Risposte esame Languages of the media + approfondimenti

Domande e risposte

Metafore nel contesto della fuoriuscita di petrolio

1. Various metaphors are used to dealing with the BP oil spill. Military/war metaphors are the most prominent and frequently used —> "the battle we're waging against an oil spill that is assaulting our shores", "battle plan", "deployment", "siege", "servicemen", "troops".

Generi linguistici

2. The language genres can be considered in basic form as follows: aesthetic, narrative, argumentative, persuasive, informative ——> Can you give me an example of persuasive language? Advertising, political speeches, and some newspaper reports. ——> One of informative language? Objective media reports, memos, summaries, and instructions. ——> One of argumentative language? Newspaper reports, scientific journals, and legal documents. ——> One of narrative language? Stories, books ——> One of aesthetic language? Poetry.

Media

• Describes any channel of communication from De Saussure onwards
• Does not include social media
• Describes any modern channel of communication
• None of the above (right one: describes any channel of communication)

Termine tecnico: "Register"

4. Register is a technical term used to describe a variety of language which is distinctive for a specific context.

Classificazione di Halliday

5. Which author classified these three different aspects of communication associated with any context or situation field – mode – tenor? Halliday —>

• Field: the purpose, or role, for which the language is being used. Example: political field.
• Mode: the medium of communication (writing involves a long period of composition and revision while speech is mostly spontaneously planned and produced).
• Tenor: the tone of the communication, it could be formal, informal, authoritative, etc.

Stile linguistico

6. Style is the result of personal choices that the speaker or author makes, in terms of vocabulary, grammar, layout, etc.

Tendenze dei social media

7. According to the article Top 10 social media trends [2020 & beyond] camera filter like dogs etc.. are an example of what?

• Video
• Selfie
• AR
• VR
• None of the above (give the right answer)

——> What is the difference between AR and VR? AR or Augmented Reality is often confused with virtual reality. While there are certain similarities, virtual reality implies creating a whole new world from scratch – a simulation of the real and the imagined world. Augmented reality, on the other hand, takes the real world and projects virtual, computer-generated augmentations to it, in order to enhance our experiences.

Definizione di linguaggio secondo De Saussure

8. Give the definition of language according to De Saussure. It is both a social product of the faculty of speech and a collection of necessary conventions that have been adopted by a social body to permit individuals to exercise that faculty.

Lingua persuasiva

9. The language of persuasion is similar in many ways to the language of

• Marketing
• Advertising
• Journalism
• None of the above (right answer: argument)

—> Both outline a case for or against a particular point of view. The difference is that language of persuasion deliberately tries to influence the reader by appealing to his or her emotions, not reason.

Storia della comunicazione di massa

10. "A History of mass Communication: Six information revolutions" (1997), describes Western History that fit his description of an information revolution. They are:

• The writing revolution
• The printing revolution —> Why is it called printing? Because of Gutenberg revolution in 1400.
• The mass media revolution
• The entertainment revolution
• The Communication Toolshed Home —> Transforming the home into the central location for receiving information and entertainment.
• The Information Highway —> Communication is shaking off transportation for work, study, and play.

La funzione della notiziabilità

11. For readers and viewers, newsworthiness functions a bit like a prism —> Many different events and actions that take place pass through the newsworthiness prism, where they are filtered and reflected —> Newsworthiness: a group of features that a news should have to attract attention. Bell said that these features are:

• A news should be bad or negative
• Has only just happened
• Is outstanding
• Is unexpected
• Took place close to the reader

Elementi di una buona storia

12. According to Scholes and Kellogg (1966) what makes a good story is

• Hero
• The seven roles of the folktales
• Temporality and causation —> Temporality = a time ordered sequence of events, with a minimal narrative requiring three states - the beginning, middle, and final state - linked together by conjunctions of time (e.g., firstly, then, finally...). —> Causation = the middle state causes the final state of the story - events in different parts of the story are connected by casual links.
• None of the above (right answer: a good plot)

Analisi del discorso critico

13. Who said: "Critical Discourse Analysis is a type of discourse analytical research that primarily studies the way social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted, reproduced, and resisted by text and talk in the social and political context"? VanDijk

Caratteristiche della comunicazione di massa

14. McQuail has distilled the characteristics of mass communication into seven major features:

• They normally require complex formal organizations.
• They are directed towards large audiences.
• They are public - contents open to all.
• Audiences contain many different kinds of people.
• Mass media can establish contact simultaneously with very large numbers of people at a distance from the source, and widely separated from one another.
• Relationships between communicator and audience are managed by people who are known only in their public role, as communicators.
• The audience for mass communications involves people coming together because of some common interests, even though the individuals involved do not know each other, have only a restricted amount of interaction, do not orient their actions to each other, and are either not all or only loosely unorganized as a group.

—> We can add to the McQuail’s list another feature, typical of the contemporary social media: Disintermediation. The social media platforms have changed the way in which news and opinions circulate, enabling everyone to talk one-to-many; everyone can become a self-publisher (ex: blogs).

L'influenza delle didascalie secondo Barthes

15. Which author said that captions are pervasive and influential largely because we would be traumatized by images with no direct meaning imposed on them? Barthes

Retorica

16. Rhetoric is not just persuasive speech, but persuasive public speech.

Esempio di antitesi

17. "I stand before you not as a prophet but as a humble servant of you" (Nelson Mandela, 1990) is an example of:

• Metaphor
• Repetition
• Anthesis
• The list of three

Campo, modo e tenore secondo Halliday

18. According to Halliday "field" is

• The medium of communication
• The purpose, or role, for which the language is being used
• The societal roles prescribed for, or adopted by, participants in the communication situation
• None of the above (give the right answer)

—> Halliday: According to him there are three different aspects of communication: field, mode, tenor.

• Field: the purpose, or role, for which the language is being used. Example: political field.
• Mode: the medium of communication (writing involves a long period of composition and revision while speech is mostly spontaneously planned and produced).
• Tenor: the tone of the communication, it could be formal, informal, authoritative, etc.

Indagine sul linguaggio dei media secondo O'Keefe

19. According to the O’Keefe the media language investigation is part of the broader

• Journalism discourse
• Mainstream media discourse —> "Media discourse is a broad term which can refer to a totality of how reality is represented in broadcast and printed media from television to newspaper" [O’Keefe, 2006]
• Newsworthiness
• None of the above (give the right answer)

L'annuncio pubblicitario Marlboro

20. In the Marlboro advertisement "the Miracle of Marlboro" is an example of

• Repetition
• Manipulation
• Parallelism
• None of the above (right one: alliteration)

—> Alliteration is the repetition of identical or similar sounds at the beginning of words. Another alliteration is Big, Beefy, Bliss from McDonald.

Connotazione

21. Connotation __

• Is fairly straightforward
• Is about media manipulation
• Will vary to some extent from interpreter to interpreter, and from case to case
• Is a kind of language style
• None of the above (give the right answer)

—> Connotation could have a positive or negative meaning, because it’s all about what the image means for the person who looks at it (so it could be subjective). Denotation refers to a description of an image which is straightforward because it describes the action which is taking place, for example, it also refers to the definition of words taken from dictionaries (so it’s neutral).

Metafore nella vita quotidiana

22. Who said "metaphor is pervasive in everyday life, not just in language but in thought and action"? Lakoff - Metaphors we live by —> In persuasive discourse, there are 2 devices: metaphors and frames. Metaphors affect how we think and act. Frames. Because language activates frames, new language is required for new frames.

Ruolo dei giornalisti

23. Journalist can use their techniques to highlight issues, to campaign, to criticize, to celebrate, to promote forthcoming events or to attract attention to or distract attention from other events —> Brand journalism, the literature indicates that it is the way in which brand contents are designed and brought using a news media approach. CMO.com by Adobe, RedBull corporate website.

Descrizione televisiva secondo Gunter

24. Which author said that TV allows "simultaneous observation of action and verbal description of events"? Gunter

Notizie secondo Bogart

25. According to Bogart, news involves a

• Manipulation of speeches
• Kind of storytelling
• Selection of events
• Presentation of stories

—> Bogart: What constitutes news? For example "Dog bites man" is not news. "Man bites dog" is!

Costituzione delle notizie

26. News is constituted essentially by topic areas, newsworthiness, and sources —> Area: main kind of the news. (Economic, Political, Sport...). Newsworthiness: features that a news should have. Sources: From where a news comes from. Examples: interviews, press conferences, press releases, written text...

Lingua estetica

27. Aesthetic is the language used to create an image of beauty through carefully chosen words —> Narrative: telling a (short) story. Argumentative: a debate or conflict of ideas. Persuasive: persuading someone of something. Informative: informing someone of something.

Nominalizzazione nel linguaggio

28. In the case of language used in the BP website during the oil spill, "loss of life" is an example of

• Enthymeme
• b.
• c.
• None of the above (right one: nominalization)

—> Nominalization is the consistent tendency to express abstract notions making recourse not to verb forms, but rather to nouns; can also be described as "processes crystallised into nouns"; the effect generated is de-personalization; When nominalization is used there is no need to indicate the subject of a given action.

Sviluppo della stampa

29. With the development of printing, some forms of discourse shifted from speech or manuscript into the form of books and other printed documents.

I sette peccati del greenwashing

30. The 7 Sins of Greenwashing are TUTTI

• The sin of the hidden trade-off
• The sin of no proof
• The sin of vagueness
• The sin of Worshiping false labels
• The sin of irrelevance
• The sin of lesser of two evils
• The sin of fibbing

—> Link alla domanda aperta.

Notizie e pubblicità

31. News and advertising both contain elements of infor