Preformulating the News is a study of press releases and of how they anticipate the requirements of journalistic writing. Drawing from a large corpus (Dutch and English), it is argued that the genre’s peculiar audience-directedness can be related to a number of metapragmatic textual features and that this sheds light on the asymmetries of what can be termed the ‘newsmaking’ and ‘news management’ processes. In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.e. ‘projected’, discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a ‘preformulating’ role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake of the 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested that the study’s findings support a hegemonic view of the media. In analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.

Preformulating the News is a study of press releases and of how they anticipate the requirements of journalistic writing. Drawing from a large corpus (Dutch and English), it is argued that the genre's peculiar audience-directedness can be related to a number of metapragmatic textual features and that this sheds light on the asymmetries of what can be termed the 'newsmaking' and 'news management' processes. In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.e. 'projected', discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a 'preformulating' role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake of the 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested that the study's findings support a hegemonic view of the media. In analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.

Adopting a multi-perspective ontological approach to language in social life, this book investigates the concept of journalistic stance, defining it as a nexus of social practice rather than simply linguistic realizations. It focuses on the discursive aspect of journalistic stance in news texts to analyse the ways journalistic stances are enacted in Chinese and Australian print-media, hard-news reporting. Further, using the appraisal framework, it identifies stance markers in news texts and examines the social-institutional and (inter)personal aspects of journalistic stance on the basis of insights gained from participant observation in news institutions in order to understand news-production processes. It also highlights the articulation of news values and the exercise of symbolic power in each news-production context. This book appeals to a wide range of researchers, such as discourse analysts in the field of news discourse and other scholars whose research is relevant to stance/evaluation, and those engaged in corpus-informed studies, along with those in the field journalism and communication.

This volume explores the evolution of the language of museum communication from 1950 to the present day, focusing on its most salient tool, the press release. The analysis is based on a corpus of press releases issued by eight high-profile British and American museums, and has been carried out adopting corpus linguistics and genre analysis methodologies. After identifying the typical features of the museum press release, new media more recently adopted by museums, such as web presentations, blogs, e-news, and social media, are taken into consideration, exploring questions such as how has the language of museum communication changed in order to face the challenge posed by new technologies? Are museum press releases threatened by new approaches used in contemporary public relations? Are the typical press release features still detectable in new genres? Drawing on insights from linguistics, discourse analysis, and museum communication this book will be of great value to researchers and practitioners of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, and museum communication scholars.

Media and politics have always been mutually influential. The media plays an important political role of its own in promoting and discussing policies, as well as conveying representations of power and ideology. On the other hand, media outlets are themselves subject to political forces that have an impact on their editorial line. This mutual influence comes to light not only in journalistic practices, but also in how news is constructed and conveyed. This volume explores the relations between politics and various types of media as expressed in different areas of the world, namely Europe, Asia, the Americas, and the Middle East. Such a complex landscape calls for a multiplicity of analytical tools and cannot ignore specific socio-political, geographic, linguistic, and cultural contexts which may be overlooked when approached from a global perspective. In this volume, a combination of senior scholars and young experts from a wide range of disciplines, such as discourse analysis, international relations, and cultural studies, come together in a conversation which recognizes the media as a global phenomenon without neglecting its local specificities.

Written by a former news reporter and editor, News Talk gives us an insider's view of the media, showing how journalists select and construct their news stories. Colleen Cotter goes behind the scenes, revealing how language is chosen and shaped by news staff into the stories we read and hear. Tracing news stories from start to finish, she shows how the actions of journalists and editors - and the limitations of news writing formulas - may distort a story that was prepared with the most determined effort to be fair and accurate. Using insights from both linguistics and journalism, News Talk is a remarkable picture of a hidden world and its working practices on both sides of the Atlantic. It will interest those involved in language study, media and communication studies and those who want to understand how media shape our language and our view of the world.

This book provides the first comprehensive account of temporal deixis in English printed and online news texts. Linking the characteristic usage of tenses with the projection of deictic centres, it notes how conventional tenses, particularly in headlines, are affected by heteroglossia arising from various accessed voices. The resulting tense shifts are interpreted pragmatically as a conventional reader-oriented strategy that creates the impression of temporal co-presence. It is argued that since different tense choices systematically correlate with the three main textual segments of news texts, the function of tense needs to be viewed in a close connection with its local context. Traditional news texts are also contrasted with online news, particularly as far as the effect of hypertextuality on the coding of time is concerned. A two-level structural framework for the analysis of online news is proposed in order to account for their increased textual complexity. The book will be of interest to a wide range of scholars and students working in the fields of media pragmatics, discourse analysis and stylistics.

The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media provides an accessible and comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research in media linguistics. This handbook analyzes both language theory and practice, demonstrating the vital role of this research in understanding language use in society. With over thirty chapters contributed by leading academics from around the world, this handbook: addresses issues of language use, form, structure, ideology, practice, and culture in the context of both traditional and new communication media; investigates mediated language use in public spheres, organizations, and personal communication, including newspaper journalism, broadcasting, and social media; examines the interplay of language and media from both linguistic and media perspectives, discussing auditory and visual media and graphic modes, as well as language and gender, multilingualism, and language change; analyzes the advantages and shortcomings of current approaches within media linguistics research and outlines avenues for future research. The Routledge Handbook of Language and Media is a must-have survey of this key field, and is essential reading for those interested in media linguistics.

The Business of Words examines the practices of ‘high-end’ language workers or wordsmiths where we find words being professionally designed, institutionally managed, and, inevitably, objectified for status and profit. Aligned with existing work on language and political economy in critical sociolinguistics and discourse studies, the volume offers a novel, complementary insight into the relatively elite practices of language workers such as advertisers, dialect coaches, publishers, judges, translators, public relations officers, fine artists, journalists, and linguists themselves. In fact, the book considers what academics might learn about language from other wordsmiths, opening a space for ‘dialogue’ between those researching language and those who also stake a claim to linguistic expertise and a way with words. Bringing together an array of leading international scholars from the cognate fields of discourse studies, sociolinguistics, and linguistic anthropology, this book is an essential resource for researchers, advanced undergraduate, and postgraduate students of English language, linguistics and applied linguistics, communication and media studies, and anthropology.

The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Pragmatics provides an overview of key concepts and theory in pragmatics, charts developments in the disciplinary relationship between translation studies and pragmatics, and showcases applications of pragmatics-inspired research in a wide range of translation, spoken and signed language interpreting activities. Bringing together 22 authoritative chapters by leading scholars, this reference work is divided into three sections: Influences and Intersections, Methodological Issues, and Applications. Contributions focus on features of linguistic pragmatics and their analysis in authentic and experimental data relating to a wide range of translation and interpreting activities, including: news, scientific, literary and audiovisual translation, translation in online social media, healthcare interpreting and audio description for the theatre. It also encompasses contributions on issues beyond the level of the text that include the study of interpersonal relationships in practitioner networks and the development of pragmatic competence in interpreter training. Each chapter includes many practical illustrative examples and a list of recommended reading. Fundamental reading for students and academics in translation and interpreting studies, this is also an essential resource for those working in the related fields of linguistics, communication and intercultural studies.