The creation of an “imagined community” in readers' letters to the Daily Sun: an APPRAISAL investigation
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Ralph Adendorff
Ralph Adendorff is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University, South Africa. His research interests are the ethnographic investigation of literacy practices,APPRAISAL analysis, CDA, and pidgins.
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Jade Smith
Jade Smith completed her Master's degree in Linguistics at Rhodes University, South Africa, in 2012. Her undergraduate majors were linguistics and journalism and media studies, where she specialized in writing and editing. She worked as a research assistant at the Discovery Centre for Health Journalism at Rhodes University, and edited content for the Centre's website, social media, and publications. Her research interests lie in evaluation and affiliation in print and online media.
Abstract
Despite its reputation for sensationalism and championing of superstition, the Daily Sun is South Africa's most-read newspaper, with over five million readers. The tabloid targets English-literate, predominantly black, first-time newspaper readers. The Daily Sun's publisher, Deon du Plessis, called the potential reader “the guy in the blue overall [...] who lived in the township [...] owned his own house [...] worried about his kids, rather than manning the barricades”. Contrary to ideas of tabloids addressing readers as individuals, media studies theorists Steenveld and Strelitz (2010: 531) argue that they “help constitute an imagined community [of readers],” following Anderson's (1983) imagined community. So far, there has been little empirical evidence for this community. Our research uses the APPRAISAL framework (Attitude, Graduation, and Engagement, cf. Martin and White 2005) to investigate the creation of a community in ten of the Daily Sun's “letters of the day,” written by readers, selected by the editor. The investigation of the writers' APPRAISAL choices exposes the readers' values, beliefs, and interests, as well as the writers' attempts to align the potential audience with these qualities. The cumulative effect of the APPRAISAL strategies suggests that the nature of this imagined community is advisory, and fosters a feeling of neighborly support.
About the authors
Ralph Adendorff is Professor of English Language and Linguistics at Rhodes University, South Africa. His research interests are the ethnographic investigation of literacy practices, APPRAISAL analysis, CDA, and pidgins.
Jade Smith completed her Master's degree in Linguistics at Rhodes University, South Africa, in 2012. Her undergraduate majors were linguistics and journalism and media studies, where she specialized in writing and editing. She worked as a research assistant at the Discovery Centre for Health Journalism at Rhodes University, and edited content for the Centre's website, social media, and publications. Her research interests lie in evaluation and affiliation in print and online media.
©2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The creation of an “imagined community” in readers' letters to the Daily Sun: an APPRAISAL investigation
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Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The creation of an “imagined community” in readers' letters to the Daily Sun: an APPRAISAL investigation
- The linguistic accuracy of chatbots: usability from an ESL perspective
- A drift toward direct structures in Dutch direct mail sales letters
- “You are children but you can always say ...”: hypothetical direct reported speech and child–parent relationships in a Heritage Language classroom
- “Christians” and “bad Christians”: categorization in atheist user talk on YouTube
- Rapport management in strong disagreement: an investigation of a community of Chinese speakers of English
