Appraisal as co-selection and media performativity: 5G technology imaged in German news discourse
-
Min Dong
Min Dong is a professor in the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing, China. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and discourse analysis. Her recent publications have appeared in, for example,
Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory ,International Journal of Corpus Linguistics andLingua .
und
Mengfei Gao
Mengfei Gao is a senior student at the Department of German, School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing, China. Her research interests include corpus linguistics and news discourse analysis.
Abstract
This article views appraisal as co-selection patterns of target, source and evaluative parameters and investigates the ways in which news discourse retells news stories and reproduces truthful reality. We combined the corpus-assisted method and quantitative/qualitative analysis of the data, i.e., 904 sentences which were extracted from the corpus of German 5G news reports by selecting the top 5 items from each of the noun keywords lists of the three subcorpora of economics, politics and technology news reports. It was found that the German media restage the necessity and desirability to promote the development of German communication facilities/technology through international cooperation, particularly Germany-Sino cooperation. In addition, a hesitant image was evoked as to the high-profile 5G development in Germany with an awareness of the potential security risks and economic losses. On the intersubjective dimension, our findings suggest that journalists make full exploitation of different dialogistic positioning strategies for closing down or opening up the dialogic space to a greater or lesser degree. More specifically, they tend to acknowledge and endorse the positive/negative attitudes attributed to the non-authorial voices towards particular targets in the fields of economics, politics or technology. A future comparison with the genre of news comments or editorials would deepen our understanding of the performativity of media.
Funding source: Beijing Municipality Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences
Award Identifier / Grant number: 19YYA001
About the authors
Min Dong is a professor in the School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing, China. Her research interests include corpus linguistics, systemic functional linguistics, and discourse analysis. Her recent publications have appeared in, for example, Corpus Linguistics and Linguistic Theory, International Journal of Corpus Linguistics and Lingua.
Mengfei Gao is a senior student at the Department of German, School of Foreign Languages, Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics), Beijing, China. Her research interests include corpus linguistics and news discourse analysis.
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the comments and suggestions received from Dr Alex Fang at City University of Hong Kong, Dr Linyao Xu at Beihang University, and the editor and the two anonymous reviewers of the Journal.
-
Research funding: Research described in this article was supported by grants received from Beijing Municipality Planning Office of Philosophy and Social Sciences (Project No 19YYA001). In addition, our research was also supported by the First Prize Award granted by Beihang University’s “Fengru Cup” Academic Research Competition for Undergraduates.
Appendix A: Key noun keywords retrieved from the corpus of CGNR5G and each of the three component subcorpora of CENR5G, CPNR5G and CTNR5G
Top 30 key noun keywords retrieved from the corpus of CGNR5G.
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | p-Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DEUTSCHLAND | 1,235.00 | 0.27 | 188.00 | 3,470.98 | 0.00 | |
| 2 | HUAWEI | 905.00 | 0.20 | 4.00 | 3,258.93 | 0.00 | |
| 3 | DPA | 805.00 | 0.18 | 30.00 | 2,695.17 | 0.00 | |
| 4 | TELEKOM | 832.00 | 0.18 | 172.00 | 2,182.53 | 0.00 | |
| 5 | AUSBAU | 559.00 | 0.12 | 24.00 | 1851.77 | 0.00 | |
| 6 | UNTERNEHMEN | 757.00 | 0.17 | 206.00 | 1839.94 | 0.00 | |
| 7 | WIRTSCHAFT | 592.00 | 0.13 | 74.00 | 1725.44 | 0.00 | |
| 8 | CHINA | 616.00 | 0.14 | 104.00 | 1,693.71 | 0.00 | |
| 9 | NETZ | 644.00 | 0.14 | 158.00 | 1,613.72 | 0.00 | |
| 10 | NETZBETREIBER | 422.00 | 0.09 | 2.00 | 1,517.85 | 0.00 | |
| 11 | BUNDESNETZAGENTUR | 392.00 | 0.09 | 4.00 | 1,389.56 | 0.00 | |
| 12 | VODAFONE | 432.00 | 0.10 | 40.00 | 1,319.18 | 0.00 | |
| 13 | USA | 467.00 | 0.10 | 72.00 | 1,308.52 | 0.00 | |
| 14 | LTE | 365.00 | 0.08 | 10.00 | 1,245.46 | 0.00 | |
| 15 | MOBILFUNK | 431.00 | 0.10 | 68.00 | 1,201.96 | 0.00 | |
| 16 | BILD | 552.00 | 0.12 | 208.00 | 1,198.70 | 0.00 | |
| 17 | DIGITALISIERUNG | 336.00 | 0.07 | 4.00 | 1,186.06 | 0.00 | |
| 18 | MOBILFUNKSTANDARD | 310.00 | 0.07 | 2.00 | 1,109.61 | 0.00 | |
| 19 | SMARTPHONE | 353.00 | 0.08 | 36.00 | 1062.99 | 0.00 | |
| 20 | NETZE | 336.00 | 0.07 | 24.00 | 1,060.21 | 0.00 | |
| 21 | ROAMING | 321.00 | 0.07 | 16.00 | 1,050.17 | 0.00 | |
| 22 | INTERNET | 827.00 | 0.18 | 816.00 | 0.03 | 1,031.76 | 0.00 |
| 23 | BUNDESREGIERUNG | 295.00 | 0.07 | 8.00 | 1,007.13 | 0.00 | |
| 24 | MERKEL | 351.00 | 0.08 | 52.00 | 991.27 | 0.00 | |
| 25 | INFRASTRUKTUR | 331.00 | 0.07 | 38.00 | 978.48 | 0.00 | |
| 26 | QUALCOMM | 259.00 | 0.06 | 4.00 | 906.64 | 0.00 | |
| 27 | POLITIK | 394.00 | 0.09 | 164.00 | 821.80 | 0.00 | |
| 28 | GRO | 246.00 | 0.05 | 14.00 | 795.01 | 0.00 | |
| 29 | DATEN | 405.00 | 0.09 | 208.00 | 767.95 | 0.00 | |
| 30 | ANBIETER | 324.00 | 0.07 | 96.00 | 766.39 | 0.00 |
Top 10 keyword nouns and basic information retrieved from CENR5G.
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | p-Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DEUTSCHLAND | 540.00 | 0.27 | 188.00 | 1935.47 | 0.00 | |
| 2 | WIRTSCHAFT | 479.00 | 0.24 | 74.00 | 2003.82 | 0.00 | |
| 3 | HUAWEI | 420.00 | 0.21 | 4.00 | 2083.23 | 0.00 | |
| 4 | UNTERNEHMEN | 381.00 | 0.19 | 206.00 | 1,203.47 | 0.00 | |
| 5 | INTERNET | 371.00 | 0.18 | 816.00 | 0.03 | 539.90 | 0.00 |
| 6 | TELEKOM | 349.00 | 0.17 | 172.00 | 1,135.55 | 0.00 | |
| 7 | CHINA | 305.00 | 0.15 | 104.00 | 1,098.47 | 0.00 | |
| 8 | AUSBAU | 277.00 | 0.14 | 24.00 | 1,239.72 | 0.00 | |
| 9 | NETZ | 262.00 | 0.13 | 158.00 | 797.10 | 0.00 | |
| 10 | USA | 253.00 | 0.12 | 72.00 | 949.74 | 0.00 |
Top 10 keyword nouns and basic information retrieved from CPNR5G.
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | p-Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | DEUTSCHLAND | 479.00 | 0.33 | 90.00 | 2,168.65 | 0.00 | |
| 2 | HUAWEI | 284.00 | 0.19 | 2.00 | 1,549.57 | 0.00 | |
| 3 | CHINA | 242.00 | 0.17 | 32.00 | 1,147.04 | 0.00 | |
| 4 | MERKEL | 207.00 | 0.14 | 32.00 | 962.47 | 0.00 | |
| 5 | SPD | 189.00 | 0.13 | 24.00 | 899.93 | 0.00 | |
| 6 | AUSBAU | 184.00 | 0.13 | 4.00 | 980.91 | 0.00 | |
| 7 | UNION | 171.00 | 0.12 | 40.00 | 747.34 | 0.00 | |
| 8 | USA | 164.00 | 0.11 | 26.00 | 759.99 | 0.00 | |
| 9 | CDU | 163.00 | 0.11 | 80.00 | 605.19 | 0.00 | |
| 10 | INTERNET | 160.00 | 0.11 | 68.00 | 617.09 | 0.00 |
Top 10 keyword nouns and basic information retrieved from CTNR5G.
| N | Keyword | Freq. | % | RC. Freq. | RC. % | Keyness | p-Value |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | INTERNET | 301.00 | 0.24 | 816.00 | 0.03 | 586.22 | 0.00 |
| 2 | DEUTSCHLAND | 284.00 | 0.23 | 188.00 | 1,087.19 | 0.00 | |
| 3 | TELEKOM | 238.00 | 0.19 | 172.00 | 886.65 | 0.00 | |
| 4 | NETZ | 229.00 | 0.19 | 158.00 | 865.57 | 0.00 | |
| 5 | BILD | 204.00 | 0.17 | 208.00 | 673.06 | 0.00 | |
| 6 | UNTERNEHMEN | 201.00 | 0.16 | 206.00 | 661.82 | 0.00 | |
| 7 | SMARTPHONE | 190.00 | 0.15 | 36.00 | 944.43 | 0.00 | |
| 8 | DIGITAL | 168.00 | 0.14 | 58.00 | 755.56 | 0.00 | |
| 9 | HUAWEI | 146.00 | 0.12 | 4.00 | 838.66 | 0.00 | |
| 10 | LTE | 133.00 | 0.11 | 10.00 | 725.74 | 0.00 |
Appendix B: Original data extracts in German
| Der Bund will Netzbetreiber bei Lizenzen für das ultraschnelle Mobilfunk-Internet 5G stärker in die Pflicht nehmen als bisher geplant. (Government + German communication facilities + Inclination: pos) <eco-ZT-20181106> |
| Teile der Wirtschaft und der Kommunen bemängeln, dass die Netzagentur keine lückenlose Versorgung vorschreiben will. (Authorial + German communication facilities/technology + Economic valuation: neg) <eco-ZT-20181010> |
| Dabei handelt es sich um das wichtigste Unternehmen Chinas, das nicht nur mehr Smartphones verkauft als Apple . (Authorial + Huawei + Capacity: pos) <eco-FA-20180529> |
| Beim Umsatz geht das Flaggschiff-Unternehmen der Samsung-Gruppe von einem Rückgang um 10,6 Prozent auf 59 Billionen Won aus. (Enterprise + others’ world-renowned communication corporation + Economic valuation: neg) <eco-BD-20180108> |
| Auch für autonomes Fahren gilt 5G als Schlüsseltechnologie . (Authorial + 5G technology + Capacity: pos) <eco-SD-20190202> |
| Die USA und andere westliche Länder werfen Huawei zu große Nähe zu den chinesischen Behürden vor und sehen den Konzern als Gefahr für ihre Cybersicherheit. (Government + Huawei + Security: neg) <pol-ZT-20190117> |
| Die EU-Kommission prüft Insidern zufolge einen Ausschluss von chinesischen Firmen wie Huawei beim Aufbau des neuen Mobilfunkstandards 5G in Europa. (Government + Huawei + Inclination: neg) <pol-BD-20190131> |
| Man wolle “auf Augenhöhe” mit China arbeiten, sagte Merkel bei einer Diskussion mit Studenten der japanischen Elite-Universität Keio in Tokio. (Politician + Germany-Sino technology cooperation + Inclination: pos) <pol-SD-20190205> |
| Vor dem Hintergrund der Vorwürfe gegen den chinesischen Telekom-Riesen Huawei sprach sich Abe dagegen aus, bestimmte Unternehmen vom Ausbau der 5G-Technologie auszuschließen. (Politician + Other-Sino technology cooperation + Inclination: pos) <pol-WT-20190204> |
| Angela Merkel sprach lieber über etwas, das nicht allzu fern in der Zukunft liegen soll: die Einführung des neuen Mobilfunkstandards 5G in Deutschland. (Politician + 5G technology + Inclination: pos) <tech-ZT-20181205> |
| Zudem gilt 5G als Schlüssel für das vernetzte Autofahren, bei dem Fahrzeuge in Echtzeit untereinander und mit der Umwelt verbunden sind. (Authorial + 5G technology + Capability: pos) <tech-FR-20190109> |
| Selbst in den Großstädten gibt es viel zu viele Funklöcher, in der Bahn keine stabile Internet-Verbindung und die Preise der Anbieter sind im internationalen Vergleich geradezu lächerlich hoch. (Authorial + German communication facilities + Satisfaction: neg) <tech-BD-20180106> |
| Im vergangenen Jahr habe Huawei mit 139 Millionen verkauften Mobiltelefonen Platz drei der Liste der weltgrößten Smartphone-Anbieter erreicht. (Authorial + Huawei + Capacity: pos) <tech-HB-20170106> |
References
Baker, Paul. 2006. Using corpora in discourse analysis. London: Continuum.10.5040/9781350933996Suche in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2006. Evaluation in media discourse: Analysis of a newspaper corpus. London: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika. 2008. Emotion talk across corpora. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230285712Suche in Google Scholar
Bednarek, Monika & Helen Caple. 2012. News discourse. London: Continuum.Suche in Google Scholar
Bell, Allan. 1991. The language of news media. Oxford, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.Suche in Google Scholar
Broersma, Marcel. 2010. Journalism as performative discourse: The importance of form and style in journalism. In Verica Rupar (ed.), Journalism and meaning-making: Reading the newspaper, 15–35. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.Suche in Google Scholar
Calsamiglia, Helena & Carmen López Ferrero. 2003. Role and position of scientific voices: Reported speech in the media. Discourse Studies 5(2). 147–173. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461445603005002308.Suche in Google Scholar
Chouliaraki, Lilie. 2013. Re-mediation, inter-mediation, trans-mediation: The cosmopolitan trajectories of convergent journalism. Journalism Studies 14(2). 267–283. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670x.2012.718559.Suche in Google Scholar
Fang, Alex, Jing, Cao & Yang Song. 2009. A new corpus resource for studies in the syntactic characteristics of terminologies in contemporary English. In CEUR workshop proceedings, vol. 578.Suche in Google Scholar
Goldhahn, Dirk, Thomas Eckart & Uwe Quasthoff. 2012. Building large monolingual dictionaries at the Leipzig Corpora Collection: From 100 to 200 languages. In Proceedings of the eighth international conference on language resources and evaluation (LREC’12), 759–765.Suche in Google Scholar
Groom, Nicholas. 2010. Closed-class keywords and corpus-driven discourse analysis. In Marina Bondi & Mike Scott (eds.), Keyness in texts, 59–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.41.05groSuche in Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan. 2011. Corpus approaches to evaluation: Phraseology and evaluative language. New York: Routledge.10.4324/9780203841686Suche in Google Scholar
Hunston, Susan & Hang Su. 2019. Patterns, constructions and local grammar: A case study of ‘evaluation’. Applied Linguistics 40(4). 567–593. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amx046.Suche in Google Scholar
Martin, James & Peter White. 2005. The language of evaluation: Appraisal in English. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan.10.1057/9780230511910Suche in Google Scholar
Ramón García, Noelia. 2006. Mapping meaning onto form: A corpus-based contrastive study of nominal modification in English and Spanish. Languages in Contrast 6(2). 307–334. https://doi.org/10.1075/lic.6.2.05ram.Suche in Google Scholar
Reul, Robin, Steve Paulussen & Pieter Maeseele. 2019. News from the pit: Journalistic performativity and discourse on Belgian internment policy. Discourse, Context & Media 27. 32–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2018.02.005.Suche in Google Scholar
Scollon, Ron. 1998. Mediated discourse as social interaction: A study of news discourse. New York: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Scott, Mike. 2010. Problems in investigating keyness, or clearing the undergrowth and marking out trails. In Marina Bondi & Mike Scott (eds.), Keyness in texts, 43–57. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.41.04scoSuche in Google Scholar
Scott, Mike. 2011. WordSmith tools v. 6.0. Liverpool: Lexical Analysis Software.Suche in Google Scholar
Scott, Mike & Christopher Tribble. 2006. Textual patterns: Keyword and corpus analysis in language education. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/scl.22Suche in Google Scholar
Sinclair, John. 1986. Fictional worlds. In Malcolm Coulthard (ed.), Talking about text: Studies presented to David Brazil on his retirement Discourse Analysis Monographs No. 13, 43–60. Birmingham: University of Birmingham: English Language Research.Suche in Google Scholar
Su, Hang & Susan Hunston. 2019. Language patterns and ATTITUDE revisited: Adjective patterns, attitude and appraisal. Functions of Language 26(3). 343–371. https://doi.org/10.1075/fol.16030.su.Suche in Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 2010. Review of Emotion talk across corpora. Linguistics and the Human Sciences 3(3). 399–404. https://doi.org/10.1558/lhs.v3i3.399.Suche in Google Scholar
Thompson, Geoff. 2014. AFFECT and emotion, target-value mismatches, and Russian dolls: Refining the APPRAISAL model. In Geoff Thompson & Laura Alba-Juez (eds.), Evaluation in context, 47–66. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.10.1075/pbns.242.03thoSuche in Google Scholar
Tuchman, Gaye. 1971. Objectivity as strategic ritual: An examination of newsmen’s notions of objectivity. American Journal of Sociology 77(4). 660–679.10.4324/9781315189772-9Suche in Google Scholar
Van Leeuwen, Theo. 1996. The representation of social actors. In Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard & Malcolm Coulthard (eds.), Texts and practices, 32–70. London: Routledge.Suche in Google Scholar
Waugh, Linda. 1995. Reported speech in journalistic discourse: The relation of function and text. Text 15(1). 129–173. https://doi.org/10.1515/text.1.1995.15.1.129.Suche in Google Scholar
White, Peter. 2012. Exploring the axiological workings of ‘reporter voice’ news stories–Attribution and attitudinal positioning. Discourse, Context & Media 1(2). 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcm.2012.10.004.Suche in Google Scholar
© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Hedging in interpreted and spontaneous speeches: a comparative study of Chinese and American political press briefings
- Appraisal as co-selection and media performativity: 5G technology imaged in German news discourse
- Moments and mechanisms of intervention along textual trajectories: norm negotiations in English-medium research writing
- How do applied linguistics researchers structure coherence relations in the process of establishing a niche for their research?
- A window into interpersonal relations in Jane Eyre from the perspective of imperatives
- Epistemic stance in the translations of Chinese medicine classics: a case study of Huang Di Nei Jing
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Frontmatter
- Full Length Articles
- Hedging in interpreted and spontaneous speeches: a comparative study of Chinese and American political press briefings
- Appraisal as co-selection and media performativity: 5G technology imaged in German news discourse
- Moments and mechanisms of intervention along textual trajectories: norm negotiations in English-medium research writing
- How do applied linguistics researchers structure coherence relations in the process of establishing a niche for their research?
- A window into interpersonal relations in Jane Eyre from the perspective of imperatives
- Epistemic stance in the translations of Chinese medicine classics: a case study of Huang Di Nei Jing
