Riassunto esame Lettorato di Lingua Inglese, prof. Solly, libro consigliato Global Media Discourse di Machin e Van Leeuwen

CHAPTER VI – GLOBAL GENRES

GENRE

Our principal methodological tools for investigating the formats in this chapter are genre analysis

and modality analysis. The kind of genre analysis we adopt here focuses on spoken and written text

as communicative action. A genre analysis of an advertisement taken from the Dutch Cosmopolitan of

2001 brings out a habitual format of communicative action. Note that there is a difference between

a problem solution format and a problem solution discourse schema. The approach to genre analysis

discussed so far has been designed for linear texts. However magazine texts are not necessarily

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linear. There is also a spatial element of their organisation, through the use of layout. Kress and

van Leeuwen recognised three key principles which can be combined in various ways:

First, information may be organised along a horizontal axis whit one element on the left and

• another on the right. The left element is then presented as given, that is positioned as

something already known to the reader, while the information on the right is presented as

New as something not yet known to the reader.

Second, if information is organised vertically with two different elements, the information on

• top is presented ad ideal, and the information below as real.

Finally, information can be organised concentrically. In this case the centre contains the

• information that is presented as the core, and the margins contain information that is

presented as in some sense subservient or complementary to the centre.

Combination of the three principles are also possible. The writers also describe two other aspects of

the spatial organisation of information, the salience of the different elements which can be realised

by the size of the elements, or with tonal contrast, and the framing of the different elements. A given

genre can accommodate many different contents. The problem solution genre, for instance can

accommodate many different kind of problem and many different kind of solution. It is easily

transferred from one context to another.

MODALITY

Our second methodological tool is modality analysis. The term modality refers to semiotic resources

for indicating how true or how real communication content is to be taken. We deal primarily with the

modality of images, the question of how images signify their status as factual or fictional, truth of

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fantasy, an so on. In an advertisement images, the top (ideal) usually shows what you might be or

could be, the bottom (real) what is, what you can actually buy right now in the shop if you want to.

The top part may feature a photo in a sepia-tinted black and white, the bottom part a photo of the

product in full colour. The image showing the promise of the product in sharp detail. This illustrates

how visual modality works. Increases or decreases in the degree to which certain means of visual

expression are used (colour, sharpness, etc.) express increases or decreases in as how real the image

is meant to be taken.

In many contexts naturalistic truth remains dominant. Its modality criterion is more or less as follows:

the more an image of something resembles the way we would see it in reality, from a specific

viewpoint, and under specific conditions of illumination, the higher its modality. When black and

white was the norm, colours was regarded as “more than real”. Today colour is the norm and black

and white tends to be lower in modality, used for representing the past, dreams, fantasies.

In abstract modality, common in specific visuals and modern art, visual truth is abstract truth. This is

expressed by reduced articulation. Specifics of illumination, nuances of colour, the details that create

individual differences are all irrelevant from the point of view of the essential or general truth.

In technological modality, visual truth is based on the practical usefulness of the image. The more an

image can been uses as a blueprint or aid for action, the higher its modality.

In sensory modality, finally visual truth is based on the effect of pleasure or displeasure created by

visuals, and realised by a degree of articulation which is amplified beyond the point of naturalism,

so that sharpness, colour, depth, the play of light and shade, etc. become more than real. This

modality is often used in context where pleasure matters: in food photography, perfume ads, etc.

The reason to investigate in Cosmopolitan is that it seeks to communicate certain truth and seeks to

extend these truth and these behaviours globally. We expect that the modality of magazines such as

Cosmopolitan will be lower the greater the distance between the overt, real mores of a market and

the mores propagated by Cosmopolitan, with its fun, fearless female ethos.

TWO CASES

Women’s work in the Dutch version of Cosmopolitan

Every issue of every Cosmopolitan contains a section related to work. in the Dutch Cosmopolitan of

2001 this section is entitled “work and travel”. Work appears in many other contexts (gossip,

actresses and singers).

From an example taken from the Cosmopolitan about work, there is a photograph relatively low

naturalistic and depicts “women at work” as glamorous, but also vulnerable and not fully of control.

We can see that the picture shows an attractive model standing near a row of files. Although it

illustrates a factual item, it has sensory qualities of highly produced fashion and advertising

photographs. There is an emphasis on the shimmering slinky clingy (vestito aderente e sinuoso) fabric

of the model’s dress and on their loose and lavish hair. The background is reduced perhaps

suggesting the photographer’s studio rather than a real office location. This is typical for

Cosmopolitan work images. A few attributes (a pen, computer, files,) stand for work, in an

abstracted stylised way. Also the position of the model, that is merely using the files as a support for

her pose, is important. She is looking away, at something we cannot see, something left open for the

viewer to fill in or to supply from the context. Frequently such wistful looks at something unseen are

used of vulnerable people, people who are no longer in control of their destinies.

The text has high modality and uses a hot tips problem solution genre. The text is relatively

straightforward (inequivocante). It directly addresses the reader, first describing a familiar enough

problem and then providing the solution in the form of a relatively unordered list of tips. Problem

solution genres pervade magazines like Cosmopolitan. Articles on subjects such as gossip, anger,

embarrassing moments. May be interrupted by tips, and profiles of stars may go quite deeply into

the details of how such stars deal with stress.

The photograph and the text are spatially organised in terms of an Ideal-Real syntagm.

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Women’s work in the Indian version of Cosmopolitan

The Cosmo career’s section of the same month’s Indian issue of Cosmopolitan, contain other work

items. This magazine does not address the same kind of reader as the Dutch version. It sees its

readers as an elite of managers and bosses, and the problem is not how to relate to your

subordinates (European version), but how to relate to your boss. In India, the message of

Cosmopolitan is, for the time being, only for an elite of taste-makers and trendsetters. In Europe, it

has already filtered through to a much larger section of the population.

The career’s page in India is titled under the heading “life and work”. in the case of the Indian

Cosmo careers like its Dutch counterpart, there is a similar layout and a similar generic structure of

the items included. Again, a hot tips item is prominently featured.

The photograph has relatively low naturalistic modality and shows women as glamorous but not as

being in control of a situation or activity. The picture shows two models standing in front of a desk.

As in the Dutch version the models are attractive, but not strikingly (notevolmente) beautiful. The

modality is both abstract and sensory.

As in the Dutch version the text uses a hot tips format and is relatively straightforward, lacking the

air of unreality of the photograph. The format is graphically realised by having the underlined

words in large blue font and the tips pointed in a box.

As in the Dutch version, fantasy and reality are ambiguously juxtaposed. The somewhat unreal

picture, showing woman as glamorous but not in control is positioned as the idealised essence of the

message. Like in the Dutch text, it indicates total support for, and total dedication to work and its

values. But the second woman is a boss, and she is in it for herself.

CHAPTER VII – GLOBAL LANGUAGES 

Linguistic globalisation has stirred up (scosso) much the same issues as media globalisation.

linguistic imperialism of English: English is not only the mother tongue of some 400 million people, it is

the second language of another 430 million. Two-third of the world’s scientists write in English and

most journals have shifted from other languages to English.

The rise of other languages

Spanish for example, is also a global language, with some 400 million speakers and a growing

popularity as a second language. Chinese, Arabic and Hindi are also spreading their wings across

the globe.

Localisation

Technical information, for instance, is now routinely translated increasingly in many different

languages, and as a result many local languages have to change, to accommodate domains of

communication that were formerly only associated with English.

The regeneration of minority languages

In the chapter there are two case studies. The one is an example of the local adoption of English,

and the other a case of localisation into languages other than English. In both cases the question is

not just what language is used, but also and especially how the languages are used, and how they

mix in the global and the local, or not.

The global language of the journalism of information

The “Vietnam news” is a 28 page English language, tabloid size newspaper published every day in

Hanoi. The staff of the “Vietnam news” consist of some 40 translators who double as proofreaders

(revisori) and occasionally write their own stories as well. They work together with six to eight British

and Australian sub-editors who correct the translated English and write headlines and captions. Just

as global news agencies have done since the nineteenth century these sub-editors try to teach their

Vietnamese colleagues the values of the Western journalism of information. We discuss the English of

the Vietnam News in three steps. First we will look at its grammar and vocabulary, then at its

journalist style, and finally at the discourses the ways in which the event and issues covered by the

paper are represented.

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FIRST STUDY

A new variety of English?

The excerpt below shows how an Australian sub-editor changed the work of a Vietnamese translator

reporter. Some of the changes correct grammatical mistak