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