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Lingua Inglese 1 LM Spoken narrative and media

ANALYSING MEDIA TALK 1

Video blogs and news talk

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Video narratives v text

Voice (sound, intonation, rhythm) Facial expression Movement Different context Editing

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Context Immediate context (i.e. where the video

has actually been made, e.g. in a studio, outside)

Virtual context (i.e. where the video has been placed on the Internet – website, you tube, social media etc.)

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Listeners

Who is the speaker addressing?- someone off camera but present at the

recording?- the outside world

- a particular person (in the outside world)- users of the website in general (in the outside world)

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Media talk

Primarily interested in building a social relationship

Interactivity Perfomativity Liveliness Para-social interaction Part of the conversationalisation of public

discourse?

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Interactivity

The style of speech used in media talk is designed to produce active, participating listeners; even though listeners are not present, media speech acts as if they were

You need to establish the “participation framework” (who speakers and listeners are and whether participating or not)

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Performativity There is an overhearing audience (the

audience sitting at home) There is pressure on media talkers to

perform to the overhearing audience It is difficult to interact with someone

who is not present Media talk has to do a performance of

friendliness

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Liveliness

Media talk has to seem spontaneous even though many programmes are recorded

so speakers have to be extra-lively (the rhetoric of “liveness” without being live)

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Para-social interaction You need to assess whether or not

speakers are using a script (but pretending not to in order to seem spontaneous)

Do speakers asjust their response to the supposed response of the audience and does the audience anticipate this?

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Mediated relationships with absent others Intimacy at a distance What kind of group identity does this

produce in people who are sharing the events

What is the “imagined community” of people watching things on TV or using the Internet

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Other characteristics of media talk Sympathetic circularity – an

exaggeratedly conversational style used in media talk to involvelisteners at home with studio guests

Media professionals are good at using conversational genres in an institutional framework

News talk News reports are a form of narrative. Remember Labov’s paradox and the two

extremes of ……

interest credibility

You need to see where a news report

stands on this line by looking at the way

the story is presented and told 12

Formats of news talk News presenter(s) in the studio News reporters in the studio or “on the

spot”? Monologue report or dialogue? Studio-reporter interviews

(live or recorded?) How is the interview conducted? In studio?

Two-way satellite links?

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Presenter-reporter interaction Monologue report? Interview by presenter? Question-answer routine Is reporter’s speech prepared, ready by autocue? Does reporter establish credibility? Does the reporter speculate? Report or narrative reconstruction? Use table 3.1

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Interaction in news studio Analyse the interaction between news

presenters – e.g. news as gossip between presenters; shared knowledge and mutual affiliation

Analyse interaction between presenter and expert; how does expert establish credibility?

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