Mediating terror through narratives A corpus-based approach to media translation

Maria Constantinou

doi:10.1515/lpp-2017-0003

Article

Mediating terror through narratives A corpus-based approach to media translation

Maria Constantinou
Maria Constantinou received her Ph.D. in Language Sciences from the University of Franche-Comté in 2006. She taught foreign languages and communication-related courses in private academic institutions of Cyprus (2007-2012), and since January 2012, she has been teaching linguistics, discourse analysis, semiotics and translation at the University of Cyprus. She has also collaborated with the University of Nicosia within a master’s degree programme. She is particularly interested in issues related to conceptual metaphors, ideology, emotions, discourse and society, hate speech, irony and humour. Her recent research focuses on journalistic and political discourse, CMC (forums, blogs) and media translation (mainly translation of terrorism). She has participated in various conferences and published articles and chapters on (and in) English, French and Greek mainly from a contrastive, cross-cultural and translational perspective in refereed and peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

Published/Copyright: September 2, 2017

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From the journal Lodz Papers in Pragmatics Volume 13 Issue 1

Abstract

The present study sets out to investigate how terror and terrorism are mediated through narratives of translation by Greek online newspapers. Combining Critical Discourse Analysis (van Dijk 1997 inter alia; Wodak 2001; Wodak et al. 2009; Schäffner 2004) and Narrative Theory of translation (Baker 2006, 2007, 2010), this paper has a double objective: to measure in the first place each medium’s stancetaking toward terrorism mainly by considering headlines and frequency of some words designating the Other, and in the second place to put these results to the test of translational strategies observed in the data. As results show, media coverage of terrorism seems to vary from one medium to another: negative framing or positive framing is displayed both in the headlines chosen, the frequency of some words and in the narratives, being all the product of translation; translation in the present study is seen as being a socio-political activity, which is built on and builds and maintains social power, while playing a key role in constructing the Other. The analysis of the data reconfirms the key role of translation in the news production and concludes that it is indeed an ideology-based process and a means to accentuate western values, by promoting an orientalist conception of the Other, through selective appropriation, inaccurate translations, and amalgamation or generalization strategies, or less frequently as a means to foster intercultural dialogue and to attenuate a negative discursive construction of the Other.

Keywords: translation; terror media coverage; stancetaking; narratives; Critical Discourse Analysis; Greek media

Maria Constantinou Department of French and European Studies University of Cyprus P.O.Box 20537,1678 Nicosia Cyprus

About the author

Maria Constantinou

Maria Constantinou received her Ph.D. in Language Sciences from the University of Franche-Comté in 2006. She taught foreign languages and communication-related courses in private academic institutions of Cyprus (2007-2012), and since January 2012, she has been teaching linguistics, discourse analysis, semiotics and translation at the University of Cyprus. She has also collaborated with the University of Nicosia within a master’s degree programme. She is particularly interested in issues related to conceptual metaphors, ideology, emotions, discourse and society, hate speech, irony and humour. Her recent research focuses on journalistic and political discourse, CMC (forums, blogs) and media translation (mainly translation of terrorism). She has participated in various conferences and published articles and chapters on (and in) English, French and Greek mainly from a contrastive, cross-cultural and translational perspective in refereed and peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

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Published Online: 2017-9-2

Published in Print: 2017-8-28

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https://doi.org/10.1515/lpp-2017-0003

Keywords for this article

translation; terror media coverage; stancetaking; narratives; Critical Discourse Analysis; Greek media