Discursive strategies in online media

shaping the perception of news

DIgesting Crises in Europe (DICE):
Deconstructing and Constructing Media Texts in Dialogue –
May 2017

Jasmina Đorđević
Faculty of Philosophy
University of Niš
jasmina.djordjevic@filfak.ni.ac.rs
Introduction
Modern media shape their news!

1. To comply with the message.

2. To fit the target audience.
3. To predetermine the perception of news.

One way of understanding this is to acknowledge that discursive

strategies are an integral part of cross-cultural activity.

Questions to consider:
1. How do the creators of news transfer the subtle nuances of cross-
cultural activity to their respective target audiences?
2. To what extent are discursive strategies employed to present “tailor-
made“ news to a particular audience ?
How could we answer the previous
questions?
Aim:
Investigate the extent to which discursive strategies are used in
online media reports by identifying the different approaches the
media take to one particular political problem.

Method:
A comparative analysis on a corpus of news based on key
words.

Corpus:
News (or headlines) with identical topics published in diffferent
national media (in different languages) during a certain period.
 Important about online news
1. A “type of text or discourse as it is expressed, used, or made
public in news media or public information carriers such
as TV, radio and the newspaper”, or a piece of “news discourse
about past political, social, or cultural events” (van Dijk, 2013: 4-5).

2. They are presented to various audiences, i.e. across different

languages and cultures, thus implying that each audience shares
“general opinions and the attitudes they form are essentially
social” which to a certain extent “define the goals, interests,
values and norms of a group, relative to socially relevant issues”
(van Dijk, 2013: 108).

BUT sharing news across languages and cultures does

not imply sharing the same opinions and attitudes!
Media discourse analysis
1. An approach within media linguistics,
2. A newly born sub-discipline of linguistics
investigating the discourse of the media
(Perrin, 2013).
3. Media linguistics is interested in two main
problems:
a) the language of the media, i.e. the ways by
which news media use language to represent
various aspects of society, politics, culture, etc.
(Bell, 1991; Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) and
b) the language in the media, i.e. language
standards, language ideologies and language
change, represented in the news media (Johnson
& Ensslin, 2007; Johnson & Milani, 2010).
Eight analytical approaches to MD
(Bednarek, 2006: 11-12)

1. Critical approach - power relations and ideology,

2. Narrative/pragmatic/stylistic approach - discourse-level
elements and explanations,
3. Corpus-linguistic approach - based on corpora,
4. Practice-focused approach - aspects of news-making
practices,
5. Diachronic approach - the history of newspaper discourse,
6. Socio-linguistic approach - correlation between style and
social factors,
7. Cognitive approach - relations between cognitive processes,
conceptual metaphor, social meaning and discourse and
8. Conversationalist approach - media discourse based on
methods of conversation analysis.
 None of the previously mentioned
strategies has ever been applied or tested
on multilingual and/or multicultural
corpora!
Basic strategies (Reisigl and Wodak, 2001: 44-45)

1. Reference or nomination: How are social actors,

objects, phenomena and events named and referred to
linguistically?

2. Predication: Which characteristics and features are

attributed to the actors, objects and phenomena?

3. Argumentation: How are claims of truth justified?

4. Perspectivization: How is the point of view of the

producer of a text positioned?

5. Intensifying and mitigating: To what extent are the

force and status of utterances modified?
Additional approach borrowed
from translation studies:
Recontextualization (Schäffner, 2013)
• Selection of information (omissions, additions);
• Restructuring, re-ordering, rearrangement of
information;
• Transformation of genre (e.g. interview into
report on interview) and
• Incorporation of (selected) information in a new
text, including syntactic (and stylistic)
adaptation
Practice 1

1. Look at the examples on the hand-out and

study the illustrated strategies.

1. Try to think of the reasons why the strategies

might have been applied by the particular
authors of the news items.
Practice 2
1. Look at the headlines on the hand-out.

2. Underline phrases (keywords) that indicate

cross-cultural activity based on any of the
previously mentioned strategies.

3. How would you alter/adapt the news item for

your own audience, i.e. which strategy would
you apply?
1.
References
Bednarek, M. (2006). Evaluation in media discourse. London/New York: Continuum.
2. Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
3. Chilton, P. & Schäffner, C. (Eds). (2002). Politics as text and talk. Analytic approaches to political discourse. Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins.
4. Coleman, S. & Ross, K. (2010). The media and the public: “them” and “us” in media discourse. Chichester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
5. Fetzer, A. & Lauerbach, G.E. (Eds.) (2007). Political discourse in the media: cross-cultural perspectives. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
6. Johnson, S., & Ensslin, A. (2007). Language in the media: Representations, identities, ideologies. A&C Black.
7. Johnson, S., & Milani, T. M. (Eds.). (2010). Language ideologies and media discourse: Texts, practices, politics. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
8. Kolstø, P. (Ed.). (2009). Media Discourse and the Yugoslav Conflicts. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing Limited.
9. Koopmans, R. & Statham. P. (2010). The making of a European public sphere: media discourse and political contention. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
10. Kress, G. R., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2001). Multimodal discourse: The modes and media of contemporary communication. London: Arnold.
11. Macdonald, M. (2003). Exploring media discourse. London: Oxford University Press.
12. Machin, D. & Van Leeuwen, T. (2007). Global Media Discourse. London/New York: Routledge.
13. McGee, M. C. (1985). Some issues in the rhetorical study of political communication. In K. R. Sanders, L. L. Kaid & D. Nimmo (Eds.), Political
communication yearbook (pp.155-182). Carbóndale: Southern Illinois University Press.
14. Musolff, A. (2004). Metaphor and political discourse: analogical reasoning in debates about Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
15. Obeng, G. S. & Hartford, B. A. S. (Eds.). (2008). Political Discourse Analysis. New York: Nova Science Publishers.
16. O’Keeffe, A. (2006). Investigating media discourse. London/New York: Routledge.
17. Perrin, D. (2013). The linguistics of newswriting. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
18. Reisigl, M. & Wodak. R. (2001). Discourse and discrimination: rhetorics of racism and antisemitism. London: Routledge.
19. Schäffner, C. (2004) Political discourse analysis from the point of view of translation studies. Journal of Language and Politics, 3(1), 117-150.
20.Schäffner, C. (2009). Political discourse, media and translation. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Available from http://www.myilibrary.com?ID=258518
21. Schäffner, C. (2013). Bridging the ideological abyss – translation strategies in politically sensitive texts [PDF document]. Presented in Liege, May 2013.
22.Talbot, M. (2007). Media discourse: representation and interaction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
23.Tannen, D. & Trester, A.M. (2013). Discourse 2.0. Language and new media. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
24.Van Dijk, T. A. (1997). What is Political Discourse Analysis? Belgian Journal of Linguistics, 11(1), 11-52.
25.Van Dijk, T. A. (2002). Political discourse and political cognition. In P. Chilton & C. Schäffner (Eds). Politics as text and talk. Analytic approaches to
Political Discourse (pp. 203–237). Amsterdam/ Philadelphia: Benjamins.
26.Van Hout, T. & Burger, P. (2015). Mediatization and the language of journalism. Tilbourg Papers in Culture Studies. Retrieved from:
https://www.google.rs/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=7&ved=0CEAQFjAG&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tilburguniversity.edu%2Fupload%2
F3cdcfbf7-8e54-4c8e-a318-d249b9165e47_TPCS_131_Van%2520Hout-
Burger.pdf&ei=QS6aVaWREaq7ygOssLO4Cw&usg=AFQjCNFr5lFNC49UT6ulatNsuZg5UsTm0g&sig2=WeJk3yoMYuM0jFwRbenPaw [21 July 201di5]
27.Wodak, R. (2013). Micro-level discursive strategies for constructing shared views around strategic issues in team meetings. Journal of Management Studies,
51(2), 175-348.