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14. Changing trends in Italian newspaper language

A diachronic, corpus-based study

Abstract

This paper describes changes in the frequency and use of some selected linguistic features in the language of Italian printed news: left dislocations, sentence-initial connectives, sentence length, lexical density and subordinating conjunctions. The study adopts a diachronic approach and relies on a corpus-based methodology. Language change was measured between 1985 and 2000 using two sub-sections of the Repubblica corpus. The main hypothesis is that these sixteen years highlighted significant changes emerging in newspaper language, partly due to the competition of commercial television, which entered a phase of exponential development in this period. More specifically, these changes reflect the attempt of written news to reproduce communicative styles more suitable to orality and to real-time events.

Abstract

This paper describes changes in the frequency and use of some selected linguistic features in the language of Italian printed news: left dislocations, sentence-initial connectives, sentence length, lexical density and subordinating conjunctions. The study adopts a diachronic approach and relies on a corpus-based methodology. Language change was measured between 1985 and 2000 using two sub-sections of the Repubblica corpus. The main hypothesis is that these sixteen years highlighted significant changes emerging in newspaper language, partly due to the competition of commercial television, which entered a phase of exponential development in this period. More specifically, these changes reflect the attempt of written news to reproduce communicative styles more suitable to orality and to real-time events.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction ix
  5. I. Corpus analysis of spoken dialogue
  6. i. Variation and academic dialogue
  7. 1. Speaking professionally in an L2 5
  8. 2. Common features and variations in the use of personal pronouns in two types of monologic academic speech 33
  9. ii. Dialogue in spoken and written business discourse
  10. 3. Variation across spoken and written registers in internal corporate communication 47
  11. 4. Using grammatical tagging to explore spoken/written variation in small specialized corpora 65
  12. iii. Dialogic variation and language varieties
  13. 5. Exploring regional variation in Italian question intonation 79
  14. 6. Estonian emotional speech corpus 109
  15. 7. Using movie corpora to explore spoken American English 123
  16. 8. “But that’s dialect, isn’t it?” 137
  17. II. Using corpora to analyse written discourse
  18. i. Diachronic approaches to historical corpora
  19. 9. Variation in the language of London newspapers 157
  20. 10. From letters to guidebooks 173
  21. 11. Justificatory arguments in writing on art 185
  22. 12. Analysing discourse in research genre 203
  23. ii. Diachronic methodologies and language change
  24. 13. The difference a word can show 223
  25. 14. Changing trends in Italian newspaper language 239
  26. 15. A corpus-based analysis of some time-related aspects of contemporary Japanese 255
  27. 16. It’s always the same old news! 269
  28. Name index 283
  29. Subject index 287
Variation and Change in Spoken and Written Discourse
This chapter is in the book Variation and Change in Spoken and Written Discourse
https://doi.org/10.1075/ds.21.23spi

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgements vii
  4. Introduction ix
  5. I. Corpus analysis of spoken dialogue
  6. i. Variation and academic dialogue
  7. 1. Speaking professionally in an L2 5
  8. 2. Common features and variations in the use of personal pronouns in two types of monologic academic speech 33
  9. ii. Dialogue in spoken and written business discourse
  10. 3. Variation across spoken and written registers in internal corporate communication 47
  11. 4. Using grammatical tagging to explore spoken/written variation in small specialized corpora 65
  12. iii. Dialogic variation and language varieties
  13. 5. Exploring regional variation in Italian question intonation 79
  14. 6. Estonian emotional speech corpus 109
  15. 7. Using movie corpora to explore spoken American English 123
  16. 8. “But that’s dialect, isn’t it?” 137
  17. II. Using corpora to analyse written discourse
  18. i. Diachronic approaches to historical corpora
  19. 9. Variation in the language of London newspapers 157
  20. 10. From letters to guidebooks 173
  21. 11. Justificatory arguments in writing on art 185
  22. 12. Analysing discourse in research genre 203
  23. ii. Diachronic methodologies and language change
  24. 13. The difference a word can show 223
  25. 14. Changing trends in Italian newspaper language 239
  26. 15. A corpus-based analysis of some time-related aspects of contemporary Japanese 255
  27. 16. It’s always the same old news! 269
  28. Name index 283
  29. Subject index 287
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