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SUMMARY:How do stylistic features “work” in news texts about a violent
  event that took place abroad? A cross-cultural case study. - Ashley Riggs
  (Université de Genève)
DTSTART:20210527T153000Z
DTEND:20210527T170000Z
UID:TALK160498@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tim Laméris
DESCRIPTION:"REGISTER HERE":https://forms.gle/UqMEAFyne44WyZCP6\n\n*ABSTRA
 CT*\n\nThe role of stylistic features of news in conveying information and
  portraying events and societies warrants more research\, and the potentia
 l impact of such features on readers’ impressions of events and societie
 s is\, I claim\, under-estimated. That said\, journalism studies scholars 
 have certainly recognized the importance – and power – of the formal c
 haracteristics of news texts\; Ettema (2012 [2010]: 296] even asserts that
  “the formal features of news\, as much as (or more than) its content\, 
 are a source of whatever socio-cultural authority that journalism retains.
 ”\n\nIn my interdisciplinary study of news language\, I conceived of jou
 rnalists reporting on events abroad as intercultural mediators and of cult
 ural representation as a form of translation. This is in line with the rec
 ent broadening of the definition of translation (e.g.\, Davier\, 2015\; Ma
 itland\, 2017\; Valdeón\, 2015\; van Doorslaer\, 2012)\, in part to accou
 nt for the variety of processes involved in collecting\, drafting and diss
 eminating news across borders and across cultures.\n\nMy corpus consisted 
 of online news texts from the UK\, French-speaking Switzerland\, and Spain
  about the violent attack that took place in Nice\, France in July 2016. U
 sing a mixed-methods approach\, I analysed certain *lexical choices* and t
 he use of *modality*\, *alliteration* and *metaphor* in these texts from t
 hree distinct linguistic and cultural spaces and from different parts of t
 he political spectrum. There was a strong tendency across the corpus to la
 bel the event as terrorism as soon as the news broke and to “make the at
 tack about (radical) Islam”\, and stylistic features played an important
  role in conveying these messages. There were important differences\, howe
 ver\, linked to political leanings\, in how Muslims were reported upon and
  how French society and/or the event were contextualized. The UK texts som
 etimes used modality to give unproven assertions a patina of factuality in
  ways that were likely to heighten fear and a sense of threat\, whereas th
 e Swiss and Spanish news more often employed it to establish distance or a
 llow vacillation. In almost all the news texts\, the majority of the allit
 erated content was negative\, thus making such content more salient\, alth
 ough the device was more frequent in the UK news than in the other sub-cor
 pora. Metaphor\, too\, was predominantly negative and evocative of violenc
 e – although the imagery chosen sometimes varied by country/language –
  and this was particularly true of the Telegraph\, Le Courrier and El Paí
 s (and therefore not directly attributable to political affiliation). Conc
 rete examples of these stylistic features as well as the potential reasons
  for and implications of these findings will be discussed.\n\nThe research
  presented and the open access version of the resulting book\, Stylistic D
 eceptions in Online News: Journalistic Style and the Translation of Cultur
 e (Bloomsbury Academic\, 2020)\, were funded by the Swiss National Science
  Foundation.\n\nReferences\n\nDavier\, L. (2015)\, “‘Cultural Translat
 ion’ in News Agencies? A Plea to Broaden the Definition of Translation\,
 ” Perspectives\, 23 (4): 536–51. https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/090 7676X.
 2015.1040036\n\nEttema\, J. S. ([2010] 2012)\, “News as Culture\,” in 
 S. Allan (ed.)\, The Routledge Companion to News and Journalism\, 289–30
 0\, London: Routledge.\n\nMaitland\, S. (2017) [Kindle version]\, What Is 
 Cultural Translation?\, Bloomsbury Advances in Translation\, London: Bloom
 sbury.\n\nValdeón\, R. A. (2015)\, “Fifteen years of journalistic trans
 lation research and more\,” Perspectives\, 23 (4)\, 634–62. https://do
 i.org/10.1080/0907676X.2015.1057187\n\nvan Doorslaer\, L. (2012)\, “Tran
 slating\, Narrating and Constructing Images in Journalism with a Test Case
  on Representation in Flemish TV News\,” Meta: journal des traducteurs/M
 eta: Translators’ Journal\, 57 (4): 1046–59.\n
LOCATION:Online
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