Output details

Television Discourse: Analysing language in the media

Overlap with pre-2008 publications: Each empirical chapter analyses a range of illustrative examples from a corpus of television texts. Nine examples from three pre-2008 publications have been drawn upon: four (p. 166, p. 168, p. 170, p. 171) from ‘The discourse of lifestyles in the broadcast media’ (Bou-Franch (ed.) Ways into Discourse, 2006a), two (p.173, p. 177) from ‘Buying and selling’ (Media, Culture & Society, 2006b) and three (p. 44, p. 46, p. 111) from ‘A rapport and impression management approach to public figures’ performance of talk’ (Journal of Pragmatics, 2005). These examples are integrated into the theme of each relevant empirical chapter.

Television Discourse chapters are structured around discussion of illustrative examples from an extensive reference corpus (c. 50 hours) of transcribed video recordings. These come from non-fiction formats on New Zealand/ UK/US television. While this textual corpus constitutes the primary source of data for the book, ethnographic materials were also drawn upon. Given the linguistic focus of the output, the ethnographic corpus was used sporadically. Critical insight regarding the key defining features of television discourse is developed across the chapters, especially Chapter 14. The arguments underpinning these features evolved from analysis of the textual/ethnographic corpora, which were collected over 15 years.