Volume 11, Issue 2

Drawing on selected approaches from pragmatics, functional linguistics, discourse space theories and evaluation theories, this article proposes a methodological framework for the study of science journalism. It presents the institutional context of science journalism, which is considered a hybrid discourse, as it combines features of science communication and of market-driven journalism, particularly the need for the coverage to meet the criteria of newsworthiness. To enable the study of how science journalists tend to engage the readers linguistically without foregoing the appearances of credibility, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of such pragmalinguistic categories as illocutionary force, reference and positioning, agency and stance, proximization and alignment, as well as emotivity and evaluation. Finally, the article illustrates the applicability of the above categories in a qualitative analysis of a special corpus of “most-read” medicine and biotechnology reports published in the online version of the popular international science magazine New Scientist. The analysis shows how to combine these categories in a productive way in order to develop a methodologically viable and theoretically grounded approach to doing (critical) discourse analysis of science journalism.

Analysing a corpus of article-headlines selected from forty issues of National Geographic in its French electronic version contrasted to its Greek one, this paper examines the constrains (cognitive, cultural and social) observed in both versions in terms of characteristics of identity and of politeness. Findings demonstrate that cross-cultural differences emerge along with linguistics parameters and that translators attend target group’s enactment of pragmatic features. The degree of the enunciator’s involvement in his/her utterance varies in both versions, process that implies a differentiation in the preferences/characteristics of the specific audiences; characteristics to which both of the working languages seem to stay attached, reflecting a general attitude of each linguistic community.

The article begins with the assumption that that translators use hyperbole and understatement to manipulate ideology. The explication of it is embedded in the pragma-linguistic framework and supported with the discussion of the role of context perceived as the three-dimensional understanding of text production. The focus of this paper is on the negative application of these two ideologically loaded language tools in the context of the press. Accordingly, press translators need to be aware of the negative application of hyperboles and understatements for ideology purposes in the source text in relation to the surrounding context (textual, institutional, and social) and, next, be able to translate them adequately to the needs of the target text ideology in the target context. The purpose of this article is to verify this assumption and gain insight into such operations. In order to investigate it, a sample of articles from the British quality press and their translations published in Polish newspapers is used. The results show that hyperboles and understatements, indeed, possess ideological potential that contributes to the projected textual ideology. They are manipulated in translation, however, not invariably through alterations of these two devices themselves. Sometimes the manipulation occurs through omission or manipulation of of of the context in which they are employed while the hyperbole and understatements are translated rather literally. Independently of what technical decision the translator makes in reference to the devices as such, it is invariably performed in relation to the ideological demands of the target text.

This study investigates news, editorials and opinion pieces (op-ed) appearing in the Australian in the context of Iran’s nuclear project and finds that the attention of this newspaper is inconsistent with the International Non-Proliferation Treaty. It argues that the Iran nuclear program is represented as a threat and Iran is perceived as untrustworthy. Furthermore, this newspaper does not criticize “the West” and its allies for having and using nuclear weapons. Ultimately, it demonstrates the limitations of media criticism of official policy. This study also draws attention to the fact that the Australian espouses a predominantly Orientalist view.

The paper sets out to examine the metaphoricity of mediatized political discourse, particularly, news reports dealing with the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in its initial stage, from November 2013 to February 2014, as reflected in Lithuanian and Polish online press. The methodology of research relies on the principles of the Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Metaphor Identification Procedure (see Steen et al. 2010) and metaphorical patterns (Stefanowitsch 2004). Metaphorical expressions were identified in contexts surrounding three main content words identified with the AntConc (Anthony 2014) programme in Lithuanian and Polish corpus: Kyiv, Ukraine and Maidan. The results suggest that in the mediatized political discourse, these place-names are usually conceptualized as an animal or, more frequently, as a person, experiencing difficulties, suffering, feeling lost, angry, also ready to fight and able to make decisions and act independently. Another image is that of a traveller to Europe, an almost mythical destination, which is reflected in metaphorical expressions and the newly emerging compound Euromaidan. Another, slightly less numerously represented, tendency is concerned with Kyiv, Ukraine and Maidan conceptualized as objects and institutions. They include containers for (hot) fluid, a chiming bell, a toy, garbage, theatre, school, etc. Most metaphors employed in the texts are evaluative. Culture-specific features in conceptualizing events in Ukraine are mostly connected with some deeply entrenched images, like furrows and rural life in Lithuanian, and positing Poland as Ukraine’s ally and friend in Polish.

Cornelius Castoriadis (1987: 147) argues that all societies have a central imaginary in order to consider basic questions about their identity. Imaginary specifications provide an answer to these questions, while they assemble, adjust, fabricate and construct a society. In all this, language plays a crucial role. As Castoriadis points out, it is through language that these social imaginary significations become manifest and do their constitutive work. In the spirit of these claims and the assumption that identities are constructed discursively (Tekin 2010: 4), the present article uses Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the construction of the identity of the Troika – the common support mechanism for Greece in the wake of its sovereign debt crisis and threat of a disorderly default in 2010 consisting of the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Commission. The aim is to determine how the different political parties construct the identity of the troika. Since identity necessarily concerns a relation to the Self and the Other, and othering is an important activity in the construction of identity, the paper studies the strategies of othering used in the Greek Parliament by the different political parties across all political affiliations during the parliamentary debate preceding the vote on the second bailout loan on 12 February, 2012. The paper also seeks to identify the social imaginary of Greek society and determine whether it is one of social division and dissimulation or one of unity and accord.