presentation
• They express affiliations and disaffections
in the way they represent or mediate by
means of transformation or differential
treatment in presentation
The editorial is the voice of the
paper’s opinions
• We will be exploring how attitudes, judgements
and emotive responses are explicitly presented
in texts but also how they can be more indirectly
implied, presupposed or assumed.
• How the expression of such attitudes and
judgements is, in many instances, carefully
managed so as to take into account the ever
present possibility of challenge or contradiction
from those who hold differing views.
commenting
• Editorial
– Voice of the newspaper
– Unsigned
• Op-ed (opposite the editorial)
– A signed comment article
– Giving one person’s opinion
Readers’ comments: letters page or comment
threads under an article
Guradian editorial page
• Editorials & reply p32
• Leveson: a public inquiry demands a public debate
• Editorial: The derailing of bills through Leveson amendments is
clumsy and blunt but it is forcing the issue into the open where it
belongs
• In praise of … mind the gap
• Editorial: In a world forever catastrophising the future, miniinstitutions embedded into our daily lives anchor us to our past
• Papal conclave: I elect as supreme pontiff …
• Editorial: With no clear favourite, it could take a long time for the
white smoke to emerge when the cardinals go into lockdown
• The SWP and rape: why I care about this Marxist-Leninist
implosion
• Laurie Penny: The SWP has been a significant organising force on
the British left for decades. But socialism without feminism isn't
worth it
Functions of the editorial
• To comment on items in the news, give
opinions, guide others in forming an
opinion, sometimes humourous.
• To persuade
• To create a consensus of opinion with the
readers
Editorial language
• Evaluative lexis: affect, judgements
• Modality – authority
• Generic statements (show authority, the
editorial claims total knowledge)
• Argumentative – e.g. rhetorical questions,
exclamatory clauses, other rhetorical
devices such as metaphor, hyperbole
• Exophoric reference- first person plural
pronouns: we, us, our
Editorials: examples
• Matter of Consent
The Times January 17, 2008
Convincing many more people to register as organ
donors is the right approach
• Give us justice
The Sun January 17, 2008
POLICE catch criminals. Courts punish them.
That’s the bargain between citizen and state. We call it
justice.
But justice means nothing when decent parents are
murdered on their doorstep by drunken thugs.
Op eds
• Short for ‘opposite the editorial’ but of
course this is valid only for the paper
version.
• They are signed
• They have all the linguistic features which
differentiate editorials from news reports
• They appear in sections which label them
(blog, comment, opinion ecc)
Op-eds
• Blogs Home » News » US politics » Tim
Stanley
• Tim Stanley
• Dr Tim Stanley is a historian of the United States. His
biography of Pat Buchanan is out now. His personal
website is www.timothystanley.co.uk and you can
follow him on Twitter @timothy_stanley.
• Texas secession petition reaches 25,000 signatures.
Even Obama doesn't warrant this conservative
pessimism
Op-ed example
• Robert Fisk article
• Sunday 18 November 2012
• As Israel and Hamas open the 'gates of hell' in Gaza, all the
journalistic cliches of war are here again
• 'Surgical air strikes', 'rooting out terror', and 'cyber-terrorism'
cannot conceal reality
• ( distributed during lesson 06.03 and on Prof Blog)
Modality
• A term used in syntactic and semantic
analysis to refer to meanings connected
with degrees of certainty, necessity,
obligation or desirability
• It is expressed mainly by verbs but also by
associated forms
A PERSONAL VIEW
• Modality is the speaker’s assessment of
the probabilities inherent in the situation
(epistemic modality)or of the rights and
duties (deontic modality)
• It allows the speaker to introduce a
personal, subjective view of the nonfactual and non-temporal event
Type of modality: Deontic or
intrinsic modality
• The system of duty, desirability and
necessity; attitude to the degree of
obligation which the speaker does not
expect to be disputed on. Associated with
power and formality
Type of modality: Epistemic
• Epistemic or extrinsic modality: commitment to
the truth of the proposition: i.e. the speaker’s
confidence in the truth of the proposition
expressed and reflect the certainty and the
authority of these propositions.
• It refers to the logical status of events or states,
assessments of likelihood. Associated with
confidence and lack of confidence but also with
power and authority
Simple present for eternal truths
• All messages choose some form of modality
even if it is only the neutral choice of bold
assertion – absence of explicit modality still
expresses a high degree of certainty and
therefore a perception of authority, the right to
make pronouncements.
• The speaker’s choice of modal expressions
signals both the degree and type of involvement
a speaker has in the content of his/her message
• the neutral choice of bold assertion –
absence of explicit modality still expresses
a high degree of certainty
• The simple present is used to express
universal truths
• The sun rises in the east
• Wood floats on water
Stance: what, how and who
• expression of the writer/speaker's attitude
towards, viewpoint on or feelings about the
entities or propositions s/he is talking
about
• Assessment of desirability or likelihood
• Affect and evidentiality
• Stance markers
The interpersonal function of
language
• the speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards
or point of view about a state of the world
• Certainty or possibility or probability
• Trying to get things done or trying to
control the course of events; degrees of
obligation and whether something is
necessary, desirable permitted or
forbidden, volition and instructions
Interpersonal meanings
• Modality is concerned with assertion and
assertiveness, tentativeness, commitment,
detachment and other crucial aspects of
interpersonal meaning (as opposed to
ideational or content meanings)
• They form a part of the tenor of discourse
• They are part of how a person presents
his/her self through language
Useful things to distinguish
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Attitudinal targets
Explicit vs implicit attitude
Asserted vs presupposed attitude
Evaluative responsibility
The right to assess or appraise
• Stance, appraisal and assessment are all
about relative positions
• Who is in a position to appraise
• Positions of authority
Graduation
• Force – gradable scaling raising or
lowering the intensity of the utterance
• Focus – non-gradable scaling: raising or
lowering of intensity achieved through
narrowing or broadening, and or
sharpening or softening
• Both are factors in the expression of
strong opinions
Voice of the Mirror
• Respect is due for our soldiers
• The disgraceful protests against soldiers in the
Royal Anglian Regiment returning home have no
place in Britain.
• Those men who were waving placards that
attack our brave soldiers as "butchers" only
shamed themselves.
• Our soldiers have a right to respect and pride
when they return from a tour of duty.
• They have given their all for their country.
The Sun says
• Mob rule
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• OUR brave troops have enough to put up with as they risk life
and limb in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• To top it all, now they fly home to vicious abuse from Islamic
fanatics.
• The Royal Anglians had to face a chanting mob waving grotesque
placards accusing THEM of terrorism and child murder.
• Astonishingly, this despicable demo went ahead with police
approval.
• When it turned predictably ugly, who did our brave bobbies arrest?
• Not the extremists who started the trouble, but a couple of
locals who rallied to Our Boys’ defence.
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Voice of the Mirror
• Blacklists ruin lives
Blacklisting workers is wrong and must be
stamped out completely.
• The disclosure that some of Britain's biggest
companies secretly banned individuals from jobs
demands a strong Government response.
• Men and women deprived of their livelihoods
were unable to challenge allegations that were
often inaccurate.
• And a person's political views should never be a
bar to employment in a democracy.
International paedophile register is
needed
• The worrying case of the convicted
paedophile found working as a children's
nurse in an NHS hospital raises serious
issues.
• The need for a comprehensive,
international register is clear so
paedophiles aren't able to sneak
undetected from country to country.
• The safety of our kids must never be
compromised
Sources / Useful Reading
• See lesson 3
• Also:
• Fowler, R. 1991. Language in the News:
Discourse and Ideology in the Press. Routledge.
Pp 208-221
• Morley, J. The sting in the tail: Persuasion in
English editorial discourse. In Partington et al.
Corpora and Discourse. Peter Lang pp 238-255