Keynote Daniel Perrin
Linguistic Perspectives on Investigating Newswriting
Daniel Perrin, Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Linguistics first focused on written language, later describing
conversations as processes, and only then rediscovered written language
from a process perspective: sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, text
linguistics as well as discourse analysis all viewed writing as a core
process of language use.
But even then, journalism and media were not a domain of interest
to most linguists. Media texts were usually investigated as easily
accessible traces of everyday language rather than as traces of public
discourse as a specific area of language use. However, in the past
decade things have changed. More and more linguists are investigating
a) writing processes in b) public discourse, media, and journalism. It
is a good time to sum up where we stand.
In my keynote presentation, I will provide a short, systematic
overview of linguistic and linguistically-based interdisciplinary
approaches in analyzing newswriting processes. Key questions are: What
are the main issues and methods? Where has the field come from and what
direction does it seem to be heading? How can the linguistics of news
production be related to other disciplines? What kind of added value
does that bring to journalism/media studies – and to those professional
fields?
To illustrate claims and problems of current linguistic research in
newswriting, I will present questions, methods, findings, and
interpretations of the “idee suisse” project, in which newswriting in
three newsrooms is investigated as a situated activity and then related
to psychobiography, social settings and cultural resources to
individual, organizational, and political empowerments and constraints.
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Daniel Perrin, Dr. phil., born in 1961, is a professor of media
linguistics and director of the Institute of Applied Media Studies IAM
of the Zurich University of Applied Sciences (ZHAW). Main areas of
research and teaching: media linguistics, text linguistics, methodology
of applied linguistics, text production research, and professional
communication.
http://www.linguistik.zhaw.ch/iam