Language in the Media

Question 1

Fairclough - Synthetic Personalisation

Answer 1

Addressing a wide audience as individuals using direct address, e.g. newspaper articles read by thousands but still uses ‘you’

Large corporations address potential customers on a personal level to create a sense of friendship

Question 2

Fairclough’s values

Answer 2

experiential values = any words with certain associations or ideologies - e.g. ‘rampage’ is used to describe a group of kids, creates sense of chaos and animalistic imagery

relational values = formality, refers to how close/distant the reader and writer are (formal/informal) (e.g ‘hooded youths’ has rv as audience is likely older gen)

expressive values =over wording/ hyperbolic, the idea that a word used by a writer might express a certain opinion, e.g. ‘left wing politicians’ can be intended as an insult from right wing politics, but might express a positive feeling for someone who is more left wing

Question 3

Fairclough - Power behind/within discourse

Answer 3

Power WITHIN refers to the language itself and the words chosen and choices made with grammar, semantics etc

Power BEHIND refers to the context behind the writing, social impact, political standing, power dynamics etc.

e.g. a teacher in a classroom has power in discourse because they control the conversation and subject matter

a doctor is trusted and professional, therefore we take what they say and write as more factual than other people

Question 4

Instrumental vs. Influential power

Answer 4

Instrumental - held by those who have authority over others due to who they are, e.g. The Queen

Influential - held by those who aim to influence and persuade others (such as politicians and advertisers)

Question 5

Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis

Answer 5

Linguistic determinism - suggests the language a person uses determines or influences their thinking or worldview.

Question 6

Linguistic determinism vs reflection

Answer 6

Determinism - suggests the language a person uses determines or influences their thinking or worldview.

Reflection - suggests the language we use reflects our own thoughts

Question 7

Bell (1991)

Answer 7

Journalists do not write articles, they write stories

Question 8

Hall (1978)

Answer 8

said that the media is ‘the translation of official viewpoints into a public idiom’

Question 9

3 ASPECTS OF IDEOLOGY (Van Dijk, 1998)

Answer 9

Social functions - Why do people develop and use ideologies in the first place?
For coordination of the social practices of group members in order to realise the goals of a society, protects its interests, etc.

Cognitive structures - Creating/representing ‘in group members’ and ‘out-group members’ (us vs. them)

Discursive expression - How are ideologies expressed in text and talk? e.g. lexis (labelling of ‘crooks’ ‘gangsters’ etc), conceptual metaphors (‘floods of immigrants’) etc.

Question 10

Gendered language examples

Answer 10

• The generic ‘he’ pronoun used in old law texts for all people of any gender
• The generic ‘man’ (marked forms), e.g. fireMAN, policeMAN
• Terms of endearment e.g. ‘sweetie’ ‘honey’ ‘chick’ ‘baby’ all condescending to women, comparing them to infants, food and animals
• Order of precedence, e.g. husband and wife, boys and girls, men and women -. exception is ‘ladies and gentlemen’ due to rule of courtesy
• Semantic derogation, female version of a word becomes more negative over time while the male version stays the same e.g. master and mistress

Question 11

Halliday’s verb processes (1994)

Answer 11

Material verbs - describe ‘doing’ something, e.g. ‘ran’, ‘fought’ - usually used when describing men

Mental verbs - describe ‘feeling’ something, e.g. ‘thought’, ‘loved’ - usually used when describing women

Question 12

Aristotle theory (persuasive rhetoric device)

Answer 12

Logos - Logic, statistics, facts etc.
Ethos - ethics, morals etc.
Pathos - emotions, feelings etc.

Question 13

Anaphora

Answer 13

Repetition at the beginning of a sentence

Question 14

Hypophora

Answer 14

Asking a question then immediately answering it

Question 15

Van Leeuwen - Nomination

Answer 15

Naming of social actor in any way within a text

Question 16

Van Leeuwen - Classification

Answer 16

Talking about a social actor’s identity, e.g. class, age, gender, e.g. ‘The woman, aged 34’

Question 17

Van Leeuwen - Functionalism

Answer 17

Talking about a social actor’s role or occupation ‘The secondary school teacher’

Question 18

Van Leeuwen - Physical identification

Answer 18

Talking about a social actor’s physical appearence, e.g. ‘sporting a high ponytail’

Question 19

Van Leeuwen - Relational identification

Answer 19

Talking about a social actor’s relation to others, e.g. ‘mother of three’

Question 20

Use of passive voice in newspapers

Answer 20

Used to avoid blame, allow them to be vague on details of a story or distance the publication from the story

Question 21

Wareing’s theory of power

Answer 21

Social - power held by a group of people due to certain social factors, such as class, ethnicity, gender, or age.

Political - power held by people with authority, such as politicians and the police.

Personal - power based on an individual’s occupation or role in society. For example, a headteacher would likely hold more power than a teaching assistant.

Question 22

Syndetic vs Asyndetic listing

Answer 22

Syndetic - use of conjunctions when listing (and — and —–)

Asyndetic - avoidance of conjunction when listing, using commas instead (, , , )

Question 23

3 theories of Humour

Answer 23

The Incongruity Theory (Morreall)
- humor is the enjoyment of something that violates ordinary mental patterns and expectations.
-structural ambiguity (jokes/puns-> double meaning/one-liners)
- phonological jokes ; ‘How do you think the unthinkable? With an ithberg’
-morphological jokes
-lexis
-syntax
-discourse

The Superiority Theory
= Teasing someone to gain power over them (social context for humour)

The Psychic Release Theory
= Jokes that make people laugh because a taboo has been broken
(ie sex, death, religion etc)

Question 24

Types of satire

Answer 24

Horatian Satire -> seeks to criticise rather than attack its subject (witty/playful)
= fake donald trump example

Juvenalian Satire -> biting, bitter and angry; sees the voices in the world as intolerable, very ironic/sarcastic (attacking) (wants to achieve something)
= uni price example

Question 25

Material verbs (Halliday)

Answer 25

Verb processes that describe actions or events, e.g. ‘hit’ ‘run’ ‘play’

Question 26

Mental verbs (Halliday)

Answer 26

Verb processesthat describe thought, emotion etc. e.g. ‘loved’ ‘thought’ ‘felt’