attribution

Intertextual evaluation

Evaluative texts

• Often the way an event is summarised can involve an evaluation

• In the lexis• In the grammar

• Even newspaper headlines can contain evaluations

Functions of the headline

• Attract the reader’s attention to the story (or paper, if on the front page)

• Tell the reader what the story is about– summarising the content of the story– indicating the evaluation of the story– indicating the register or tone of the story– indicating the focus of the story

Two headlines about the same topic

• UK unemployment rate falls to 7.7%• (Guardian)• (the evaluation depends on sharing the value

system in which unemployment is considered bad)

• Record-breaking 30 million Britons now in work: Cheer for Cameron as number hits highest level for more than 40YEARS

• (Daily Mail)

Headline language: evaluation and graduation

• An emphatic triumph (Sun)• A shattering blow (Mirror)

• The adjectives are intensifiers , one positive, one negative, of the nouns which are strongly evaluative, one positive, one negative

Headline Language: Focus and register

The same event? Evaluations?• Goldman Sachs 'is morally bankrupt'• • Goldman executive quits over 'toxic' greed• • A knee in the nuts that means serious trouble

for Goldman Sachs • • A PR disaster for Goldman Sachs• • Smith lifts lid on nasty culture

Daily mail headline

• 'How we ripped out the eyeballs of our "muppet" clients': Goldman Sachs exec exposes bank's 'toxic' greed in scathing public resignation letter

Where the news came from

• The event was the publication of a performative document – a letter of resignation -

• Journalists love performative documents because they are the hardest facts they can get their hands on

• (Fishman: 1980:99)

The construction of news

[t]he reporter does not go out gathering news, picking up stories as if

they were fallen apples, he creates news stories by selecting fragments

of information from the mass of raw data he receives and organizing

them in journalistic form.

(Chibnall 1982: 76)

• News comes from a variety of sources, it then undergoes: Selection, transformation and mediation

• ‘Journalists love the performatives of politics where something happens through someone saying it. The fusion of word and act is ideal for news reporting. No other facts have to be verified. The only fact is that somebody said something’

• Bell 1991:207

Reporting choices

• 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.

• This is part of the social construction of news but before transformation and treatment there is the question of selection: the decision that something is worth including, is relevant

Where news comes from

• Press release material is being used more often as a basis for articles,

• and phrases are frequently taken verbatim by the journalists from a limited number of press releases

• 60 percent of press articles come wholly or mainly from ‘pre-packaged’ sources

PR sources

• The findings suggest that public relations often does much more than merely set the agenda: it was found that 19 percent of newspaper stories were verifiably derived mainly or wholly from public relations material, while fewer than half the stories appeared to be entirely independent of traceable PR

Once a topic is selected then the next thing…..

• Is who gets to speak:• news has to be gathered so there are a number of

sources, events and institutions which are frequently used as sources sometimes called ‘accessed voices’

• Sources monitored routinely: such as parliament, councils, police, emergency services, courts, diary events, royalty, airports, other news media

Accessed voices 2

• organizations issuing statements and holding press conferences (government departments, local authority departments, public services, companies, trade unions, non-commercial organizations, political parties, armed forces)

Accessed voices 3

• Individuals making statements, seeking publicity

• (prominent people, members of the public)

• The interesting thing is how they are introduced and how their words are used

Inclusion means evaluating relevance

• When a writer/speaker chooses to quote or reference the words or thoughts of another.

• By referencing the words of another, the writer, at the very least, indicates that these words are in some way relevant to his/her current communicative purposes.

• Thus the most basic intertextual evaluation is one of implied `relevance'.

Reflexive language

• You use language to talk about events and objects in the world around you.

• Some of the events that you talk about are language events – what other people say or have said, what you yourself think or have thought and so on. You can also treat these events as things – you listen to a speech or make a suggestion.

• Any language has particular ways of talking about events and things which happen to consist of language.

Ways of reporting

• To repeat the bit of language more or less as it originally occurred (Direct speech) consisting of a reporting clause and a reported clause.

• The reporting clause contains a verb indicating speech, such as say, demand, ask, tell.

• The reported clause represents the exact words someone used as they occurred; the reported clause is separated by punctuation (commas, speech marks)

Reported (indirect) speech

• This choice employs a reporting clause plus a reported clause which is more fully integrated as the object of the reporting verb and not separated by punctuation.

• The reported clause may be reporting a statement ( introduced by that) a question (wh- questions or with if or whether an exclamation or an infinitive clause reporting a directive

Talking about reporting

• the voice (who or what is presented as the source of the language being reported),

• the message (the way in which the function or content of the 'original‘ language is presented),

• the signal (the way in which the present reporter indicates that this is a language report),

• the attitude (the evaluation by the present reporter of the message or the original speaker)

The voice or source

• Specified others? Named or anonymous? Individual or group?

• Unspecified others? E.g. it is said that, and other passive forms

• High or low status?• Community (shared knowledge such as

phrases or proverbs)

Source specification

• how is the nature of the source specified?• (personalized, impersonalized, institutional,

named, anonymous, generalized, specific, generic, aggregate, collective, association)

Status and source

• Sources are often associated with some level of status, authority or power in the current speech community (see accessed voices)

• source type has an impact and the type of source chosen indicates the values of the reporting source

Reporting signals

• The reporting signal can represent a speech act and can include evaluation in its meaning

• Verbs: e.g. say, hail, claim, comment, deny, remark, admit, express, argue,promote, protest, warn, send a message

• Nouns: e.g assertion, claim, denial, excuse, explanation, response, suggestion

• Other expressions e.g according to, allegedly,

Reporting signals and evaluation

• the reporter's attitude to the reported message

• expressions of attitude neutral positive or negative

• and for language reports one of the main types of value that are assessed in these terms is the truth or validity of what the original speaker or writer said

• Reporters may also indicate other types of evaluation, in particular their attitude towards the speaker rather than the message There are again many ways of doing this, including through the choice of reporting verb (where the main choice seems to be to opt for negative evaluation)

• i bet you parlay French pretty well, don't you7' brayed the general

• She goes wittering on all the time about how she can never remember things these days

• On cue, he fulminated on camera I am not prepared to take part in this charade

• See also Robert Fisk article: words like waffled on, claiming, trumpets

extra-vocalisation – using others’ words

• the degree of authority which is indicated of the source and the degree to which the writer/speaker endorses (or dis-endorses) the attributed material are also important.

• As X, perhaps the world's leading authority on Y, has demonstrated, ... (high authority / authorially endorsed, the writer indicates they share responsibility with the source for the proposition/proposal)

• X says that... (neutral with respect to endorsement) • Some Xs have claimed that...(dis-endorsed, author disavows

responsibility for the proposition/proposal and the source is anonymous and with imprecise reference)

the message• whether the writer purports to offer the reader the

actual words of the attributed source or whether these have been reworked in some way, often with the result that the wording is more like that of the current text than that of the original speaker/writer.

• direct quotation (where the attributed material is clearly separated from the rest of the text), can be a way of distancing (partial quotes, scare quotes) or alternatively can give a sense of vividness and drama

• and indirect quotation (where the words of the attributed are not so clearly demarcated and where there may be considerable paraphrasing.)

Indirect quotation

• the distance between the external and the authorial voice is reduced. Summary or simple report that a speech act took place

• There is some degree of assimilation by the text of the attributed meanings.

• Such assimilation may be increased through the use of the various grammatical structures of attribution. (reporting verbs with a speech act)

Endorsement

• Once an attributed proposition has been included (and hence evaluated as `relevant') it can then be further evaluated as `endorsed' or `disendorsed'.

• The endorsed utterance is one which the writer either directly or indirectly indicates support for, or agreement with.

• The endorsed utterance is represented as true or reliable or convincing.

Argumentative force

• In endorsed formulations (for example, `As X has so compellingly demonstrated)

• the writer not only indicates their personal investment in the current argument, but adds to the argumentative force by representing the current view as one which is not theirs alone but one which is shared with, for example, the wider community or with relevant experts.

The Government has finally conceded that they made a mistake.

• Here the term "concede" carries a number of connotations. Firstly, of course, it indicates that the Government only reluctantly came to offer up the proposition that "we made a mistake". "Concede" like "admit" implies that the attributed source has only now been compelled, somehow, to reveal the truth.

• And, secondly, of course, there is the implication that what is "conceded" is "the truth of the matter" - that is to say, the proposition framed in this way is represented as true. The positive endorsement is not of the quoted source, but of their proposition or proposal.

Disendorsement and distancing

• Even if writers/speakers choose to include what other people say they can also distance themselves from the utterance, indicating that they take no responsibility for its reliability.

• This is commonly done by the use of a quoting verb such as `to claim' and `allege', nouns such as ‘rumour’, adverbs such as ‘reportedly’ which all suggest doubts about the truth value

Signalled choices

• The speech criticised those who falsely claim that Bush is just a Texas catle-rancher

Disendorsement

• The Archbishop rightly describes the killing as evil. Endorsement

• The report demonstrates clearly…Endorsement

Responsibility

• Who is presented as taking responsibility for the utterance under consideration:

• sole responsibility (all unattributed material)• no responsibility (as with dis-endorsed,

attributed material)• shared responsibility (with endorsed

attributed material)

textual integration

• Insertion = a clear separation between the words of the source and those of the source (quotation marks) or whether the distinction has been blurred; the actual words of the other speaker

• assimilation = reformulation and paraphrasing

Attribution and text types• There are marked differences between text types

e.g. fiction vs. news reporting• ambiguous attribution and blurred distinctions can

be used for a series of rhetorical purposes• academic writing involves a series of ‘rules’ about

attribution (the plagiarism issue)• the media also have a set of editorial rules regarding

the accuracy of reporting

Speech events can be reported in a variety of ways

• Distance or disendorsement, stance signals, signals of interactional resistance, time frames, and values can all be altered to fit a particular political or journalistic purpose.

• Questions can frame utterances in a particular way and responses too can be crafted either to respond or evade

Events and the reporting of events are not the same thing.

• You should be able to use your critical skills, analytical abilities and appropriate metalanguage to comment on choices made in the reporting of speech events and performative documents