Derivational processes in the discourse of international relations. The case of press articles on international politics
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Piotr Twardzisz,
The author is assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland. His scholarly interests include English for specific purposes, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, legal language and language for politics and international relations. His earlier research has focused on various aspects of language structure and meaning from the viewpoint of cognitive linguistics. His recent publications analyse the role of metaphor and metonymy in the specialist discourse of international politics.
Abstract
In this article, two areas of scholarship have been combined, namely journalistic English and international relations. More precisely, current word-formation tendencies in press articles have been analysed against a background of events on the international arena. First, the language of Newsweek�s press articles on international affairs has been searched for derivations (affixed formations) with names of all 192 UN member states. The five most productive affixes involved are: the prefixes un- and anti- and the suffixes -ize, -(iz)ation and -ness. The results obtained demonstrate vast quantitative disproportions between particular names with these affixes. Secondly, arguments from the area of international relations have been brought in and displayed alongside the linguistic statistics. The results of the quantitative and qualitative linguistic analysis are claimed to have a strong political motivation. �Pure� linguistic findings, such as high numbers of certain derivations only, can be linked with negative attitudes toward a particular state described in the political literature. Current derivational trends in English for international relations are intrinsically related to events that unfold and situations that obtain on the international scene. In conclusion, semantic consequences of the linguistic phenomena in question are also predicted.
About the author
The author is assistant professor in the Faculty of Applied Linguistics, University of Warsaw, Poland. His scholarly interests include English for specific purposes, cognitive linguistics, lexicology, legal language and language for politics and international relations. His earlier research has focused on various aspects of language structure and meaning from the viewpoint of cognitive linguistics. His recent publications analyse the role of metaphor and metonymy in the specialist discourse of international politics.
©[2012] by De Gruyter Mouton Berlin
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Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Editorial
- Route dialogue partitions: Interactions between semantics and pragmatics
- Learning to analyse and write extended speech acts in the foreign language classroom
- A preliminary study of the thinking processes and speech act comprehension patterns of Contonese learners of English
- The covert language in Kenyan hip hop lyrics
- Early nineteenth-century advertisements in the South African Commercial Advertiser – Global scheme and advertiser presentation
- Derivational processes in the discourse of international relations. The case of press articles on international politics
- Review of Gender, Sexuality and Meaning: Linguistic Practice and Politics by Sally McConnel-Ginet
- Review of News Discourse by Monika Bednarek and Helen Caple
