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

• 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, mini-

institutions 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 implo

sion• 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, 2008Convincing many more people to register as organ donors is the right approach

• Give us justiceThe Sun January 17, 2008POLICE 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 non-factual 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

• 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

• 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. •

Voice of the Mirror

• Blacklists ruin livesBlacklisting 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