Session - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Session 5

Evaluation

and

reporting

:

attributionSlide2

revision

What is described as ‘the voice of the newspaper’? What characteristics does it have?Slide3
Slide4

Commenting

In the editorial, who is evaluated

favourably? (give e.g.s of vocabulary used)

unfavourably? (give e.g.s of vocabulary used)

Underline example(s) of:

modality

a rhetorical question

first person plural pronouns – who do they refer to?

a metaphorSlide5

A brave widow and our broken society

19th January 2008

Brave: Devastated

widow Helen

Newlove

spoke

wise

words about today's society

Anyone who wants to know how to tackle

the tide of

drunken

,

mindless

lawbreaking

that threatens to

engulf

our communities,

should

read the

wise

words of Garry

Newlove's

widow, Helen.

Despite still

raw grief

for the loss of her husband and the father of her three daughters, Mrs

Newlove

set out a

clear

template for dealing with

Britain's social breakdown

in her impact statement to the court that this week found three youths

guilty of kicking her husband to death

.

The first culprit was

the legal system

. The ringleader of the gang had been released on bail hours before the attack.

Mrs

Newlove

believes that

we

have a "

justice system

that does not do enough to protect

decent

hard working people".

Slide6

Yesterday, in a separate case, a judge agreed that

our

obsession

with rights

was

leaving society

"

bedevilled

by

feral

youth".

Then, Mrs

Newlove

criticised

the police

. The

gang

that

killed

her husband had, along with others, she said, been

terrorising

the neighbourhood for weeks.

Local police

had done nothing to stop them.

What kind of policing is it that allows criminal gangs to make people prisoners in their own homes?

But Mrs

Newlove

did not limit her criticism to

the authorities

.

Parents

must

"take responsibility for their children".

It's up to

parents

to teach their children respect for authority and for other people.

It's up to

parents

to set an example about drinking.

It's up to

parents

to ensure that truanting children get the education that will put them on

the path to a better life

.

Mrs

Newlove

and her daughters have

suffered a terrible loss

, but if

we

act on what she has learnt,

we

'll be taking

the first steps

to making our streets as safe as they

ought

to be. Slide7

Evaluative texts

Often

the way

an

event

is

summarised

can involve

an

evaluation

In the

lexis

In the

grammar

Even

newspaper

headlines

can

contain

evaluationsSlide8

Functions of the headline

Attract the reader’s attention to the story (or paper, if on the front page)

Tell the reader what the story is about

summarising the

content

of the story

indicating the

evaluation

of the story

indicating the

register

or tone of the story

indicating the

focus

of the storySlide9

Headline language: evaluation and graduation

An

emphatic

triumph (

Sun

)

A

shattering

blow (

Mirror

)Slide10

Headline Language: Focus and registerSlide11

The same

event

?

Evaluations

?

Goldman Sachs '

is

morally

bankrupt

'

Goldman executive quits over 'toxic' greed

A knee in the nuts that means serious trouble for Goldman Sachs

A PR disaster for Goldman Sachs

Smith lifts lid on nasty cultureSlide12

Daily mail headline

'How we ripped out the eyeballs of our "

muppet

" clients': Goldman Sachs exec exposes bank's 'toxic' greed in scathing public resignation letterSlide13

Where the news came

from

The

event

was

the

publication

of

a performative

document

– a

letter

of

resignation

-

Journalists

love performative

documents

because

they

are the

hardest

facts

they

can

get

their

hands

on

(

Fishman

: 1980:99)Slide14

The construction of news

[t]he reporter does not go out gathering news, picking up stories as if they were fallen apples, he creates news stories by selecting fragments of information from the mass of raw data he receives and organizing them in journalistic form.

(Chibnall 1982: 76)Slide15

‘

Journalists

love the

performatives

of

politics

where

something

happens

through

someone

saying

it

. The

fusion

of

word and

act

is

ideal

for

news

reporting

. No

other

facts

have

to

be

verified

. The

only

fact

is

that

somebody

said

something

’

Bell 1991:207Slide16

Reporting

choices

Different newspapers and news broadcasts report differently, both in content and presentation

They express affiliations and disaffections in the way they represent or mediate by means of transformation or differential treatment in presentation

This is part of the social construction of news but before transformation and treatment there is the question of selection: the decision that something is worth including, is relevantSlide17

Where news comes from

Press release material is being used more often as a basis for articles,

and phrases are frequently taken

verbatim by the journalists from a

limited number of press releases

60 percent of press articles come wholly or mainly from ‘pre-packaged’ sourcesSlide18

PR sources

The findings suggest that public relations often does much more than merely set the agenda: it was found that 19 percent of newspaper stories were verifiably derived

mainly or wholly from public relations material,

while fewer than half the stories appeared to be entirely independent of

traceable PRSlide19

Once a topic is selected then the next thing…..

Is who gets to speak:

news has to be gathered so there are a number of sources, events and institutions which are frequently used as sources sometimes called ‘accessed voices’

Sources monitored routinely: such as parliament, councils, police, emergency services, courts, diary events, royalty, airports, other news mediaSlide20

Accessed voices 2

organizations issuing statements and holding press conferences (government departments, local authority departments, public services, companies, trade unions, non-commercial organizations, political parties, armed forces)Slide21

Accessed voices 3

Individuals making statements, seeking publicity

(prominent people, members of the public)

The interesting thing is how they are introduced and how their words are usedSlide22

Inclusion means evaluating relevance

When a writer/speaker chooses to quote or reference the words or thoughts of another.

By referencing the words of another, the writer, at the very least, indicates that these words are in some way relevant to his/her current communicative purposes.

Thus the most basic intertextual evaluation is one of implied `relevance'. Slide23

Reflexive language

You use language to talk about events and objects in the world around you.

Some of the events that you talk about are

language events

– what other people say or have said, what you yourself think or have thought and so on. You can also treat these events as things – you listen to a speech or make a suggestion.

Any language has particular ways of talking about events and things which happen to consist of language.Slide24

3 basic ways

To repeat the bit of language more or less as it originally occurred (Direct speech)

To repeat in your own words (Reported or indirect speech)

To report the occurrence of a bit of language without actually saying what was said or written (Language reports)Slide25

Endorsement

Once an attributed proposition has been included (and hence evaluated as `relevant') it can then be further evaluated as `endorsed' or `

disendorsed

'.

The

endorsed utterance is one which the writer either directly

or

indirectly indicates support for, or agreement with.

The

endorsed utterance is represented as true or reliable or convincing. Slide26

extra-vocalisation – using others’ words

There are a number of factors including the degree of authority which is indicated of the source and the degree to which the writer/speaker endorses (or

dis

-endorses) the attributed material.

As X, perhaps the world's leading authority on Y, has demonstrated,

... (high authority /

authorially

endorsed, the writer indicates they share responsibility with the source for the proposition/proposal)

X

says that

... (neutral with respect to endorsement)

Some Xs have claimed that

...(

dis

-endorsed, author disavows responsibility for the proposition/proposal)Slide27

Argumentative

force

In endorsed formulations (for example, `

As X has so compellingly demonstrated

)

the writer not only indicates their personal investment in the current argument, but adds to the argumentative force by representing the current view as one which is not theirs alone but one which is shared with, for example, the wider community or with relevant experts.Slide28

The Government has finally conceded that they made a mistake.

Here the term "

concede"

carries a number of connotations. Firstly, of course, it indicates that the Government only reluctantly came to offer up the proposition that "

we made a mistake

". "

Concede"

like "

admit

" implies that the attributed source has only now been compelled, somehow, to reveal the truth.

And

, secondly, of course, there is the implication that what is "c

onceded

" is "the truth of the matter" - that is to say, the proposition framed in this way is represented as true.

The

positive endorsement is not of the quoted source, but of their proposition or proposal.Slide29

Ways of distancing

One quite common and interesting mechanism for more indirectly indicating

dis

-endorsement is to

characterise

the utterance as unexpected or surprising.

Disendorsement

can, however, go beyond such `distancing' to the point of

absolute

rejection or denial of the attributed proposition. Slide30

Disendorsement

Even if writers/speakers choose to include what other people say they can also distance themselves from the utterance, indicating that they take no responsibility for its reliability.

This is commonly done by the use of a quoting verb such as

`to claim

' and `

allege

', nouns such as ‘

rumour

’, adverbs such as ‘

reportedly

’. Slide31

Signalled

choices

The

speech

criticised

those

who

falsely

claim

that

Bush

is

just a Texas

catle-rancher

Disendorsement

The

Archbishop

rightly

describes

the

killing

as

evil

.

Endorsement

The report

demonstrates

clearly

…

EndorsementSlide32

Responsibility

Who is presented as taking responsibility for the utterance under consideration:

sole responsibility (all unattributed material)

no responsibility (as with dis-endorsed, attributed material)

shared responsibility (with endorsed attributed material)Slide33

Talking about reporting

S

peaker/writer: the person who said or wrote what is being reported

H

earer/reader: the person to whom the speaker /writer was talking or writing

R

eporter: the person who gives the report of the language event

L

anguage event: the original act of speaking or writing by the speaker or writer

R

eport: the whole account of the language event(which may or may not include identification of the speaker/writer and may include a direct quotation or some indirect speech or both, or neither

M

essage: the part of the report which represents what was said or written in the language event

Reporting signal

: the part of the report which tells you that this is a report, for example, a reporting verb such as ‘say’. In some cases punctuation marks such as inverted commas may act as reporting signals

.

Look at the text

Goldman an ethical history

and identify and comment on the above elementsSlide34

textual integration

Insertion

= a clear separation between the words of the source and those of the source (quotation marks) or whether the distinction has been blurred; the actual words of the other speaker

assimilation = reformulation and paraphrasingSlide35

Direct and indirect quotation

whether the writer purports to offer the reader the actual words of the attributed source or whether these have been reworked in some way, often with the result that the wording is more like that of the current text than that of the original speaker/writer.

At its most simple, this distinction separates

direct quotation

(where the attributed material is clearly separated from the rest of the text)

and

indirect quotation

(where the words of the attributed are not so clearly demarcated and where there may be considerable paraphrasing.)Slide36

Indirect quotation

the

distance between the external and the authorial voice is reduced.

There is some degree of assimilation by the text of the attributed meanings.

Such assimilation may be increased through the use of the various grammatical structures of attribution. (reporting verbs)Slide37

Attribution and text types

There are marked differences between text types e.g. fiction vs. news reporting

ambiguous attribution and blurred distinctions can be used for a series of rhetorical purposes

academic writing involves a series of ‘rules’ about attribution (the plagiarism issue)

the media also have a set of editorial rules regarding the accuracy of reporting

in literary studies the distinction between indirect and free indirect speech has undergone a vast amount of researchSlide38

Speech

events

can

be

reported

in a

variety

of

ways

Distance

or

disendorsement

, stance

signals

,

signals

of

interactional

resistance

,

time

frames

, and

values

can

all

be

altered

to

fit

a

particular

political

or

journalistic

purpose

.

Questions

can frame

utterances

in a

particular

way

responses

can

be

crafted

to

respond

or evadeSlide39

Events

and the

reporting

of

events

are

not

the

same

thing

.

You

should

be

able

to

use

your

critical

skills

,

analytical

abilities

and appropriate

metalanguage

to

comment

on

choices

made

in the

reporting

of

speech

events

and performative

documents