Newsworthiness and Emotivity
The Language of Evaluation in the Letters to the Editor of “The Times” on the Armenian Question in 1914-1926
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.13136/2281-4582/2023.i21.1307Parole chiave:
Letters to the Editor, Corpus Linguistics, News Discourse, evaluation, historical EnglishAbstract
In 1915 the echo of the Ottoman massacres of the Christian minorities living within the borders of the Empire reached the international press at once. The Times functioned as an English-language cross-cultural referential platform for its international readership, and regularly published letters to the editor reporting on the political and humanitarian events involving the Armenians. Those letters to the editor were written in English by notable authors from different national backgrounds and political appointments, including also Armenian notables and delegates. A corpus of letters to the editor of The Times was collected for the purpose of this study and examined through a corpus-driven and a corpus-assisted approach. This article focuses on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of recurring language of evaluation related to discursive news value analysis, with a specific focus on how the parameter of “emotivity” is expressed through the language used in the letters. This study attempts to explain the linguistic strategies through which a cross-cultural intersubjective connection with the readership of The Times was created, and it also attempts to clarify the textual strategies implemented in the letters to the editor of The Times to keep the Armenian events newsworthy.
Riferimenti bibliografici
Aybak, Tunc. “Geopolitics of Denial: Turkish State’s ‘Armenian problem.’” Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies 18.2 (2016): 125-144.
Bednarek, Monika. Evaluation in Media Discourse: Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus. New York: Continuum, 2006.
---. “Evaluation in the News: A Methodological Framework for Analysing Evaluative Language in Journalism.” Australian Journal of Communication 37.2 (2010): 15-50.
---. “Semantic Preference and Semantic Prosody Re-examined.” Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory 4.2 (2008): 119-139.
Bednarek, Monika and Helen Caple. News Discourse. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019.
Bös, Birte. “From 1760 to 1960: Diversification and Popularization.” News as Changing Texts: Corpora, Methodologies and Analysis (Second Edition). Edited by Roberta Facchinetti, et al. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015. 91-143.
Bell, Allan. The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell, 1991.
Brighton, Paul and Dennis Foy. News Values. London: SAGE Publications, 2007.
Catenaccio, Paola, et al. “Towards a Linguistics of News Production.” Journal of Pragmatics 43.7 (2011): 1843-1852.
Cavanagh, Allison. “Letters to the Editor as a Tool of Citizenship.” Letters to the Editor: Comparative and Historical Perspectives. Edited by Allison Cavanagh and John Steel. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019. 89-108.
Chovanec, Jan. “From Adverts to Letters to the Editor. External Voicing in Early Sports Match
Announcement.” Diachronic Developments in English News Discourse. Edited by Minna Palander-Collin, Maura Ratia and Irma Taavitsainen. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012. 175-197.
Cotter, Colleen. News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Dadrian, Vahakn N. The History of the Armenian Genocide: Ethnic Conflict from the Balkans to Anatolia to the Caucasus. New York: Berghahn, 2003.
European Parliament. “Opening of Negotiations with Turkey. European Parliament Resolution on the Opening of Negotiations with Turkey.” 28th September 2005. www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-6-2005-0350_EN.html?redirect. Last visited 03/04/2023.
Ferrari, Aldo. “Viaggio nei luoghi della memoria armena in Turchia e Azerbaigian.” LEA, Lingue e Letterature d’Oriente e d’Occidente 5 (2016): 179-192.
Hunston, Susan. Corpora in Applied Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
---. Corpus Approaches in Evaluation: Phraseology and Evaluative Language. New York: Routledge, 2011.
Hunston, Susan and John Sinclair. “A Local Grammar of Evaluation.” Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Edited by Susan Hunston and George Thompson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 75-101.
Hunston, Susan and George Thompson, edited by. Evaluation in Text: Authorial Stance and the Construction of Discourse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
Martin, James R. and Peter R. R. White. The Language of Evaluation: Appraisal in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Martini, Isabella. “A Denial of Identity: The Armenian Genocide in the Letters to the Editor of The Times 1914- 1926.” Token 12 (2021a): 115-136.
---. “Analysing the Semantic Prosody of Timeliness in Letters to the Editor of The Times on the Armenian Question from 1914 to 1926.” Iperstoria 18 (2021b): 339-63.
Matheson, Donald. “The Birth of News Discourse: Changes in News Language in British Newspapers, 1880-1930.” The Media, Culture & Society 22.5 (2000): 557-573.
Partington, Alan. “Corpora and Discourse, a Most Congruous Beast.” Corpora and Discourse.
Edited by Alan Partington, John Morley and Louann Haarman. Bern: Peter Lang, 2004.
---. “Corpus-Assisted Comparative Case Studies of Representations of the Arab World.” Corpora and Discourse Studies. Edited by Paul Barker and Tony McEnery. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 220-243.
---. “Modern Diachronic Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (MD-CADS) on UK Newspapers: An Overview of the Project.” Corpora 5.2 (2010): 83-108.
Partington, Alan, Allison M. Duguid and Charlotte Taylor. Patterns and Meanings in Discourse: Theory and Practice in Corpus-assisted Discourse Studies (CADS). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2013.
Peltekian, Katia Minas. The Times of Armenian Genocide: Reports in the British Press. Volume 1: 1914-1919, Volume 2: 1920-1923. Beirut: Four Roads, 2013.
Pounds, Gabrina. “Democratic Participation and Letters to the Editor in Britain and Italy.” Discourse & Society 17.1 (2006): 29-63.
---. “Writers Argumentative Attitude: A Contrastive Analysis of ‘Letters to the Editor’ in English and Italian.” Pragmatics 15.1 (2005): 49-88.
Reader, Bill. “An Ethical Blind Spot: Problems of Anonymous Letters to the Editor.” Journal of Mass Media Ethics 20.1 (2005): 62-76.
Richardson, John E. and Bob Franklin. “Letters of Intent: Election Campaigning an Orchestrated Public Debate in Local Newspapers’ Letters to the Editor.” Political Communication 21.4 (2004): 459-478.
Romova, Zina and John Hetet. “Letters to the Editor: Results of Corpus Analysis.” New Zealand Studies in Applied Linguistics 18.2 (2012): 45-63.
Samson, Christina. “‘The Whole of Bengal is in Revolt.’ A Corpus-Based Analysis of Letters from the 1857-58 Mutinies in India.” Lingue e Linguaggi 36 (2020): 283-296.
Scott, Mike. WordSmith Tools Version 8. Stroud: Lexical Analysis Software, 2020.
Suny, Ronald Grigor, Fatma Muge Göçek and Norman M. Naimark, edited by. A Question of Genocide: Armenians and Turks at the End of the Ottoman Empire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Tognini-Bonelli, Elena. Corpus Linguistics at Work. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2001.
Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. “Understanding the Conditions for Public Discourse: Four Rules for Selecting Letters to the Editor.” Journalism Studies 3.1 (2002): 69-81.
Downloads
Pubblicato
Fascicolo
Sezione
Licenza
Copyright (c) 2023 Isabella Martini
Questo lavoro è fornito con la licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale 4.0 Internazionale.
Iperstoria è una rivista accademica ad accesso libero.
a. Gli autori detengono il copyright e danno alla rivista il diritto per la prima pubblicazione con il contributo sotto licenza Creative Commons che permette di condividere l’articolo con il riconoscimento della prima pubblicazione su questa rivista.
b. Gli autori possono inoltre stabilire ulteriori direttive contrattuali per la distribuzione non esclusiva della versione del contributo pubblicata sulla rivista (es. ripubblicarlo in archivi istituzionali o in un volume), con uno specifico riconoscimento della prima pubblicazione su questa rivista. Chiediamo pertanto agli autori di contattarci nel caso di eventuali ripubblicazioni.
