Language in the News

Innocent Chiluwa

ISBN 10: 3631633548 / ISBN 13: 9783631633540

Published by Peter Lang Ltd. International Academic Publishers Jun 2012, 2012

About this Item

This item is printed on demand - it takes 3-4 days longer - Neuware -This book is a discourse-pragmatic study of media language in news headlines and leads. News is viewed as discourse in action largely influenced by some unique sociolinguistic and cultural constraints. The period between 1996 and 2002 viewed in this book as very crucial in the political development of Nigeria provided an environment that made highly critical and sensational news reports inevitable. The three most prominent Nigerian urban newsmagazines namely Newswatch, Tell and TheNews referred to as 'radical press,' are viewed as adopting a people-oriented approach to confront perpetrators of social unrests and political scandals in Nigeria, especially military dictators and corrupt politicians. In a wide range of stylistic variations, lexico-semantic and grammatical strategies that produced highly sensational headlines and overlines, the news conveyed clearly marked ideologically significant representations of people and situations. Thus, in the context of Nigerian English, certain culture-specific items of discourse are foregrounded in the news to resist corruption and political power abuse. 182 pp. Englisch.

Seller Inventory # 9783631633540

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Language in the News
• Publisher: Peter Lang Ltd. International Academic Publishers Jun 2012
• Publication Date: 2012
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 3631633548
• ISBN 13: 9783631633540
• Binding: Buch
• Condition: Neu
• Dimensions: 210W x 148H x 15D millimeters 210 millimeters width by 148 millimeters height by 15 millimeters depth
• Weight: 350 grams

About this title

Synopsis

This book is a discourse-pragmatic study of media language in news headlines and leads. News is viewed as discourse in action largely influenced by some unique sociolinguistic and cultural constraints. The period between 1996 and 2002 viewed in this book as very crucial in the political development of Nigeria provided an environment that made highly critical and sensational news reports inevitable. The three most prominent Nigerian urban newsmagazines namely Newswatch, Tell and TheNews referred to as ‘radical press,’ are viewed as adopting a people-oriented approach to confront perpetrators of social unrests and political scandals in Nigeria, especially military dictators and corrupt politicians. In a wide range of stylistic variations, lexico-semantic and grammatical strategies that produced highly sensational headlines and overlines, the news conveyed clearly marked ideologically significant representations of people and situations. Thus, in the context of Nigerian English, certain culture-specific items of discourse are foregrounded in the news to resist corruption and political power abuse.

About the Author

Innocent Chiluwa is a Senior Lecturer in Applied Linguistics in the Department of Languages, Covenant University, Ota (Nigeria). He has published scholarly articles in leading international journals in this field, e.g. Discourse & Society, Discourse Studies, Discourse & Communication, Journal of Multicultural Discourses, Journal of Language of Politics etc. He is the author of Labeling and Ideology in the Press (Peter Lang) and co-editor of Computer-Mediated Discourse in Africa (Nova Science).