Riassunto esame Inglese, prof. Maci, libro consigliato Changing channels, Mansfield

Ex: Fur Out

The department store Selfridges has stopped selling fur-trimmed gloves and clothes after

pressure from customers and animal rights campaigners.

Here the most recent event (end of selling of fur garments) is reported as a consequence

of pressure from campaigners (event 1). The story doesn’t follow a chronological order.

The news value of the story appears to be extracted and highlighted in the headline, it’s

then confirmed in the lead, after which the reader is taken to the chronological order of the

event itself before being informed of the latest developments.

In his major studies on news discourse, Van Dijk identified a framework for analysing the

overall discourse structure of news stories according to their thematic and syntactic

structure. The thematic structure presents the various topics of the story and how they’re

organized within it, thus giving it its overall semantic structure. He uses the term news

schemata to describe the story’s syntactic structure. These schemata are the formal

categories that journalists and readers use in the production and understanding of news

and according to which news can be analysed.

According to Bell, the main elements that can be used to describe the discourse structure

of news stories are: attribution, an abstract and the story proper. In the attribution we find

the source from which the news information was taken (ex: the press agency). We find

again the summary of the story in the headline and lead in what he classifies as the

abstract, which may also contain some information regarding the actors and the main

event from which the story triggers. The body if the story itself may contain one or more

episodes, which will turn in to contain one or more events. He then adds other three

categories: background, covering any event prior to the action of the story; commentary,

providing the reporter’s or news actor’s evaluative observation of the event; follow-up,

covering the future time of the story.

However, the news story in its brevity doesn’t cover all the possible categories outlined by

Bell.

Halliday and his studies on transitivity: transitivity in clauses gives the reader an

impression of what took place in the news event by linking the three main elements for

creating meaning:

The participants or things taking part in the action of the predicate. They may be the

1) doers of the action or those the action is done to

The predicate which provides the description of what happened

2) The circumstances (wh- questions)

3)

Meaning is created by exploiting the above three elements in a clause and it will change

according to the order in which they are presented. Halliday categorises the descriptions of

event into the following processes, each of which may potentially occur in a news story:

Material: the process of doing (ex: the prime minister worked ...)

- Mental: the process of sensing (ex: the prime minister didn’t like ... )

- Relational: the process of being (ex: the prime minister is quite young; he has three

- children)

Behavioural: the process of psychological or physical behaviour (ex: he stuttered ...)

- Verbal: the process of saying (ex: the prime minister confirmed ...)

-

Delin classifies participants as being of two kinds: the doer (actor) and the done-to (goal).

Their strategic position in the process clause, or the omission of the actor, relays a

different message to the reader. Also, the reporter is able to direct the blame towards or

even away from the attacker if no explicit agent is given, as illustrated in the following

example:

Girl 7 murdered while divorced mum drank at pub

The particular structure given places the blame on the mother. Such clause structuring is

exploited by the writer in order to provide the ideological slant of the newspaper he

represents, that is, the set of beliefs through which the world is viewed.

Fowler observes how gender is encoded in numerous ways in the language and claims

that linguistic usage is sexist. Different styles of naming indicate different social values. He

stresses that the use of certain terms is very much context dependent, according to

authority or intimacy. For example, famous women personalities make the headlines with

nicknames attributed to them (ex: Victoria Beckham who’s called Posh).

Ideology is also expressed through the connotations that take terms on in their particular

context of use. We have only to note the choice of vocabulary in any news text to

understand the eyes through which the world is being seen (ex: the writer’s choice to

describe a murdered person as ‘being butchered’ rather than the more generic ‘being

killed’).

The visual

Whenever large photos monopolize the page, it’s clear that the message is encoded

primarily in the visual mode with the words in the caption and/or headline simply serving as

some form of elaboration. There are, in fact, various interactive techniques at work

between the two modes: the written and the visual message may either complement each

other, have exactly the same or completely opposite meaning. In the tabloid press, usually,

the reader is addressed through the medium of the visual, with only a small proportion of

the page given over to the written language. Front pages, or newspapers in general, are

culture specific. One of the differences is likely to be the choice or not of the use of the

visual as a point of preliminary address to the reader. Le Monde and the Frankfurter

Allgemeine are renowned for their lack of visuals. Some readers will find written text more

significant and turn to it more quickly, while others will favour the visual and spend longer

on taking in its significance.

The popular press invariably places a large visual that takes up most of the space to the

left, right or in the centre of the front page. The quality press also will use a visual, but the

ratio between the visual and the written texts will favour the latter. Very important in the

placing of the visual is the salience, the elements of a layout that attract the reader’s

attention to different degrees by means of placing the visual in the foreground or

background, its relative size, contrasts in the tones of black and grey. The greater the

weight of an element, the greater its salience will be.

Also relevant is the technique of framing, where framelines or spacing between the visual

and text in the layout may indicate that each element is to be read as a separate entity.

Indeed, there’s an implied reading path in each page.

One of the first considerations in the positioning of the visual is that of information value.

Notion of given and new:

Given: the element is on the left; it’s presented as something the reader already

- knows, as a familiar and agreed departure point for the message

New: the element is on the right; it’s presented as something which is not known yet

- to the reader, hence the crucial point of the message, the issue to which the reader

must pay special attention to.

It should be noted that in the layout of the page, the given may be made more salient than

the new, or vice versa, or they may both be of equal salience. Another distinction is the

one between ideal and real, the former being placed at the top of the page and the latter at

the bottom. The ideal refers to the idealized or generalized essence of the information; the

real presents more specific information (details) as well as more practical information.

Another important feature is the use of a headline plus visual that sends the read to

another page for the article itself. The headline and visual, printed immediately below the

masthead, are given salience by being set at the very top of the page. The inter-

relatedness between headline and text on one hand and headline, text and cartoon on the

other, bears mention. A strategically placed cartoon commenting on the news report in

question is another means of uniting different forms of text into one.

A newspaper is made up of a number of different text types, one containing more than

others.

Editorial comment and letters to the editor are more explicit forms of argumentative text.

There are also a number of journalists, particularly those specialising in a particular area,

who have a regular opinion column where they take up a recent topic of news, discuss it

and conclude with a statement of opinion.

The Guardian has a page entitled Comment & Analysis with articles that may include a

visual of the journalist or a significant visual relating to the text, and at the end an email

address, giving the reader a chance to respond directly to the comment published. What

characterises these articles is the use of the first person pronoun. These articles end with

an opinion in one or two summary sentences.

The editorial is more anonymous in the sense that the first person pronoun doesn’t

transpire, since the editor is representing the paper at large. It is however full of

statements reflecting the opinions of the author. The editorial is an opportunity for the

newspaper to express its ideology and political alliances.

Many of the texts unrelated to the news stories published in each issue of the newspaper

are those that invite a reaction from the reader. These texts stand out for their layout,

which is different from those of the traditional news story. There are also other informing

kinds of text (birth, marriage, death announcements) which can be easily recognised by

the layout and tipically formulaic language.

If the page is dense with text, reading will tend to be linear, from right to left, top to bottom

and line by line.

The implied reader or implied recipient is the one referred to in the news text, rather than

the actual one holding the newspaper so to speak. Implied voices and readers are a useful

technique with which to invite and/or put forward comment which the actual reader will

decode not only from the explicit choice of language and informal register but also from the

staged format of news reporting. Chapter 3: the radio

It’s likely to be the first media people come into contact with at the beginning of the day.

Time is marked out for radio in such a way that it’s the time now not the time in the past or

in the future. Closely related to the concept of newness is that of immediacy and relevance

to the individual. So today means tuning in to all that’s happening around us and getting to

know about newsworthy events as and when they happen, just as much as reading about

the events of yesterday in the newspaper. The radio is very much an intimate means of

communication which addresses the individual. No sooner as a news event reaches the

studio than it may be relayed directly to the listener. This liveness contributes to the

newness of the medium.

On an informational level, radio is likely to provide us with the first news of the day, an

update of events happening at home or abroad or some breaking news. The very fact that

the message cannot be complemented and/or assisted by the visual medium means that

the