This study aims at establishing whether the lexico-grammatical and semantic differences between British popular and quality newspapers can be connected to the concepts of coding orientations (Bernstein 1973, 1975, 1977, 1982, 1990) and semantic styles (Hasan 1973, 1984, 1986, 1989). For this purpose, a corpus of 83 British newspaper articles has been collected. The articles are on the same topic and were published on two consecutive days, but they belong to different genres, in particular news report and editorial comment. The corpus has been divided into different sub-corpora on the basis of the genre the articles belong to, and on the basis of the kind of newspaper they are taken from (quality or popular). The corpus has been tagged with tagging systems based on Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional grammar, and the frequencies of the various tags have been counted using the Wordsmith Tools program. The data have then been elaborated using a non-parametric statistical test, the Mann-Whitney test, in order to establish which lexico-grammatical and semantic categories indicate statistically significant differences between popular and quality newspapers. The data thus obtained lie at the basis of the discussion of the main differences between quality and popular newspaper articles. These differences have been interpreted in relation to Basil Bernstein’s and Ruqaiya Hasan’s studies on the different values which inform the language used by different social groups, focussing on how journalists adapt their language to the presumed values of the social groups their newspapers are addressed to. The first chapter of the dissertation explains the concepts of coding orientation and semantic style and the main aspects of Halliday’s systemic functional model, within which these concepts have been elaborated and / or developed. In the same chapter an overview is given of the main differences between quality and popular newspapers which have been discussed so far in the literature. Chapter two illustrates the corpus which has been analysed, the sub-corpora it has been divided into, and the rationale behind the choice of the articles and their categoisation. Chapter three describes the grammatical categories the corpus has been tagged for, the 300 different tags which have been adopted, and the aims of the various analyses. It offers short illustrations of the theoretical aspects which lie at the basis of the different systems the corpus has been analysed for, i.e., Transitivity, Ergativity, Clause Complexing, Conjunctive Relations, Participant Identification, Mood and Modality, and Appraisal. Chapter four briefly illustrates the statistical test which has been applied to the data and it shows all the statistically significant outputs, i.e., those for which the error chance was 5% or less. It also shows the outputs of the statistical test for some categories which, contrary to expectation, were not statistically significant. Chapter five presents the discussion and interpretation of the results on the basis of the concept of semantic style. Chapter six offers some final reflections on the concept of ideology and its place in the systemic functional linguistic theory. In particular, in this chapter it is claimed that this concept lies at the very basis of the models of language and context which systemic theory has developed.
Semantic Styles in the British Daily Press: a corpus study / Samiolo, Silvia. - (2008).
Semantic Styles in the British Daily Press: a corpus study
Samiolo, Silvia
2008
Abstract
This study aims at establishing whether the lexico-grammatical and semantic differences between British popular and quality newspapers can be connected to the concepts of coding orientations (Bernstein 1973, 1975, 1977, 1982, 1990) and semantic styles (Hasan 1973, 1984, 1986, 1989). For this purpose, a corpus of 83 British newspaper articles has been collected. The articles are on the same topic and were published on two consecutive days, but they belong to different genres, in particular news report and editorial comment. The corpus has been divided into different sub-corpora on the basis of the genre the articles belong to, and on the basis of the kind of newspaper they are taken from (quality or popular). The corpus has been tagged with tagging systems based on Halliday’s (1994) systemic functional grammar, and the frequencies of the various tags have been counted using the Wordsmith Tools program. The data have then been elaborated using a non-parametric statistical test, the Mann-Whitney test, in order to establish which lexico-grammatical and semantic categories indicate statistically significant differences between popular and quality newspapers. The data thus obtained lie at the basis of the discussion of the main differences between quality and popular newspaper articles. These differences have been interpreted in relation to Basil Bernstein’s and Ruqaiya Hasan’s studies on the different values which inform the language used by different social groups, focussing on how journalists adapt their language to the presumed values of the social groups their newspapers are addressed to. The first chapter of the dissertation explains the concepts of coding orientation and semantic style and the main aspects of Halliday’s systemic functional model, within which these concepts have been elaborated and / or developed. In the same chapter an overview is given of the main differences between quality and popular newspapers which have been discussed so far in the literature. Chapter two illustrates the corpus which has been analysed, the sub-corpora it has been divided into, and the rationale behind the choice of the articles and their categoisation. Chapter three describes the grammatical categories the corpus has been tagged for, the 300 different tags which have been adopted, and the aims of the various analyses. It offers short illustrations of the theoretical aspects which lie at the basis of the different systems the corpus has been analysed for, i.e., Transitivity, Ergativity, Clause Complexing, Conjunctive Relations, Participant Identification, Mood and Modality, and Appraisal. Chapter four briefly illustrates the statistical test which has been applied to the data and it shows all the statistically significant outputs, i.e., those for which the error chance was 5% or less. It also shows the outputs of the statistical test for some categories which, contrary to expectation, were not statistically significant. Chapter five presents the discussion and interpretation of the results on the basis of the concept of semantic style. Chapter six offers some final reflections on the concept of ideology and its place in the systemic functional linguistic theory. In particular, in this chapter it is claimed that this concept lies at the very basis of the models of language and context which systemic theory has developed.File | Dimensione | Formato | |
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