News across Five Continents
Newspaper Language in the Context of Regional and Functional Variation
Jennifer Fest [+–]
RWTH Aachen University
Jennifer Fest is Chair of English Linguistics at RWTH Aachen University.
This volume presents a thorough analysis of newspaper language from a regional and functional perspective. Based on a collection of 4,000 newspaper articles from five English-speaking regions and five different news domains, it discusses the benefit of register analysis in a systemic functional framework to comparing varieties and determining their developmental status. For this purpose, it starts with revisiting the states of the art in the fields of media studies, text analysis and variational studies, and then combines the three strands to result in an operationalization of register parameters and thus the basis for the analysis. The results are presented for each parameter as well as in terms of correlations, and are visualized frequently. After a discussion of the findings, the work considers their implications for the theory and method as well as the author’s ideas for enhancements and future research.
Series: Text and Social Context
Table of Contents
Part I: Theory
1. Regional and Functional Variation [+–] 3-5
Chapter 1 introduces the questions this book will tackle and the motivation behind it, as well as the approaches suggested to find answers. It also briefly outlines the combination of functional and regional perspectives on language variation and connects it to the area of news writing.
Chapter 2 gives an overview of previous research in the field of English as a global language, involving both established concepts and outdated or rejected ones. It compares different taxonomies, categorisations, and definitions, and establishes the terminology and theoretical assumptions used in this volume. Furthermore, it describes the development of the English varieties spoken in Kenya and Hong Kong and puts them in their historical as well as current socio-political contexts.
3. The Role of News and its Language [+–] 27-33
Chapter 3 reviews models of journalistic writing as well as linguistic research in the field. It discusses norms and guidelines that are in use among and taught to journalists and introduces the notion of press freedom as a potential influence on news language.
Chapter 4 introduces the linguistic framework used in this study, that of systemic functional linguistics. The concept of register is defined based on the relevant literature, and it is outlined how a functional approach can be beneficial for analyses of media language as well as regional variation.
Part II: Methodology
Chapter 5 contains the operationalisation of the theoretical concept of register in order to prepare it for a quantitative analysis. It looks at the three register parameters – field, mode, and tenor of discourse – separately, taking into account their respective subdimensions. The concrete linguistic features defined for each dimension are summarised in a table.
6. Corpus Design [+–] 57-64
Chapter 6 describes the dataset used in this study. The sampling method, size and processing of data and the annotation and mark-up are explained separately and in detail. To make the corpus design and sampling decisions transparent and understandable, the notion of representativeness is also discussed.
Part III: Results and What to Learn from Them
7. Field of Discourse [+–] 67-91
Chapter 7 is the first part of the analysis. It covers the results for the field of discourse, looking at subdimensions of goal orientation and experiential domain in turn. It gives descriptive and inferential statistics and offers some tentative potential explanations of key findings.
8. Tenor of Discourse [+–] 92-120
Chapter 8 summarises the results for the tenor of discourse and its subdimensions social hierarchy and social distance. Descriptive and inferential statistics are presented and the results are connected to those given in Chapter 7 wherever connections appear.
9. Mode of Discourse [+–] 121-130
Chapter 9 contains the results from the analysis of the mode of discourse and its subdimension medium. Again, the statistical insights are related to the results for the parameters of field and tenor whenever indicated.
Chapter 10 summarises the key findings of the analysis and draws conclusions for the overarching questions. It looks at functional and regional variation separately and then combines the two approaches to see how the perspectives benefit from each other. Press freedom is taken up as a further factor in the analysis and we check for correlation with individual linguistic features, strengthening the assumption that freedom of press influences how news is presented linguistically.
11. Concluding Remarks [+–] 143-147
Chapter 11 briefly recaptures the main findings and insights of the study. It also reviews the method applied here and addresses potential strategies for future research.
Appendices
Appendix 1: Top Ten Keywords 148-152
ISBN-13 (Hardback)
9781800502895
Price (Hardback)
£75.00 / $100.00
ISBN-13 (Paperback)
9781800502901
Price (Paperback)
£24.95 / $32.00
ISBN (eBook)
9781800502918
Price (eBook)
Individual
£24.95 / $32.00
Institutional
£75.00 / $100.00
£24.95 / $32.00
Institutional
£75.00 / $100.00
Publication
28/05/2023
Pages
194
Size
234 x 156mm
Readership
scholars
Illustration
20 figures
