Examining the ways in which the media represents language-related issues and how it shapes and constructs what people think language is, this book offers a multilingual survey of the construction of language in and by the media. Tackling the big issues of identity, gender, youth, citizenship, politics and ideology across a range of mediums including television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet, Language in the Media brings together an international team of experts to examine how the media gives language distinctive forms and values. This is an essential text for students and researchers of sociolinguistics or language and communication. At a time when trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low and world leaders are using new media to deride so called 'fake news', this classic text offers insight and critical analysis into the key issues surrounding the relationship between language, the media and its audience.

The study of language ideologies has become a key theme in sociolinguistics over the past decade. It is the study of the relationship between representations of language, on the one hand, and broader aesthetic, economic, moral and political concerns, on the other. Research into the particular role played by media discourse in the construction, reproduction and contestation of such ideologies has been widely scattered - this book brings together this emerging field. It considers how, in an era of global communication technologies, the media - by which we understand the press, radio, television, cinema, the internet and multimodal gaming - help to disseminate preferred uses of, and ideas about, language. The book is tightly focussed on the relationship between language ideologies and media discourse, together with the methods and techniques required for the analysis of that relationship. It also places emphasis on television and new-media texts, incorporating and expanding upon recent theoretical insights into visual communication and multimodal discourse analysis. International in scope, this book will also be of interest to students from a wide range of fields including linguistics (particularly sociolinguistics and linguistic anthropology), modern languages, education, media studies, communication studies and cultural theory.

The issue of language policies in Ukraine gained prominence in 2014 when Russia launched an armed aggression against this Eastern European country at the pretext that language rights of its Russian-speaking citizens were violated. Three language laws in particular caused outrage of the Kremlin, and all of them were related to the media. These laws include the 2016 law, "On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Concerning a Share of Musical Works in the State Language in Programs of TV and Radio Organizations," the 2017 law, "On Amendments to Certain Laws of Ukraine Concerning the Language of Audiovisual (Electronic) Mass Media," and the 2019 law, "On Ensuring the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language." While language policies in Ukraine have been studied by Ukrainian and international scholars, most of their research focused on education and public administration. Additional research of the media is necessary, recognizing their place in a modern society. Media create informed citizenry in a democracy and affect meaning-making of their consumers. They are also a part of the economic market. By regulating media, a state sets up conditions for a media system that would meet its economic, political, social, and ideological goals. Therefore, by examining language policies in media regulation, this study set out to better understand processes taking place in the society. To achieve this goal, the following research questions were posed: What were the reasons for creating policies regulating language use in the media? What were the goals of the policies? What are the results of the policies? Did the policies accomplished what they were supposed to do and why? If not, what are the alternatives? The primary theoretical foundation was in the political economy of media, which recognizes a dual nature of media in a capitalist democracy as a source of information and a profit-generating industry. Using political economy allowed for a comprehensive analysis of the studied social phenomenon. In addition, theories of media regulation were used to analyze principles applied by the Ukrainian state to govern media systems. This research also operated with the concepts of language ideologies, practices, and policies, borrowing from the fields of sociolinguistics and rhetorical theory, as well as studies of nationalism. Methods of research included historical analysis, policy analysis, and semi-structured in-depth interviews. As Ukraine is transitioning from a totalitarian state to a capitalist democracy, historical analysis was used to study political, economic, and social factors that contributed to the development of Ukraine's media regulation and language use. Policy analysis focused on the review of the 2016-2019 language policies affecting media and the public discourse around them. An important part of the study included interviews with Ukrainian media workers and policymakers. Interview participants reflected on the reasons, goals, results, and effectiveness of the language policies in the media, as well as their alternatives. Their thoughts provided a much-needed insiders' perspective on media regulation in Ukraine. The research showed that the 2016-2019 language policies in the media were caused by a rapid transition of Ukraine from a republic in a totalitarian state with a dominant Russian culture to a capitalist democracy based on a Ukrainian nation state. Ambiguous language policies in the media allowed for an unrestricted use of any language while declaring Ukrainian the official state language, thus maintaining stability in the de facto bilingual country. Commercialization and consolidation of the media led to capturing of the media by oligarchs who favored Russian products and had cultural and business ties with Russia. When territorial integrity of Ukraine was threatened by the Russian aggression, the state tightened language policies to strengthen the country's national identity. Thus, the goals of the language policies in the media were to secure the dominant status of the Ukrainian language as a critical element of the nation state by opening the media market for and popularizing media content made in Ukrainian and/or in Ukraine. These goals were partially achieved as Ukrainian became more prominent in the media, but reforms are slowed down by the resistance of large media owners. Russian aggression essentially ruled out alternatives to current media policies. Considering the success of media quotas and the current government's commitment to language policies despite lobbying efforts of the oligarchs, the language provisions in the media regulations analyzed will likely endure. Based on the research findings, recommendations for policymakers and media workers include continued support to the policies, focus on localism and public media, open discussion of language ideologies, and protection of journalism.

"Language ideologies" are cultural representations, whether explicit or implicit, of the intersection of language and human beings in a social world. Mediating between social structures and forms of talk, such ideologies are not only about language. Rather, they link language to identity, power, aesthetics, morality and epistemology. Through such linkages, language ideologies underpin not only linguistic form and use, but also significant social institutions and fundamental nottions of person and community. The essays in this new volume examine definitions and conceptions of language in a wide range of societies around the world. Contributors focus on how such defining activity organizes language use as well as institutions such as religious ritual, gender relations, the nation-state, schooling, and law. Beginning with an introductory survey of language ideology as a field of inquiry, the volume is organized in three parts. Part I, "Scope and Force of Dominant Conceptions of Language," focuse on the propensity of cultural models of language developed in one social domain to affect linguistic and social behavior across domains. Part II, "Language Ideology in Institutions of Power," continues the examination of the force of specific language beliefs, but narrows the scope to the central role that language ideologies play in the functioning of particular institutions of power such as schooling, the law, or mass media. Part III, "Multiplicity and Contention among Ideologies," emphasizes the existence of variability, contradiction, and struggles among ideologies within any given society. This will be the first collection of work to appear in this rapidly growing field, which bridges linguistic and social theory. It will greatly interest linguistic anthropologists, social and cultural anthropologists, sociolinguists, historians, cultural studies, communications, and folklore scholars.

"Examining the ways in which the media represents language-related issues and how it shapes and constructs what people think language is, this book offers a multilingual survey of the construction of language in and by the media. Tackling the big issues of identity, gender, youth, citizenship, politics and ideology across a range of mediums including television, radio, newspapers, magazines and the internet, Language in the Media brings together an international team of experts to examine how the media gives language distinctive forms and values. This is an essential text for students and researchers of sociolinguistics or language and communication. At a time when trust in the mainstream media is at an all-time low and world leaders are using new media to deride so called 'fake news', this classic text offers insight and critical analysis into the key issues surrounding the relationship between language, the media and its audience." --Bloomsbury Publishing.

Newspaper coverage of world events is presented as the unbiased recording of `hard facts`. In an incisive study of both the quality and the popular press, Roger Fowler challenges this perception, arguing that news is a practice, a product of the social and political world on which it reports. Writing from the perspective of critical linguistics, Fowler examines the crucial role of language in mediating reality. Starting with a general account of news values and the processes of selection and transformation which go to make up the news, Fowler goes on to consider newspaper representations of gender, power, authority and law and order. He discusses stereotyping, terms of abuse and endearment, the editorial voice and the formation of consensus. Fowler's analysis takes in some of the major news stories of the Thatcher decade - the American bombing of Libya in 1986, the salmonella-in-eggs affair, the problems of the National Health Service and the controversy of youth and contraception.

Language Ideologies and Canadian Media explores how French and English Canadian media discuss languages and language issues, which language ideologies predominate in English and French, and whether language ideologies in traditional news media are transferred to new and social media. Using corpus linguistics and discourse analysis and a variety of different datasets ranging from print newspapers to online news, commentary and Twitter, the author argues that language ideologies in Canadian media have a bearing not only on the extent to which Canadian language policies are adopted, but also on the very way that Canadians understand themselves and their place in the nation.

Digital Discourse offers a distinctly sociolinguistic perspective on the nature of language in digital technologies. It starts by simply bringing new media sociolinguistics up to date, addressing current technologies like instant messaging, textmessaging, blogging, photo-sharing, mobile phones, gaming, social network sites, and video sharing. Chapters cover a range of communicative contexts (journalism, gaming, tourism, leisure, performance, public debate), communicators (professional and lay, young people and adults, intimates and groups), and languages (Irish, Hebrew, Chinese, Finnish, Japanese, German, Greek, Arabic, and French). The volume is organized around topics of primary interest to sociolinguists, including genre, style and stance. With commentaries from the two most internationally recognized scholars of new media discourse (Naomi Baron and Susan Herring) and essays by well-established scholars and new voices in sociolinguistics, the volume will be more current, more diverse, and more thematically unified than any other collection on the topic.

This systematic introduction to the concept of point of view in language explores the ways in which point of view intersects with and is shaped by ideology. It specifically focuses on the way in which speakers and writers linguistically encode their beliefs, interests and biases in a wide range of media. The book draws on an extensive array of linguistic theories and frameworks and each chapter includes a self-contained introduction to a particular topic in linguistics, allowing easy reference. The author uses examples from a variety of literary and non-literary text types such as, narrative fiction, advertisements and newspaper reports.