Language & Literature SL1 & HL1
Language and Mass Communication
News & Views
Essential Questions
- How do newspapers use language to inform, entertain and persuade?
- How do the choices about what is news reflect beliefs and biases?
- How do the choices of words and images reflect belief and biases?
- How does mass media use language (words and images) to influence
audiences ideologically?
Note: you will need access to several different newspapers throughout this unit.
Many of the articles we will analyze are online, but it is important to analyze the
actual layout and appearance of real newspapers. Collect some.
Attention! Minor Assessment – Create a glossary of all of the major terms used
in this unit. Grading will be based on comprehensiveness and usefulness of your
work. Due at the end of the unit.
What is News? – Earthquake Far Away - Not Many Dead
 News values
 Timeliness, proximity, prominence, impact, rarity, human interest.
 Who decides?
 Understanding theoretical bias involves examining codes,
assumptions, political affiliations and the social and professional
context behind the argument and the focus of the story.
 There are institutional assumptions that are made when producing
the news, regardless of any other political or theoretical leaning.
 News media must be aware of the desires and concerns of its
audience. It must be concerned with generating an audience for
advertisers.
 News organizations, far from simply finding news, must create
consumable and interesting news out of a mass of experience.
 Each news outlet will have a distinct philosophy of what counts as
news – this philosophy will contain assumptions about what is
important in the world thereby influencing how their audience
perceives and understands the world.
Exercise:Work in pairs/threes. Examine two different newspaper websites from
the same city. What choices have been made about what is news? What factors
have been considered in determining the news? Present to class.
What are Newspapers?
http://www.mediaknowall.com/Year9/Print/9printanaly.html
- Purpose
- Audience
- Role
- Layout
- Different types
Exercise: Work in pairs/threes. Examine two different newspapers, one tabloid
and one broadsheet. Find as many differences and similarities as you can. Draw
up a table in your notebook and list them. Listen to other groups as they present
and include their ideas.
Text Types in Newspapers
- News articles
- Photographs and captions
- Opinion articles
- Editorials
- Political cartoons
Exercise: Answer the questions below.
1. What is the purpose of each of the text types?
2. What are the elements required for each text type?
3. In what ways can each of them shape the audience’s beliefs?
Register and Style
 There are different linguistic elements that belong to particular media –
they have their own register and style.
 Register – language choices based on the situation, the information being
communicated and the target audience.
 Style – individual linguistic choices that make a communicative act
distinctive.
Aspects of Register and Style
 Language analysis of description, tone, diction and figurative language helps
to determine register and style of media genres.
 Dialect, jargon, technical language and pronunciation play important roles in
the overall register and style of a communicative act.
 Example – television newscasters tend to use a formal register, a vocabulary
that seems educated but not too highbrow or full of jargon that would
exclude people.
 Speech versus writing – different register and style. Speech is usually more
informal, interpersonal, unstructured and grammatically simple.
 Genre – a type of text within a given medium. There are many genres within
every media category.
 Genre examples in film – action, horror, drama, comedy.
 Every genre can be recognized by its ‘codes’ – its defining features
 The study of what gets created in particular genres, how audiences react to
those texts, and the ways new genres develop offer great insights into
creative practice and society more broadly.
Exercise: Choose an article from an online newspaper and describe the register
and style the writer uses.
Structure and Elements of News Articles
- Headlines
- Sub-heading
- Byline
- Position in paper
- Layout
- Length
- Five questions
- Inverted pyramid
- Register
- Style
- Accuracy
- Sources
- Choices of all these will affect your knowledge of event, issue.
Exercise: Find an article (from a ‘real’ newspaper rather than an online news
outlet). Photocopy it so there is room around the edges. For each of the elements
above highlight and comment on them.
Concepts of News
- Role?
- Objectivity
- Bias
- Agendas
- Separating facts and opinions – lines blurred.
Exercise: Watch a part of the documentary Outfoxed and answer the attached
questions. Outfoxed Questions file.
Deconstructing News and Opinion to show how your view of the issue is being
made for you (unless you are a close, vigilant and critical reader)
From the other side – different viewpoints
Analyzing News Texts
What for?
The way language is used affects how you understand the world and everything in
it.
Virtually every text, from recipes to novels to newspaper editorials, has underlying
belief systems, or ideologies that inform what is being written or created.
Newspapers are powerful tools to help people understand what is happening in the
world. Bias in those newspapers will affect how the readers learn about the world.
It is very difficult for a newspaper to not have some sort of bias, especially in their
editorials and opinion sections. Of course, it is not only newspapers that contain
ideologies…
Exercises – Reading and note-taking
Now read the file Language Analysis Newspapers. This is long and detailed
analysis, but it’s very good.
Read the file Discourses – Subtexts. Read very carefully and note how language
choice is used to position the reader to accept a particular perspective on the
event being reported.
Read the file Pre-suppositions.
Bias
Read the file Bias and complete the questions associated.
See file Uk riots Iran bias.
Issues
An issue is an event(s) or argument where there are at least two differing
opinions about it such as abortion or capital punishment. Many events that are
reported in newspapers become issues because people disagree about aspects of
it. Recent examples of major issues include the RV bill, the global financial crisis,
environmental solutions and political elections. Language use plays a crucial role
in persuading people to believe in some way or another.
Medium Assessment
You are required to analyze one (SL) or two (HL) articles to demonstrate how
the authors are trying to position the reader to accept their point of view about
an event or an issue.
Articles to analyze for medium assessment
SL article:
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/politics/3882606/Fury-atDavid-Cameron-over-knife-crime-betrayal.html
Two articles for HL students to compare and contrast:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financialcrisis/8836580/You-St-Paulsprotesters-want-what-exactly.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/07/opinion/krugman-confronting-themalefactors.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Assessments
Minor – questions, glossary
Medium – Analysis of one or two of the articles above
Written Task: More details to come.