Approaches to

DIREC=
Edited by Allan Bell and Peter Garrett
Approaches to Media Discourse

[Se
Advance Praise for Approaches to Media Discourse

‘An editor’s introduction and eight excellent papers, by acknowl-

edged experts, present current approaches to media discourse.
Critical discourse analysis, cultural studies, conversation analysis,
the analysis of page layout, reception of news broadcasts, are ap-
plied to newspapers, television and radio. A state-of-the-art presen-
tation, invaluable for students and researchers in the growing field
of media discourse.’ Roger Fowler, University of East Anglia

‘This admirable collection of papers by some of the most eminent

scholars in the field of media studies combines breadth of coverage
with depth of analysis, and programmatic methodological state-
ments with detailed empirical studies. It will be an indispensable
text in its field for many years to come.’ Andreas H. Jucker, Professor
of English Linguistics, Justus Liebig University, Giessen

‘A useful entry point for anyone seeking to understand the diverse

approaches found under the umbrella label of “media discourse”.’
Jean Aitchison, Professor of Language and Communication, University of
Oxford

‘Approaches to Media Discourse provides a sharp collection of critical

essays, mainly on the news media. Leading writers on media dis-
course introduce their theoretical methods and make them work on
specific instances from the press, radio and television, as well as
texts produced by selected audiences. Readers can test and compare
the applicability and relevance of various approaches and adapt
them to their own examination of the media.’ Ulrike H. Meinhof,
University of Bradford
Approaches to Media Discourse
Edited by Allan Bell and Peter Garrett

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Copyright © Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 1998

First published 1998

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Preface
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements

Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview

Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

Opinions and Ideologies in the Press

Teun A. van Dijk Pa

The Discourse Structure of News Stories

Allan Bell 64

News from NowHere: Televisual News

Discourse and the Construction of Hegemony
Stuart Allan 105

Political Discourse in the Media:

An Analytical Framework
Norman Fairclough 142

Conversation Analysis: Neutralism

in British News Interviews
David Greatbatch 163
vi Contents

Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis

of Newspaper Layout
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen 186
Chapter 8 Signs and Wonders: Interpreting
the Economy through Television
Kay Richardson 220
Media — Language — World
Paddy Scannell de

References 268
Index 283
This book began life at a Victorian country mansion in Wales in
the hot July of 1995. Two dozen specialists gathered for three
days at Dyffryn House for the Cardiff Round Table on Media
Discourse. The core papers presented on that occasion were in-
tended for this collection on approaches to media discourse, making
the event the conference of these proceedings rather than vice
versa. Scholars who had developed the main frameworks for ana-
lysing media discourse presented and exemplified their ap-
proaches, each with a respondent and discussion from the rest of
those present.
Numbers invited to the Round Table were limited to ensure a
size conducive to fruitful discussion. In addition, some of those
invited were unable to be present. This inevitably restricted the
number of approaches that could be represented. Those who came,
however, were particularly attracted by the chance to gather with a
small number of like-interested scholars for an intensive time
concentrating on one area. The format worked well, and the next
in the annual Cardiff Round Table series — on another topic in
language and communication — will have taken place before this
volume of papers from the first of these events is published.
viii Preface

As convenors of that meeting and editors of this collection, we

are happy to acknowledge the contribution of all participants to a
very valuable meeting and to the quality of the book which has
grown from it: Jean Aitchison, Stuart Allan, Allan Bell, Nikolas
Coupland, Howard Davis, Tatiana Dobrosklonskaya, Peter Garrett,
Sharon Goodman, David Graddol, David Greatbatch, Sandra
Harris, Andreas Jucker, Stephanie Marriott, Philip Mitchell, Kay
Richardson, Itzhak Roeh, Srikant Sarangi, Paddy Scannell, Wenche
Vagle, Teun van Dijk and Theo van Leeuwen. As well as the papers
published in this book, other presentations at the Round Table
covered a wide range of work: changes in media discourse in the
former Soviet bloc (Davis, Dobrosklonskaya), the discourse of peace
and war in Israeli media (Roeh), dialect and social stereotyping in
television sitcoms (Marriott), the development of dialogue formats
on Norwegian radio (Vagle), British headlines about crime
(Aitchison), the use of non-standard English in British newspapers
(Goodman), and social work in the media (Sarangi). The partici-
pants included mostly linguists and discourse analysts who study
media texts, but there were also some media sociologists present. As
well as from the UK, we came from the Netherlands, Norway,
Germany, Israel, Russia and New Zealand.
We gladly acknowledge the support of the Centre for Language
and Communication Research at the University of Wales Cardiff,
and in particular of the Centre’s Director, Nikolas Coupland.
Blackwell Publishers sponsored the meeting as well as publishing
this volume, and we are grateful for some travel support from the
British Academy. Allan Bell’s involvement in the enterprise as a
whole is due in part to support from the British Council, New
Zealand Public Good Science Fund, the Department of Linguistics
at Victoria University of Wellington, and the Centre for Language
and Communication Research of the University of Wales Cardiff.
At Blackwell’s, we thank Philip Carpenter and Steve Smith for
their guidance throughout the production of the book.

Peter Garrett, Cardiff

Allan Bell, Auckland
Stuart Allan is Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at the Uni-
versity of Glamorgan. His publications have been primarily con-
cerned with cultural theory, media sociology and nuclear issues,
and include a co-edited volume (with Barbara Adam), Theorizing
Culture: An Interdisciplinary Critique After Postmodernism (UCL
Press/NYU Press: 1995). He is currently writing a book entitled
News Culture (Open University Press), as well as co-editing one
entitled News, Gender and Power (Routledge). He is also the deputy
editor of Time and Society (Sage Journals).

Allan Bell has been both making and studying media language and
discourse for many years, combining work as an independent re-
searcher in mass communication and sociolinguistics with freelance
journalism and media consultancy. He has worked as journalist and
editor in the daily and weekly press. He has researched media
language in several countries, especially New Zealand and the
United Kingdom. He is affiliated as a Senior Research Fellow to the
Linguistics Programme, Department of English, University of
Auckland. In 1994 he held a fellowship at the Centre for Language
x Notes on Contributors

and Communication Research, University of Wales Cardiff. His

publications include ‘Language style and audience design’ (Lan-
guage in Society: 1984), The Language of News Media (Blackwell: 1991)
and ‘Language and the media’ (Annual Review of Applied Linguistics:
1995). He is (with Nikolas Coupland) co-founder and editor of the
Journal of Sociolinguistics (Blackwell).

Norman Fairclough is Professor of Language in Social Life in the

Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language, Lancas-
ter University. He has published Language and Power (Longman:
1989), Discourse and Social Change (Polity Press: 1992), Media Dis-
course (Edward Arnold: 1995) and Critical Discourse Analysis
(Longman: 1995).

Peter Garrett is Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at

the Centre for Language and Communication Research, University
of Wales Cardiff. His research and publications are primarily in the
areas of language attitudes and language awareness. He co-edited
(with Carl James) Language Awareness in the Classroom (Longman:
1991), and is currently editor of the journal Language Awareness
(Multilingual Matters). He has published articles in many journals,
including Language in Society, Language and Communication,
Multilingua, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development,
Language and Education, and Language Culture and Curriculum.

David Greatbatch is University Research Fellow in the School of

Social Studies, University of Nottingham. He has written exten-
sively on conversation analysis, media discourse and professional /
client interaction. His publications include articles in the American
Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Language in Society,
and Law and Society Review. He is currently completing a book on
news interviewing, entitled The Political News Interview: The History
and Dynamics of a Social Form, with John Heritage and Steven
Clayman.

Gunther Kress is Professor of Education/English at the Institute of

Education, University of London. He is interested in the complex
interrelations of social and cultural matters and their representa-
tions in the form of signs. He has published in the areas of critical
 Notes on Contributors xi

_ discourse analysis and social semiotics: (with Robert Hodge) Lan-

guage as Ideology (Routledge: 2nd edn, 1993) and Social Semiotics
(Polity Press: 1989); Learning to Write (Routledge: 1993); (with Theo
van Leeuwen) Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design
(Routledge: 1996). He has also published Linguistic Processes in
Sociocultural Practice (Oxford University Press: 1989); Writing the
Future: English and the Making of a Culture of Innovation (Sheffield,
National Association of Teachers of English: 1995); Before Writing:
Rethinking the Paths to Literacy (Routledge: 1996). He has taught at
universities in Australia and the UK.

Kay Richardson is Senior Lecturer in Communication Studies at the

University of Liverpool. Her published research is partly in media
studies and partly in applied linguistics. She is co-author (with John
Corner and Natalie Fenton) of a book on audience interpretations of
TV documentaries about the nuclear power industry, Nuclear Reac-
tions (John Libbey Publishers: 1990), and co-editor (with Ulrike
Meinhof) of Text, Discourse and Context: Representations of Poverty in
Britain (Longman: 1994). She has also published in the journals
Language and Communication, Text and Social Semiotics.

Paddy Scannell is Reader in Media Studies at the Centre for Com-

munication and Information Studies at the University of Westmin-
ster, where he has taught since 1967. He is a founding editor of the
journal Media, Culture and Society. He has published widely on
many aspects of broadcasting. His books include: A Social History of
British Broadcasting, 1923-1939 (with David Cardiff; Blackwell:
1991); an edited collection on Broadcast Talk (Sage: 1991) and, most
recently, Radio, Television and Modern Life (Blackwell: 1996). His
current research interests include the phenomenology of media,
and communication and culture in Africa.

Teun A. van Dijk is Professor of Discourse Studies at the University

of Amsterdam. After earlier work in literary studies, text grammar
and the psychology of text comprehension, his research in the 1980s
focused on the study of news in the press and the reproduction of
racism through various types of discourse. In each of these do-
mains, he published several books. His current research in ‘critical’
discourse studies focuses on the relations between power, discourse
xii Notes on Contributors

and ideology. He is founder-editor of the international journals Text

and Discourse and Society, and editor of the four-volume Handbook of
Discourse Analysis (1985) and the two-volume Discourse Studies: A
Multidisciplinary Introduction (Sage: 1996). He has lectured widely in
Europe and the Americas, and has been visiting professor at several
universities in Latin America.

Theo van Leeuwen is Professor of Communication at the School of

Media of the London College of Printing. He studied screenwriting
and direction at the Netherlands Film Academy in Amsterdam, and
linguistics at Macquarie University and the University of Sydney.
After working as a film and television producer in his native Hol-
land and in Australia, he lectured in Media and Communication at
Macquarie University. He is co-author (with Gunther Kress) of
Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design (Deakin University
Press: 1990), and (with Philip Bell) of The Media Interview: Confession,
Contest, Conversation (1994).
The authors and publishers gratefully acknowledge the following
for permission to reproduce copyright material: the Daily Mirror,
the Sun, the Guardian, the Observer, Washington Post, Reuters, Neue
Kronenzeitung, Taglich Alles, Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, and ITN.
Every effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce
copyright material. The publishers apologize for any errors or omis-
sions in the above list and would be grateful to be notified of any
corrections that should be incorporated in the next edition or reprint
of this book.
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 Chapter 1

Media and Discourse:

A Critical Overview
Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

Approaches to Media Discourse presents for scholars and students

some of the main ways in which media discourse has been studied.
It is intended both to introduce students to the available frame-
works, and, for scholars, to mark the state of the art in media
discourse studies. Our brief for contributors to the volume was to
outline their own approach or analytical framework for media dis-
course; to illustrate it in depth by close analysis of example media
texts, including their production and reception, and sociopolitical
dimensions; and to offer practical guidelines on applying their
approach.
Most of the contributions were originally presented at the
Cardiff Round Table on Media Discourse which we convened in
1995 at the University of Wales Cardiff. The Round Table brought
together a selected group of the leading specialists in media dis-
course. It offered them the chance to present their approaches
and to receive feedback from colleagues in the field. But this book
is not a conference proceedings. Rather the reverse: the Round
Table meeting was in large part planned as a dress rehearsal for the
book.
2 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

Media and Discourse

So what is media discourse and why the interest in it? The first of
these questions immediately runs into the problem of terminologi-
cal clarity. There is a conspicuous lack of agreement on definitions
of both discourse and text (see for example Widdowson, 1995). It is
clearly not our intention in this brief introduction to attempt to
establish clarity in such a complex field. But it is an issue: if we are
studying media discourse, what is discourse? Media studies is very
much a multidisciplinary area, and different disciplines are work-
ing with their own notions of what these terms mean. For example,
in the more sociologically oriented areas, discourse is considered
primarily in relation to social contexts of language use. In linguis-
tics, discourse tends to focus more on language and its use. Recent
years have seen steps towards a constructive fusion of these two
traditions (Boyd-Barrett, 1994: 23). This volume is very much a
product of such mutual interest, and we hope an encouragement to
further co-operative development.
Language in the modern media cannot realistically be seen in
terms of the traditional linguistic distinction between the terms
discourse and text, as spoken and written language respectively.
Spoken language traditionally entailed a co-present listener who
was able to affect the speaker’s flow of discourse, but usually
spoken language in the media does not allow that (cf. Bell, 1991).
And if written texts traditionally implied a remote reader unable to
influence the flow of discourse, then spoken language in the media
shares such properties. Another cause of this blurring of distinc-
tions has been the change in perspectives on where the meanings of
texts reside. ’. . Text-as-meaning is produced at the moment of
reading, not at the moment of writing... [this] takes away from
that text the status of being the originator of that meaning’ (Fiske,
1987: 305; see also Meinhof, 1994: 212f). Since meanings are now
seen to be more a product of negotiation between readers and texts,
text takes on more of the interactive qualities of discourse.
Such developments in part account for the failure to distinguish
sharply between discourse and text in some literature today, and for
the statements that the difference is negligible (see Widdowson,
1995: 161f). However, for many, as will be seen in this volume, a
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 3

- new distinction has emerged. Text tends to be used to refer to the

outward manifestation of a communication event, whereas use of
the term discourse may be exemplified through a statement by Cook
(1992: 1) about discourse analysis:

[I]t is not concerned with language alone. It also examines the context
of communication: who is communicating with whom and why; in
what kind of society and situation, through what medium; how
different types of communication evolved, and their relationship to
each other.

For discourse analysis to achieve thisin, eae contexts, definitions

of media texts have moved far away from the traditional view of
text as words printed in ink on pieces of paper to take on a far
broader definition to include speech, music and sound effects,
image, and So on.
Graddol (1994b: 41) maintains that most texts can be regarded as
communicative artifacts, and that, as such, they are a product of a
technology. Media texts, then, Teflect the technology that-is avail-
able for producing them. The music and sound effects of modern
media can act in similar ways to prosodic features in spoken texts —
grouping items, marking boundaries, indicating historical periods
or distant locations, and so on. Against this technological back-
ground, Kress and van Leeuwen are able to refer to the layout of
newspaper pages as ‘text’ in their chapter in this volume. And
knowing that any artifact has a history and has been crafted into a
final form gives a context for Bell’s insights into how the final shape
of a news story is affected by the process of selection and editing.
Why then the interest in media discourse? The media have long
been a focus amongst those working with language and communi-
cation, as well as others working within the broader field of media
studies. Bell (1995a: 23) gives four main reasons for this. Firstly,
media are a rich source of readily accessible data for research and
teaching. Secondly, media usage influences and represents people’s
use of and attitudes towards language in a speech community.
Thirdly (and related), media use can tell us a great deal about social
meanings and stereotypes projected through language and commu-
nication: for example in the use of foreign languages in advertise-
ments (Haarmann, 1984; Cheshire and Moser, 1994), in radio disc
4 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

jockey style-shifting (N. Coupland, 1985), and in the television

portrayal of the elderly (Robinson and Skill, 1995). Fourthly (and
again relatedly), the media reflect and influence the formation and
expression of culture, politics and social life.

Coverage

This book includes a wide range of frameworks and approaches to

media discourse: Conversation Analysis (Greatbatch); Critical Dis-
course Analysis from both sociocognitive (van Dijk) and discourse-
practice (Fairclough) perspectives; Cultural Studies (Allan); a
structural discourse analysis (Bell); reception analysis (Richardson);
and a ‘grammar’ of visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen). All of
these attend closely to the form of media texts, but are also informed
to varying degrees by social and political analysis. Van Dijk, Bell,
Greatbatch, and Kress and van Leeuwen expound detailed analyti-
cal frameworks and apply them closely to their various example
media texts. The chapters by Fairclough, van Dijk and Allan range
widely over sociopolitical as well as discoursal concerns, in keeping
with the ‘critical’ stance of their authors.
However, the range of the media genres the book discusses is
comparatively narrow. All are in the ‘factual’ rather than ‘fictional’
realm, and all but one cover news (van Dijk’s focus is opinion pieces
such as editorials). Other media genres have been researched, of
course: for example, see Cook (1992) on advertising discourse;
Talbot’s (1992) analysis of a teenage magazine; and J. Coupland
(1996) on dating advertisements. But most of the work in media
discourse has been on the ‘factual’ genres, and particularly news.
(So, let it be said, has most of the sociological analysis of mass
communications — it is only in the more recent schools of cultural,
critical and literary studies that a focus on other genres predomi-
nates.) This emphasis reflects the status of the news as the most
prestigious of daily media genres, and its role at the centre of the
exercise of power in modern societies. Within the focus on the news,
however, coverage is diverse — analysis of hard news discourse
(Bell, Fairclough), visual design (Kress and van Leeuwen), inter-
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 5

views (Greatbatch, Fairclough), television news openings (Allan),

and television news stories and their reception (Richardson).
Geographically, some of the data are drawn mainly from the
USA, New Zealand and Austria, but most come from the United
Kingdom, which is where a high proportion of media discourse
work is carried out and where most of the contributors are currently
based. The contributions are evenly divided in their focus on broad-
cast versus print media. Bell, van Dijk, and Kress and van Leeuwen
deal with the daily press; Allan, Greatbatch and Richardson with
television; and Fairclough with radio.
One of the most instructive ways to approach this book is to
compare how different contributors have dealt with similar kinds of
data or research questions. For example, both Greatbatch and
Fairclough analyse antagonistic news interviews, from Conversa-
tion Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis viewpoints respec-
tively. This enables us to see how their different approaches work in
practice, what they entail, what they offer, what kind and quality of
findings they yield. Similarly, Bell, Richardson and Allan all analyse
the texts of news stories, and their approaches can also be com-
pared. Both Allan and van Dijk deal with texts about two of the
villains of Western international relations — Gadhafi of Libya and
Saddam Hussein of Iraq. Both analysts characterize how ‘Us’ versus
‘Them’ stereotyping functions in coverage of these nations.
Greatbatch also analyses an earlier news interview (circa 1980) in
which the Soviet Union was the targeted ‘Them’.

Critical Approaches

In the past few years, the study of media language and discourse
has gained a coherence and focus it previously lacked. Pioneering
analyses of media discourse conducted in the ‘Critical Linguistics’
framework (e.g. Fowler et al., 1979; Kress and Hodge, 1979) had
been stimulating but less than satisfactory.
The approach called ‘Critical Discourse Analysis’ (CDA) repre-
sents an outgrowth of the work of the British and Australian pio-
neers of Critical Linguistics, particularly Fowler and Kress, in
6 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

convergence with the approaches of the British discourse analyst_

Fairclough and Dutch text linguist van Dijk. CDA has produced the
|
majority of the research into media discourse during the 1980s and |
1990s, and has arguably become the standard framework for study-
ing media texts within European linguistics and discourse studies.
Thus, several of the contributors to this book work out of a CDA
approach. They are also the leading contributors to the theoretical
section of a CDA reader (Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard, 1996).
Conversely, a high proportion of CDA work has focused on the
media. Some 40 percent of the papers published in the CDA journal
Discourse and Society deal with media data, as do half the chapters in
Caldas-Coulthard and Coulthard (1996).
Neither of these facts is surprising. CDA has an explicit socio-
political agenda, a concern to discover and bear witness to unequal
relations of power which underlie ways of talking in a society,
and in particular to reveal the role of discourse in reproducing or
challenging sociopolitical dominance. The media are_a particular
subject of CDA analysis because of their manifestly pivotal role as
discourse-bearing institutions.
CDA also offers the potential for applying theoretically sophisti-
cated frameworks to important issues, so is a natural tool for those
who wish to make their research socially activist. But CDA is best
viewed as a shared perspective encompassing a range of ap-
proaches rather than as just one school, as we shall see in the
different frameworks of contributors to this volume. CDA is criti-
cized (see Hammersley, 1996; Widdowson, 1995, 1996; Fairclough,
1996), but it nevertheless holds a hegemonic position in the field
of media discourse, such that other approaches tend to have to
position and define themselves in relation to CDA.

The Contributions

Van Dijk

Teun van Dijk has long been a leading theorist and advocate of
discourse analysis as an interdisciplinary approach to the analysis
of texts in social context. His framework aims to integrate the pro-
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 7

duction and interpretation of discourse as well as its textual analy-

sis. In the 1980s he began to apply his theory and methodology of
discourse analysis to media texts. He published two pioneering
companion volumes on his ‘new, interdisciplinary theory of news in
the press’ (1988b: vii). News as Discourse (1988b) appeared as a
primary theoretical contribution to the analysis of news stories. It
was supplemented by a volume of case studies, News Analysis
(1988a), drawn mainly from large-scale studies of international
news reporting and of racism in the European press. Van Dijk’s is
the most comprehensive work on media discourse to date, and he
has continued to extend the range of his work on to themes such as
racism in the media, and other genres such as opinion texts and
editorials — his topic in his contribution to this book.
Van Dijk’s approach falls under the rubric of Critical Discourse
Analysis (he is founder and editor of the journal Discourse and
Society). In his chapter, he looks at the nature of opinions and how
they are expressed in editorials in the press. To do so, he works
within the framework of a larger project on discourse and ideology,
and employs a multidisciplinary theory of ideology.
A fundamental question that van Dijk’s theory addresses is: how
are societal structures related to discourse structures? Van Dijk
argues that they cannot be related directly. If they were, then there
would be no need for ideology, and moreover, all actors in a social
group would do and say the same thing. He posits a framework in
which societal structures can only be related to discourse structures
through social actors and their minds: mental models mediate
between ideology and discourse. Hence his theory has three main
components: social functions, cognitive structures, and discursive
expression and reproduction. These bridge the gap between macro
and micro levels of analysis.
Discourse structures which may contain underlying ideological
positions range from microstructures such as lexical items and
grammatical structures to macrostructures such as topics or themes
expressed indirectly in larger stretches of text or whole discourses.
These macrostructures are organized hierarchically: macrorules
define the most important information in a text. These are evident,
for example, when we give a summary of a text. Such macrorules
draw upon the reader’s world knowledge. At the macrolevel, then,
this is a point at which meanings are assigned by readers.
 8 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

But readers do not ‘impose’ coherence only at the global level;

they do this at the local level too. A sequence of sentences, for
example, may have coherence read into it through the reader’s
mental model. This is an important implication of van Dijk’s model.
Not only is a text just a fraction of a model, but people understand
much more than a text actually expresses.
There are two points to be made here in relation to other chapters
in this volume. First of all, one of the underpinnings of Bell’s chap-
ter is that knowing what a text says is usually not straightforward.
We need to look carefully at what texts actually say and what they
do not say, to identify the points where there is vagueness, ambigu-
ity, lack of obvious coherence, etc. Carrying out such analysis gives
a firmer basis for considering ideological issues.
The second point relates to the readers. One of the most potent
forces at work in van Dijk’s discourse is the ‘ideological square’.
This functions to polarize in and out groups in order to present the
‘We’ group in a favourable light and the ‘They’ group unfavour-
ably. With a close analysis of editorials and opinion pieces, van Dijk
shows how the American prestige press presents national leaders
such as Gadhafi and Saddam Hussein as ‘Them’ in contrast with
nations such as Israel which are regarded as ‘Us’.
How do the readers respond to this when they are from different
groups? The media are not directed at a homogeneous society,
untouched by divisions of power and interests, as van Dijk himself
says. It is often pointed out amongst media discourse researchers
how relatively little study has been made of how readers respond.
It is clearly not within the scope of van Dijk’s chapter to do so,
though his chapter sets out a theoretical basis from which to ap-
proach it. Richardson’s paper in this volume is one of the compara-
tively rare examples of studies that combine analysis of media
discourse with analysis of reception of that discourse.

Bell

Allan Bell has researched in the area of media language since the
1970s, primarily in New Zealand and the UK. He worked initially
on microlinguistic features of news language in a variationist frame-
work (a disciplinary background still seen in his co-founding and
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 9

editing of the Journal of Sociolinguistics). More recently he turned to

the macrolinguistic level of discourse in the media, developing an
analytical framework in his book The Lannguage ofNews Media (1991), _
which is one of the three principal texts in the field (together 1with
Fowler, 1991 and Fairclough, 1995a).
Bell’s chapter séts out and applies a framework for examining the
structure of news stories. His 1991 book had three main themes to it
— the processes which produce media language, the notion of the
news story and the role of media audiences. The chapter in this
volume emphasizes in particular the first two of these themes.
Bell’s work is characterized by an unusual mix of careers as both
journalist/editor and academic. This has enabled him to draw on
‘observant participation’ in journalism — an inside knowledge of
journalistic practices. His analysis of news stories in this book is
informed by what the surface of news texts can tell us about the
origins and inputs of stories. As Bell shows in his chapter, it is
important to understand how these production processes work if
one is to understand the eventual form and content of the news text.
But Bell’s prime focus in this volume is the discourse structure of
news stories. He shows how news stories differ from other kinds of
narrative.
The approach to discourse analysis that Bell sets out in this vol-
ume enables us to interrogate the story to try to reveal its event
structure, to address the question: what does the story say actually
happened? By this means, we are better able to uncover gaps or
unclarities, to see what the text does not say. At that point, we
are better prepared to engage in what he refers to as the ‘ideological
detective work’ of more critical discourse approaches.
He analyses examples of one-sentence stories published in British
newspapers, showing that even a single sentence can involve a
high level of discourse complexity as journalists try to pack in as
much information as possible. He offers detailed guidelines for
analysing the event structure and discourse structures of news
stories, and applies them to a Daily Mirror story about the arrest of
IRA suspects. The analysis of the events, actors, times and places in
a story shows up inconsistencies, incoherence, gaps and ambi-
guities within the story, conflicting forces during the story’s pro-
duction by journalist and copy-editor, and implications for readers’
comprehension.
10 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

Bell also focuses on time as one of the crucial dimensions of news

stories and news work. There is rarely chronological order in a news
story. Temporal sequence is subordinated to news values such as
the negativity value of the component events. This can lead to
considerable difficulty for readers in identifying precisely (even ina
single-sentence story) who did what, where and when. Stories are
given in instalments. There are undoubtedly advantages in this for
newsrooms at work: stories can be quickly cut down, perhaps to
the lead paragraph or sentence, and stories can soon have more
sentences or paragraphs ‘bolted on’.

Allan

Cultural Studies is the context for Stuart Allan’s contribution to this

volume. His approach has more recently been informed by critical,
postmodern approaches to media and society. This shows up in his
interest in time inthe media, and his deputy editorship of the
journal Time and Society,
Allan’s chapter provides an evaluative assessment of Cultural
Studies as an approach to media discourse, in particular to
televisual news discourse. He highlights news discourse as a re-
search problematic within Cultural Studies and briefly sketches the
history of work on news in that tradition. He identifies the issue of
‘hegemony’ as the key point of departure from earlier (positivistic)
approaches, and considers the problem of how news naturalizes
dominant forms of ‘common sense’ — the ‘NowHere’ of the news —
along with the implications for the ideological reproduction of
social divisions and hierarchies.
After assessing the place of contributors such as Gramsci and
Williams to the cultural studies tradition, Allan proceeds to outline
the main features of Hall’s (1980) influential ‘encoding /decoding’ —
model (which also figures importantly in the chapters by
Richardson and Scannell). He focuses on three ‘moments’ of media
communication outlined in this model: the moment of production
(encoding); the moment of the text; and the moment of meaning
negotiation (decoding) by the audience. The encoding/decoding
model goes beyond the standard three-stage model of communica-
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 11

tion — sender-message-receiver — to take seriously the intermeshing

of the three moments. Each of the moments is examined with an
eye to its importance for investigating how televisual news dis-
course serves hegemony through its self-presentation as natural
common sense. Allan analyses the opening sequences of televised
news programmes to see how they frame the material they are
presenting, and how they key viewers in to the lead stories which
follow.
Allan concludes by suggesting that there is a need to reverse the
direction of the enquiries into televisual news discourse in order to
discern the slippages, fissures and silences which always threaten to
compromise its discursive authority.

Fairclough

Norman Fairclough has developed his approach to media discourse

over a decade or more through his concern with language, dis-
course and power in society. His early books (1989, 1992) focused on
the place of language and discourse in sociopolitical power and
processes of social change, often using media texts as examples. His
more recent book on Media Discourse (1995a) focuses his work on
media texts and contexts. As with other critical discourse analysts,
Fairclough’s approach draws on Halliday’s functional framework.
To this, though, he adds a knowledge of more recent social theory,
drawing particularly on the French theorist Foucault. He has devel-
oped his approach independent of the media focus we see in his
chapter here, and his work covers a broader range of media texts
than that of, say, van Dijk and Bell.
Like van Dijk’s, Fairclough’s framework has three components
(but, as we will show later, one of these is crucially different). The
first dimension is text or discourse analysis, which includes micro
levels (e.g. vocabulary, syntax) and macro levels of text structure, as
well as interpersonal elements in a text. The second is analysis of
discourse practices. This looks at how a text is constructed and
interpreted, and~also how it is distributed. The media, of course,
distribute to receivers a considerable number of texts from other
sources. Analysis of discourse also considers the discourse practices
12 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

of different social domains (such as political discourse). Fairclough

calls these orders ofdiscourse (a term adapted from Foucault). The
third dimension is analysis of social practices, focusing in particular
on the relation of discourse to power and ideology.
Although Fairclough’s and van Dijk’s versions of CDA both have
three components, they differ on the nature of the central, mediat-
ing dimension. Where van Dijk sees ‘sociocognition’ — cognitive
structures and mental models — as mediating between discourse
and society, Fairclough sees this central role as occupied by the
discourse practices through which texts are produced and received.
However, Fairclough makes the point himself that the analysis of
discourse practice has sociocognitive aspects (which is the focus of
van Dijk’s chapter) and intertextual aspects. His own focus is on the
latter.
In the analysis of discourse practice, Fairclough is particularly
concerned with two trends: marketization (or commodification) of dis-
course, and conversationalization of discourse (which may or may not
serve the democratization of discourse). These are both instances of
intertextuality, where there is an admixture of different language
styles or genres within a text. Marketization relates to a process that
began in many areas in Western democracies in the 1980s, where
many aspects of life and institutions were increasingly viewed
in terms of commercial models. Hence, for example, the promo-
tional language of advertising encroached more and more into
other domains (e.g. universities), in a sense colonizing other areas
of discourse in society (Fairclough, 1993). The evaluative stance
taken towards these constructs tends to be generally negative
(though J. Coupland (1996) has pointed to their potential for
empowerment).
Democratization is seen as a shift towards increased informality
in language in areas such as the news, which are more traditionally
associated with a voice of authority. Fairclough points to the ambi-
guities here: there appears to be a move towards democratization,
but this democratization is nevertheless restricted to an institutional
representation of the voices of ordinary people. Similarly, the more
general tendency towards conversationalization, in which, say,
panel interviews may be conducted in ways that are strikingly
similar to TV chat shows, cannot simply be interpreted as a sign that
previously closed domains are opening up. There is also the possi-
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 13

bility that this is merely pseudo-conversation, acting as a more

effective mask for the exercise of power.
Fairclough’s chapter analyses radio coverage of an incident in
Northern Ireland. He notes the basically monologic nature of news
bulletins, as compared with the dialogic character of the rest of the
news programme. Interestingly, Schlesinger (1987: 249) noticed the
beginnings of ‘conversationalization’ in his study of production
practices in the 1970s BBC. At the time, news bulletins were pro-
duced by the News Department and the surrounding news pro-
grammes by the separate Current Affairs Department. Whether this
bifurcation of production still operates and influences news presen-
tation styles in the 1990s is a question that could usefully be
researched.

Greatbatch

The application of Conversation Analysis (CA) to broadcast news

interviews has been pioneered by three colleagues - Heritage and
Clayman in the USA, and Greatbatch in the UK. Their collective
findings are to appear in a long-awaited book (Heritage et al., forth-
coming). David Greatbatch’s close analyses of interviews broadcast
on British television over more than a decade have provided signifi-
cant insights into how this genre of media talk operates for its
participants. His contribution to this volume distils a CA approach
to news interviews together with key examples and findings.
Broadcasting offers opportunities to analyse a range of spoken
genres, such as interviews, telephone conversations, and various
kinds of monologues. For the most part, such analysis has been
conducted using the methods of CA, which sets out to describe how
conversations are structured, for example in their openings, clos-
ings and turn-takings. Much of this research has focused on radio
and TV interviews, in particular because of their sociopolitical em-
phasis. Broadcast technology has taken a relatively private speech
event and transformed it into one that is for public consumption,
and which has developed its own norms. CA researchers such as
Greatbatch, looking at how news interviews are structured around
questions and answers, have found differences from the features of
ordinary conversations.
14. Peter Garrett and Allan Bell
ee de oe ah

Interviews operate under various institutional constraints. One

of these is that interviewers ask questions and interviewees answer
them, but such constraints are not always adhered to. So inter-
viewees may start to ask questions. In such instances, the inter-
viewer will generally sanction the digression and eventually
retrieve the interview so that it once more operates within the
constraint.
Greatbatch’s chapter looks at the constraint that interviewers
should take a neutralistic stance. Analysing excerpts from several
news interviews on British television, he shows how news inter-
views operate within this constraint. Interviewers elicit the views of
others without expressing opinions of their own. If the interviewer
posits a contentious proposition, it will often be attributed to absent
third parties. The maintenance of such a neutralistic stance requires
the co-operation of the interviewees, of course, and usually this is
forthcoming. On the occasions when there may be challenges to the
interviewer's neutralism, these are usually quickly repaired and the
constraints restored.
CA pays meticulous attention to the details of conversations, and
Greatbatch’s analysis shows how much we can learn through just
such a close reading of news interviews.

Kress and van Leeuwen

Theo van Leeuwen and Gunther Kress are pioneers in analysis of

the visual dimension of printed texts. Kress was one of the founders
of Critical Linguistics (e.g. Kress and Hodge, 1979), and has been
publishing on media discourse since the 1970s. Van Leeuwen has
worked hands-on in film and television scripting and directing as
well as in research and teaching. Kress and van Leeuwen have
researched the analysis of visual design in Australia and the UK,
and have published successive textbooks on this neglected area
(1990, 1996). Their Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design is
the first advanced textbook on the topic.
Kress and van Leeuwen consider texts from a multimodal per-
spective, to include semiotic modes that accompany language or
through which language is realized. They argue that with the in-
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 15

crease in the use of the visual mode with texts, it is essential that
scholars now focus on and clarify the interplay between the verbal
and the visual. Their chapter in this book sets out ideas which are a
step towards developing such a descriptive framework.
In this chapter, the object of their analysis is the layout of front
pages of newspapers. They examine how headlines, blocks of text
and photographs are set out on the front page into coherent and
meaningful structures, which differ interestingly across different
newspapers. The underlying function of layout is textual, affording
order and coherence. Kress and van Leeuwen’s framework at-
tributes meanings to these features of layout according to whether
they appear on the left or the right of the page, or towards the top
or the bottom, or towards the centre as opposed to at the margins.
Kress and van Leeuwen suggest that the left and right sides of
newspaper front pages represent the Given and New respectively,
with Given referring to something the reader already knows, or a
departure point for the message, and New to things not yet known
to which the reader must pay close attention. Visual cues (e.g. size,
colour, tonal contrasts) can create hierarchies of importance by giv-
ing different degrees of salience to items. And framing (lines,
spaces) can suggest connections and separateness amongst the
items.
The authors do not claim that newspapers always adhere to the
same layout conventions. But it is suggested that there are regulari-
ties that would stand up to quantitative analysis of large samples,
and conventions that are regular enough for change over time to be
identifiable.
Kress and van Leeuwen state that their chapter is intended in
part to assemble items for a new research agenda, and it does
indeed raise important research issues. It would be interesting to
investigate whether media designers verify the values associated
here with left and right, centre and margins etc., whether readers
‘understand’ these layouts, and indeed, whether any such
understandings operate at a level of consciousness that allows read-
ers to articulate them. Cross-cultural studies are needed to investi-
gate whether the semiotics of layout are different (and in what
ways) in cultures with writing systems that go from right to left, or
top to bottom on the page.
16 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell ieee
Sc ceili inten ASaeStain RINE Terae
~

Richardson ,

Kay Richardson’ has specialized in research on the reception of

media texts, particularly in co-operative work. With Corner and
Fenton, she undertook and authored a study of how British audi-
ences interpret television documentaries about the nuclear power
industry (Corner et al., 1990).
While other contributors to this volume touch on how audiences
receive media texts (e.g. Bell, Allan), reception is the focus of
Richardson's chapter, specifically of news about the economy. She
analyses a BBC news broadcast on the British economy, focusing on
elements of economic understanding and areas of ambiguity and
indeterminacy. This analysis then provides a basis for exploring the
responses of the audience to the news item, concentrating on what
they recall from the screening, how their comprehension of new
information in the text is influenced by textual form, and the effects
of their background understanding of the economy and economic
reasoning.
The audience comprises members of six groups: Conservative
and Labour Party members, science students, university security
staff, local government officers, and unemployed. One would ex-
pect, then, different mental models, frameworks of personal and
social knowledge and understanding to be operating on the text,
resulting in interpretative variation. Alternatively, audience groups
may share the interpretation of the text, but not give it the same
value: hence a Labour Party audience hearing a Conservative Party
text will not attempt to impose Labour values upon it. They will
make sense of it as a Conservative text to which they are opposed.
It is very much a characteristic of this type of study that there
are in fact two sets of texts for analysis. Firstly there is the news
text itself (the primary text), and secondly — indeed, equally — the
recorded discussions of the respondents are also texts for analysis.

Scannell

Paddy Scannell is a media researcher with an abiding interest in

how language operates in broadcast media. He is one of the found-
ing editors of the journal Media, Culture and Society, and has focused
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 17

_ on the history of British broadcasting. He has edited a wide-ranging

collection of essays on Broadcast Talk (1991), and brings a non-
linguist’s eye to the study of media discourse.
His chapter in this volume has a different brief from the others. It
is not to set out and demonstrate a particular approach to media
discourse, but rather to comment on the part played by discourse
analytical approaches in the whole research area of mass communi-
cation. Scannell begins by asking what ‘media language’ is address-
ing, and then sets out two main approaches to media and language.
These two approaches, which he labels the ideological and the
pragmatic, differ in that the latter takes reality (at least initially) at
its face value, and the former does not. The former is a hermeneutics
of suspicion (‘being in the head’) and the latter a hermeneutics of
trust (‘being in the world’). These contrasting approaches are repre-
sented in this volume most clearly in the chapters by van Dijk,
Fairclough and Allan on the one hand, and by Greatbatch on the
other.
Scannell bemoans the domination of media studies, as he sees it,
by over-concern with ideology in place of more focus on what is
unique about the media in relation to language and to the world. He
draws attention to the ways in which the media deal with the here
and now to show how media and language can benefit from a
phenomenological approach, pointing to the work of Bell (e.g. this
volume) on how the concepts of time and chronology feature in
news stories, and to the work of Marriott (1995, 1996) on action
replays. In Scannell’s view, the worldlessness of some ideological
approaches can lead to such characteristically media phenomena
being overlooked.

Conclusion

We would like to conclude this introduction with two caveats.

Firstly, although we have attempted to produce a volume of chap-
ters that give readers practical demonstrations of some of the main
approaches to media discourse, grasping and implementing these
techniques requires time and commitment, and the complexity of
some approaches can be daunting for students and even specialists.
 18 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

We urge students, if they find frameworks hard to use at times, to

keep in mind the following:

e the rewards from perseverance are worthwhile in terms of the

perceptions they bring;
all approaches have been taught to students;
e full-scale analyses are time-consuming — the originators are
aware of this and conduct these on only a few texts, with more
specific analyses on larger samples; : ai
e the complexity of the frameworks is a reflection of the complex-
ity of such texts as news stories (even if such stories appear
simple on first impression).

Secondly, we would not like to leave readers with the impression

that we believe this volume contains all of the main approaches to
media discourse. We would not wish to make such a claim. There
are three primary gaps which we see in this collection.
The first gap is individual: Roger Fowler, author of one of the
three current texts on media language (Fowler, 1991), was unable
. either to attend the Round Table meeting or to contribute a chapter
‘\to this book. His analysis of language structures uses the tools of
functional linguistics, including analysis of the transitivity of sen-
tences, use of passives and nominalizations, and modality. With
its emphasis on vocabulary (including a concern with how groups
and individuals are labelled in the media) Fowler’s approach is
probably the most accessible among the main frameworks used to
analyse media discourse. We regret his.absence.
The second. gap is disciplinary. Reception or comprehension. of
media texts is the focus of just one chapter in this book
(Richardson’s), although it also figures importantly in the contribu-
tions by Bell and Allan. Fairclough’s concept of the ‘lifeworld’ also
invites a concern with the contexts in which media are received,
although he does not pursue this issue in this book. The under-
standings which audiences bring to print and broadcast media,
their evaluative reactions to discourse styles, their preferences for
other variables, the situations in which they receive media texts, are
crucial to our approach to media discourse. While there is some
work that links the media text and its reception (e.g. Morley, 1980,
1992; Meinhof, 1994), a close relating of the text and its reception is
 Media and Discourse: A Critical Overview 19

still relatively rare as yet in research. Richardson’s contribution here

andelsewhere does begin to redress the balance.
The third gap is also disciplinary, but much wider. We have no
chapter focusing on the production of media texts. This is not an
accident. It reflects an almost total lack of research on how media Le
a
texts are actually produced, of how the finished text is the outcome /
of the processes by which it was made. Most of the chapters in this.
book touch on the importance of production at some point. Allan
treats it in relation to the ‘encoding’ moment of Hall’s model, but
offers no new data of his own. Bell touches on production practices
as they are presumed to be revealed in the actual text, such as
disagreements between news workers. On the basis of published
layouts, Kress and van Leeuwen offer interpretations of the work-
ing concepts of those who make newspaper page layouts. One of
the three components of Fairclough’s approach, discourse practices,
has production practices as a primary aspect. Yet none of the
~ contributors has focused on this crucial area.
This lack of production research is no accident either. It is more
difficult to research production than reception (while reception is
more difficult than the text itself). That difficulty is not so much
theoretical as practical and interactional. Access to and acceptance
by media organizations and personnel is the central problem, as
researchers have found for decades since Lazarsfeld (1948). Suspi-
cion strong enough to jeopardize the conduct or outcome of re-
search has dogged many studies including those by the Glasgow
University Media Group (1976, 1980), Burns (1977), Schlesinger
(1980, 1987) and Fenby (1986). Bell has in part bypassed the problem
of being an outside researcher by also working as an insider, but
until more journalists become researchers, or researchers journal-
ists, scholars are going to need to devise acceptable means of
approaching media organizations for their co-operation.
As well as introducing students to the available analytical ap-
proaches, this book serves as a state-of-the-art statement on media
discourse. The future agenda for this kind of work must clearly
focus more on reception, and particularly production, as well as and
in relation to the texts themselves. There has been a convergence
between the methods and interests of linguistic discourse analysis
and European critical sociopolitical theory, literary criticism and
cultural studies. Both strands share an interest in media texts as
20 Peter Garrett and Allan Bell

manifestation of and contributor to sociopolitical structures and

trends. The growing fusion of approaches from discourse analysis,
cultural studies and media sociology reflected in this book is also a
promising indicator of the way forward for media discourse stud-
ies. The obstacles include the access issue just highlighted, and also
the nature of the analytical frameworks themselves. But the pay-off
from overcoming those obstacles is, we believe, worthwhile.
 Opinions and Ideologies
In the Press

Teun A. van Dijk

1 Aims

Editorials and op-ed articles in the press are generally expected to

express opinions. (Op-ed articles are opinion pieces published on
the page opposite the editorials.) Depending on the type and the
stance of the newspaper, these opinions may vary considerably in
their ideological presuppositions. This rather common formulation
seems to imply that the ideologies of journalists somehow influence
their opinions, which in turn influence the discourse structures of
the opinion articles. Within the framework of a larger project on
discourse and ideology, this chapter examines some of the theoreti-
cal properties of these complex relations between ideology, opin-
ions and media discourse. For instance, we need to spell out what
exactly we mean by ‘ideology’ here, what the nature is of the
common-sense notion of an ‘opinion’, and by what discourse
structures they may be expressed.
At one level of analysis, opinions and ideologies involve beliefs
or mental representations, and our approach therefore first takes a
22
Ce Teun
UO A. vaneeDijk
0 ga ee

cognitive perspective. On the other hand, the ideologies and opin-

ions of newspapers are usually not personal, but social, institutional
or political. This requires an account in terms of social or societal
structures. In fact, we integrate both approaches into one
sociocognitive theory that deals with shared social representations
and their acquisition and uses in social contexts. And finally, since
we examine in particular the sometimes subtle textual expressions
of ideologically based opinions, this sociocognitive orientation will
be embedded in a discourse analytical framework (for details, see
van Dijk, 1995).
This approach is unique in rejecting the theoretical reduction that
characterizes virtually all past and contemporary approaches to
ideology. As is the case for language and knowledge, ideologies too
are very complex social phenomena, which require independent
conceptual analysis and empirical description at various theoretical
levels. Thus, recognizing that ideologies are socially shared and
used by groups and their members does not mean that they there-
fore cannot and should not also be described in cognitive terms.
In that respect, ideologies are like knowledge and natural language
(or rather like the grammars and discursive rule systems that
underlie language use). Hence, our distinction between the mental
and the social is a theoretical and analytical one, made to account
for different dimensions of ideology.
Thus, in line with contemporary cognitive science, beliefs and
ideological belief systems need to be accounted for also, though not
exclusively, in terms of mental representations and eventually in
terms of the neurobiological structures of the brain. This by no
means implies a reduction to individualist, dualist or mentalist
positions. On the contrary, what we are after is to show precisely
how elements of societal structure (such as groups, institutions,
power or inequality), as well as the everyday social practices of
discourse and other forms of interaction among people as group
members, are systematically related to the socially constructed
dimensions of their minds.
For us, then, the mind is both a common-sense and a theoretical
concept. It is no less (and no more) ‘real’ or ‘material’ than equally
unobservable societal structures and social practices. The latter are
no more ‘all in the mind’ than ideologies and other beliefs are all in
interaction or discourse. In our view, only integrated sociocognitive
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 23

theories are able to explain in detail how social ideologies ‘monitor’

the everyday practices of social actors like journalists, and con-
versely, how ideologies are formed and changed through the every-
day interaction and discourse of members in societal contexts of
group relations and institutions like the press.
Our examples will be taken from opinion articles in the New York
Times and the Washington Post, which may be taken to express a
variety of more or less liberal and more or less conservative opin-
ions and ideologies, depending on the issues at hand, while at the
same time probably exhibiting fragments of an overall ‘American’
ideological perspective on news events and the world.

2 Ideologies

The concept of ‘ideology’ is one of the most elusive notions in the

social sciences, and this chapter will not even try to summarize the
long theoretical debate about this notion (see, among many other
books, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS), 1978;
Eagleton, 1991; Larrain, 1979; Thompson, 1984, 1990).
Rather, it is the aim of this chapter to make a further step in the
(slow) development of a new theory of ideology aiming to replace
the hitherto rather vague notions of ideology in philosophy and the
social sciences. This new theory has three main components:

A Social functions. A theory of the functions of ideologies for

groups or institutions within societal structure. This theory an-
swers the simple question of why people develop and use ideo-
logies in the first place.
B_ Cognitive structures. Within this framework, a theory is devel-
oped about the mental nature and the internal components and
structures of ideologies, as well as their relations to other cogni-
tive structures or social representations, such as socially shared
values, norms, attitudes, opinions, and knowledge, on the one
hand, and personal and contextual models (experiences, inten-
tions, plans etc.), on the other hand. This theory answers the
question of what ideologies look like, and how they monitor
social practices.
24 Teun A. van Dijk

C Discursive expression and reproduction. A theory of the ways

ideologies are expressed in, and acquired and reproduced by,
the structures of socially situated text and talk. This theory is a
special case of a broader theory of the ways ideologies are
expressed and reproduced by social practices in general.

Social functions

Since the social functions of ideologies have been amply discussed

in the classical literature, we shall be very brief about them. Con-
trary to the conventional view, however, we do not limit ideologies
to their role in the reproduction and legitimation of class domina-
tion. To begin with, dominated groups also need ideologies, for
example as a basis for resistance. This means, secondly, that ideo-
logies in general are not wrong or right, but rather more or less
effective in promoting the interests of a group. Thirdly, we shall
assume therefore that the main social function of ideologies is the
co-ordination of the social practices of group members for the effec-
tive realization of the goals of a social group, and the protection of
its interests. This applies both to group-internal social practices as
well as to interaction with members of other groups. Given this
general function of ideologies, it is of course true that many ideo-
logies develop precisely in order to sustain, legitimate or manage
group conflicts, as well as relationships of power and dominance.

Cognitive structures

In order for ideologies to effectively sustain such social functions,

their cognitive contents, structures and strategies should somehow
be tailored to these social functions. In other words, what people do
as group members should reflect what they think as group mem-
bers, and vice versa, a relation studied in terms of ‘social cognition’
(Fiske and Taylor, 1991). Thus, social practices presuppose vast
amounts of sociocultural and group-specific beliefs or social rep-
resentations, such as knowledge, attitudes, norms, values and ideo-
logies. Our theory proposes that ideologies are the ‘axiomatic’ basis
of the mental representations shared by the members of a social
group. That is, they represent the basic principles that govern social
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 25

judgement — what group members think is right or wrong, true or

false.
What do such ideologies look like? Despite the vast literature on
ideologies, we do not know. But we may speculate about the typical
contents and in particular the structure of ideologies. For instance,
many group ideologies involve the representation of Self and
Others, Us and Them. Many therefore seem to be polarized — We are
Good and They are Bad — especially when conflicting interests are
involved.
Such basic propositions of positive self-presentation and nega-
tive other-presentation may influence the myriad of opinions and
attitudes We have about Them in more specific social domains.
Racist ideologies featuring such axiomatic propositions may thus
co-ordinate prejudiced social group attitudes about minorities or
immigrants, for instance in matters of immigration, residence, em-
ployment or education. In other words, the main cognitive function
of ideologies is to organize specific group attitudes. This does not
mean that ideologies as well as ideologically based attitudes are
consistent, although in another sense they may well be coherent in
relation to the basic interests of the group.
More generally, we propose that ideologies reflect the basic cri-
teria that constitute the social identity and define the interests of
a group. That is, ideologies may be represented as group self-
schemata, featuring such categories as Membership (‘Who belongs to
our group? Who may be admitted?’), Activities (‘What do we do?’),
Goals (‘Why do we do this?’), Values (‘How should we do this?’),
Position (‘Where are we? What are our relations to other groups?’)
and Resources (‘What do we have, and what do we not have?’).
Because these schemata are ideological, the way groups and their
members represent themselves and others may of course be
‘biased’, when seen from the point of view of others (including
our point of view as analysts).
For journalists as a group, these ideological categories will
feature basic information about who is recognized as a journalist
(e.g. through holding a diploma or licence), what journalists typi-
cally do (e.g. write news and editorials), their goals (e.g. to inform
the public, to serve as a ‘watchdog of society’), their values and
norms (e.g. truth, reliability, fairness), their position with respect to
their readers or the authorities, and their typical group resource
(information).
26 Teun A. van Dijk

Ideologies and other social representations of the mind are ‘so-

cial’ because they are socially shared. As is the case for grammar
and other forms of knowledge, such shared representations should
be seen as general and abstract. As a practical criterion, we may say
that all representations that are routinely presupposed in discourse
and other social practices are socially shared. Of course, throughout
socialization, individual members may acquire slightly variable
‘versions’ of these social representations. Some members (e.g. the
‘ideologues’) of a group may have a more detailed and complete
ideological system than others (see the discussion in Lau and Sears,
1986). This is the first source of individual variation in the enact-
ment of ideologically based social practices, but it does not therefore
mean (as is sometimes argued) that ideologies do not exist, any
more than that grammars, discourse rules or sociocultural knowl-
edge can be said not to exist because some members have more
knowledge than others. In other words, as suggested before, the
analysis of ideologies should take place at the abstract level of
groups, and not at the level of individual cognition. Moreover, since
individuals may belong to a number of social groups, they may
have several ideologies, each variably influencing their social prac-
tices, depending on the situation. This also explains why personal
uses of ideologies in concrete situations may be variable and often
appear contradictory.

Models

General group ideologies and the specific group attitudes they or-
ganize may be expressed directly in discourse, for example by gen-
eral expressions of opinions such as ‘Women are less competent’ in
male chauvinist ideology. However, much opinion discourse, in-
cluding that in the press, is more specific, and expresses not only
group opinions, but also personal knowledge and opinions about
specific people, events and situations (‘I disapprove of this inva-
sion’). Such personal and specific opinions derive from socially
shared opinions or attitudes as well as from people’s personal ex-
periences and evaluations as these are represented in so-called
mental models.
Models are the crucial interface between the social and the per-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 27

sonal, between the general and the specific, and between social
representations and their enactment in discourse and other social
practices. Essentially, models represent people’s everyday experi-
ences, such as the observation of or participation in actions, events
or discourse. Unlike social representations they are personal, sub-
jective and context-bound: they feature what individuals know and
think about specific events, and account for the fact that such events
and actions are subjectively interpreted. Thus, models explain why
interpretations of discourse are constructive.
People continually ‘model’ the events of their everyday lives,
including the communicative events they engage in, or the news
events they read about in the press. Thus, remembering, storytelling
and editorializing involve the activation of past models, whereas
intentions, plans, threats and announcements involve models
about future events and actions. In sum, all our social practices are
monitored (intended, understood) in terms of mental models.
Although such models as a whole are unique, personal and con-
text-bound, large parts of them are of course social in the sense that
the knowledge and opinions they embody are merely personal
‘instantiations’ of sociocultural knowledge and group opinions.
In other words, models are indeed the interface between social
representations, including ideologies, on the one hand, and social
practices and discourse on the other hand.

From models to discourse

We now have the vital missing link between ideology and dis-
course. Ideologies organize specific group attitudes; these attitudes
may be used in the formation of personal opinions as represented in
models; and these personal opinions may finally be expressed in
text and talk. This is the usual, indirect way of ideological expres-
sion in discourse. We have seen above, however, that in some forms
of discourse, ideologies may also be expressed directly, that is, in
general statements.
Because models represent what people know and think about an
event or situation, they essentially control the ‘content’, or seman-
tics, of discourse. However, since people know and think much
more than they usually need to say for pragmatic reasons, only a
28
Be Teun A. ie
van Al
Dijkleeeae vans cae

fraction of the information in a model will usually be expressed in

text and talk. This is of course also true for opinions: people do not
always find it necessary or appropriate to say or write what they
think. In many respects a text is merely the tip of the iceberg of what
is mentally represented in models. And conversely, due to the con-
struction of a model and the application of knowledge and attitudes
in this construction, people usually understand much more of a text
than it actually expresses.
We have already suggested that people form not only models
about events they know about (through personal experience or
through communication), but also specific models of the communi-
cative events in which they participate. Such so-called context mod-
els will typically feature the overall definition of the situation (e.g. a
lecture, talk with a friend, or reading the newspaper), as well as
subjective beliefs about participants in different roles, about overall
aims and goals, the setting, and so on. Context models are crucial in
the production and comprehension of discourse. Whereas event
models represent what is being communicated, context models
largely regulate how this is being done, that is, the phonological,
syntactic, lexical and other formal variation of text and talk. Like
event models, such context models may of course also feature opin-
ions, such as evaluative beliefs about other communicative partici-
pants, their roles, credibility, and so on. Thus, reading editorials
usually involves the formation of opinions not only about what is
said, but also about the writer, or the newspaper.
It should be stressed again that the sociocognitive framework
presented here does not imply any primacy for the cognitive or the
social dimensions of discourse or ideology. Rather, it aims to show
the close relations between mind and society. It does, however,
imply that, both theoretically and empirically, societal structures
cannot be directly related in any way to discourse structures. This is
only possible through social actors and their minds, that is, through
the mental interpretations or constructions of social and situational
structures by group members. All accounts that ignore cognitive
analysis of the processes involved in the development and uses of
ideology are in our view simplifications or reductions. Indeed, if
social structures (such as those of domination) could directly influ-
ence (cause?) social practices and discourse, no ideologies or other
shared social representations of the mind (such as knowledge)
would be needed in the first place. And if individual experiences
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 29

and interpretations (as represented in models) were ignored, this

would imply that all social actors in a group would do and say the
same thing.

3 Opinions

Before we examine in some detail the discourse expressions of

opinions in editorials, we need briefly to attend to the rather elusive
notion of ‘opinion’ itself. Above, we defined opinions as ‘evaluative
beliefs’, that is, as beliefs that feature an evaluative concept. In many
cases, this poses no problem. Any belief that presupposes a value,
and that involves a judgement about somebody or something,
is evaluative, such as ’X is good (bad, beautiful, ugly, honest, intel-
ligent)’, depending on the values of a group or culture. Some judge-
ments are evaluative only indirectly or in specific situations,
for example when someone or something is believed to be small
or large, light or heavy, and when such a factual belief itself
presupposes a value judgement (e.g. ‘being a small X is bad’).
The same is true for categorizations, for example when someone
is believed to be a thief or a terrorist. These may be factual beliefs. If
socially accepted, general criteria can be specified for such a catego-
rization, such as the judgement of a court of law. On the other hand,
if the factual criteria are less relevant, and the concept is used only
or primarily to make a value judgement (someone is bad), then we
are dealing with an opinion. Obviously, as is the case for all values
and judgements, these may vary culturally and socially. And as
soon as groups and conflicting group interests are involved, such
opinions will be said to be ideological.
This highly simplified account has practical implications for
discourse analysis. It hides fundamental problems of cognition
and philosophy, such as the basis of knowledge and belief, evalua-
tions and judgements (Kornblith, 1994; Lehrer, 1990). In the social
psychology of opinions and attitudes, such issues are usually
ignored (Eagly and Chaiken, 1993).
In a discussion of ideology in particular, the criteria of truth and
falsity become relevant here. Thus, if we define opinions as evalua-
tive beliefs, and contrast these with factual beliefs, as we have done,
we are begging the question if we are unable to distinguish between
30 Teun A. van Dijk

evaluative and factual beliefs. Both involve a judgement, but simply

saying that this judgement presupposes values in opinions, and
truth criteria in factual beliefs, again needs further explication. In-
deed, to take a contemporary example, is the belief ‘smoking is bad
for our health’ an opinion or a factual belief? It features a typically
evaluative concept (‘bad’) and as such seems to be an opinion,
namely about smoking or smokers. On the other hand, when based
on the conclusions of scientific research, then the belief may be seen
as factual.
In other words, it depends on the grounds or criteria of judge-
ment. If these grounds are merely a cultural or group norm or value
(‘it is bad to damage our health by smoking’) then the belief is an
opinion. However, if the grounds are socially shared criteria of
truth (e.g. observation, reliable communication, valid inference,
scholarly research, etc.), or other knowledge based on such criteria,
then the belief is factual (true or false). Both types of judgement
are socially, historically and culturally relative. Also, truth criteria
may be different in different periods or for different groups. But
for beliefs to be factual, it is only necessary that within each
culture or group accepted criteria of knowledge are applied. And
whenever these particularly favour a special group, the very system
of knowledge and truth criteria may be ideologically based.
Note that we do not use the concept of ‘opinion’ here to refer to
false beliefs, as is sometimes done in everyday language use. False
beliefs are also factual if they can in principle be evaluated relative
to a system of truth criteria. Conversely, opinions and ideologies are
often said to represent the ‘truth’ for specific people or groups, but
that does not make them factual in our sense. As soon as norms and
values are involved, they are evaluative and not factual.
Many other relevant notions that are commonly used in the dis-
tinction between knowledge and opinions, such as subjectivity and
objectivity, or consensus, are ignored here. Similarly, a more discur-
sive definition of knowledge and beliefs will not be proposed either.
Although opinions are usually the object of disagreement, and are
debated in specific argumentative structures, the same may also be
true for factual beliefs. That is, the claim defended in an argument
may be either factual or evaluative. Nor do we accept the discursive
reduction of opinions and knowledge. For us, as for most psycholo-
gists, these are mental representations, and not discursive struc-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 31

tures. That is, people are said to ‘have’ and share opinions, whether
they express them in discourse or not, and both within and across
specific contexts. That beliefs are socially acquired, constructed,
changed and used (also) through discourse is obvious, but that does
not make them discursive in the usual sense of ‘being a property of
discourse’.

4 Discourse Structures

After this brief summary of our theory of ideology and opinion,

we now need to examine in some more detail how these may be
expressed in text and talk in general, and in opinion articles in
the press in particular. A discourse analytical approach to this ques-
tion will typically do this by examining the various levels and
dimensions of discourse.

Lexical items

Traditionally best known in studies of ideology and language is the

analysis of lexical items. Words may be chosen that generally or
contextually express values or norms, and that therefore are used to
express a value judgement (e.g. ‘terrorist’, ‘racist’). But although
there are many predicates that are normally used to express an
opinion (e.g. ‘beautiful’, ‘dirty’ etc.), others may be used either
factually or evaluatively (e.g. ‘polluted’, ‘democratic’, ‘intelligent’),
depending on whether a knowledge or value system is presup-
posed in their use, as discussed above.
However, in a discourse analytical approach in particular, we
want to go beyond this obvious analysis of lexical items. Opinions
may also be expressed in many other, much more complex, ways in
text and talk: for instance in headlines, story structures, arguments,
graphical arrangements, syntactic structures, semantic structures of
coherence, overall topics, and so on. Let us examine some of these
somewhat more carefully, and thereby focus on the various seman-
tic structures of discourse, since they form the core ‘content’ of the
expression of ideological opinions (van Dijk, 1995; for the semantic
32 Teun A. van Dijk

notions used here, see van Dijk, 1985). As a convention, we shall

now refer to meanings, concepts and propositions (and hence to
opinions) by using single quotes, and to the actual words, sentences
and other expressions of such meanings with double quotes, or in
italics.

Propositions

Concepts and their expressions in lexical items usually do not come

alone, but combine into propositions expressed by clauses and sen-
tences. Thus the occurrence of words that seem to imply opinions
(such as “terrorist”) does not mean much if we do not know the
meaning of the sentences in which they occur (and, of course, of the
whole text and context, to which we turn below). For instance, there
is considerable difference between the proposition ‘He is a terrorist’
and its denial ‘He is not a terrorist’, even if they both contain the
concept of ‘terrorist’, and although both may be taken as expres-
ions of opinions.
Propositions are usually analysed in terms of a main predicate
(usually interpreted as a property, event or action) and a number of
arguments with different semantic roles, such as Agent, Patient, and
so on, as in the proposition ‘killed (Agent: terrorists, Patient: hos-
tages)’. This proposition may be modified further by modalities
such as ‘It was necessary (possible, unlikely etc.) that’.
Each category of a proposition may be modified again by another
predicate: for example ‘desperate (terrorists)’ and ‘terrified (hos-
tages)’. As discussed above, each of these concepts may feature
implied opinions. Thus, choosing ‘desperate’ rather than ‘cold-
blooded’ as a modifier for ‘terrorist’ implies another, less negative,
opinion suggesting that the terrorist had no other option but to kill
the hostages. This implication may also be inferred from the choice
of modalities such as ‘They were obliged to . . .”. We find such use of
necessity-modalities quite often in strategies that limit the negative
actions of the authorities of the We-group, as in ‘The police had to
act tough against the demonstrators’ (for examples in news reports
about police actions, see van Dijk, 1988a).
Interestingly, however, it is not merely the concepts involved in
the proposition, but also the propositional structure itself that may
express opinions. If negative acts are attributed to people appearing
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 33

_in the Agent role, then they are held (more) responsible for these
actions than if they appear in other roles. Moreover, the syntactic
structure of the sentence expressing such propositions may vary
such that the agency of a particular person or group is de-empha-
sized, as is the case in passive constructions (e.g. “The demonstra-
tors were killed by the police”, or “Demonstrators (were) killed”). In
this way, OUR people tend to appear primarily as actors when the
acts are good, and THEIR people when the acts are bad, and vice
versa: THEIR people will appear less as actors of good actions than
do OUR people (for detailed analysis of these strategies, see e.g.
Fowler, 1991; Fowler et al., 1979; van Dijk, 1991).
We find here a first general strategy for the expression of shared,
group-based attitudes and ideologies through mental models. This
strategy of polarization — positive ingroup description, and negative
outgroup description — thus has the following abstract evaluative
structure, which we may call the ‘ideological square’:

Emphasize our good properties /actions

Emphasize their bad properties /actions
Mitigate our bad properties/actions
Mitigate their good properties/actions.
PON

These functional moves in the overall strategy of ideological self-

interest, which appear in most social conflicts and actions (e.g. in
racist, sexist etc. discourse), may be expressed in the choice of lexical
items that imply positive or negative evaluations, as well as in the
structure of whole propositions and their categories (as in active/
passives etc.). Here ‘our’ may refer to the ingroup or its friends and
allies, and ‘their’ to the outgroup and its friends or allies (for social
psychological studies of these principles, for example in attribution,
see e.g. Fiske and Taylor, 1991; for the dimension of impression
management, see Tedeschi, 1981).

Implications

Opinions need not always be explicitly expressed in a proposition,

but may be implied. Theoretically, this means that given an (ex-
pressed) proposition P, one or more propositions QI, Q2, . .. may be
inferred from P on the basis of an event model or context model.
34 Teun A. van Dijk

These models may themselves embody instantiated knowledge or

attitudes. Thus, in an editorial about the expulsion from Israel of 400
members of Hamas (an Islamist Palestinian movement), the New
York Times concludes as follows:

(1) Whatever Israel’s offenses, it mocks reality for Arabs to

imply that the expulsion is equivalent to Saddam
Hussein’s crimes against Kuwait or Libya’s complicity in
state terrorism. By all means hold Israel to the letter of
Geneva Conventions. But don’t exaggerate the scale and
nature of the infraction. (NYT, Ed., 29 Jan. 1993)

The first sentences imply the opinion proposition that the Arabs are
exaggerating, whereas the last sentence implies that the “infraction”
of the Israelis is in fact minor, which is also an opinion. Also the
choice of the very concept of “infraction” is itself a form of mitiga-
tion. Since the Israelis are on OUR side, and Saddam Hussein and
Libya are typically enemies and hence THEM, we also see the basic
ideological framework being expressed that explains such a mitigat-
ing operation, as well as the implied propositions (in our detailed
analysis of a sample opinion article below, we shall see how
Saddam Hussein may also be used by Us to characterize other
enemies).

Presuppositions

Propositions may be implied because they are presumed to be

known (to be true) or presupposed, given a model of an event. They
may be strategically used to obliquely introduce into a text proposi-
tions which may not be true at all. This is also the case for presup-
positions that embody opinions. Thus, in the previous example it
was presupposed that the “Arabs” did indeed exaggerate the scale
and nature of the “infraction”, which by itself is a partisan opinion
about the reaction of the Arabs. Earlier in the same editorial, we
read the following passage:

(2) Israel’s defenders justly argue that the world takes too
little note of the terrorist crimes committed by Islamic
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 35

extremists, and of their fanatic determination to block any

compromise settlement between Israelis and Arabs.
(NYT, Ed., 29 Jan. 1993)

Since the NYT claims that Israel’s argument is valid, it also espouses
the presuppositions of that argument, namely that “Islamic extrem-
ists” commit terrorist crimes and block any compromise settlement.
The phrasing of that presupposition, while not attributed (by
quotes) to Israel, is that of the NYT, and hence also the opinions
implied by the use of the lexical items “terrorist crimes”, “extrem-
ists” and “fanatic determination”. No such words are used to de-
scribe the expulsion of 400 Palestinians by Israel. On the contrary,
the article explicitly claims that this “infraction” should not be
exaggerated. Earlier in the article, it is therefore described as a
“blunder”, and not as a “terrorist crime” of the State of Israel,
as the Palestinians probably would have done. We see again
how opinions about friends and enemies are being described,
implied and presupposed following the ideological square pro-
posed above.

Descriptions

Moving now to the proper discursive level of sequences of proposi-

tions, we find that events may be described at various levels of
generality or specificity, and with many or few propositions at each
level (van Dijk, 1977). If we apply the ideological square to this
phenomenon, we may expect that Our good actions and Their bad
ones will in general tend to be described at a lower, more specific
level, with many (detailed) propositions. The opposite will be true
for Our bad actions and Their good ones, which, if described at all,
will both be described in rather general, abstract and hence ‘dis-
tanced’ terms, without giving much detail.
Thus, again in the example from the NYT quoted above, the
expulsion of Hamas members is evaluatively summarized with the
predicate “blunder” and as “violating the Geneva Convention”.
Later, these Palestinians are described as “huddling in tents in a
freezing no man’s land in Lebanon”, which may be read as imply-
ing something negative for the Israelis. However, this is the only
36 Teun A. van Dijk

negative way Israeli policies are described in this article, whereas

those of the Palestinian “terrorists” and the “Arab” states are de-
scribed in much more detail, as we have seen before in the descrip-
tion of the “terrorist crimes” and the “fanatic determination”, as
well as in the following passages:

(3) But it would compound the blunder and jeopardise

Middle East peace talks for Arab states to press for United
Nations sanctions before President Clinton’s team has
even settled in.... (Palestinians huddling in tents. . .).
That perfectly suits the banished Islamic militants, since
their plight has effectively stalled the peace talks they
vigorously oppose. (NYT, Ed., 29 Jan. 1993)

Thus, Palestinians are described as wanting to block talks “vigor-

ously”, and to be “fanatically determined” to do so, and this is also
true for other parts of the text: negative Arab reactions are spelled
out in detail (and emphasized) and negative Israeli actions given
little attention, mitigated or structurally subordinated.
Methodologically, single examples like these do not prove much;
additional quantitative demonstration would be needed in order to
establish that the overall strategy indeed applies. The example
given is merely illustrative for the kind of operation at work: what
we want to know is how opinions and attitudes may be expressed
in discourse. Other work may then examine how often this happens,
and whether the empirical hypothesis (about the differential de-
scriptions of ingroups and outgroups) may hold up in quantitative
comparisons.

Local coherence

One of the crucial semantic conditions of textuality is coherence,

that is, the property of sequential sentences (or propositions) in text
and talk that defines why they ‘hang together’ or forma ‘unity’, and
do not constitute an arbitrary set of sentences. Both in formal dis-
course studies and in our sociocognitive approach, coherence is
defined relative to models. That is, roughly speaking, a sequence of
sentences is coherent if a model can be constructed for it. This may
involve causal or conditional relations between the facts as repre-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 37

sented by a model. In other words, coherence is both relative and

referential. That is, it is defined according to the relations between
facts in a model which is referred to or talked about.
If coherence is based on models, and models may feature opin-
ions, which in turn may be ideological, it should be expected that
coherence too may involve opinions and ideologies. If Dutch em-
ployers believe, as many of them do, that immigrant workers do not
work hard enough, or have insufficient knowledge of the language
or lack education, these are all opinions, but since they are believed
to be ‘true’, they may function as the causal part of explanations,
and thus make the texts of employers coherent (from their ideologi-
cal perspective at least). Others might prefer to attribute high mi-
nority unemployment to the discrimination of the employers, rather
than to blame the victims, and the ‘ideological coherence’ of their
explanatory discourse would therefore be rather different (for de-
tailed analysis of such biased talk by corporate managers, see van
Dijk, 1993).
Besides this form of referential or extensional coherence,
sequences of propositions may also be related by intensional or
functional relations. One proposition may be a Generalization,
Specification, Contrast or Example of another proposition. Since
meanings rather than models seem to be involved here, it is hard
to see how such relations can be ideologically controlled by opin-
ions. Yet, the use of such functional relations may have strategic,
argumentative or rhetorical functions. Thus, it is one thing for an
editorial to describe a ‘riot’ in terms of black ‘violence’, but quite
another to add the Generalization that this is ‘always the case’,
as also happens in many negative conversational stories about mi-
norities (van Dijk, 1984, 1987a). Similarly, in the same story, a story-
teller may point out that We have to wait years for an apartment,
but that They get a new apartment right away. Storytellers thus may
make a general claim, for example about the lack of cultural adap-
tation of immigrants, and then add an example (which may turn
into a complete story). In sum, the intensional relations too may
accurately reflect conflicting relations between groups, cognitive
operations of generalization and specification, of comparison and
contrast, and so on, which may also obviously be imbued by ideo-
logical opinions. This is the case in the example discussed above
concerning the political consequences of the expulsion of 400 mem-
bers of Hamas from Israel:
38 Teun A. van Dijk

(4) The greater challenge now is to revive the stalled peace

talks. To do so, the Administration will need Arab help.
Now that Israel has compromised on an issue of princi-
ple, are Arab leaders willing to do the same? (NYT, Ed., 3
Feb. 1993)

The opposition and comparison between Israelis and Arabs become

particularly clear in the last sentence, which is based on a contrast
between Israel’s ‘positive’ action (having granted the return of 100
of 394 expelled Palestinians) and scepticism about any positive
action by Arab leaders. In both cases, opinions are involved, and
opposing the two parties as in this example is one move in the
broader strategy of positive self-presentation and negative other-
presentation (indeed, the following sentence is “Predictably, the
PLO has rushed to say no.”).

Global coherence and topics

Local coherence between propositions of text or talk is a necessary,

but not sufficient, condition for discursive coherence. Another uni-
fying principle is at work, namely that of overall or global coher-
ence, as it is defined by ‘topics’ of paragraphs, large stretches of text
or whole discourses. Such topics may be formally described as
semantic macrostructures that are derived from local microstruc-
tures by specific mapping rules. In actual discourse processing,
these rules take the form of efficient (but fallible) macrostrategies for
the construction or local execution of topics (van Dijk and Kintsch,
1983).
Since propositions may be belief propositions, macroproposi-
tions may represent opinions, as is typically the case in editorials.
Locally and globally, an editorial will express local and global opin-
ions, respectively, as would typically become clear in summaries.
Indeed, the NYT editorial of which we just analysed a fragment, is
summarized as follows in the Lexus database from which it was
downloaded:

(5) An editorial congratulates President Clinton for his first

Middle Eastern foreign policy success in extracting con-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 39

cessions from Israel on the issue of its deportation of 400

Palestinians, concluding that Arab countries can best pro-
mote the new seriousness about international law by re-
turning to the peace talks. (NYT, Ed., 3 Feb. 1993)
Thus, the speech act of congratulation first presupposes that Clinton
did something well (an opinion), and the (summary of the) recom-
mendation at the end also involves an opinion about what Arabs
should do. Thus, more generally, we may expect editorials of course
to express, presuppose or imply opinions at the overall, macro level
too.
That such opinions reflect partisan positions and ideologies may
be concluded from the same example. We can infer which side of
the Middle East conflict the NYT editors stand on by the fact that
they congratulate Clinton for “extracting” a concession from Israel,
instead of blaming him for being unable to force the Israelis to
comply with the resolution of the UN Security Council (ordering
the return of all those who were illegally expelled). This stance
is despite their criticism of Israel, which is also evident in this
editorial. Indeed, a locally critical opinion about Israel is not the
same as an overall, macro opinion about Israel that is negative. On
the contrary, negative opinions about Israel typically occur in
lower-level, subordinate sentences.

Semantic moves

Overall ideological strategies of positive self-presentation and nega-

tive other-presentation may also be implemented at the local level
of sentences and sentence sequences. In this way, one clause may
express a proposition that realizes one strategy, and the next clause
a proposition that realizes the other strategy. This is typically the
case in the local semantic moves called disclaimers: “I have nothing
against blacks, but . . .”. In this so-called Apparent Denial, the first
clause emphasizes the tolerance of the speaker, whereas the rest of
the sentence (and often also the rest of the text) following the but
may be very negative. In the same way, we may encounter Appar-
ent Concessions in the same racist paradigm (“There are also intel-
ligent black students, but ...”), or Apparent Empathy (“Of course
refugees have problems, but . . .”), and so on.
40 Teun A. van Dijk

The very strategies on which such local moves are based are
intended precisely to manage opinions and impressions, that is,
what our conversational partners will think of us. Thus to avoid the
negative impression of being an intolerant, ignorant bigot, the dis-
claimers are used as strategic prefaces to the negative part of the
text. This does not mean that such moves are merely rhetorical.
Obviously, speakers may well be convinced, on the basis of other
(humanitarian) ideologies, that one should not have anything
against blacks (Billig, 1988).
At the end of example (1), we find two Apparent Concessions in
which Israel’s “infraction” and obligations are conceded (in initial
but subordinate clauses), but the main focus is placed on ridiculing
the claims of the Arabs (comparing Israel with Saddam Hussein). Of
course, such moves may also apply to other parties, such as when
the NYT criticizes Premier Rabin for acceding to the expulsion, as
follows:

(6) Whatever the domestic political costs for Mr. Rabin, mag-
nanimity would better serve Israel’s wider interests.
(NYT, Ed., 29 Jan. 1993)

Thus, the concession part pays tribute to the reality of the internal
opposition to lifting the ban on the expelled Palestinians, but the
main thrust of the argument focuses on what the NYT thinks is best
for Israel. Incidentally, also note the style of the recommendation,
namely the choice of the very positive “magnanimity”, which
hardly seems compatible with undoing the expulsion of 400 citizens
and complying with UN resolutions. Would the NYT describe a
terrorist who releases some of his hostages as ‘magnanimous’? That
is, a critical position towards friends may also use kid gloves, and in
fact express ideologically based opinions. This is a typical example
of the strategy of emphasizing Our good actions.

Integration?

Having reviewed the mapping of opinions on several semantic

structures, we may ask ourselves whether some general principles
may be derived from our analyses. Is there some ‘logic’ in the way
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 41

ideological (or other) evaluations tend to manifest themselves in

discourse meaning?
To answer this question, let us briefly retrace the theoretical
itinerary that brought us from ideologies to discourses. Discourse
meanings derive from mental models of events, controlled by con-
text models. These models may embody both personal and instan-
tiated social opinions about events or about any of their relevant
aspects (participants, their properties and actions, etc.). The social
opinions ‘applied’ to a specific event and context may be organized
in attitudes, which in turn may be based on ideologies shared by
groups. These ideologies are mental representations whose catego-
ries schematically code for the major social dimensions of groups
(identity, activities, goals, position, value, resources), and involve
interest-based selections of values that underlie the evaluations and
the social practices of group members.
Thus, despite personal and contextual variation, opinions about
events may be expected to express underlying ideological frame-
works that also monitor social practices, and hence discourse, in
strategic, self-interested ways. Especially in institutional and public
discourse, it will generally be in the interest of a group if informa-
tion is selected from a model and emphasized in discourse that is
positive about the group of the speaker, and negative about oppo-
nents or Others. The converse is equally true: it will not be in our
best interest to select and emphasize information that is negative
for/about Us, or positive for/about the Others. This is precisely
what the ideological square, discussed above, suggests as an overall
strategy in mapping models on text and talk.
How does such an overall strategy influence discourse seman-
tics? What semantic strategies does it entail at all levels of discourse
meaning? We may try to answer these questions by distinguishing
various dimensions of the moves that translate overall ideological
strategies into semantic structures.

Volume Models are generally much more detailed than the texts
that express them. We usually know more than we say, and the
same is true for our opinions, which we may often ‘keep to our-
selves’, for good contextual reasons. This means that we are able to
say either more or less about an event. We may describe it in a few
general propositions, or use many propositions that characterize the
42 Teun A. van Dijk

event (and our opinions about it) in detail. Obviously, such varia-
tion may be constrained by the ideological square in an obvious
way: say a lot about Our good things and Their bad things, and say
little about Our bad things and Their good things.

Importance Models, like most mental schemata, are hierarchically

organized: they have overall propositions (macrostructures) at the
top, and more specific propositions at the bottom; for the same
reason, some information is important, other information less im-
portant, conceptually speaking, in the overall representation of an
event. Since people may understand and hence model each event
differently, the hierarchical structures of events may be different
too. Similarly, for strategic ideological reasons, such differences of
importance may be manipulated in discourse meaning. Some
propositions will only appear at the lower-level microstructure,
others typically may function as overarching macropropositions.
Thus, a ‘race riot’ may be mainly conceptualized as an act of ‘black
mob violence’, as conservative white politicians and media will
conceptualize it, or as a form of ‘urban resistance’, as black or white
radicals might conceptualize it. Macrostructural organization of
models (how the event is globally interpreted) will thus influence
the topicalization of discourse, and hence its global coherence and
what is presented as important or as less important information.
The same may be true at the micro level, where importance may
translate in prepositional (and then clausal) structure, as is the case
with topic-comment or focus organization. As a strategy, then, we
will expect that information that is favourable about/for Us and
unfavourable for Them will be construed as important or topical
macro-information, and vice versa.

Relevance The pragmatic dimension of relevance is about the utili-

tarian importance of information for (language) users or partici-
pants, and is therefore controlled by context models. Important
information may still be less relevant for the readers or the audi-
ence, and conversely, unimportant details may well be relevant for
them, if we measure relevance in terms of the seriousness or the
scope of consequences for its users. Trivially, we may expect Our
discourses to feature information and opinions that are particularly
relevant for Us, and irrelevant for Them, and vice versa. For in-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 43

‘stance, information about white racism, though important, may be

found less relevant by white newspaper editors and hence be
accorded less newsworthiness, as is indeed the case (van Dijk, 1991).

Implicitness/Explicitness The presence or absence of model infor-

mation may be semantically construed as explicitness or implicit-
ness. The influence of the ideological strategic square is obvious
here: make explicit the information and opinions that are good for
Us, and bad for Them, and vice versa. Again, this may be at the
overall level of the discourse (as we have seen for Volume), or at the
level of words and sentences.

Attribution In explanatory contexts, acts may be variously attrib-

uted to actors, and explained in terms of their properties or the
situation (Antaki, 1988; Jaspars, Fincham and Hewstone, 1983).
Agency, responsibility and blame may also be attributed as a
function of ideological orientation: good acts will usually be self-
attributed to Ourselves (or our allies) and bad acts other-attributed
to the Others (or their allies), and in both cases these groups are
assigned full control and responsibility for their acts. The converse
is true for Our bad acts and Their good acts: Our bad acts will be de-
emphasized and attributed to circumstances beyond our control,
and the same is true for Their good acts (“they were just lucky”).
These various attribution strategies may appear at all levels of
action description, and also appear in word order (responsible
agency may be preferentially expressed by grammatical subjects
and in initial position).

Perspective Inherent in the notions of ideology, attitudes and the

specific opinions based on them is the notion of ‘position’. Events
are described and evaluated from the position, point of view or
perspective of the speaker. This perspective may be cultural, social,
personal or situational, and may apply to all levels and dimensions
of discourse. That is, judgements are by definition relative, as the
concept of ‘standpoint’ (a synonym of ‘opinion’) suggests. This is
true for the subjective point of view of the individual, as much as for
the shared, inter-subjective opinions of group members. Situational
perspective is expressed, first of all, in context-dependent deictics
(pronouns, demonstratives and adverbs like ‘here’, ‘now’ and
‘today’), verbs (like ‘come’ and ‘go’) and position- or relation-
dependent nouns (such as ‘home’, ‘sister’ and ‘neighbour’), among
other expressions. Personal perspective trivially manifests itself in
fixed expressions such as ‘from my point of view’, ‘in my opinion’
or ‘as far as I am concerned’. The plural forms of such expressions
may indicate social perspective (‘from our point of view’ etc.),
which however may also simply be expressed by first person plural
pronouns, as in the well-known ethnocentric example “We are
not used to that here”, used to express negative opinions about
the acts of foreigners. A well-known slogan expressing a sociopoliti-
cal (and geographical) perspective (an anti-American one) is of
course “Yankee, go home!”. Implicitly this is also the case in the
racist slogan of the National Front in France: “Les Frangais
d’abord”, which of course suggests that the person who is speaking
is French.
In sum, given a mental model of an event, and a context model of
the current communicative event, the overall strategic principles
examined above allow language users to express their opinions not
only through explicitly evaluative words, but also through:

e the generality vs. specificity and quantity of model propositions

used in descriptions of events;
¢ the explicitness vs. the implicitness of model propositions;
the importance assigned to propositions relative to others;
the contextual relevance assigned to propositions;
the attribution of agency, responsibility and blame for actions;
¢ the perspective from which events are described and evaluated.

These different discursive strategies have several functions, such

as enhancing the vividness of descriptions or the credibility of
accounts, and for our analysis they are particularly relevant in
expressing the ideological perspective and the opinions of groups
and their members. In each case, then, the strategy applies
‘via’ the ideological square: the type of description (general, or
explicit etc.) must be in Our favour, in Our interest, or in any
other way contribute positively and persuasively to Our self-
presentation and impression management, or conversely, contrib-
ute to the negative presentation of our opponents, enemies or the
Others in general.
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 45

Surface structures

In the previous sections we focused on the mapping of opinions and

ideologies on semantic structures of discourse. Meanings are, how-
ever, expressed in various ‘forms’ or ‘surface structures’, that is, in
concrete lexical items, clause and sentence structure, syntactic cat-
egories, word order, discourse intonation, graphical structures, and
the organization of macrostructures in canonical schemata, such as
those of narration, argumentation or news reporting.
Many of the semantic structures examined above, as well as the
opinions embodied in them, thus need to be inferred from such
surface structures. However, these structures or forms may also
play their own role in the expression of opinions. One of the ways
they do this is by the formal implementation of the ideological
square. Meanings, and therefore opinions, may also be emphasized
or de-emphasized by their expressions. They may be expressed on
top (as in headlines), earlier in the text (as in leads of news reports),
in topical (initial) positions in sentences, or through a complex
system of rhetorical ‘figures of speech’ (repetition, parallelism,
metaphor, comparison, irony, litotes etc.), or vice versa for mean-
ings/opinions that need to be de-emphasized. We shall not further
investigate the details of these expression structures of opinions in
this chapter, but it should be borne in mind that many of the discur-
sive strategies of ideological expression are formal. Conversely, in
text comprehension, these expression structures influence semantic
interpretation, and hence also the construction of opinions in
models.

5 An Example

To illustrate the theoretical analysis proposed above, let us at this

point examine in some detail how ideologies and opinions may be
expressed and combined at the different levels of a typical ‘opinion
article’. Here we take an op-ed piece in the Washington Post (15
December 1993), written by Jim Hoagland (© 1997, Washington
Post Writers’ Group; reprinted with permission):
46 Teun A. van Dijk

GADHAFI: SINISTER POSTURING

[1] A moment comes when a tyrant crosses a line of no return.
In the grip of megalomania, he is incapable of making
rational calculations of cost and gain. He strikes out in fury
and in fear, intent on destroying even if it means destruc-
tion will visit him in turn.
[2] Iraq’s Saddam Hussein crossed that line in the spring of
1990. But the outside world paid little heed until he
invaded Kuwait that summer. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi
now has crossed that line. The international community
should not repeat the mistake it made with Saddam.
[3] On Sunday Gadhafi invited the world’s two most
notorious Palestinian terrorists, Ahmed Jibril and Abu
Nidal, to visit Tripoli, perhaps to set up headquarters there.
The Libyan leader told a cheering crowd in the town of
Azizia that the invitations were meant to defy the United
Nations.
[4] Gadhafi has shown that he no longer values the cloak
of silence or acquiescence in his evil that he sought to
purchase or extort. He is on the attack, pushing his long
confrontation with the West back to the breaking point.
[5] For months Egyptian diplomats, fearful of the damage
Gadhafi could do their country, and European oil execu-
tives and Washington lawyers, enamored of the lucre
Gadhafi could send their way, have spoken of Gadhafi’s
new ‘moderation’ and have urged the international com-
munity to treat him with reasonableness and patience.
[6] He was, the lawyers submitted, about to change his spots
on terrorism. He was, the Egyptians said, misunderstood
and in any event a lesser evil than the Islamic fundamental-
ists who have declared war on the Egyptian regime. He
was, the oil men claimed, a leader they could do business
with, on favorable terms.
[7] Their pleas for patience lie in ruins now that Gadhafi has
renewed his public embrace of terrorism, in word and
deed. He has responded with vitriol and menace to the
mild economic sanctions placed on his regime by the U.N.
Security Council.
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 47

[8] The Security Council has demanded that Gadhafi turn over
for trial abroad two of hissecurity aides, who are accused
by the United States of carrying out the bombing of Pan
Am Flight 103 on Dec. 21, 1988. His refusal to do so trig-
gered sanctions that restrict air travel to and from Libya
_and freeze Libya’s oil revenues banked abroad.
[9] Intelligence reports link Jibril and his General Command
‘organization to the planning of the Pan Am massacre,
which cost 270 lives. Although Jibril’s exact role is not clear,
Gadhafi’s invitation strips away the pretense that the
Libyan is interested in seeing justice done in this case.
[10] As sinister as his invitation to the two managing partners
of Terror Inc. is Gadhafi’s suspected involvement in the
kidnapping over the weekend in Cairo of Mansour
Kikhiya, his former foreign minister, who broke with
Gadhafi over terrorism to become a leading dissident — and
a resident of the United States, due to become a U.S. citizen
next year.
[11] Kikhiya’s associates tell me he had gone to Cairo reluc-
tantly and only after receiving personal guarantees from
senior Egyptian officials of safe passage. He was well
aware of the presence of Libyan secret police and of the
Egyptian government's effort to shield Gadhafi from inter-
national punishment by arguing against sanctions.
[12] But on Dec. 10 Kikhiya disappeared from his hotel room
in Cairo. Left behind in the room were the insulin
and syringe Kikhiya needs every eight hours to treat his
diabetes.
[13] Politically sensitive visitors like Kikhiya are routinely kept
under surveillance by Egypt's internal intelligence service.
His disappearance raises the question of Egyptian complic-
ity in or tolerance of a Libyan plot to eliminate the Libyan
exile movement. The movement has begun to worry
Gadhafi, who brands the exiles as ‘stray dogs and dollar
slaves.’
[14] Gadhafi stands at a crossroads similar to the one that
Saddam confronted in the spring and summer of 1990. He
48 Teun A. van Dijk

responds with a similar lashing out at those who would

thwart him, even at the cost of embarrassing an Egyptian
government that has defended him.
[15] Libya is not broke or gravely weakened by a long war, as
Iraq was. But Gadhafi is boxed in and embarrassed by
- sanctions. Sanctions show the Libyan population that
Gadhafi is not the omnipotent, respected leader he claims
to be.
[16] Rather than sink into impotence, Saddam went to war.
Gadhafi does not have the ground army to do that. But he
does have an army of international terrorists, including
those who carried out his orders to bomb Pan Am 103 five
years ago this month.
[17] Abu Nidal has also favored the Christian and Jewish year-
end holiday seasons as moments for terrorist outrages. His
men shot up the airports in Rome and Vienna in December
1985.
[18] It is impossible to know if Gadhafi was simply reminding
the world of his sinister capabilities, or foreshadowing new
atrocities with his public welcome of terrorists. But he has
warned the world that he must be watched and confronted
anew after a season of phony peace.

Let us analyse the evaluative and ideological strategies of this

article paragraph by paragraph, beginning with the headline.

GADHAFI: SINISTER POSTURING

In this headline, as well as in the rest of the text, the main target for
Hoagland’s attack is of course Gadhafi, generally known as the
devil incarnate of conservative US foreign policy (for details, see
Chomsky, 1987). Structurally, the importance of Gadhafi is first
emphasized by his appearance in the title, which means that he is
the actor of a macroproposition. Secondly, fronting his name in the
title further emphasizes his agency and responsibility for the
nominalized verb “posturing”, an effect that would be less obvious
in the normal ordering for this sentence: ‘The sinister posturing of
Gadhafi’. Then, Hoagland’s negative opinions are explicitly ex-
pressed in the choice of “sinister” and “posturing”, the first predi-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 49

cate being associated with secret and dark forces, and the second
with affectation and a pose, and as having a big mouth, but really
being nobody. Both predicates are obviously intended in the politi-
cal sense, and hence express not so much Hoagland’s personal
opinion, but a shared US evaluation of Gadhafi. Note also that what
Gadhafi has done is not topicalized in the headline, but only the way
he does it, so that it is the evaluation itself that is thus emphasized.
In the system of the ideological square, this is a clear example of
negative other-presentation, as well as an example of emphasizing
these negative properties of the Other.
1. A moment comes when a tyrant crosses a line of no return. In
the grip of megalomania, he is incapable of making rational
calculations of cost and gain. He strikes out in fury and in fear,
intent on destroying even if it means destruction will visit him
in turn.
The relevant opinions expressed here appear first of all in the lexical
style, that is, in words such as tyrant, megalomania, strikes out, fury,
and destroying, all predicated of an imaginary dictator, but (after the
title) clearly meant as a generic description that fits Gadhafi. The
political evaluation becomes obvious in the choice of tyrant, which
categorizes him not only as undemocratic or even as a dictator, but
also as someone who viciously oppresses his people. Moreover, the
choice of tyrant is part of a long tradition of Western descriptions of
Eastern ‘despots’, also applied, for example, to Saddam Hussein,
but seldom to ‘Western’ dictators, such as Batista of Cuba, Pinochet
of Chile or Stroessner of Paraguay. That is, there are various types of
denomination, and the most important, political criterion for the
choice of opinion pre-dicates is whether dictators are ‘Ours’ or
‘Theirs’, following the ideological principle that Our bad things
tend to be mitigated, and Theirs emphasized (see also Herman,
1992; Herman and Chomsky, 1988).
Another evaluative sequence or ‘opinion line’, continuing the
idea of posturing in the title, is picked up by the use of megalomania.
Again, Gadhafi is negatively being described as someone who
thinks he is bigger than he is, but the specific term also implies a
form of mental deficiency: he is a lunatic. This personal evaluation
of someone who ‘has lost his mind’ also appears in the statement
that Gadhafi is unable to make rational calculations, that he strikes
out in fury and fear and is self-destructive.
50 Teun A. van Dijk

Thus, whereas Gadhafi is first politically placed beyond the pale

of democracy and humanity, he is now also excluded from the
world of ‘us, sane’ people. These various evaluations presuppose
that Hoagland speaks from the point of view of Western, US, ra-
tional, democratic people(s), and the usual ideological polarization
here therefore opposes this group with one of its main enemies,
while Gadhafi is the incarnation of anti-Western, anti-US, anti-
democratic (etc.) forces.
Thirdly, Gadhafi is not only a tyrant (over his own people) and a
lunatic, but also a threat, since he is said to be “intent on destroy-
ing”, which brings in the relevant international perspective already
addressed above. Note that the opinion about his being a threat is
not itself expressed, but based on an inference, namely from the
explicit opinion that he is destructive, and the implicit knowledge
that he is a head of state: violent, crazy dictators are a threat to the
world, as was already suggested by the use of the concept of ‘de-
struction’ later in this paragraph.
Perhaps most interesting in this paragraph is the seemingly inno-
cent phrase “even if it means destruction will visit him in turn”,
since the international dimension of Gadhafi’s aggressiveness here
seems to suggest a legitimation of retaliation, following the maxim
derived from militarist ideologies: we are allowed to destroy some-
one who is bent on destroying us. It was precisely this legitimation,
of course, that Reagan used when the US air force bombed Tripoli
some years earlier, killing a large number of civilians, among them
a child of Gadhafi. (In that case, incidentally, Gadhafi’s alleged
posturing, rather than his destructiveness, was seen as sufficient
reason to attack Tripoli.)

2. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein crossed that line in the spring of 1990.

But the outside world paid little heed until he invaded Kuwait
that summer. Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi now has crossed that
line. The international community should not repeat the mistake
it made with Saddam.

As may be expected, a ‘tyrant’ like Gadhafi invites comparison with

the other demon of US foreign policy: Saddam Hussein. The same
metaphor used in the Gulf War (about the line drawn in the sand of
the desert) is now applied to the case of Libya, in order to accentuate
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 51

the similarity of the threats posed by both dictators to the inter-

national community. Note that “the outside world paid little heed”
seems a factual statement, but in fact implies an opinion, namely
that according to Hoagland the outside world should have paid
more attention, which is a normative implication, as is also clear
from the last sentence of this paragraph (“should not repeat the
mistake”). Here we encounter the typical recommendation speech
act that is a standard part of editorials and op-ed articles: after an
analysis of what is wrong (an opinion), it is concluded what should
be done, which semantically is also an opinion, and pragmatically
an act of advice or recommendation.
3. On Sunday Gadhafi invited the world’s two most notorious
Palestinian terrorists, Ahmed Jibril and Abu Nidal, to visit
Tripoli, perhaps to set up headquarters there. The Libyan leader
told a cheering crowd in the town of Azizia that the invitations
were meant to defy the United Nations.
After the evaluative introduction of the editorial, we here find
the newsworthy ‘facts’ that form the immediate cause or ‘peg’ of the
opinion piece, namely Gadhafi’s invitation to two Palestinians. The
evaluation implied by the use of notorious and terrorist is standard
fare, and is part of the overall opinion-coherence of the article,
representing fragments of the attitude of Hoagland and many of his
colleagues towards the Middla East conflict. The last sentence of
this paragraph is more interesting. As such, it is a factual statement,
and not an opinion; indeed, it may be true or false, and the truth
criteria are non-subjective (although there may be some dispute
about when a group of people is a ‘crowd’ and when their actions
are called ‘cheering’). And Gadhafi might indeed have defied the
United Nations, although there may be some doubt about whether
he actually said it that way. Given the authority of the UN, how-
ever, defying the UN would normally be a negative act (although
the USA itself has defied UN resolutions many times). This means
that, by stating this, there may be at least an implicit opinion, based
on the general evaluative belief that defying legitimate institutions
is wrong. This description ties in with the earlier characterization of
Gadhafi as a dangerous megalomaniac, and at the same time pro-
vides the ‘proof’ of such a characterization: he who defies the UN
must be both aggressive and a fool.
52 Teun A. van Dijk ee
ae NOI SO ON
4. Gadhafi has shown that he no longer values the cloak of silence or
acquiescence in his evil that he sought to purchase or extort. He
is on the attack, pushing his long confrontation with the West
back to the breaking point.

The opinions here are very explicit, as is most obvious in the stand-
ard way of describing the most terrible of opponents: they are evil,
just as Reagan famously described the former USSR as the ‘evil
empire’. The words extort, attack and confrontation are similarly bor-
rowed from a lexical repertoire designed to describe the acts of the
enemy. Note, however, that the opinion does not merely imply a
negative evaluation of aggression. There is a lot of aggression in
the world that Jim Hoagland and the Washington Post do not
routinely write about. The crucial point, as also expressed by the
earlier verb defy, is that Gadhafi confronts Us in the West (and
especially Us, Americans). That is, the ideological polarization be-
tween Us and Them (or in this case between Us and Him) is being
activated here to influence the organization of opinions in this
article. As the theory predicts, this will usually happen through
specific negative attitudes about the Others, in this case about
‘Their’ violence and aggression in general, and their terrorism in
particular. Hoagland follows this standard evaluative scenario
rather faithfully.

5. For months Egyptian diplomats, fearful of the damage Gadhafi

could do their country, and European oil executives and
Washington lawyers, enamored of the lucre Gadhafi could send
their way, have spoken of Gadhafi’s new ‘moderation’ and have
urged the international community to treat him with reasonable-
ness and patience.

Hoagland’s opinion discourse now shifts to those who are prepared

to accept Gadhafi, and the choice of enamored of the lucre implies that
being overly fond of profits is viewed negatively here — not, of
course, because this is out of line with the basic tenets of capitalism
both Hoagland and the Washington Post undoubtedly espouse, but
rather because this means doing business with the enemy. The use
of quotes in the description of Gadhafi as being ‘moderate’ implies
that Hoagland does not agree at all with such a characterization, as
indeed his earlier epithets in this piece show rather unambiguously.
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 53

_ Here the old rule seems to apply that the friends of our enemy are
also our enemy, so that oil executives and lawyers in this case are
evaluated accordingly.

6. He was, the lawyers submitted, about to change his spots on

terrorism. He was, the Egyptians said, misunderstood and in
any event a lesser evil than the Islamic fundamentalists who
have declared war on the Egyptian regime. He was, the oil men
claimed, a leader they could do business with, on favorable terms.

The arguments of those who have a less negative view of Gadhafi

are replayed, but again the lexicalization of these arguments does
not seem to imply agreement. The use of the verbs submitted and
claimed suggests as much, and also the expression about to change his
spots on terrorism reveals Hoagland’s serious doubts about Gadhafi’s
change. The rhetorical parallelism of the sentence structures of this
paragraph further stresses this doubt about the claims of those
Hoagland criticizes. Interesting for our analysis is that opinions also
appear when people evaluate others’ opinions.

7. Their pleas for patience lie in ruins now that Gadhafi has re-
newed his public embrace of terrorism, in word and deed. He has
responded with vitriol and menace to the mild economic sanc-
tions placed on his regime by the U.N. Security Council.

The justification of Hoagland’s scepticism follows in this paragraph.

A new enumeration of Gadhafi’s evils is used to belie those who
wanted to placate him: embrace of terrorism, vitriol and menace. These
opinions fit the overall negative characterization of Gadhafi as a
dangerous terrorist. In light of such an opinion, being patient is
clearly found an inadequate response. For our analysis this is inter-
esting, because it shows that words that usually imply positive
opinions are used here in a critical way.

8. The Security Council has demanded that Gadhafi turn over for
trial abroad two of his security aides, who are accused by the
United States of carrying out the bombing of Pan Am Flight 103
on Dec. 21, 1988. His refusal to do so triggered sanctions that
restrict air travel to and from Libya and freeze Libya's oil rev-
enues banked abroad.
54 Teun A. van Dijk

These factual statements simply appear to explain the historical

background of the (mild) economic sanctions against Libya, and do
not explicitly express opinions. Yet, mentioning the fact that
Gadhafi is accused of bombing an aircraft is in line with, and sup-
ports, the earlier qualification of Gadhafi as a terrorist, whereas
referring to his refusal to comply with the demands of the Security
Council is a specification of the earlier evaluative description of
defiance. In other words, factual statements about negative actions
(bombing an aircraft) may not express an opinion, but strongly
suggest such an opinion, which in this case might be that of the
reader. Moreover, factual statements may support opinion state-
ments: bombing an aircraft is a form of terrorism, and refusal to
comply with demands of the international community (and espe-
cially of the UN), a form of megalomania.

9. Intelligence reports link Jibril and his General Command organi-

sation to the planning of the Pan Am massacre, which cost 270
lives. Although Jibril’s exact role is not clear, Gadhafi's invita-
tion strips away the pretense that the Libyan is interested in
seeing justice done in this case.

A similar negative description of the ‘facts’ is given here of another

enemy, Jibril, and the selection of massacre and cost 270 lives is
clearly monitored by a strongly negative opinion. Note also the
disclaimer Although Jibril’s exact role is not clear, which keeps some
journalistic distance from the evidence of the intelligence reports,
but which also suggests that what follows is evaluated negatively.

10. As sinister as his invitation to the two managing partners of

Terror Inc. is Gadhafi’s suspected involvement in the kidnap-
ping over the weekend in Cairo of Mansour Kikhiya, his former
foreign minister, who broke with Gadhafi over terrorism to
become a leading dissident — and a resident of the United
States, due to become a U.S. citizen next year.

The key-word of the title, sinister, appears again to qualify Gadhafi’s

actions as threatening and ominous, along with the rest of his por-
trayal as a terrorist. The picture is completed here by Gadhafi’s
(suspected) involvement in kidnapping a former associate. Inviting
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 55

two terrorists, and important ones at that, is by itself a negative act,

and calling it ‘sinister’ merely emphasizes the point. To mark the
usual Us vs. Them articulation of ideological discourse, Kikhiya is
now promoted to the status of dissident: the enemies of our enemies
become our friends, and may be awarded citizenship. In other
words, Gadhafi is not merely suspected of kidnapping a former
associate (indeed, why would that be relevant to ‘Us’?), but in
fact of kidnapping a (near) US citizen, and hence attacking the
USA. «

11. Kikhiya’s associates tell me he had gone to Cairo reluctantly

and only after receiving personal guarantees from senior Egyp-
tian officials of safe passage. He was well aware of the presence
of Libyan secret police and of the Egyptian government's effort
to shield Gadhafi from international punishment by arguing
against sanctions.

12. But on Dec. 10 Kikhiya disappeared from his hotel room in

Cairo. Left behind in the room were the insulin and syringe
Kikhiya needs every eight hours to treat his diabetes.

The only expression of opinion in these two paragraphs may be the

reference to Libya’s secret police: only dictatorships have a secret
police, so Libya is a dictatorship. Note also the reference to a source,
a rather unusual move in an opinion article, but here strategically
effective, while making the accusations more credible. Similarly
indirect is the reference to Kikhiya being a patient in need of regular
medication, but having left his medicine in the hotel room, which
suggests that he must have been kidnapped. This ‘proof’ of abduc-
tion at the same time emphasizes the negative characteristics of the
Others: they even abduct sick men and do not give them their
medication.

13. Politically sensitive visitors like Kikhiya are routinely kept

under surveillance by Egypt's internal intelligence service. His
disappearance raises the question of Egyptian complicity in or
tolerance of a Libyan plot to eliminate the Libyan exile move-
ment. The movement has begun to worry Gadhafi, who brands
the exiles as ‘stray dogs and dollar slaves’.
56 Teun A. van Dijk

Note that the security force of ‘our friend’ Egypt is not called a
‘secret police’ but an “internal intelligence service”, thus lexically
differentiating those associated with Us, and those associated with
Them. The use of brand in the last sentence implies that Hoagland
does not agree with the way Gadhafi describes his opponents, and
the nature of the description itself is so preposterous that merely
mentioning it is sufficient to qualify it. That exiles are called “dollar
slaves” by Gadhafi further exacerbates the polarization between
Us and Them, since ‘dollars’ are associated with the West or the
USA.

14. Gadhafi stands at a crossroads similar to the one that Saddam

confronted in the spring and summer of 1990. He responds
with a similar lashing out at those who would thwart him, even
at the cost of embarrassing an Egyptian government that has
defended him.
15. Libya is not broke or gravely weakened by a long war, as Iraq
was. But Gadhafi is boxed in and embarrassed by sanctions.
Sanctions show the Libyan population that Gadhafi is not the
omnipotent, respected leader he claims to be.

Paragraph 14 paraphrases earlier parts of the text, using the same

comparison with Saddam Hussein, and lashing out continues the
phrase “He strikes out in fury and in fear” used in the first para-
graph. Both have negative implications. The opinion at the end of
paragraph 15 is complex and interesting. The use of the verb “to
show that” implies that the speaker holds the proposition to be true,
so that Gadhafi in fact is not omnipotent and respected by his
people, and hence he is a dictator. Similarly, since they hurt Gadhafi
rather than his people, the use of sanctions is also legitimated,
which is an indirect opinion.

16. Rather than sink into impotence, Saddam went to war. Gadhafi
does not have the ground army to do that. But he does have an
army of international terrorists, including those who carried
out his orders to bomb Pan Am 103 five years ago this month.
17. Abu Nidal has also favored the Christian and Jewish year-end
holiday seasons as moments for terrorist outrages. His men
shot up the airports in Rome and Vienna in December 1985.
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 57

Although Saddam Hussein and Gadhafi are not comparable in mili-

tary terms, Gadhafi makes up for this by his “army of terrorists”,
and his directing the bombing of Pan Am flight 103. What earlier in
the text was a US accusation of Gadhafi’s involvement is here pre-
sented as fact. And as before, since Gadhafi associates himself with
the terrorist Abu Nidal, he is himself a terrorist. These examples
hardly express explicit opinions, but the description of the people
he associates with as “terrorists” and their actions as “terrorist
outrages” clearly reveals a negative evaluation.

18. It is impossible to know if Gadhafi was simply reminding the

world of his sinister capabilities, or foreshadowing new atroci-
ties with his public welcome of terrorists. But he has warned the
world that he must be watched and confronted anew after a
season of phony peace.

In this concluding paragraph, the evaluative description sinister is

used again, and atrocities continues the line of negative descriptions
of the acts of Gadhafi. The final recommendation (that he must be
watched) is, of course, itself based on norms and values informing
this piece, and hence a political opinion. Even the positive concept
of ‘peace’ associated with Gadhafi may be converted into “phony
peace”, thus making Gadhafi unreliable even when he keeps quiet:
he can never be trusted.

6 Summary

Having briefly commented on the various types of opinion expres-

sion in a typical conservative op-ed article in the US press, we may
at this point try to summarize our observations more analytically in
light of the earlier theoretical framework.

Polarization

Opinions may be organized following an ideological pattern that

polarizes ingroups and outgroups, Us vs. Them. This principle also
has a number of corollaries in the form of maxims, such as “The
Enemy of Our Enemy is Our Friend’. In this case, the basic dual
58 Teun A. van Dijk

ideologies used are the familiar ones of Western superiority

and Arab inferiority, whereby We are associated with positive
values such as democracy, rationality and non-violence, and They
with dictatorship, violence and irrationality. More specifically,
the ideology of Arab inferiority here focuses on attitudes to terror-
ism, organizing a set of socially shared opinions about various
aspects of terrorism and their associations (such as bombing, kid-
napping, killing innocent people etc.). Moreover, following the logic
of Ingroup—Outgroup relations, the Others are also presented as a
threat.

Opinion coherence

Specific opinions about specific terrorists (Gadhafi, Nidal, Jibril)

may follow the application of this general attitude. Together with
conceptions about terrorist attacks and abductions of political oppo-
nents, this instantiation of an attitude also sustains what we have
called the ‘opinion coherence’ of discourse in that various aspects of
terrorism are being discussed.

Attribution

Attributions of negative actions to our enemies require that our

enemies are described as responsible agents, who are consciously,
intentionally and cynically aware of what they do and of the conse-
quences of their actions, even if these actions may be branded as
irrational or even crazy at the same time. On the other hand, those
of Us who are too friendly towards our enemies do not fully realize
what they are doing, and hence they may be advised to mend their
ways.

Description

The identifying descriptions of groups or institutions related to Us

and Them also follow the principle of ideological polarization.
Thus, Their security forces are called the ‘secret police’, whereas
Ours are an ‘intelligence agency’.
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 59

Interest

Positive or negative opinions about Our or Their actions basically

follow an evaluative logic based on a construction of what Our best
interests are. Thus, Gadhafi’s ‘posturing’ is not primarily judged to
be evil as such (indeed, many of Our friends, such as Israel, do
likewise), but it is judged to be evil in that it is seen to threaten our
(US, Western) interests in the world.

Implicitness

Opinions may be explicit and implicit, direct and indirect. Some

opinions in this op-ed article may be derived from a combination of
factual statements with the norms, values and positions of the au-
thor. Thus “crossing a line” is, as such, not an evaluative predicate,
but in the present context it expresses the opinion that Gadhafi has
gone too far. Similarly, the factual description of terrorist acts (such
as bombing an aircraft) does not express an opinion either, but
shared social attitudes about such acts allow readers to derive the
appropriate opinions.

Meta-opinions

Opinions may be opinions about other opinions. Thus, (too) posi-

tive opinions about our enemies are disqualified (as too moderate,
too mild). Similarly, opinions may apply to speech acts of others.
Doubts about the contents of the assertions of others may thus be
expressed by discrediting them as mere ‘claims’ or ‘submissions’.

Expression

The expression of opinions may be enhanced in several stylistic and

rhetorical ways. Words describing negative acts may be taken from
the repertoire of mental health, and opponents may be described as
irrational, lunatic and megalomaniac. Another strategy is to com-
pare a target enemy with another, certified enemy, e.g. Gadhafi with
60 Teun A. van Dijk

Saddam Hussein, and Saddam Hussein with Hitler, and all of them
with devils and demons. Negative characterizations are also en-
hanced by rhetorical contrasts: by opposing negative actions by
Them with positive ones by Us (e.g. mild sanctions of the UN are
met by sinister posturing and threats of terrorist warfare). Also
alliterations (fury and fear), parallelisms and especially lexical rep-
etition (sinister) may attract attention to specific opinions. Similarly,
negative opinions about Them tend to be detailed, repeated and
illustrated with concrete examples: thus the terrorism of Gadhafi,
Jibril and Nidal is detailed by reference to the bombing of the Pan
Am flight, the kidnapping of a Libyan dissident, and so on.

Unmentionables

Negative information and hence negative opinions about Us (i.e.

self-critique) may be left completely unsaid in violent ideological
confrontation. Not only is Gadhafi totally evil, but We (the USA, the
West etc.) are totally good. We have done nothing to provoke
Gadhafi. Thus, the equally terrorist bombing of Tripoli by the US air
force, killing innocent children, is not even mentioned, although
hinted at with a phrase like “destruction will visit him”. Thus, our
attacks on our enemies are always provoked and hence justified.

Arguments

Opinions usually need support. That is, they are preceded or fol-
lowed by a sequence of assertions that make them more plausible
by various rules of inference, based on attitudes and values. Simi-
larly, possible negative opinions about us are forestalled by implicit
counter-arguments against such opinions. Opinions in op-ed arti-
cles are usually formulated as evaluative support for a speech act of
advice, recommendation or warning, which define the pragmatic
point or conclusion of an opinion article.

Using history

Ideological opinions selectively invoke and hide history. Thus, ter-

rorism is presented as a timeless evil. No historical background or
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 61

explanation for Their violence against Us is given, no reference to

the Middle East conflict made, not even a brief disclaimer about
the plight of the Palestinians. On the other hand, it is necessary to
show historical continuity, so that we learn from history: hence the
reference to the Gulf War and Saddam Hussein. Similarly, from a
more cultural angle, we need continuity in presenting Arabs as
the enemy of the West by describing them in terms of ideological
opinions that are part of a long tradition of Western superiority and
Arab inferiority.
We have summarized the findings of our analysis in terms of a
number of rather specific moves that are typical for the expression
of underlying ideologies in opinion articles. These moves generally
enact the major overall strategies of ideological discourse, namely
those of positive self-presentation and negative other-presenta-
tion. At the same time, the discourse structures involved enable
us to witness ‘at the surface’ some of the underlying trajectory
that relates ideologies to discourse, such as the values involved in
ideological statements, their polarization, their implementation
in domain-related attitudes (in this case about international
politics), their influence on specific models about specific events
and participants (what Gadhafi did), and the ways these are
presented as a function of a context model (of Hoagland writing
in the Washington Post, especially for US citizens, and more specifi-
cally addressing US politicians and other elites, such as business
people).

7 Suggestions for Ideological Analysis

There is no one, standard way to do critical discourse analysis, nor

to do ideological analysis of editorials or other types of text or talk.
However, from the discussion in this chapter, as well as from our
other work, the following practical suggestions may be derived for
doing ideological analysis: (a) examine the context of the discourse,
(b) analyse which groups, power relations and conflicts are in-
volved, (c) look for positive and negative opinions about Us
and Them, (d) spell out the presupposed and the implied, and (e)
examine all formal structures that (de)emphasize polarized group
opinions.
62 Teun A. van Dijk

Backgrounds

No serious ideological analysis is possible without at least some

knowledge of the ‘facts’, about the historical, political or social
background of a conflict, its main participants, the grounds of the
conflict and preceding positions and arguments. Many ideological
moves closely involve the self-serving use and abuse of the ‘facts’.

Context

In order to understand the ideological position of the author (writer

or speaker), describe the communicative context: group
membership(s) of the author, the aims of the communicative event,
the genre, the intended audience(s), the setting (time, location), the
medium, and so on. Through the contextual occasioning or func-
tions of the discourse, its ideological functions may be spelled out.
For instance, an editorial may function as a critique and advice to
specific (often elite) groups or institutions, and hence involves
(power) relations between the media and media writers on the one
hand, and these other groups, on the other. This context also defines
the ideological dimension of the speech acts involved (e.g. warnings
as a means of enacting power).

Ideological categories

Ideologies are the basic ‘axioms’ of socially shared representations

of groups about themselves and their relations to other groups,
including such categories as membership criteria, activities, goals,
values, and crucial group resources. Look for expressions in the text
that refer to these basic categories defining the interests or identity of
the group the author belongs to.

Polarization

Many ideologies sustain and reproduce social conflict, domination

and inequality. This conflict may involve any type of interest (typi-
cally symbolic or material resources) mentioned above, and is char-
 Opinions and Ideologies in the Press 63

acteristically organized in a polarized way, that is, represented as

Us vs. Them. This polarization is at the basis of much ideological
discourse, that is, as the strategy of positive self-presentation and
negative other-presentation. Since ideologies involve values, they
typically surface as evaluative beliefs or opinions. Find all opinions
in the text that enact such polarized evaluation of Us and Them. Little
discourse analytical expertise is necessary to do such an ideological
‘reading’ of the text.

The implicit

Ideological opinions, however, are not always expressed in a very

explicit way. That is, very often they are implied, presupposed,
hidden, denied or taken for granted. Hence it is necessary to exam-
ine more systematically the semantic structure of the text for various
forms of implication, indirectness or denial, as shown above. In-
deed, seemingly non-evaluative, non-ideological descriptions of
‘facts’ may imply positive opinions about Us and negative opinions
about Them. Also the ways the sentences of the discourse cohere
(e.g. on the basis of causality) may be part of this implicit manifes-
tation of ideology. Similarly, the overall coherence of the discourse
in terms of topics or themes indicates what information (and what
ideological opinions) are deemed more or less important, thus re-
flecting the structures of the underlying ideological mental models,
attitudes and ideologies.

Formal structures

Indirectly, the various forms of a discourse may also be involved in

the expression or signalling of ideological positions. The ideological
square of polarization applies here too. Structural features may
emphasize or de-emphasize information or opinions about Us and
Them: sound structures in talk (e.g. intonation, stress, volume,
‘tone’, applause, laughs); graphical structures in printed text (head-
lines, columns, placing, letter type, photos etc.); the overall (sche-
matic) organization of the discourse (e.g. argumentation); lexical
choice and variation in the description of Us vs. Them; and the
syntactic structure of clauses and sentences.
Chapter 3
The Discourse Structure
of News Stories
Allan Bell

1 On Analysis

This chapter offers and exemplifies a framework for analysing the

discourse structure of news. Why would one want to undertake
such an enterprise? Why analyse news story structure? What is
the pay-off for the labour-intensive analysis of the text of news
stories?
Stories are central to human nature. The stories people tell are a
core part of their social identity, and the construction of a life story
is crucial to our self-identity. The idea of the story is also central to
news media. Journalists do not write articles, they write stories —
with structure, order, viewpoint and values. So the daily happen-
ings of our societies are expressed in the stories we are told in the
media.
In addition, the media are important social institutions. They are
crucial presenters of culture, politics and social life, shaping as well
as reflecting how these are formed and expressed. Media ‘discourse’
is important both for what it reveals about a society and because it
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 65

also itself contributes to the character of society. Linguistic research

on the media has always emphasized this last concern, focusing
where issues of ideology and power are closest to the surface. But
prerequisite to all such questions is a sound discourse analysis, and
this is something that students of media — in their eagerness to get
to the ‘real meat’ of ideological detective work — have sometimes
skimmed over at their peril.
To the linguist, a first answer to a question about why undertake
such a study is ‘because it is there’. News is a major register of
language. Understanding how it works is important to understand-
ing the functioning of language in society. Such a study also enables
us to compare news with other kinds of stories, such as the ones
people tell in face-to-face conversation. And we can compare the
discourse structure of news with other media genres such as editori-
als, and one type of news medium with another, for instance
tabloid and broadsheet press, or newscasts on different television
stations.
The text is central to news. News content is not independent of its
expression, and we can only hope to have a clear understanding of
the nature of news content by close analysis of the news text. A
close, linguistically proficient analysis of the text needs to be the
foundation for all attempts to unpack the ideologies underlying the
news. Such an analysis shows that even simple-looking news stories
are often rather complex, and the events they describe rather less
distinct than we supposed. It also illuminates how stories are made.
This is important for news audiences — to know something of how
the news products they consume are manufactured. The very idea
that the news is a ‘product’ may itself come as something of a
surprise, and analysis can show something of the make-up of the
product.
My approach to news discourse focuses on the question ‘what
does this story actually say happened?’. It begins by taking the news
media’s concentration on factuality on its own terms, together with
the ordinariness of our acceptance, as readers, of such stories and
what they tell us (cf. Scannell, this volume). It is not a question — at
least initially — of whether these reports represent what ‘really’
happened. What we are fold happened is important in the news just
as it is in courts of law, which devote much of their time to scrutiny
of accounts of events.
66
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This analytical framework seeks chiefly to deduce an ‘event

structure’ for a story — that is, to reconstruct, from the often frag-
mented information presented, what the story says actually hap-
pened. It thus concentrates on the basics of storytelling, which in the
news are encapsulated by the journalist’s ‘five Ws and an H’: who,
what, when, where, why, how. Only after we are clear what the
story says will we be in a position to see what it does not say. We
will find, as shown below, that news stories are regularly not saying
what we think they say on first reception. They are not telling
a simple, clear tale, but are replete with ambiguity, unclarity,
discrepancy and cavity.
Such close analysis is prerequisite to a more sophisticated ap-
proach to questions of ideology in news texts. It makes us aware of
the complexity and ambiguity of news. It enables us to examine
whether a headline fairly represents the story it accompanies. It
shows who are the sources of information in the news — and which
information has no explicit source at all. It leads us to consider why
these particular events have been reported at all, and why they have
been gathered together into a single published news story.
This chapter is organized thus: first I outline a framework for
analysing the discourse structure of news, then exemplify it briefly
through examining a number of single-sentence newspaper stories.
I then present detailed guidelines for analysis of discourse struc-
ture, and proceed to close analysis of one news story. Lastly, I
examine one of the most important and interesting aspects of news
story structure — time — again with an example analysis of press
stories.

2 The Framework

The approach to media discourse analysis used in this chapter was

developed in Bell (1991). It draws on elements from general frame-
works of story analysis, especially Labov’s analysis of narratives of
personal experience told in conversation (Labov and Waletzky,
1967; Labov, 1972), as well as from van Dijk’s framework for analys-
ing news discourse (1988b). The analysis of time in news stories
derives from Bell (1995b, 1996). The frameworks used to analyse the
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 67

_ structure of different kinds of stories have a lot of their elements in

common (e.g. Labov, 1972; Rumelhart, 1975; van Dijk, 1988b).
Labov’s is one of the most familiar and contains six elements: ab-
stract, orientation, action, evaluation, resolution and coda (see Bell,
1991 for application of this framework to news stories).
Figure 3.1 shows the elements needed to describe the discourse
structure of news stories. A story normally consists of attribution,
an abstract, and the story proper. Attribution of where the story
came from is not always made explicit. It can include credit to a
news agency and/or a journalist’s byline, and may also state place
and time (‘dateline’). The abstract consists of the lead sentence or
‘intro’ of the news story and — for press news — also a headline. The
lead covers the central event of the story, and possibly one or more
secondary events. This necessarily entails giving in the lead itself
some information on actors and setting involved in the event. The
body of the story itself consists of one or more episodes, which in
turn consist of one or more events. Events must describe actors and
action, usually express setting of time and place, and may have
explicit attribution to an information source. Episodes are clusters
of events which share a common location or set of news actors (and
need only be specified when a single story contains two or more
clearly distinct sets of events).
As well as the above elements which present the central occur-
rences, there are three additional categories of material in a news
story: background, commentary and follow-up. These represent the
past, the (non-action) present, and the future of the events described
in the main action of the story.
The category of background covers any events prior to the current
action — story past time. These are frequently previous events which
probably figured as news stories in their own right at an earlier
stage of the situation. If the background goes back beyond the near
past, it is classed as ‘history’. Example 3 of the one-sentence stories
below contains just such background.
Commentary provides the journalist’s or news actor’s present-
time observations on the action, assessing and commenting on
events as they happen (rather than the actual narration of the events
themselves, or other parties’ verbal reaction to them). It may pro-
vide context to assist understanding of what is happening, or evalu-
ative comment on the action, or expectations of how the situation
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will develop. The story in figure 3.4 analysed below contains both
context (S9: S = Sentence) and evaluation (S1, $3).
Follow-up covers story future time — any action subsequent to the
main action of an event. It can include verbal reaction by other
parties or non-verbal consequences. Because it covers action which
occurred after what a story has treated as the main action, follow-up
is a prime source of subsequent updating stories — which are them-
selves called ‘follow-ups’ by journalists. The story in figure 3.6
below contains follow-up material in $2.

3 Analysing the Single-Sentence Story

This chapter deals with the structure of press news only, and a
specific kind of press news: the ‘hard’ or ‘spot’ news which we
recognize as the staple diet of daily media — stories of fires, wars,
accidents, disasters, dangers and all manner of the mayhem that
befalls human life. The minimal well-formed hard news story is just
one sentence long. Many newspapers publish one-sentence stories,
either to fill odd corners, or gathered in a column of news briefs. In
a lot of broadcast news, many stories may consist only of a single
sentence. The single-sentence story is also an appropriate proxy for
examining the structure of longer stories in general. The news story
is always focused in its first sentence — its lead or intro (Bell, 1991).
We can see this most clearly when the story itself is reduced to just
that sentence, but the lead is itself a microstory even when a full
story follows. It compresses the ‘news values’ that have got this
story through to publication.
The single-sentence story is therefore a good place to start as an
introduction to analysis. Here are the texts of five one-sentence spot
news stories published in British daily newspapers in February
1994. They are all from the international news agencies — Associated
Press, Reuters and Agence France Presse — which act as models of
Western journalistic style.

(1) Clashes kill eight

At least eight people have died in tribal fighting in the Bimbila
region of northern Ghana. — AFP
70 Allan Bell

(2) Fumed out

Tokyo: Two sake brewers were seriously ill after being over-
come by fumes when one fell into a half-full vat and the other
was trapped trying to rescue him. — Reuter
(3) Deportation setback
Storms over Iceland delayed the deportation from Norway
yesterday of 12 American anti-abortion activists who had
allegedly planned to stage demonstrations during the Winter
Olympics and were detained by police when they arrived at
Oslo’s airport. — AP
(4) Icicle horror
A woman was fighting for life last night after a giant icicle fell
30 storeys from a New York skyscraper and speared her.
(5) Awaiting the end
Communist North Korea is building an underground mauso-
leum and waterproof glass coffin to await the death of its
“Great Leader”, President Kim Il-sung, a South Korean press
report said. - AFP

Example 1 covers a single event and can be diagrammed as in figure

3.2 (in this and subsequent figures, some nodes of the structure are
omitted to simplify the tree diagrams). It has a headline — ‘Clashes
kill eight’ — as have all these single-sentence stories, and an attribu-
tion to the source agency, Agence France Presse. It consists of a
single event, which specifies:

actors — ‘at least eight people’

action — ‘have died in tribal fighting’
setting, specifically place — ‘in the Bimbila region of northern
Ghana’.

The structure of this story is as minimal as it can be. Yet, of course,

even here it is quite likely that we are not dealing with just a single
action — the eight victims may well have perished in widely sepa-
rated incidents.
Example 2 compresses a chain of five actions into one sentence:

1 first sake brewer falls into vat

Ps second brewer goes to save him
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 71

NEWS TEXT

ATTRIBUTION ABSTRACT STORY

AGENCY HEADLINE EVENT

AFP Clashes
kill
eight

ACTORS ACTION SETTING

PLACE

At least have died in the Bimbila

eight people in tribal region of
fighting northern Ghana

Figure 3.2 Discourse structure of the one-sentence story in example 1 (some

nodes of the structure are omitted for simplification)

3 second brewer also gets trapped

4 both brewers overcome with fumes
5 both now seriously ill.

The most notable thing about example 2 is the order in which it tells
these. My list above is in chronological order, that is the time se-
quence in which things actually happened, beginning at (1) and
ending at (5). But the news typically begins with the most recent
main happening (as also in examples 3 and 4). So the narrated order
of the actions in story 2 is 5-4-1-3-2. It starts with the most recent
72
NN
~+Allan Bell

happening, then the next most recent, then goes back to the first and
causal action, then fills in the remaining steps (again in reverse
chronological order). The story is thus told in a radically non-
sequential fashion - an issue we will return to in detail later in the
chapter.
Most of these single-sentence stories overtly narrate more than
one event. In terms of the model story structure indicated in figure
3.1, their structure is therefore complex. Example 3 contains a
sequence of four events, with a complex embedding of background
involving multiple time points and locations. The four events are (in
chronological order):

1 Anti-abortion activists had allegedly planned to stage demon-

strations during the Winter Olympics
2 detained by police when they arrived at Oslo airport
3 had been scheduled for deportation from Norway yesterday
4 deportation delayed by storms over Iceland.

Three of these events have their own different place specification.

Each has a different time specification: event 1 includes a future
(‘planned to stage demonstrations’) which did not in fact happen,
and event 3 is as yet a ‘non-event’ which has still not occurred —
deportation. Figure 3.3 diagrams the discourse structure of this
example (again with some of the potential nodes of the tree diagram
omitted to reduce complication). It shows some of the complexity of
action, place and time that can be covered by even a single-sentence
story. Such a story offers a considerable challenge to the reader’s
comprehension, as I shall discuss further below, particularly be-
cause of its multiple embedding of disparate events, some of which
have not in fact (yet) happened. There is also obviously a lot more
to be told about what has happened ‘behind the scenes’ of this story,
the factuality of which will doubtless be in dispute between the
different parties. The story also has one notable gap that readers
have to fill from their world knowledge — why storms over Iceland
should delay a deportation from Norway. We are probably to
understand that the storms delayed or diverted an incoming aircraft
on which the activists were meant to leave.
Looking across these five example stories, we can see patterns in
their discourse structures. Firstly, all of them specify main event,
 NEWS TEXT

ATTRIBUTION ABSTRACT STORY

HEADLINE EVENT 4

AP Deportation ACTION SETTING BACKGROUND

setback |
PLACE

storms over
delayed
elaye Iceland
celan EVENT3

BACKGROUND ACTORS ACTION SETTING

PLACE TIME

Activists (scheduled) from yesterday

EVENT 2 deportation Norway

ACTORS ACTION SETTING BACKGROUND

TIME PLACE EVENT 1

Activists detained whenthey at Oslo

by police arrived airport

ACTORS ACTION SETTING

TIME

Activists planned during the

demonstration Winter Olympics

Figure 3.3 Discourse structure of the one-sentence story in example 3

74
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news actors and place — the journalist’s what, who and where. Exam-
ple 1 contains only those elements. Time is expressed in most of
them. News agency attribution is present in all except (4), and (5)
also credits a local agency. But none attribute their information to
any other source such as bystanders, spokespeople or officials.
Secondly, these stories proclaim their news value. As single-
sentence stories, they probably originated as the lead paragraphs of
longer stories from the international agencies. Their role is therefore
to concentrate the news value of the whole story. News values are
those factors which take a story into the news. They include at-
tributes such as negativity, immediacy (or recency), proximity, lack
of ambiguity, novelty, personalization and eliteness of the news
actors (Bell, 1991). A story’s news value focuses in the lexicon of
newsworthiness in its lead sentence. In (4), for instance, almost
every word makes a claim to news value: ‘fighting for life’, ‘giant
icicle’, ‘fell 30 storeys’, ‘New York skyscraper’, ‘speared’. Most of
the stories contain death, violence, or the imminent threat of these.
The facticity of the stories is stressed through the detail of person,
place and time already mentioned, and through the use of figures.
Thirdly, all but one story (3) begin with who — the main news
actor. The stress on personalization and elite news actors guides the
order of constituents within the sentence, even if this will result in
a passive-voice verb. News-writing mythology holds that verbs
should be active, but passivization is quite common as the only
means of getting the main news actors to the start of the sentence.
We thus have a grammar of news value as well as a lexicon. Syntactic
rules such as passivization are applied to serve the values of news
discourse, as is linkage through temporal conjunctions such as after
and as (2, 4). In most cases one event is the sequel to or result of
another, as also in examples 3 and 4.
Fourthly, time is sometimes expressed directly in these stories as
‘yesterday’ or ‘last night’. But often there is no direct reference to
current calendar time. We interpret these stories as ‘reported within
the past day’. But this immediacy criterion may not always be the
case, and some of these stories could well be days-old news (e.g. 1,
2) and we readers would be none the wiser.
Fifth, since these are all international agency stories, they often
carry explicit place of origin in the dateline (2). Otherwise place is
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 75

sometimes expressed in the canonical form of a prepositional

phrase, such as ‘in the Bimbila region of northern Ghana’ (1).
Lastly, information content, brevity and clarity can be seen
tussling with each other. Sometimes, as in (3), clarity is the loser and
the result is a sentence or a story in which the degree of layering and
the dispersion of the events reported jeopardizes comprehension.
This accords with van Dijk’s finding (1988b: 77) that lead sentences
in news stories can often be syntactically and informationally
complex.

4 What Does the Story Actually Say?

I now turn to consider in more depth one longer news story, subject-
ing it to close analysis of its discourse structure. The Guide to
analysis below presents a step-by-step procedure for establishing
what a story says happened — that is, the event structure of the story.
The fruit of analysing the discourse structure of stories in this way
is an understanding of what the story says actually happened. At
least at this stage, Iam concerned only with what the story says, not
with whether or how closely that corresponds to ‘the facts’ of what
happened.
The event analysis takes into account not just the overt specifying
of events themselves, but what the story says about news actors,
locations and times of occurrence in order to tease out the structure
of the story. Moving through each of these aspects, we will com-
monly have to modify our conception of what happened as further
specification of persons, time or place makes it clear that our earlier
models were inadequate.
Figure 3.4 contains the text of a very routine news story from the
(UK) Daily Mirror. I chose such a story because it is common rather
than exceptional. The first group of analyses seek to uncover what
the story is telling us actually happened — what events occurred,
where they occurred and when, and who was involved (that is, four
of the journalistic five Ws and the H, with the exception of ‘why’
and ‘how’: cf. Manoff and Schudson, 1987). This analysis yields
structures for these four aspects: events, times, places and news
76 Allan Bell

Guide

How to analyse and interpret the discourse structure of a news

story. First number the sentences of the story. The first steps
listed under each numbered point below (in roman type) are
basic analytical moves. The later steps under each point — in-
dented and in italics — are the more interpretive procedures.

What

1 Headline
What events take place in the headline? Summarize and
number each event.
Lead
What events take place in the lead or intro? Summarize and
number.

Events
What events take place in the story? Summarize and
number, then enter numbers alongside each sentence of the
story (as in figure 3.6).
Re-categorize events in headline and lead as necessary to
correspond with the fuller picture you now have from the
story as a whole.
What is the central event of the whole story? (Usually the
main ‘hard’ news event in the lead.)

Headline, lead and story

What is the relationship of the headline to the lead?
What events in the lead are included/excluded in the headline?
What news values lie behind these inclusions and exclusions?
Is the headline a valid representation of the lead?
What is the relationship of the lead to the story as a whole?
What events in the story are included/excluded in the lead?
What news values lie behind these inclusions and exclusions?
Is the lead a valid representation of the whole story?
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 77

_Is there any information that is given in the lead but not re-
turned to in the rest of the story?
How does the lead begin telling the story as well as act as an
abstract for it?

Who |
5 Story attribution
Is the story as a whole attributed? To whom (agency, jour-
nalist)?

6 Sources attribution
Is there any attribution within the story? Who is attributed?
(list)
Beside each sentence, note down whom it is attributed to (if
anyone).
Precisely what is attributed and to whom?
What speech verb is used in the attributions? (list)
What claims do the attributed sources have to authority?
Who is quoted directly? Indirectly?
Why have the particular speech verbs been used?
What parts of the story are not attributed? Why?
Where is attribution unclear or ambiguous? Does this have any
repercussions?

7 News actors
What news actors are mentioned? (list: people, organiza-
tions, nations, etc.)
How are they labelled or referred to? (list)
What kinds of people or entities are mentioned in the story?
Why are they in the news? Are the news actors elite?
Is the news story personalized?
Are there patterns in the way the story refers to them or labels
them?
Does specifying who the news actors are modify the event
structure you developed earlier?
78
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Where

8 Places es
What place expressions are used? (list)
Where do they occur in the story? (sentence number)

9 Place structure —
What locations does the story take place in? (list)
Does the story stay in one location or move from place to place
and back? Why?
Is it clear what is happening in which location?
What sort of places are the events happening in? Is there a
pattern to this?
Does specifying locations in this way modify the event struc-
ture you developed earlier?

When

10 Times
What time expressions are used in the story? (list)
Where do they occur in the story? (sentence number)

11 Time structure
What is the time structure of the story? Take the time of the
central event as Time 0. Label earlier events as Time —1, —2
etc., and later events as Time +1, +2 etc. in the chronological
sequence in which they actually occurred.
Beside each sentence, note down the number of the time or
times at which the actions mentioned there occurred.
How does the order in which the story is told relate to the
chronological order of events?
Why has the story been written in this order? What values lie
behind the order?
Does the order help or hinder a reader in understanding what is
going on in the story?
Does specifying times of occurrence in this way modify the
event structure developed earlier?
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 79

12 Background
Is any background given (events prior to the central action —
either recent previous events or more historical events)?
Does any of the background indicate any particular ideological
frame behind the story?
13. Commentary
Is there any commentary on events? — evaluation of events
(editorializing)? Context for what has happened? Expecta-
tions of how the situation will develop?
Does any of the commentary (especially evaluation) indicate
any particular ideology behind the story?
14 Follow-up
Is there any follow-up to the central action of each event
(subsequent events, either reaction (verbal) or consequences
(non-verbal))?
Does any of the follow-up indicate any particular ideology be-
hind the story?

Event and Discourse Structure

15 Event structure
Collate your successive re-categorizations of what happened
in the story, drawing on news actors, place and time as well
as the actions themselves.
List in chronological order the events and their associated
actors, times and places and the sentence numbers in which
they occur (as in table 3.1 example). This represents the event
structure as you finally assess it to be.
Note any alternatives, which represent discrepancies or
unclarities in the story itself.
Is the story told in instalments? That is, do the events follow one
after another or are they interspersed with each other?
16 Discourse structure
At this stage you can draw a tree diagram of the discourse
structure (e.g. figures 3.2, 3.3, 3.5). Note that the apparent
80
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order which these example figures display is only arrived at

after a succession of rough drafts! Such a structure is also
idealized in the sense that it masks ambiguities and
unclarities.
17 Cohesion
What linkages are expressed or implied between the sen-
tences or events in the story? How? (list)
What linkages are omitted? (list)
What do the linkages (or their absence) between sentences or
events mean for understanding the story?
Is a cause-and-effect relationship between different events im-
plied by the way they are ordered?
Does the story flow smoothly, or does it jump about?
Why?
18 Confusion
Has it now been possible to say precisely what happened in
the story?
Or are there still ambiguities, gaps or confusions, as exempli-
fied in the possibility of alternative event or discourse struc-
tures? (list, explain)

actors. In theory, these four should all mesh into a unified picture of
what the story says happened. In practice, they often do not quite fit
together, and it is precisely these differences which may cast the
most interesting light on the story. The category labels I use below
are from Bell (1991), reproduced earlier as figure 3.1, the model tree
diagram of news story structure. Working through this example, I
follow the sequence of steps indicated in the Guide, although not all
the points listed there are useful for analysing this — or any indi-
vidual — story. There is a logic to the order in which I have listed the
steps, but not all steps are necessarily going to contribute equally to
an understanding of every story. Neither are they necessarily
always best followed in this particular order or independently of
each other — it may often make sense to carry out some later steps
before those I have listed here as earlier.
EVENT TIME
STRUCTURE STRUCTURE

3 HL 2 held as IRA blitz is foiled +2

1 0
te?) S1 POLICE and MI5 agents have
0 (+1?)
swooped in an undercover operation
which netted bomb-making equip-
ment — and may have foiled a major
IRA blitz on the British mainland.
1 (2?) 52 They recovered enough Semtex 0 (+1?)
explosive to devastate a large office
block.
yAv rs wees) And security services believe they 0? (+1?)
have intercepted a highly-placed IRA
quartermaster who supplies equip-
ment to terror cells.
3 S4 Last night two men were being held 2
in London under the Prevention of
Terrorism Act.

Pistol

1 a) One, in his 30s, was arrested at

Accrington, Lancs, with between 10 Ib
and 15 lb of high explosives, bomb-
making equipment, a pistol and
ammunition in his car.
1 S6 Plain-clothes police wearing flak
jackets and carrying semi-automatic
weapons seized the suspect in a car
park next to Charlie Brown’s Auto
Centre.
2 S7 Within two hours another man, in Pl
his 50s, was held at Wembley in North
London.
1 S8 A terraced house in Accrington was ae
under police guard last night.
3 rope) The suspects can be held for up to +3
seven days before being charged or
released.

Figure 3.4 Example story with Event and Time Structures (Daily Mirror, London,
23 February 1994; reproduced by permission of Mirror Group Newspapers)
82
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1 Headline

The headline appears to narrate two events — (1) the holding of two
suspects, and (2) the foiling of an IRA blitz. The two events are
clearly closely linked, or may even in effect be the same action — the
blitz may have been foiled precisely through the capture of the two
people. The journalistic ‘as’ of the headline would thus not be
an accident; it would specify precisely the temporal and causal
relationship between the two events. Alternatively, there may have
been action which foiled the blitz, and then led to the capture of two
suspects. We cannot tell from the headline alone. We must read on.

2 Lead

The lead appears to tell of one event: a security service ‘swoop’

which discovered bomb-making equipment. This action is clearly
related to, but not quite identical with, the two events in the head-
line. The ‘foiled’ statement in the headline is now shown to be an
evaluation of the significance of the raid rather than a separate
action of any kind. We thus find that the lead sentence clarifies the
ambiguity of the headline, but it of course remains possible that the
operation consisted of raids on more than just one location.

3 Events

We can now move to tease out the event structure of the story as a
whole. The lead and the following three sentences (i.e. S14) invite
the interpretation that there has been a single raid. But the second
half of the story tells of two suspects being arrested in widely
separated locations. It takes until S7 to become clear that we are
dealing with quite separate events, and it remains unclear whether
they were in some sense part of a single security operation, or
whether they coincided by chance. The central action of both events
is clearly the respective raids (assuming that Wembley involved a
raid — we are told only that the man was ‘held’, in a strangely active
use of a stative verb, akin to ‘arrested’). To this point, it seems we
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 83

can describe the story as being about a total of three events, assum-
ing we treat the continuing detention of the two suspects as a
separate event:

1 Accrington arrest
2 Wembley arrest
3 detention of two suspects.

The Accrington arrest seems to be the central event of the story and
most of the story apparently concentrates on it (see figure 3.4 for
Event Structure).

4 Headline, lead and story

We have already seen that the content of the lead in this story
disambiguates the headline. But a closer look at the headline shows
that the ‘2 held’ statement with which it begins does not derive from
the lead at all but rather from S4. This is an infrequent pattern, since
a majority of headlines are derived solely from lead sentences and
not from information further down a story (Bell, 1991).
There is also a contrast in the modality of the verbs used in the
headline and the lead. The lead hedges its evaluation as ‘may have
foiled’, but the headline presents this as unvarnished fact — ‘is’. The
central event of the lead, the raid, is represented in the headline only
by the gloss of ‘foiled’ — that is, the tentative evaluation expressed in
the lead has become the unhedged description of action in the
headline. This is a classic news ‘over-assertion’ of a kind I found
commonly in a study of editing changes made to news copy (Bell,
1983, 1984). The original lead sentence would have been written by
a journalist, and the headline by a copy-editor. The shift is driven by
the attempt to make a story as definite as possible (‘unambiguity’ is
one of the classic news values: Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Bell, 1991).
So it appears that the headline is not a valid representation of the
story as a whole to the extent that through omitting the modal verb,
the headline overstates the certainty of the evaluation contained in
the lead. Modality is probably rarely expressed in headlines.
Further, we are not told whose opinion it is that a major IRA blitz
may have been foiled. There is no sourcing of the evaluation. It is
84 Allan Bell

not mentioned again in the body of the story. We are probably to

assume the source is the ‘security services’ quoted in S3, but it may
in fact be the product of the journalist who wrote the story. A more
likely possibility is that this statement is a gloss inserted by the
copy-editor in order to raise the news value of the story — to ‘beat it
up’. Evidence for this is the fact that it appears in S1 after a dash —
an avoided piece of punctuation that betrays late and hasty addition
of the second half of S1.

5 Story attribution

This story attributes no journalist as author nor agency as provider.

We must assume it is written by a staff reporter who was not
‘bylined’.

6 Sources attribution

More importantly, the story does not directly specify the source of
its information. The nearest we get to sourcing is in S3 where we are
told what ‘security services believe’ in relation to the results of their
actions. We can presume they were also the source of some of the
information about the event itself, as well as possibly of the evalu-
ation in S1. The use of ‘believe’ rather than ‘say’ in S3 is probably
significant, indicating either that the security services were not pre-
pared to provide information ‘on the record’ for the media, or that
this was a chance comment that the journalist has built into more
than the source would have wanted. We can note that the S9 back-
ground about detention powers probably comes from the journal-
ist’s own knowledge rather than any source.

7 News actors

The news actors specified in the story are:

security services (S3)

police (S1, S6, S8)
MI5 agents (S1)
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 85

_ two IRA suspects (S4)

one arrested in Accrington (S5)
second arrested in Wembley (S7).

There is also another reference to an IRA member — ‘a highly-placed

IRA quartermaster’ (S3). The way the reference is phrased in S3
implies that this character is not the same as the person/s involved
in the events of S1-2. Use of co-ordinator ‘and’ to introduce the
sentence, plus indefinite article ‘a... quartermaster’, implies a dif-
ferent person. If it was the same person we would rather expect a
phrasing like ‘security services believe the suspect is a highly-
placed IRA quartermaster . . .’.
On the other hand, given the detail of weaponry listed with the
Accrington suspect in S5, S3 seems more likely to also refer to him.
But since that would entail S1—2 referring to the Wembley suspect,
this interpretation is not entirely satisfactory either. The remaining
possibility is that this refers to a third person not otherwise
mentioned, but that seems least likely of all.
Notice how we are gaining more information as our analysis
moves into the story, and that new information modifies our under-
standing of earlier information. But it does not always clarify that
understanding, and at this point we have to say that the identity of
the quartermaster is unclear. Such questions of reference identity
are not uncommon in news. In studies of editing practice (Bell,
1984), I have found cases where editors were obviously unable to
decode whether expressions in different sentences were meant
to refer to the same or different places or people. Their attempts to
clarify reference sometimes took the wrong interpretation, and con-
verted a second reference to a city already mentioned in a story into
a first reference to another city.

8 Places

The story uses expressions of place in the following:

blitz on the British mainland (S1)

held in London (S4)
arrested at Accrington, Lancs (55)
with ... ammunition in his car (S5)
86 Allan Bell
Beer nl a

seized the suspect in a car park next to Charlie Brown’s Auto Centre
(S6)
held at Wembley in North London (S7)
a terraced house in Accrington (S8).

What is not said is more striking than what is said: there is no

specification of where the raids and arrests took place until S5 and
below. This contributes to our unclarity about what has taken place.
We may also wonder why the story details ‘Charlie Brown’s
Auto Centre’, since this is unlikely to be known to anyone beyond
the immediate Accrington area. For locals, however, the description
might signify that the raid was in a central, busy area of the town,
for example. This may be a clue that the origin of this part of the
story was in a local Accrington reporter’s account which has not
been appropriately edited for national readership. In contrast,
Wembley — which no Briton needs an introduction to — is glossed as
being in North London, presumably for international readership. So
within two sentences we have conflicting indications of the pre-
sumed readership, local versus international, through the kind of
shared knowledge that is and is not presupposed.

9 Place structure

It seems then that the story has (at least) three locations — raids in
Accrington, Lancashire, and in Wembley, North London, plus the
site or sites in London where the two suspects are being held pris-
oner. So we can confirm our specification of probably three events
in the story. If we had more detail, we might wish to regard other
actions — such as the guarding of a terraced house in Accrington ($8)
—as further separate events, since it seems likely that the house was
not located at the car park which was the scene of the Accrington
suspect’s arrest.
What is most striking, however, is that the further we get into the
analysis, the less clear it becomes exactly what we are being told
happened. What on the surface appeared a simple little story turns
out to be rather complicated and opaque. In particular, it is by no
means obvious which of the two sets of news actors, locations and
actions detailed in S5—7 are actually being referred to in S1-3,
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 87

because those first three sentences contain no unambiguous refer-

ences to persons, and no reference to place at all. For instance, we
cannot be sure which place the Semtex explosive was found in ($2),
or which (if either) suspect is the quartermaster of S3.

10 Times

The specification of time is often surprisingly sparse in a news story

(aside from tense and aspect marking on verbs). It is frequently left
to the inference that ‘this must be recent because it is news’. The
time expressions in this story are:

last night (S4)

within two hours (S7)
last night (S8)
for up to seven days (S9).

No time is expressed until the fourth sentence of the story, with the
presumption of recency governing our reading up to that point.
There is no specification of the time of day when the two arrests
were made, although we know there was no more than two hours
between them. We presume the arrests took place during the day
before the story was published — certainly before ‘last night’. But in
fact it is possible that the news is older than this, dating from the
night before last or even earlier. It is not uncommon for stories to
remain silent on the time of their events. Occasionally it becomes
obvious that the presumption of recency is wrong — and sometimes
this silence on timing appears to serve the misleading implication of
immediacy.

11 Time structure

Closely related to teasing out the event structure of a story is speci-

fying its time structure: what happened in what order, what is the
story’s chronology? The time structure of this story is rather
straightforward except for the lack of clarity over absolute timing,
and what actions are part of what event.
88
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Allan Bell
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Time structure is shown on the right of figure 3.4. We take the

time of the main news action as TO — the operation described in S1,
which I will assume to refer to the Accrington raid (though it may
cover both). Thus $1, 2, 5 and 6 all describe aspects of the raid. I will
interpret S3 as also referring to Accrington. All these are therefore
TO events. S7 occurs at the time of the Wembley raid ‘within two
hours’, therefore at T + 1: the next time point after TO. S4 and 8 both
refer to ‘last night’, subsequent to both arrests, that is T + 2. S9 can
be considered subsequent again, therefore T + 3.
This is a comparatively simple time structure, as even a short
news story can easily involve ten or more actions in non-chronologi-
cal order, as we will see ina later example. This story is also unusual
in not leading with the most recent event, perhaps because of the
staticness of ‘held’ that I noted earlier. But we can also note that the
headline does in fact major on the most recent event — the detention
of the two suspects. There has thus been a difference of opinion over
what constitutes the central news event in this story. The journalist
who wrote the story, including the original lead, thought it was the
raid. The copy-editor who edited it and wrote the headline thought
it was the detention of two suspects. Such disagreements are a
common locus of newsroom anguish.
Because time is such an important element in news stories and
merits more discussion and illustration, I will return to it below
with examples where it plays a more important role.

12 Background

The category of background (cf. figure 3.3) covers events prior to the
central action of the story, and may include either recent past events
or more remote history. This story contains no background.

13 Commentary

Commentary concerns context, evaluation or expectations for

events that are happening. In this story we have already noted the
evaluative comments concerning foiling an IRA blitz (S1, headline),
and the assessment of the significance of the security services’ dis-
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 89

-coveries (S3). In addition, there is context given about the Preven-

tion of Terrorism Act (S4), which spells out (S9) the provisions
under which the suspects can continue to be detained.

14 Follow-up

If we take the raids to be the central event of the story, then the
detention of the two suspects counts as follow-up to that event.
Follow-ups commonly become the lead in subsequent stories, and
we have noted already that the headline (written later than the
story, of course) tends in this direction.

15 Event structure

We have noted the ambiguity and lack of clarity in the who and the
where of this story. The left side of figure 3.4 shows the event struc-
ture as best I can judge it. Usually it is time that is the problematic
factor in understanding what happened in a story. In this case it is
the place structure which is the more confusing, and to a lesser
extent the identity of the news actors, because it is by no means clear
which place is referred to in different parts of the description -
Accrington or Wembley. Table 3.1 schematizes this event structure,
_ linking action, actors, place and time for each event.

Table 3.1 Event structure of IRA story (figure 3.4)

Event Sentence Actors Place Time

1 Raid, Headline Security Accrington 0

arrest, all> We Sy services, +2
seizure 5,6, 8 IRA

2 Arrest 57 Security Wembley Fi

(S1222°32) services, Within
IRA 2 hours

3 Detention Headline 2 IRA London +2,4+3

(‘held’) S4,9 members Last night
90 ~=—Allanes
ac Bell Me ers ira eae pa Ss wheNT Metis hy Lome FE

16 Discourse structure

Figure 3.5 diagrams the discourse structure of the story in accord-

ance with the interpretation I have offered, again omitting some of
the detail so that an already complex diagram does not get more
complicated still. The neatness of the eventual tree should not dis-
guise the fact that it presupposes a series of (albeit increasingly
refined) rough drafts. Event 3 is placed as a follow-up to both events
1 and 2. The constituents of each event are the straightforward ones
of actors, action and setting, plus commentaries and follow-ups.
If we take other interpretations of the ambiguous information in
the story, it will mean shifting some constituents to other points of
the diagram. So, if we understand the ‘blitz foiled’ comment as
applying to both the Accrington and Wembley raids, we will attach
that Evaluation to both events 1 and 2 (or possibly to the Story as a
whole). If we decide the quartermaster was the Wembley suspect
rather than the Accrington one, we will re-attach that Evaluation to
event 2.

17 Cohesion

News stories are standardly written as a series of one-sentence

paragraphs, and commonly express little linkage between the sen-
tences. With each news sentence usually also its own paragraph,
there is no larger unit of text organization. There is routinely no
flow of time sequence from one sentence to the next, and a lack of
devices such as adverbs expressing linkages between sentences.
It is common for cohesion between sentences to be unclear or non-
existent, and we may be genuinely doubtful what actions within the
story belong together, at what point location actually shifted, or
what material is attributed to whom.
It is the lack of such signposting, together with the mix of loca-
tions, that contributes to the ambiguities of this story. In the absence
of any indications to the contrary, we would normally take S1-3 to
be describing a single set of happenings, although there are no
explicit linkages to mark this. Things become clearer after $4 where
links are expressed: ‘one’ at the start of S5 links the news actor back
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 91

into S54, and ‘the suspect’ in S6 continues the thread of reference. The
signposting in S7 equally clearly indicates that this is a different
event — ‘another man’ in another place at another time. However,
the jump back to Accrington again in $8 is rather disconcerting to a
reader.

18 Confusion

I have noted a number of points where it is unclear, ambiguous or

confused what actually happened in this story, to whom, and
where. To list these as questions (such as a journalist doing a follow-
up story might ask a source):

Were the two arrests part of a single operation or coincidental? (S1)

Which arrest did security forces consider represented a ‘foiled IRA
blitz’? (S1)
Was Semtex recovered at Wembley as well as Accrington? (S2)
Was the Accrington or the Wembley suspect the quartermaster? (S3)

The grounds for confusion in this story are possible because of the
lack of cohesion and specific reference across the story. This is
commonly a source of problems for accuracy of both reporting and
understanding. In a study of reporting of climate change (Bell,
1994), I found that the practice of not expressing cohesive links
between sentences of a story enabled one journalist to refer alter-
nately to the greenhouse effect and ozone depletion between suc-
cessive sentences of a story in a way that seriously confused these
two basically distinct atmospheric phenomena.
The packaging of the two raids in one story implies that they and
the suspects were closely linked. However, we are told so little
about the Wembley arrest that we cannot be sure of this. In fact,
when we examine the role of the security services as news actors in
the story, ‘police’ are twice specified in relation to Accrington (S6,
S8), but MI5 are mentioned only generally in the lead sentence. It
seems possible that Accrington involved only the police, Wembley
involved only MI5, and the timing was coincidence rather than a
single operation. This unclarity of reference in fact serves to en-
hance news value through co-option of a minor story into a bigger
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story (Bell, 1991). One reading of the story is that most of the serious
action is linked to Accrington, and very little to Wembley. The
ambiguity of reference therefore enables the Wembley event to be
co-opted to the Accrington raid, building it into more than it would
be just on its own — when it might not have been reported at all.
The detailed analysis I have run through in this section has
shown us a good deal about the character of this story — indications
of how it was made, evidence of inconsistencies and gaps, and
manifestations of the news values behind it. We can see the claims
it makes to be newsworthy mainly in the negativity of its content —
in the presence of conflict, discoveries of weapons and explosives,
use of force — together with involvement of elite news actors (the
security services), co-option of possibly separate stories to reinforce
each other, reduction of ambiguity over the significance of the
arrests, and possibly enhanced immediacy.
The journalist’s own ultimate abstract of a story is the one-word
‘slugline’ by which each story is identified in the news processing
system — now in practice also presumably the filename under which
the story is saved in the computer. The slugline is often a good
guide to news value, and it is instructive to speculate what slugline
a particular story might have carried. The likely candidates on this
example story seem to me to be: ‘swoop’, ‘blitz’ or ‘foiled’.

5 News Time

Time, as we have seen in the analyses so far, is an important dimen-

sion of news stories and merits more discussion in its own right.
Time is expressed in stories at different levels of language — in the
morphology and syntax of the verb phrase, in time adverbials
whether lexical or phrasal, and in the discourse structure of stories
above the sentence. One characteristic of all kinds of stories appears
to be so shared across genres and cultures that it has been called
‘canonical’ — events tend to be told in the chronological order in
which they occurred.
Time in story has interested widely different groups of scholars
(Toolan, 1988) — literary theorists, and cognitive psychologists re-
searching discourse comprehension, as well as text and discourse
94
EN Allan
ee reBellgh eee a et ee re

linguists. Literary theory tends to treat chronological order as the

unmarked or basic form underlying fictional narrative, and identi-
fies the time structure of a novel as interesting just where it departs
from chronology. Genette’s general theory of narrative discourse
(1980) developed in relation to Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu
is primarily devoted to time. Time order is his dominant category,
analysed in terms of ‘anachronies’ — departures from chronological
sequence. Cognitive psychologists make the distinction between
event structure and discourse structure (Brewer, 1985) — between the
order in which events actually happened and the order in which
they are told in a story (my own framework above allows for an
event structure in discourse which is non-chronological). There is
only one real-world event structure but many possible discourse
structures. The chronological is apparently the ‘natural’ order be-
cause it matches its discourse structure to the event structure.
Fairy stories are typical — even archetypal — of the canonical time
ordering of stories. So, in ‘The Three Little Pigs’:
The first little pig meets a man carrying straw, buys the straw,
and builds a house out of it. The big bad wolf comes, huffs,
puffs, blows the house of straw down and eats up the pig.
The second little pig meets a man carrying sticks, buys the
sticks, builds a house, and ends up getting eaten too by the
wolf.
The third little pig meets a man carrying bricks, . . . ete.
But the wolf fails to blow the brick house down, the pig puts a
pot on the fire to boil, the wolf climbs down the chimney to get
at the pig, but instead gets boiled for dinner.
End of story.

Analysis of a story’s time structure

News is by nature time-bound - it is a perishable commodity. Time

is a defining characteristic of the nature of news, a major compul-
sion in news-gathering procedures, and an influence on the struc-
ture of news discourse. Figure 3.6 shows the text of a typical agency
story, as published in Wellington’s Evening Post newspaper. The
time structure of the story’s events is listed down the right-hand
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 95

TIME
STRUCTURE

Protest cut short

S1_ Lima, Jan 18. — The estranged wife of Peru’s 0

President Alberto Fujimori was taken to
hospital today just 24 hours after she began af
a hunger strike to protest at her party’s
elimination from congressional elections. -3

S2 Doctors said she was suffering from tachycardia, +]

or an accelerated heartbeat.

S3 Earlier, [deposed first lady Susanna] Higuchi, al

sitting under an umbrella in a scorching
summer sun outside the National Electoral
Board’s headquarters, had pledged to press
on with her protest.

S4 The electoral board said on Monday Higuchi’s =3

Armonia-Frempol party had not qualified
for the April Congressional vote because 2
it failed to present a full list of candidates -4
for the 120-member legislature.

S5 Board member Manuel Catacora said today 0

that since Higuchi had presented her party’s —4
congressional slate just 10 minutes before the
filing deadline, a provision allowing parties 0
five days to correct any error did not apply.

S6 Higuchi, a 44-year-old civil engineer, has been 5

estranged from Fujimori since August when =6
she protested an election law that banned her from
running from [sic] public office. —- Reuter

Figure 3.6 International news agency story as published in the Evening Post,
Wellington, 20 January 1995 (reproduced by permission of Reuters)

side. Time zero is the story present, the time of the lead event in the
lead sentence. Times prior to this are labelled Time —1 for the event
immediately preceding, moving back up to Time —6 in this story,
the earliest occurrence in the reported background. The story also
reports on events subsequent to Time 0, labelled Time +1 (the
96
a
Allan Bell eee

diagnosis), and so on. Here I report only briefly for illustrative

purposes on a more detailed analysis drawn from Bell (1995b).
The lead sentence covers three temporally and causally sequen-
tial events, but in reverse chronological order. The result (Higuchi’s
departure to hospital) precedes cause (hunger strike), which itself
precedes prior cause (disqualification from elections). They are
linked by temporal expressions, usually after for a sequence as in
examples 2 and 4 of the single-sentence stories analysed earlier, or
as for simultaneous events (as in the headline in figure 3.4). The
temporal expressions commonly imply a causal link, even though
this may not always seem warranted.
In figure 3.6, Time Zero is explicitly identified in the lead sen-
tence — ‘today’ — with other earlier or later time points signposted in
the later sentences. Some of the time references situate events in
calendar time (since August in S6), others in relation to each other
(just 24 hours after ... in S1, earlier in $3), still others are deictic with
the present as reference point.
Labov found that a defining characteristic of personal narrative
as a form is the temporal sequence of its ‘clauses’. That is, the action
is invariably told in the order in which it happened, what I have
labelled canonical order — ‘matching a verbal sequence of clauses to
the sequence of events’ (Labov, 1972: 360). News stories, by con-
trast, are seldom if ever told in chronological order. The time struc-
ture of the story in figure 3.6 is very complex, with nine points in
time identified in the analysis. The story as a whole divides into
three sections: S1—2, S3-5, S6. The lead sentence alone covers three
events and times, as we have seen. Each of the three sections repre-
sents a cycle through events taking us further back in time, present-
ing in reverse order of actual occurrence (plus a couple of
excursions into story future time) the chain of events which have
culminated in the lead event of this story. The earliest events are
reported last of all, with the final sentence describing events from
some six months previously which are the antecedents to the
present occurrences.
In the body of the story, perceived news value overturns temporal
sequence and imposes an order completely at odds with linear
narrative. It moves backwards and forwards in time, picking out
different points on each cycle or giving more detail on previously
mentioned matters (S4 and S5). This violation of our expectations
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 97

_ that narratives usually proceed in temporal succession is a distinc-

tive feature of news stories — the inverted pyramid structure. Van
Dijk has called this the instalment method (1988b: 43), by which an
event is introduced then returned to in more detail two or more
times. The radical discontinuity of time between sentences imparts
a general lack of syntactic, semantic and discourse cohesion within
the news story, as we have seen in the figure 3.4 IRA story. The
reverse-chronological structure has a direct pay-off (and in part
doubtless an origin) in journalistic practices — stories are routinely
cut from the bottom up to fit into available space. The important
information must therefore come as early as possible, and the story
should be capable of ending at any sentence. So, in the IRA story, at
least the last two sentences could be cut without affecting the earlier
part of the story (for more discussion of this question, see Bell,
1991).

Earlier forms of news telling

As news consumers we are so accustomed to this approach that we

forget how deviant it is compared both with other narrative genres
and with earlier norms of news reporting. Figure 3.7 shows a story
from the New Zealand Herald of 11 June 1886. It reports the eruption
of Mount Tarawera, a volcano located some 200 km to the south-east
of Auckland, where the Herald is published. The eruption caused
significant loss of life and reshaped an extensive area of the New
Zealand landscape.
It is a typical disaster story which would run in any modern
newspaper, but here it is narrated in absolute chronological order.
Events are told from the viewpoint of the readers in Auckland -— first
hearing the sounds of the distant eruption and speculating on their
cause, then eventually receiving the news of the real cause. Where
the historical story begins at the beginning, the modern lead sen-
tence would run something like this:
‘Mount Tarawera erupted last night killing at least 30 people
and sending hundreds more fleeing .. .’
Research on the development of modern news narrative style
indicates that the inverted pyramid structure developed in
98
A Allan
NE nie0Bell
cas TR na ee eg

AT an early hour on Thursday morning a noise as of the

firing of cannon was heard by many Auckland residents.

From the continuousness of the firing, the loudness of the

reports, and the apparent occasional sound resembling
salvoes of artillery, many people both here and at Onehunga
were under the impression that a man-of-war, probably the
Russian Vestnik, had run ashore on the Manukau bar and
that these were her signals of distress.

Vivid flashes, as from the firing of guns, were also seen

both at Onehunga and also from the cupola of the Herald
Office, which served to almost confirm the impression that
there had been a marine disaster. At about 8.30 a.m.,
however, it began to be circulated about town that a
catastrophe, far surpassing in horror even the most terrible
of shipwrecks, had taken place.

The first news was, through the courtesy of Mr Furby, the

officer in charge of the telegraph department, issued by us
in an extra and consisted of the following message, sent
from Rotorua, by Mr Dansey, the telegraphist there, who
manfully and bravely “stuck to his instrument” in the face
of the most dreadful danger:

“We have all passed a fearful night here. At 2.10 a.m.

there was a heavy quake, then a fearful roar, which made
everyone run out of their houses, and a grand, yet terrible,
sight for those so near as we were, presented itself. Mount
Tarawera suddenly became active, the volcano belching out
fire and lava to a great height. A dense mass of ashes came
pouring down here at 4 a.m., accompanied by a suffocating
smell from the lower regions.

“Several families left their homes in their nightdresses

with whatever they could seize in the hurry, and made for
Tauranga. Others more lucky, got horses and left for
Oxford.”

Figure 3.7 News as chronological story: New Zealand Herald, 11 June 1886

American journalism at the end of the nineteenth century. Schudson

(1982, 1989) found that until the 1880s, stories covering presidential
State of the Union addresses did not summarize the key points
at the beginning. However, by 1910 the lead as summary was
standard.
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 99

News time and news comprehension

The discontinuous, non-chronological nature of the time structure

of contemporary news stories invites the question of how well
readers and hearers understand them. Introducing their study of
narrative comprehension, Ohtsuka and Brewer (1992: 319) state: ‘If
the reader is to comprehend a narrative text, the reader must be able
to derive the underlying event sequence from the given text se-
quence.’ If this is strictly so, then it has dire consequences for the
comprehensibility of news. The example analyses in this chapter
show it takes considerable effort for the academic analyst — let alone
the casual audience — to unravel the time structure.
Psychological research on the comprehension of narratives’ has
illuminated both the time structures of different kinds of stories,
and the effects which different orderings have on audiences’
comprehension. Ohtsuka and Brewer (1992) found that readers
understood the canonical/chronological version of a story most
easily. There was a significant drop in comprehension level for a
second version of the same story which was presented in directly
reverse chronological order, and for a third version which told
some of the events using flashbacks. A final version contained
‘flashforwards’ which could not be immediately related to what had
already been narrated, and here comprehension was little better
than chance.
Relating these principles and findings to news stories, we can see
that while the canonical/chronological pattern is not used in mod-
ern news, nor is the backwards pattern used in its pure form of
telling an entire story from last event back to first. However, sec-
tions of news stories do run events in reverse order. Flashback
appears to be the staple time structure of news stories, and this is
abundantly evident in the stories examined in this chapter.
The findings to date on comprehension of news stories are
equivocal on whether the non-linear time sequence of standard
news writing is in fact harder to comprehend, or whether chrono-
logical order is easier. Lay readers clearly have some ability to
reproduce news formats. Lutz and Wodak (1987) tested the form in
which subjects retold news stories, asking them to write a lead
sentence themselves. They found that most middle-class students
reproduced a standard, reverse-chronology news format. But while
some lower-class informants included much of the desired informa-
tion, their retellings did not follow news style.
In another study, Duszak (1991) had readers reconstruct the
randomized sentences of a news story. Most identified the lead
sentence correctly, but there were two relevant tendencies in how
they ordered sentences after the lead. Informants appeared to be
avoiding the radical discontinuousness of news formats by group-
ing apparently cohesive sentences together. And they tended to
reassemble events in a more chronological order than the original
had, for instance putting background material earlier in the story
rather than at the end. It seems that readers have a default strategy
by which — in the absence of cues to the contrary — they re-impose
chronological order on events in the discourse. Duszak rightly inter-
prets this as a ‘powerful drive’ to retell events chronologically,
clashing with readers’ knowledge of the ordering promoted by
news schemata.
More research is needed on the effects of time structure on news
comprehension. The hypothesis that the non-canonical news format
does adversely affect understanding is a reasonable one on the basis
of comprehension research into other narrative genres, but the de-
gree to which familiarity with news models may mitigate these
problems is unclear.
Brewer hypothesizes that certain discourse genres are particu-
larly intended for comprehension. In these, ‘the order of events
in the discourse will map the order of the underlying events’
(Brewer 1985: 187) — that is, they will be written in chronological
order. Among the genres supposedly designed for comprehension
he explicitly and rightly includes news stories — with no comment
on the fact that news stories virtually never follow the easily com-
prehensible canonical order. They consist of series of flashbacks,
flashforwards and reverse tellings which, when they are used in
films or novels, challenge the audience’s powers of decoding.
So why do journalists write in an order which we know to be less
easily comprehended, when one of their declared goals is reader
comprehension? Ohtsuka and Brewer (1992: 331) ask the same ques-
tion of non-chronological orderings in any kind of narrative: ‘why
don’t authors always write texts in canonical form?’ Their answer is
that authors have purposes — and narratives have functions — other
than just comprehension. They serve to entertain and persuade, for
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 101

example. With news stories, however, the question is especially

sharp, because comprehension by the audience is one of the main
explicit aims of news writing. The answer lies in a marriage of
journalistic values, journalistic practices and technological develop-
ment, which is strong enough to overturn the drive to comprehen-
sibility.
The values of media control the way in which news is presented.
We can account for the way news stories are structured only with
reference to the values by which one ‘fact’ is judged more news-
worthy than another — and so more worth remembering and
understanding. In particular the value of immediacy, as we have
seen, is a powerful force in news discourse. The reason for this is
the dominating role that time plays in the practice of news-work
(Bell, 1995b). Time rules news-work in a way it does few other
professions: the product must be finished by a set time or it is
useless. Schlesinger’s study of BBC newsroom practices rightly
characterizes news-work as ‘a stop-watch culture’ (1987: 83).
Newsrooms operate against the clock, measuring daily achieve-
ment by the ability to produce a required number of stories for the
deadline. The drive to get the news first is embedded deep in the
news ethos, and radically affects the structure of the news text — to
the extent of motivating attempts to disguise the age of news
which is less than fresh. These work practices both drive and are
reinforced by technological development. From the invention of
the telegraph, which gave rise to modern news coverage as we
know it, to the presentation of live news as it happens through the
satellite and the cable, innovation in technology has been aimed at
reducing the time between the occurrence of a news event and its
telling.

6 Conclusion: Application and Applicability

The detailed analysis of news stories presented in this chapter

has told us a lot about the character of the stories — indications of
how they were made, evidence of discrepancies and gaps, and
manifestations of the news values behind them. There is
considerable pay-off from a comparatively straightforward dis-
102 Allan Bell

course structural analysis of this kind. It can open up a subtext of

the news, for instance of implied linkages which may not stand up
to scrutiny. It can lead us closer to ‘what the story actually says
happened’.
In the IRA story, for example, we have been able to infer a good
deal about its production and potential reception as well as
about the text itself. We have seen the joins between the different
input texts that have gone to make this one story; the divergent
local and international readerships at which these inputs were
targeted; and the conflicting views held by journalist and copy-
editor over what was really the story in these events. We have
noted the unspecificness of much of what we have read, reflected
in alternative possible discourse structures for the story, which
make it impossible from this text alone to determine exactly
what were the persons, places and events involved. We have
seen how the routinely jumbled time structure and lack of
cohesion between sentences has served to make some things un-
clear, and looked at some of the repercussions that may have for
comprehension of news stories. We have been able to assess the
validity of the headline, and the reliability of evaluations put
forward in the story.
It is particularly salutary how our specification of events, persons
and places changed as the analysis moved further down the story.
The interpretation based only on the headline and lead was rather
misleading. If this had been a single-sentence story of the kind
analysed earlier in the chapter, the level of unclarity and ambiguity
would have remained very high. Projecting this experience back on
to the earlier examples, it seems likely that the interpretations I
offered of their event and discourse structures would be proved
quite mistaken if we had access to the full text of the stories from
which they have been cut.
The system of analysis I presented in the Guide earlier covers
most of what we might want to know about a story’s discourse
structure, but there are other questions we might ask in relation to
it, such as:

¢ What vocabulary is used in the lead to claim news value for the
story?
 The Discourse Structure of News Stories 103

What is the order of sentence constituents within the lead? What

news values lie behind that order?
Is there a conflict between the journalist’s goals of brevity and
clarity in the lead?
e What figures or similar ‘hard facts’ does the story contain?
How does the story use these to buttress its news value?
¢ How much of the story consists of talk? What kind of talk -
statement, accusation, reaction, announcement?

e What are the news values which have made this a published
news story?
The analytical framework concentrated on the journalist’s five
Ws and an H. But it is significant that two of those did not
figure explicitly — ‘how’ and particularly ‘why’. ‘How’, of course,
is in many ways represented as the detail of ‘what’, but ‘why’ is
not overtly addressed in the IRA story — or in many others. It is
no accident that Carey characterizes ‘how’ and ‘why’ as the
‘dark continent’ of journalism (Carey, 1987; cf. Bell, 1996). Secondly,
while there is good insight to be gained from an understanding
of a profession’s own understanding of its work (Manoff and
Schudson, 1987), it must not be forgotten that such categories
should themselves be subjected to analysis and deconstruction.
The analytical work involved in this framework is not small. The
demand is in fact a true reflection of the real complexity of texts
such as news stories, which sometimes appear deceptively simple.
In doing such work, it is essential to move systematically, picking
off the analysis point by point.
Yet while we need to be selective in our analyses and know what
is an appropriate point to cut off at, it is evident to me that many of
the insights yielded come only near the end of detailed work follow-
ing a pattern such as that outlined in the analysis Guide. Because
the analyses are time-consuming if undertaken at all comprehen-
sively (cf. van Dijk, 1991: 10), we need to complement full-scale
work ona few texts with more piecemeal, specific analyses on larger
samples. But the reward of such work is a better knowledge of what
the stories of our time are saying, and an understanding of the way
they may be produced and received.
104 Allan Bell

NOTES

This chapter is in large part the fruit of a fellowship I held in 1994 at the
Centre for Language and Communication Research, University of Wales
Cardiff. So also was the idea for the Cardiff Round Table as a whole and
this publication of a range of approaches to media discourse. I am grateful
to the Centre — and particularly to its Director, Nikolas Coupland — for
support and warm hospitality on that and later occasions. During the
fellowship, I taught a course on news language and discourse, and much of
the present chapter grew from that material and experience. I work nor-
mally as a researcher and journalist rather than a teacher, and it was
salutary how hard the students found it to understand and apply these
analytical approaches. This was a main motivation behind the Round Table
meeting and this collection. I am greatly indebted to co-editor Peter Garrett
for the encouragement and insight he brought to my chapter and to the
book as a whole.

1 In this section, I report at second hand the findings of other researchers

on story ‘comprehension’ which are relevant to my concern with tem-
poral order. This begs methodological and theoretical questions that are
beyond my scope to address in this chapter — such as the relationship
between recall and comprehension, and between written and oral chan-
nels, and the dynamic way in which audiences interpret meanings
in everyday life. Compare Richardson’s and Allan’s chapters in this
volume.
 News from NowHere:
Televisual News
Discourse and the
Construction of
Hegemony
- Stuart Allan

1 Introduction

News from NowHere? This title signals from the outset my aim to
displace the ‘view from nowhere’ indicative of much postmodern
theorizing about televisual news in order to address the ways in
which this form of discourse constructs a politicized configuration
of the ‘now-here’. That is to say, I wish to render problematic the
means by which televisual news seeks to implicate its. audience in a
specific relationship of spectatorship, ostensibly that of an unseen
onlooker or witness. Televisual news claims to provide an up-to-
the-minute (now) narrative which, in turn, projects for the viewer a
particular place (here) from which she or he may ‘make sense’ of the
significance of certain ‘newsworthy’ events for their daily lives. This
process of representation, far from being a neutral reflection of ‘the
world out there’, works to reaffirm a network of conventionalized
rules by which social life is to be interpreted. Accordingly, I argue
that televisual news accounts encourage us to accept as natural,
obvious or commonsensical certain preferred definitions of reality,
106 Stuart Allan

and that these definitions have profound implications for the

cultural reproduction of power relations across society.
This chapter’s discussion draws primarily on enquiries into
televisual news discourse undertaken in the area of cultural studies.
Efforts to discern the contours of cultural studies need to recognize
that its formal definition as a discipline of study and research is
characterized by constant debate. Differences in opinion regarding
‘what counts’ as cultural studies are becoming ever more pro-
nounced due, in part, to an increasing recognition of the need to
avoid prescriptivist definitions of what constitutes ‘culture’ as an
object of analysis: (particularly in different national contexts).
Nevertheless, and despite the sometimes heated nature of the ensu-
ing discussions, these different voices typically share a crucial pre-
supposition, namely that all definitions of cultural studies are
necessarily partial, provisional and selective in their claims. With
this in mind, I make the general suggestion that cultural studies be
understood as being inclusive of a variety of different approaches
(conceptual and methodological) which endeavour to explicate the
cultural dynamics of everyday experience in relation to the naturali-
zation of social divisions and hierarchies, especially those of class,
gender, race, ethnicity and sexuality. That said, of course, where
culture is understood as a formation of material signifying practices
by which norms, rules, values, beliefs, meanings, subjectivities
and identities are held to be representative of ‘a whole way of
life’ (Williams, 1961), the boundaries which delimit the scope of
exploration for cultural studies will necessarily be under continu-
ous renegotiation.
It is against this backcloth of change and renewal, then, that I
shall proceed to situate the broad imperatives of cultural studies
research on televisual news discourse. If the origins of cultural
studies, at least in Britain, are routinely defined in relation to the
work of Richard Hoggart, Raymond Williams and, to a lesser ex-
tent, E. P. Thompson, it was the interventions of Stuart Hall and his
colleagues at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS)
at the University of Birmingham during the 1970s and 1980s that
were most relevant to the emergence of a cultural studies ‘ap-
proach’ to news discourse.’ In order to map a number of the most
salient features of this research terrain, and in this way to help
advance an evaluative assessment and critique of this approach for
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 107

future applications, this chapter will assume the following form.

First, the discussion commences with a consideration of the issue of
‘hegemony’ as it pertains to the mass media, for in my view this is
the principal point of departure for cultural studies analyses of
news discourse. Next, attention turns to specify the precise mecha-
nisms by which televisual news operates to render its preferred
truth-claims authoritative, credible and factual — and, in this way,
potentially hegemonic. To this end, the three primary ‘moments’ of
the communicative process, as identified by Hall (1980) in his
encoding—decoding model, are highlighted: specifically, the pro-
duction or ‘encoding’ of the news message, followed by the moment
of the ‘news text’ itself (an illustrative analysis is provided), and
then its negotiation or ‘decoding’ by the news audience. Each of
these respective moments is then examined with an eye to its impor-
tance for investigating how televisual news discourse articulates the
fluidly contradictory dynamics of hegemony as being inferentially
consistent with the dictates of “common sense’. Finally, the chapter
concludes by briefly outlining a basis for possible future
elaborations of this mode of enquiry.

2 News and Common Sense

Much of the early cultural studies work concerned with the analysis
of news discourse sought to intervene against the traditional ortho-
doxies of empirical, positivistic social science. In the 1970s, social
science research into televisual news tended to prioritize quantita-
tive models of content analysis, whilst the attendant approaches to
the ‘audience effects’ derivative of this content were often framed in
terms of public surveys and questionnaires. Researchers routinely
sought to identify the singular ‘message’ of televisual news as it was
transmitted (ostensibly in a unilinear direction) from sender to re-
ceiver. The complexities of textual meaning production, to the ex-
tent that they were directly problematized at all, were usually
described using a language of ‘bias’ and ‘objectivity’. That is, atten-
tion would often focus on whether a given news account had
portrayed a news event in an impartial, politically neutral (non-
partisan) manner. The principal conceptual issue would then be
108 Stuart Allan

whether the account had successfully ‘reflected’ reality or, alterna-

tively, had actually served to ‘distort’ what had really taken place.
Studies could then be undertaken to determine the ‘societal impact’
of the news coverage of different threats to the established social
order, thereby allowing for an assessment of any concomitant dan-
gers for the proper maintenance of the larger ‘pluralistic consensus’.
The news media were generally viewed as part of the ‘system of
checks and balances’ for the smooth running of the governmental
sphere, so their performance vis-a-vis this functionalist role was a
matter of considerable concern for these social scientists.
Cultural studies researchers took issue with these conceptual
commitments from a number of different angles. In their view, the
most serious of the limitations engendered by social scientific lines
of enquiry was their acute failure to adequately address the implica-
tion of the news media in the cultural reproduction of oppressive
relations of power across society. In contrast, then, cultural studies
researchers sought to identify the ways in which the news media
systematically extend and reinforce the interests of economic and
political elites. An emphasis was placed on the need to elucidate the
routinized logics by which these institutions reproduce hierarchical
relations indicative of everyday life in capitalist societies such as
Britain (especially those of class in the early research, followed by a
later shift to address gender, racial, ethnic and sexual divisions). To
the extent that the news media contribute to the naturalization of
these relations, they were deemed to be working to confer ideologi-
cal justification, to varying degrees, on to a multiplicity of social
inequalities.
This meant that televisual news, far from being characterized as
a ‘reflection’ of reality, was to be theorized as a complex assemblage
of signifying conventions in which a preferred ‘map of social real-
ity’ has been inscribed. That is to say, whereas news discourse is
presented by its makers as an objective, impartial translation of
reality, it may instead be seen to be providing an ideological con-
struction of realities. Cultural studies researchers could then attempt
to show how only certain definitions of reality are aligned with
‘common sense’, with what ‘everyone knows to be true’. Such defi-
nitions may then be analysed as instances of discursive power, for
to the degree that they naturalize a preferred range of truth claims
(to the detriment of alternative ones) as being the most obvious,
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 109

reasonable or rational ones available, they are working to reproduce

the imperatives of hegemony.
Not surprisingly, then, the concept of ‘hegemony’ came to oc-
cupy a central place within cultural studies approaches to news
discourse. Most attempts to define the concept attribute its develop-
ment to Antonio Gramsci, a radical Italian philosopher who died in
1937 after more than a decade in Mussolini's prisons. Very briefly,
in his critique of power dynamics in modern societies, Gramsci
(1971: 12) describes hegemony as a relation of:

... ‘spontaneous’ consent given by the great masses of the popula-

tion to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant
fundamental group; this consent is ‘historically’ caused by the pres-
tige (and consequent confidence) which the dominant group enjoys
because of its position and function in the world of production.

In this way, Gramsci is recognizing a crucial distinction between

coercion and persuasion. In the case of the former, he underlines the
point that it is the ‘apparatus of state coercive power which
“legally” enforces discipline on those groups who do not “consent”
either actively or passively’ (1971: 12). This type of coercive control
is the exception rather than the rule, however, as power is much
more commonly exercised over subordinate groups by means of
what he terms ‘political and ideological leadership’. It follows that
a ruling group is hegemonic only to the degree that it acquires the
consent of other groups within its preferred definitions of reality.
More specifically, these subordinate groups are directed to negoti-
ate reality within what are ostensibly the limits of ‘common sense’
when, in actuality, this ‘common sense’ is consistent with dominant
norms, values and beliefs. Hegemony is to be conceptualized, there-
fore, as a site of ideological struggle over this ‘common sense’.
In Gramsci’s (1971: 348) words, at stake is ‘a cultural battle to
transform the popular “mentality” and to diffuse the philosophical
innovations which will demonstrate themselves to be “historically
true” to the extent that they become concretely — i.e. historically and
socially — universal’ (emphasis added).
Raymond Williams sought to elaborate upon Gramsci’s ap-
proach for cultural studies research by foregrounding the lived
culture of hegemony. Of utmost importance, in his view, was the
110 Stuart Allan

need to address hegemony as ‘a lived system of meanings and

values’, that is, as ‘a whole body of practices and expectations, over
the whole of living: our senses and assignments of energy, our
shaping perceptions of ourselves and our world’ (1977: 110). In this
formulation, hegemony constitutes ‘a sense of reality for most
people in the society’ and, as such, is the terrain upon which the
‘lived dominance and subordination’ of particular groups is strug-
gled over in day-to-day cultural practices. Far from being a mono-
lithic system or structure imposed from above, then, lived
hegemony is a process: ‘It is a realised complex of experiences,
relationships, and activities, with specific and changing pressures
and limits’ (1977: 112). Consequently, no one group can maintain its
hegemony without adapting to changing conditions, a dynamic
which will likely entail making certain strategic compromises with
the forces which oppose its ideological authority. Dominance is
neither invoked nor accepted in a passive manner: ‘It has continu-
ally to be renewed, recreated, defended, and modified. It is also
continually resisted, limited, altered, challenged by pressures not at
all its own’ (1977: 112). Williams’ emphasis on the countervailing
determinants of hegemony thus encouraged researchers to accentu-
ate what are contending, and at times contradictory, processes of
transformation and incorporation.
Efforts within cultural studies to extend the concept of hegemony
via specific analyses of the news media are discernible in a wide
variety of different theoretical and methodological contexts. As
noted above, however, I would suggest that the work of Hall and
his CCCS colleagues, during the 1970s and 1980s, has proved to be
the most influential. The CCCS research succeeded in demonstrat-
ing a number of ways in which a Gramscian approach to hegemony
could facilitate a radical rethinking of how news discourse contrib-
utes to the daily renewal of the pernicious logics of class, sexism,
racism, homophobia, ageism and nationalism, amongst others,
across different societies (several agenda-setting essays are con-
tained in collections edited by Cohen and Young (1981); Curran,
Gurevitch and Woollacott (1977); Gurevitch, Bennett, Curran and
Woollacott (1982); Hall, Hobson, Lowe and Willis (1980)). Signifi-
cantly, this shift to address the problem of hegemony displaced a
range of different formulations of ‘dominant ideology’, most of
which held the news media to be complicit in the cultural reproduc-
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 111

tion of capitalist relations of production in direct accordance with

the interests of a ruling class or bloc. News discourse was often
theorized in these formulations as ‘concealing’ or ‘masking’ the
‘true’ origins of economic antagonisms, that is, their basis in the
class struggle, thus the question of audience effectivity tended to be
framed as a matter of ‘false consciousness’. Aware of the limitations
associated with theorizing the dynamics of news discourse in such
reductionistic terms, cultural studies researchers were able to see in
Gramsci’s writings the means to develop a far more sophisticated
mode of critique.
In the early cultural studies literature, the collective project which
informs the book Policing the Crisis is broadly representative of the
major emergent themes (see Hall, Critcher, Jefferson, Clarke and
Roberts, 1978). Briefly, in this study’s investigation into how ‘mug-
ging’ was ‘discovered’ by the news media as ‘a frightening new
strain of crime’ in the early 1970s, and the ensuing ideological
rupture which led to severe state interventions ‘in the interests of
law and order’, the appearance of a crisis of hegemony is identified. In
their words:

A crisis of hegemony marks a moment of profound rupture in the

political and economic life of a society, an accumulation of contradic-
tions. If in moments of ‘hegemony’ everything works spontaneously
so as to sustain and enforce a particular form of class domination
while rendering the basis of that social authority invisible through
the mechanisms of the production of consent, then moments when
the equilibrium of consentis disturbed, or where the contending class
forces are so nearly balanced that neither can achieve that sway from
which a resolution to the crisis can be promulgated, are moments
when the whole basis of political leadership and cultural authority becomes
exposed and contested. (Hall et al., 1978: 217)

The role of the news media, especially the daily press, in the crea-
tion of a ‘moral panic’ which would subsequently lead to a
reconfiguration of the public consensus about crime along far more
authoritarian lines, is carefully documented. Crime control agen-
cies, in seeking to secure popular approval for more coercive meas-
ures (for example, the length of sentences for ‘petty street crime’
rose dramatically), had much to gain by having the news media
accept their definition of a ‘mugging epidemic’. Hall et al. examine
112 Stuart Allan a

a variety of the strategies employed, to varying degrees, by the daily

press to re-inflect the language of crisis being generated by these
agencies. This focus on how certain frameworks of interpretation
were set in motion allows them to show, in turn, how the limits for
much of the political debate about what constituted this ‘break-
down of public morality’ and who was to blame for it (and, more-
over, which measures would be necessary to end the crisis) were
established. Particular attention is thus given to the means by which
news organizations, for a number of administrative, bureaucratic,
professional, technological and ostensibly practical reasons, rou-
tinely reproduce the social definitions of the powerful. This is
achieved largely — but not entirely — at the expense of those defini-
tions advanced by oppositional or counter-hegemonic voices.”
Accordingly, in recognizing that the professional demands of
‘impartiality’ impose a series of constraints on the televisual
newsworker (in Britain, it is a statutory requirement enforced by
Parliament), attention has been directed to the specific mechanisms
by which this over-accessing of powerful voices as news sources
works to underwrite the ideological rules of ‘objectivity’ and ‘bal-
ance’. Cultural studies researchers have attempted to highlight for
interrogation the exclusionary imperatives of routine, ‘common-
sensical’ news values and judgements. In order to develop this line
of critique, however, it was clear that a new conceptual vocabulary
would be required to lend their explorations a greater degree of
analytical specificity. It was with this aim in mind that some re-
searchers began to ‘borrow’ a range of categories from other ap-
proaches to textual analysis, most notably from semiotics or
semiology (these terms were generally regarded as being inter-
changeable). As will be discussed in the next section, this shift
allowed for a new emphasis to be placed on elucidating how the
‘encoding’ of televisual news accounts structures the hegemonic
rules by which social reality is to be ‘decoded’ by the news audience
within the continually evolving limits of ‘common sense’.

3 The Codification of Hegemony

The contribution made by semiotics profoundly shaped the devel-

opment of cultural studies. The semiotic project offered the promise
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 113

of breaking with those approaches which reduced language to

a ‘neutral’ instrument through which ‘reality’ is expressed. By
foregrounding the textual relations of signification, it suggested
fascinating new ways to think through Williams’ theses concerning
the lived hegemony of ‘common sense’. Moreover, semiotics al-
lowed for the opening up of what had become a rather empty
postulate, namely that televisual news texts are inherently mean-
ingful, so as to unpack the naturalness of the ‘codes’ implicated in
their representations of reality.
Briefly, the notion of ‘code’ was re-inflected within cultural stud-
ies to specify a systematized arrangement of meanings organized in
accordance with certain rules or conventions. Given that the
‘polysemic’ (Barthes, 1967) potential of the message is never fully
realized in practice, it is the mobilization of certain meanings in the
place of others which interests the analyst. In the case of a televisual
newscast, then, it cannot present an ‘unmediated’ event to the
viewer. Rather, as Hall (1980: 129) writes:

Events can only be signified within the aural-visual forms of the

televisual discourse. In the moment when a historical event passes
under the sign of discourse, it is subject to all the complex formal
‘rules’ by which language signifies. To put it paradoxically, the
event must become a ‘story’ before it can become a communicative
event.

This is to suggest that the televisual news account, far from simply
‘reflecting’ the reality of an event, is actually working to construct a
codified definition of what should count as the reality of the event.
This constant, always dynamic process of mediation is accom-
plished in ideological terms, but not simply at the level of the
televisual text per se. Instead, the complex conditions under which
the text is both produced and consumed or ‘read’ will need to be
accounted for in a cultural studies approach to news as a form of
hegemonic discourse.
To clarify how analyses may best discern the extent to which the
codes of televisual news discourse are embedded in relations of
hegemony, Hall (1980) introduced a new conceptual model.’ The
‘encoding—decoding’ model, as it was quickly dubbed, remains to
this day the singularly most influential attempt to come to terms
with these issues within cultural studies (see Ang, 1996; McGuigan,
114 Stuart Allan

1992; Morley, 1992; Seiter et al., 1989; see also Hall, 1994a). Central
to Hall’s agenda is the aim of showing why the televisual text, as an
object of investigation, needs to be situated within the larger pro-
cesses of its ‘encoding’ and ‘decoding’. Turning first to the question
of ‘encoding’, Hall seeks to underscore the fact that the production
practices helping to construct the televisual message possess highly
varied discursive aspects. Specifically, the production process ‘is
framed throughout by meanings and ideas: knowledge-in-use con-
cerning the routines of production, historically defined technical
skills, professional ideologies, institutional knowledge, definitions
and assumptions, assumptions about the audience and so on frame
the constitution of the programme through this production struc-
ture’ (1980: 129). Moreover, the encoding of a televisual newscast,
once again in his words, will ‘draw topics, treatments, agendas,
events, personnel, images of the audience, “definitions of the situa-
tion” from other sources and other discursive formations within the
wider socio-cultural and political structure of which they are a
differentiated part’ (1980: 129).
It follows, according to Hall, that whilst the encoding and decod-
ing of the televisual message are differentiated moments (that is,
they are not perfectly symmetrical or transparent), they are related
to one another by the social relations of the communicative process
as a whole (1980: 130). Before this form of discourse can have an
‘effect’, however, it needs to be appropriated as a personally rel-
evant discourse by the televisual viewer, that is, it has to be ‘mean-
ingfully decoded’. For Hall, it is this set of decoded meanings which
‘influence, entertain, instruct or persuade, with very complex per-
ceptual, cognitive, emotional, ideological or behavioural conse-
quences’ (1980: 130). The ideological form of the message thus
occupies a privileged position vis-a-vis the determinate moments of
encoding and decoding. These moments each possess their own
specific modality and ‘conditions of existence’, for while their re-
spective articulation is necessary to the communicative process, the
moment of encoding cannot ‘guarantee’ that of decoding. In other
words, the moments of encoding and decoding are ‘relatively
autonomous’: they are inextricably bound up with one another, but
there will be highly varied degrees of symmetry (‘understanding’
and ‘misunderstanding’) between the encoder-producer and the
decoder-receiver.
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 115

Hall outlines three hypothetical positions (derived, in part, from

Parkin, 1971) from which decodings may be constructed. These
‘ideal-typical’ reading positions, all of which are ‘available’ at the
moment of decoding, are to be distinguished as follows:

1 When the viewer of a televisual newscast decodes its message in

alignment with its encoding, she or he is occupying the
‘dominant-hegemonic position’. From this position, Hall argues,
the authoritative, impartial and professional signification of the
news event is being accepted as perfectly obvious or natural; the
compliant viewer, operating inside the dominant subjectivity it
confers, thereby reproduces the hegemonic ‘definition of the
situation’ in ideological terms.
2 In what Hall characterizes as the ‘negotiated position’, the
viewer recognizes as appropriate the general legitimacy of
the preferred definition, but identifies certain discrepancies or
‘exceptions to the rule’ within a specific situational context.
3 The final reading position is that which is consistent with an
‘oppositional’ code. That is to say, the viewer directly counters
the logic of the dominant-hegemonic position in such a manner
that the authority of its definition is directly challenged. Hall
offers the example of a viewer who follows ‘a debate on the need
to limit wages but “reads” every mention of the “national inter-
est” as “class interest”’ (1980: 138). In this way, the dominant
code has been re-inflected within a resistant, counter-hegemonic
framework of reference.

Here it is important to note that these ‘ideal-typical’ reading posi-

tions are being marked for purposes of analytical clarity, and that
they are not to be conflated with actual empirical or lived positions
(see Corner, 1980; Morley, 1992; Richardson, this volume; Scannell,
1991; Silverstone, 1994; Wren-Lewis, 1983). The viewer’s engage-
ment with an actual televisual news programme is likely to engen-
der a complex range of (often contradictory) positionalities as the
activity of negotiating meaning is always contingent upon the par-
ticular social relations of signification in operation. Despite the
rather abstract nature of its postulates, then, the encoding—decoding
model allows for the issue of textual determination to be addressed
as a fluidly heterogeneous process without, at the same time, losing
116 Stuart Allan

sight of the ways in which it is embedded in relations of power. The

status of the viewer is not reduced to that of a victim of false
consciousness (one who passively acquiesces to the dictates of a
‘dominant ideology’ being imposed via the text), nor is it to be
celebrated such that the viewer is to be accorded with an ability to
identify freely with multiple interpretations of the text in a wildly
immaterial fashion. Instead, by situating this dynamic activity as a
negotiated process within certain conditional, but always changing,
parameters, the encoding—decoding model succeeds in highlighting
a spectrum of potential positions to be occupied, however
fleetingly, in a determinant manner.’

4 Televisual News as Discourse

Central to the encoding—decoding model, then, is a recognition that

the codification of meaning in televisual news discourse is constitu-
tive of a particular politics of signification. What is at stake is the
need to clear the conceptual space necessary for the investigation of
the specific cultural relations at work in the discursive legitimation
of certain hegemonic definitions of reality. From this vantage point,
the communicative strategies utilized in televisual news to con-
struct a sense of the very taken-for-grantedness of hegemony may
be shown to be structuring ‘in dominance’ what is, at least in prin-
ciple, a polysemic text. More to the point, once it is acknowledged
that the full range of meanings potentially associated with a given
message do not exist ‘equally’ (true polysemy), then new questions
arise as to why particular meanings are being preferred over other
possibilities. The ideological dynamics of hegemony may therefore
be explicated, at least in part, through an examination of the visual
and aural devices in and through which the newscast encourages its
audience to apprehend these preferred meanings as being the most
truthful, credible or rational ones available.
For our purposes here, we shall address, in turn, each of the three
‘moments’ or phases of the communication circuit implied by the
encoding—decoding model in relation to televisual news discourse.
Special attention will be given to how the consensual politics of
hegemony are implicated in the codification (rule-guided) pro-
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 117

cesses at issue in each of these interrelated moments. In so doing, I

am seeking to elucidate how cultural studies researchers situate the
televisual news text in relation to its conditions of production and
consumption in order to account fully for the attendant complexi-
ties of its discursive configuration. Turning firstly to the ‘encoding’
moment, then, it is apparent that whilst the inscription of
hegemonic ‘common sense’ in the televisual message is always
provisional (absolute closure is an impossibility), it is nevertheless
being operationalized in the encoder’s attempt to ‘win the assent of
the audience’ (Morley, 1992) to a preferred reading of the message.
The range of presuppositions about what is (and what is not) ‘com-
mon sense’ for the news audience — that is, what the encoder be-
lieves is ‘simply too obvious for words’ — thus takes on a distinctly
ideological significance.

Encoding televisual news

Cultural studies research challenges the assertion that journalists

are participants, knowingly or not, in some sort of wilful conspiracy
to encodify the dictates of a dominant ideology in the newsroom.”
Instead, by prioritizing for investigation the institutionalized rou-
tines and practices in and through which televisual news is pro-
duced, this approach offers an important vantage point for
analysing the contradictory imperatives by which the meanings of
televisual news are encoded. A key assumption is that it is the very
visual and aural codes of televisual news that are regarded as the
most ‘natural’, as the most representative of ‘reality’, which are
actually the most ideological. It is the aim of the newsworker, of
course, to engineer as strong a degree of correlation between the
inflection of a news topic in a specific account and the audience
member’s ‘purchase’ or reading of it as is possible under the circum-
stances. To the extent that the newsworker is able to secure ideologi-
cal closure such that the encoding and decoding moments are
brought into near alignment, the parameters of a ‘preferred
meaning’ of the topic will have been enforced.
To date, there has been much discussion within cultural studies
concerning the hegemonic dynamics enmeshed in these communi-
cative forms, with a number of studies seeking to discern the types
118 Stuart Allan

of strategies encoders use to achieve ‘the effect of immediacy-to-

reality’ while preserving, at the same time, the newscast’s claim to
impartiality. In particular, attention has focused on how processes
of encodification are organized to set down the inferential ‘rules’ by
which the imagined decoder (discursively posited as a ‘witness’) is
to reconstruct the ‘preferred meaning’ afforded by the text. In what
is in many ways a programmatic essay, Hall, Connell and Curti
(1976: 65) point out:

The facts must be arranged, in the course of programming, so as to

present an intelligible ‘story’: hence the process of presentation will
reflect the explanations and interpretations which appear most plau-
sible, credible or adequate to the broadcaster, his [or her] editorial
team and the expert commentators he [or she] consults. Above all, the
known facts of a situation must be translated into intelligible audio-
visual signs, organised as a discourse. TV cannot transmit ‘raw histori-
cal’ events as such, to its audiences: it can only transmit pictures of,
stories, informative talk or discussion about, the events it selectively
treats.

The technical and communicative competencies of the encoder will

therefore help to determine the likelihood of a preferred meaning of
the topic being established. Still, ideological closure is always a
precariously unstable achievement, for no encoder is able to ensure
that her or his intended message will be ‘accepted’ by the decoder.
Following Hall, Connell and Curti (1976: 68), although the message
is ‘structured, and aims for a certain kind of ideological closure, it can
only be relatively closed up around any one reading: and that partial
closure is, precisely, the result of the work — the ideological work — to
which the signifying systems and their preferred use in any
one instance, contribute, and what, in effect, they sustain.’ The
encodification of hegemony, conditional as it is upon contending
processes of transformation and incorporation for its renewal,
always risks coming unravelled (see also Allan, 1995).
In order to better account for the journalist's lived engagement
with these normative dynamics, cultural studies researchers neces-
sarily draw on a range of analyses concerning the cultural impera-
tives of news production, especially those conducted by
sociologists, criminologists and ethnomethodologists (see, for ex-
ample, Chibnall, 1977; Cohen and Young, 1981; Elliott, 1972;
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 119

Ericson, Baranek and Chan, 1987, 1989, 1991; Fishman, 1980; Gans,
1979; Gitlin, 1980; Halloran, Elliott and Murdock, 1970; Jacobs, 1996;
Pedelty, 1995; Reeves and Campbell, 1994; Schlesinger, 1987;
Tuchman, 1978; van Zoonen, 1991). These empirically driven inves-
tigations tend to be examined with an eye to what they can reveal
about the culture of everyday interactions within specific news
institutions. Of particular interest to cultural studies researchers are
those enquiries which help to generate insights into the means by
which the ideological character of news is encoded through the
discursive norms and values of reporting.
Here the work of Philip Schlesinger (1987), for example, has been
incorporated into cultural studies theorizing about the routinization
of encoding practices. Specifically, in his enquiry into the occupa-
tional ideologies of broadcast journalists at the BBC, he describes
several significant constraints shaping the contradictory logics of
encodification. One of the most critical of these constraints is the
time pressure of daily deadlines, hence his use of the phrase ‘stop-
watch culture’ to pinpoint how temporal relations are interwoven
throughout the production process (see also Bell, this volume;
Schlesinger, 1990; Curran, 1990). Journalists, he argues, possess an
exacting time-consciousness due, in part, to their constant need to
co-ordinate and synchronize a range of news-work activities. The
visualization of ‘immediacy’, so important for televisual news, is
thus largely seen as a technical (and to some extent aesthetic) prob-
lem to be overcome in conjunction with negotiating the normative
logistics of impartiality on a day-to-day basis.
The uncertainties of televisual news production, Schlesinger
maintains, are marked by a range of tensions as journalistic values
(competition, professionalism, speed in relation to deadline pres-
sure) are brought into daily conflict with organizational values
(accuracy, prestige, production values, audience reach). These ten-
sions are indicative of the severe institutional constraints being
placed on journalists as they strive to determine what counts as
‘genuine’ news and who is to be accredited as an indisputable
source of ‘facts’. This need to control a scarcity of time (duration of
time-slot) and space (placement in the ‘running order’), amongst
other resources, leads to the routinization of the methods necessary
to predict the potential trajectory of news events. The mediation of
these methods through the ‘strategic rituals’ (Tuchman, 1978) of
120 Stuart Allan

news-work ensures, where possible, that any ‘unexpected’ develop-

ments will be quickly processed in a manner which is consonant
with the (largely internalized) ‘journalistic standards’ appropriate
to the organization’s bureaucratic rationales. Professional ideals,
such as those of impartiality and objectivity, are likely to be
operationalized in ways which privilege this institutional ethos
and its priorities. Even the legitimacy of the ‘news values’ inform-
ing these routinized methods of encodification finds justification
in the ongoing compromises made necessary, in part, by the
dictates of these temporal requirements. As Schlesinger (1987: 105)
writes:

Production is so organised that its basic dynamic emphasises the

perishability of stories. Where a story carries over from one day to the
next, it is assumed that the audience will, after one day’s exposure, be
adequately familiar with the subject-matter to permit the “‘back-
ground’ to be largely taken for granted. It is always today’s develop-
ments which occupy the foreground. The corollary of this point is
that there is an inherent tendency for the news to be framed in a
discontinuous and ahistorical way, and this implies a truncation of
‘context’, and therefore a reduction of meaningfulness.

This question of the ‘framing’ of news discourse, particularly

with respect to the establishment of a mode of address deemed
suitable for its assumed audience, has further implications for the
encodification of normative truth claims. Todd Gitlin (1980) extends
his reading of the encoding—decoding model in relation to an
ethnomethodological notion of ‘frame’ to argue for a consideration
of how the daily routines of journalism strive to naturalize the social
world in accordance with certain discursive conventions. News
frames, he argues, make the world beyond direct experience look
natural; they are ‘principles of selection, emphasis, and presentation
composed of little tacit theories about what exists, what happens,
and what matters’ (1980: 6). The subject of often intense negotiation
between journalists and their editors, as well as their sources,
frames help to render ‘an infinity of noticeable details’ into practica-
ble repertoires, thereby facilitating the ordering of the world in
conjunction with hierarchical rules of inclusion and exclusion. As
Gitlin (1980: 7) contends:
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 121

... largely unspoken and unacknowledged, [frames] organise the

world both for journalists who report it and, in some important
degree, for us who rely on their reports. Frames enable journalists to
process large amounts of information quickly and routinely: to recog-
nise it as information, to assign it to cognitive categories, and to
package it for efficient relay to their audiences. Thus, for organisa-
tional reasons alone, frames are unavoidable, and journalism is
organised to regulate their production.

Once a particular frame has been adopted for a news story, its
principles of selection and rejection ensure that only that ‘informa-
tion’ material which is seen to be legitimate, as appropriate within the
conventions of newsworthiness so defined, is to appear in the ac-
count. ‘Some of this framing’, Gitlin (1980: 28) argues, ‘can be attrib-
uted to traditional assumptions in news treatment: news concerns
the event, not the underlying condition; the person, not the group;
conflict, not consensus; the fact that “advances the story”, not the one
that explains it.’
The operation of a hegemonic frame is not to be viewed, how-
ever, aS a means to preclude the encoding of ‘information’ which
might explicitly politicize the seemingly impartial definitions of
social reality on offer. Rather, the very authoritativeness of the
hegemonic frame is contingent upon its implicit claim to objectivity,
which means that it needs to regularly incorporate ‘awkward facts’
or even, under more exceptional circumstances, voices of dissent.
The hegemonic frame’s tacit claim to comprehensiveness dictates
that it must be seen as ‘balanced’ and ‘fair’ in its treatment of
counter-hegemonic positions: indeed, after Gitlin (1980: 256), ‘only
by absorbing and domesticating conflicting values, definitions of
reality, and demands on it, in fact, does it remain hegemonic’.
Accordingly, it is through repetition, through the very
everydayness of news discourse, that the prevailing frames (neither
arbitrary nor fixed) acquire an ostensibly natural or taken-for-
granted status.

The televisual news text

The ‘moment’ of the televisual news text is clearly a fluid one; its
meanings are dispersed in ways which analyses of actual newscasts
122 Stuart Allan

as static constructs or artifacts cannot adequately address. By situat-

ing this genre of text in relation to the variable conditions of its
encoding and decoding, cultural studies modes of enquiry provide
us with a far more dynamic understanding of meaning production
than those efforts which treat it as an object in isolation, removed
from its ideological context.
Of particular interest to much of the cultural studies work on the
textuality of televisual news are the discursive strategies which
render it recognizable as a relatively distinct form of cultural knowl-
edge. For a news narrative to be ‘read’ as an impartial ‘reflection’ of
‘the world out there’, its explanations of the social world need to be
aligned with the lived experiences of its assumed audiences in such
a way that the rules conditioning ‘what can and should be said’
(Pécheux, 1982) are ratified (see also Montgomery and Allan, 1992).
As Ian Connell (1980) points out, it is primarily in and through the
practical implementation of the very ‘editorial criteria’ by which
‘topics’ for news stories are defined that traces of these ideological
processes are discernible. This shaping of topics is indicative of the
attempt to generalize the mode of explanatory narrative on offer so
as to make it appear to provide the ‘best sense’ of a given situation.
The basis of these explanations, he argues, are those definitions of
reality articulated by newsworkers and sources which can be cat-
egorized as what ‘most’ (or at least ‘many’) people think. Also
interwoven into the fabric of these explanations is the presupposi-
tion that the newscast is itself a ‘neutral’ space within which such
definitions are able to circulate for the viewer, positioned as on-
looker, to evaluate independently. In Connell’s (1980: 154—5) words:

This is a sense of witnessing (that is, of being present at, but not directly
involved in) a ‘reality’ which is, in and through this visual mode,
made to seem ‘out there’, separate from and independent of those
positioned as witnesses. The relation in which the ‘audience’ is cast
by this visual mode is that of onlooker; the proceedings of protagonists
are ‘looked in on’. Whether the social beings who watch television
news programmes, who are themselves sites of intersection of a
multiplicity of discursive practices, actually assume this position is,
of course, another matter. The point to be stressed here, however, is
that the mode of vision currently in dominance presents the relation
in this form — that is, as a relation between the ‘involved’ and the
‘uninvolved’.
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 123

This construction of a televisual space, where ‘the audience is con-

stantly hailed as witness of, but not participant in, the struggle and
argument over issues’ (1980: 140), is to be upheld by delimiting the
meanings of the events being conveyed to those which consolidate
the facticity of the news narrative. Of course, it is the very natural-
ness of the discursive strategies by which this ‘will to facticity’
(Allan, 1995) is being narrativized that makes it so difficult to
critique.
With this aim in mind, however, we may turn to highlight several
such discursive strategies as they are employed in British national
televisual newscasts (those of the BBC, a public service broadcasting
system, and ITN, its commercial counterpart). Specifically, I shall
limit my illustration to the opening minute of the newscasts. This
schematic reading is advanced against the current of televisual
‘flow’ (Williams, 1974), so to speak, in order to pinpoint, if in a
necessarily partial and highly subjective manner, several concep-
tual issues for further, more rigorous examination.°
In the first instance, the opening sequence may be read not only
as a means to establish a sense of urgency for the newscast, but also
as a way to anchor a declaration of ‘nowness’ and ‘liveness’ for its
claim to authoritativeness. The commencement of the newscast sig-
nifies, by definition, the imminent threat of potentially distressing
information (most news, after all, is ‘bad news’), thus the opening
sequence needs to announce its realignment of televisual flow at a
number of different levels. Apparent across the range of the differ-
ent BBC and ITN newscasts under consideration are several com-
mon features: the opening sequence tends to be a 15- to 20-second
segment of brightly coloured computer-animated graphics, which
rapidly unfolds to a sharply ascending piece of theme music (the
use of trumpets is typical). Each of these segments privileges spe-
cific formulations of temporality (ticking clocks are used by both the
BBC and ITN, which signal the up-to-the-minuteness of the news
coverage) conjoined with those of spatiality (images of revolving
globes spin to foreground an image of the British nation as defined
by geography, in the case of the BBC; whilst for ITN’s News at Ten,
a London cityscape at night is slowly panned until the camera rests
on a close-up of the clock-face of the main parliamentary building,
the apparent ‘seat of political power’). Implicit to this progressively
narrowing focal dynamic is an assertion of the comprehensiveness
124 Stuart Allan

of the news coverage: the news is ‘live’, it is being monitored from

around the world, and ‘we’ are located as an audience within the
‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 1991) of the British nation. The
final shot in the succession of graphic sequences (ostensibly
sounded by the ‘gong’ of ‘Big Ben’ in the case of ITN) brings ‘us’
into the televisual studio, a pristine place of hard, polished surfaces
(connotations of efficiency and objectivity) devoid of everyday,
human (subjective) features.
The camera smoothly glides across the studio floor while, in the
case of the ITN Lunchtime News, a male voice-over sternly intones:
‘From the studios of ITN (.) the news (.) with Nicholas Owen and
Julia Somerville.’ (A dot in parentheses indicates a pause of less
than a second.) Both newsreaders are situated behind a shared desk,
calmly organizing their scripts. Serving as a backdrop for them is
what appears to be a dimly lit (in blue light) newsroom, empty of
people but complete with desks, computer equipment, and so forth.
Similarly, for the News at Ten, as the male voice-over declares: ‘From
ITN (.) News at Ten (.) with Trevor McDonald’, the newsreader
appears in shot seated behind a desk, typing an invisible keyboard
with his left hand as he collects a loose sheaf of papers with his other
hand (which is also holding a pen). Connotatively representing an
institutional forum of legitimized debate and controversy, the news
studio may be read as the public embodiment of democratic princi-
ples and values which the newsreader, in turn, claims the right to
represent on ‘our’ behalf.
As a result, the mode of address utilized by the respective news-
readers at the outset of the newscast needs to appear to be ‘dialogic’
(Bakhtin, 1981) in its formal appeal to the viewer's attention (see
also Allan, 1994). This dialogic strategy of co-presence is to be
achieved, in part, through the use of direct eye-contact with the
camera (and thus the inscribed viewer). As Margaret Morse (1986:
62) observes, ‘the impression of presence is created through the
construction of a shared space, the impression of shared time, and
signs that the speaking subject is speaking for himself [or herself],
sincerely’ (see also Hartley and Montgomery, 1985; Marriott, 1995).
The impersonally professional space of the studio is, in this way,
personalized in the form of the newsreader who, using a language
which establishes these temporal and spatial relations of co-
presence with the viewer, reaffirms a sense of shared participation.
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 125

Nevertheless, these dialogic relations of co-presence are hierarchi-

cally structured. The direct address speech of the newsreader (note
that the ‘accessed voices’ will be restricted to indirect speech and
eye-contact) represents the ‘news voice’ of the network: she or he
stands in for an institution charged with the responsibility of serv-
ing a public interest through the impartiality of its reporting. For
this reason, these relations of co-presence need to be organized so as
to underwrite the signifiers of facticity and journalistic prestige, as
well as those of timeliness and immediacy.
In addition to the steady gaze of expressive eye-contact, the
visual display of the newsreader’s authority is further individual-
ized in terms of ‘personality’ (white males still predominate), as
well as with regard to factors such as clothing (formal) and body
language (brisk and measured). This conventionalized appeal to
credibility is further enhanced through aural codes of a ‘proper’
accent (almost always ‘received pronunciation’) and tone (solemn
and resolute). Such factors, then, may not only help to create the
impression of personal integrity and trustworthiness, they may also
ratify the authenticity of the newsreader’s own commitment to up-
holding the truth value of the newscast as being representative of
her or his own experience and reliability. Personalized terms of
address, such as ‘good afternoon’ or ‘good evening’, may similarly
work to underscore the human embodiment of news values by the
newsreader as she or he seemingly engages in a conversational
discourse with the viewer. The immediacy of the implied discursive
exchange is thus constrained by the need to project a sense of
dialogue where there is only the decisive, if inclusionary, voice of
the newsreader (cf. Fairclough, this volume). As Robert Stam (1983:
28) writes:

The newscaster’s art consists of evoking the cool authority and fault-
less articulation of the written or memorised text while simultan-
eously ‘naturalising’ the written word to restore the appearance of
spontaneous communication. Most of the newscast, in fact, consists
of this scripted spontaneity: newscasters reading from teleprompters,
correspondents reciting hastily-memorised notes, politicians de-
livering prepared speeches, commercial actors representing their
roles. In each case, the appearance of fluency elicits respect while
the trappings of spontaneity generate a feeling of unmediated
communication.
126 Stuart Allan

In play are a range of deictics which anchor the articulation of time

(‘now’, ‘at this moment’, ‘currently’, ‘as we are speaking’, ‘ongoing’
or ‘today’) to that of space (‘here’, ‘this is where’, or ‘at Westminster
this morning’) such that the hierarchical relationship of identifica-
tion for the intended viewer is further accentuated.
Contingent upon these relations of co-presence is what may be
characterized as the regime of the ‘fictive We’. That is, the mode of
address employed by the newsreader, by emphasizing the indi-
vidual and the familiar, encourages the viewer’s complicity in up-
holding the hegemonic frame (see Doane, 1990; Holland, 1987;
Morse, 1986; Stam, 1983; Wilson, 1993). To the extent that the news-
reader is seen to speak not only ‘to us’, but also ‘for us’ (‘we’ are all
part of the ‘consensus’), then ‘we’ are defined in opposition to
‘them’, namely those voices which do not share ‘our’ interests and
thus are transgressive of the codified limits of common sense. As
Stam (1983: 29) points out, there needs to be a certain ‘calculated
ambiguity of expression’ if a diverse range of viewers are to identify
with the truth claims on offer: ‘The rhetoric of network diplomacy,
consequently, favours a kind of oracular understatement, cultivat-
ing ambiguity, triggering patent but deniable meanings, encourag-
ing the most diverse groups, with contradictory ideologies and
aspirations, to believe that the newscasters are not far from their
own beliefs.’ As a result, in attempting to authorize a preferred
reading of the news event for ‘us’, the newsreader aims to frame the
initial terms by which it is to be interpreted.
The rules of the hegemonic frame, whilst in principle polysemic,
are typically inflected to encourage a relation of reciprocity between
the viewers’ and the newsreader’s ‘personal’ sense of ‘news values’.
The voice-over of the newsreader, in seeking to specify ‘what is at
issue’ in each of the headlined news stories, begins the work of
organizing the news event into a preferred narrative structure for
us. Words are aligned with images to affirm, and then reinforce, the
interpellative appeals of the news voice and the strategy of visuali-
zation: viewers can ‘see for themselves’ a range of the elements
constitutive of what journalists often call the five Ws (who, what,
where, when and why) and H (how) of the news lead. Moreover, as
Mary Ann Doane (1990: 229) writes, ‘the status of the image as
indexical truth is not inconsequential — through it the “story”
touches the ground of the real’. The extent to which these news
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 127

headlines are made to ‘touch the ground of the real’ is thus depend-
ent upon the degree to which hegemonic relations of reciprocity are
established such that it is obvious to the viewer that these are the
most significant news events of the day for her or him to know
about, and that it is self-evident how they are to be best understood.
In order to illustrate this line of argument further, we may briefly
consider the ‘news lead’ of the ‘top story’ for two newscasts, namely
the BBC’s Nine O'Clock News and ITN’s News at Ten, broadcast on 3
September 1996.

Excerpt 1: BBC Nine O’Clock News,

3 September 1996

00:00 [newsreader] President Head and shoulders shot of

Clinton says America may newsreader, BBC logo over his
strike at Iraq again to make right shoulder
Saddam Hussein pay a price
for his brutality
twenty-seven cruise missiles Video footage (single shot) of
were fired this morning to cruise missile being fired from a
check what he called the clear warship
and present danger Iraq poses
to its neighbours
here the government plans to Video footage (single shot) of two
test every child as they start young boys, in school uniforms,
school seated at work table with learn-
ing cards
and England’s rugby team Video footage (three shots) of
will boycott tomorrow’s train- rugby team at practice
ing session in the latest crisis
to hit the rugby football
union
00:26 Opening sequence
128 Stuart Allan

00:41 good evening (.) America Head and shoulders shot of

says it is prepared to repeat newsreader, BBC logo replaced
this morning’s cruise missile by still image of cruise missile
attack on Iraq to counter the being fired from a warship
clear and present danger it
says Baghdad poses to the Gulf
and the west’s oil supplies (.)
more than two dozen missiles
were fired at military targets
in southern Iraq (.) President
Clinton said it was to make
Saddam Hussein pay a price
for his offensive against Kurds
in the north of his country (.)
Iraq said five people were
killed and nineteen wounded
01:08 the US response (.) code Animated image of Europe,
named operation desert strike nation states outlined, evolves
(.) began in the early hours of until Iraq is centred
this morning...

Excerpt 2: ITN News at Ten, 3 September 1996

00:00 Opening sequence

00:10 [male voice-over] from Moving shot of newsreader at
ITN (.) News at Ten (.) with desk in studio
Trevor McDonald

00:18 [newsreader] American Video footage (single shot) of

missiles pound Iraq (.) Saddam cruise missile being fired from a
remains defiant warship
Clinton explains reckless acts Video footage (single shot) of
have consequences Clinton standing at speaking
podium, White House
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 129

Tom and Jody's parents talk of Video footage (single shot) of two
_their tragedy in a million parents, seated
and why the spotlight shines Video footage (single shot) of
on a reluctant Mrs Major _ Norma Major, seated with man
: | ata table, toasting one another
with wine glasses
00:35 good evening (.) Presi- Head and shoulders shot of
dent Clinton has been explain- newsreader, News at Ten logo
ing to America and the world _ replaced by still image of cruise
today his decision to unleash missile over Iraqi flag, word
the biggest attack on Iraq since ‘Attack’ appears at bottom of
the Gulf War (.) he said it was image
to make Saddam Hussein pay
for his brutality (.) and to
reduce his ability to threaten
his neighbours and America’s
interests (.) the Pentagon said
America reserves the right
to strike again (.) the attack
was in response to President
Saddam’s move into the
designated Kurdish safe area
in northern Iraq (.) Britain
gave America its unequivocal
backing...

Perhaps the most immediately apparent feature of these

newscasts’ introductions is the similarities they share with regard to
their respective modes of address. Both privilege as their leading
‘news headline’ US President Clinton’s decision to launch cruise
missiles against targets in Iraq, and then rely upon video footage of
these (or similar) missiles being fired from a warship to locate the
‘news event’ in the now-here. No footage is provided of the missiles
detonating; instead, the explosions (without the concomitant loss of
life) will be represented at a later point in the newscasts through
130 Stuart Allan

computer-animated graphics. The contours of the preferred defini-

tion of the situation are also readily discernible from the outset, as
both newscasts instantly grant discursive ascendancy to the words
of the US President. More specifically, they each seek to ratify a
news frame which affirms the legitimacy of the military action as
defined within the terms of the official rationale.
For the BBC newscast, Clinton’s claim to be making the Iraqi
President ‘pay a price for his brutality’ is prioritized, as is his con-
tention that the action is to ‘check’ the ‘clear and present danger Iraq
poses to its neighbours’. In the case of the ITN newscast, it is
Clinton’s explanation that ‘reckless acts have consequences’ which
is authorized, along with the attendant assertions regarding the
need to ‘make Saddam Hussein pay for his brutality’. Crucially,
both newscasts are in this way discursively anchoring the official
claim that the action was a necessary ‘response’ to a threat posed by
‘Saddam’, and hence it constitutes a defensive, as opposed to offen-
sive, ‘strike’. Neither newscast, at least in its first minute, explicitly
frames the official rationale as being contestable, as requiring evi-
dence beyond these truth claims to sustain its inflection of reality.
Instead, the conflict is immediately personalized as being between
‘Us’ (good) and ‘Them’ (evil) (cf. van Dijk, this volume). This is a
world where protectors (Clinton, ‘America’, ‘the Pentagon’, and
Britain, which ‘gave America its unequivocal backing’) endeavour
to ‘check’ or ‘counter’ the dangers posed by an aggressive enemy
Other (Saddam Hussein, Iraq, Baghdad) to ‘the Gulf’, ‘the west’s oil
supplies’, Iraq’s ‘neighbours’, ‘America’s interests’ and the ‘Kurdish
safe area in northern Iraq’. The discursive space for a counter-
definition of the situation, such as one which contends that the US
‘strike’ might actually incite an Iraqi ‘retaliation’, is thus effectively
posited outside the boundaries of the preferred interpretation on
offer.
Here it is also important not to overlook the larger performative
task of these opening sequences for the newscast. That is to say,
attention also needs to be directed to their dramatic role in attract-
ing and maintaining the interest of the viewer and, moreover, the
sense of reassurance they offer through their very repetition from
one weekday to the next (a sharp contrast is provided by the head-
line of a news bulletin which suddenly ‘interrupts’ regular pro-
gramming; see Doane, 1990). News headlines seek to incorporate
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 131

the ‘extraordinary’ into the ‘ordinary’; the strangeness of the social

world (and hence its potential newsworthiness) is to be mediated
within the terms of the familiar. A news event can only ‘make sense’
to the viewer if she or he is able to situate it in relation to a range of
pre-existing ‘maps of meaning’ (Hall et al., 1978) or forms of cultural
knowledge about the nature of society.
The framework of interpretation set down by the news headline
thus not only tends to nominate precisely ‘what is at issue’ and
how its significance is to be defined, it also must reaffirm the
viewer's sense of what is consequential, or at least relevant, in the
context of their daily lives. The language utilized in these opening
sequences, both verbal and visual, may therefore be analysed as one
way in which the newscast indicates the normative limits of the
sense of newsworthiness it attributes to its audience. Clearly, then,
once a mode of enquiry elects to seize upon the embeddedness of
the newscast in the ‘now’ and ‘here’ by prioritizing for critique
precisely those elements which are usually ignored in analyses
of this type, new aspects of the political struggle over the social
relations of signification will be brought to the fore for further
exploration.

Decoding televisual news

In seeking to better understand the moment of ‘decoding’, cultural

studies researchers have recognized the necessity of investigating
the actual ways in which people relate to televisual news. The
varied social uses to which televisual news is put have been exam-
ined in association with the (usually unspoken) rules by which the
very ‘normality’ of everyday life is defined and reproduced.
The scheduling of newscasts over the course of the day, for exam-
ple, presupposes a representative domestic pattern within the
household (current sub-genres being variations of ‘breakfast news’,
‘lunchtime news’, ‘early evening news’ or ‘suppertime news’, the
‘evening news’, ‘late-night news’, and so forth). This inscription of
television’s institutional basis in its programming protocols is also
revealed in the strategies employed to build and hold an audience
throughout the day. Richard Paterson’s (1990: 31-2) discussion of
the scheduler’s lexicon identifies several of the key formulations in
132 Stuart Allan

play, including: ‘inheritance factor’ (a programme which follows a

particularly popular one is likely to inherit a proportion of that
audience); ‘pre-echo’ (people tuning into a programme often watch
the end of the preceding one, and thus may be encouraged to watch
it in future); and ‘hammocking’ or ‘tent-poling’ (a less popular
programme is placed between two popular ones in order to benefit
from inheritance and pre-echo), amongst others. Newscasts thus
provide the scheduler with a means to facilitate the structuration of
programming flow, namely by serving as points of transition in the
routines of daily life and between different genres of entertainment
(see also Allan, 1997b; Dahlgren and Sparks, 1992; Williams, 1986).
Morse (1986: 74-5) illustrates some of the potential implications
of these dynamics for those people who work both inside and
outside of the household when she writes:

Morning and prime time news occur at key thresholds in the day
between work and leisure. Morning news precedes the transit from
the privacy of the home, where one kind of reality prevails, to the
realm of work, a reality with entirely different roles, hierarchies and
rules. Morning news can be used as an alarm and pacing device to
speed the viewer/auditor into the rhythms of the work world; the
news, however lightly attended, may also orient her/him in social
reality. ...In contrast, the evening news has a more hierarchical
‘work’ structure in its anchor-reporter relations, and the set, dress
and demeanour of the news personalities are from the world of work
and its imposed roles....The evening news is a mixed form...
which aids the transition between one reality and another — between
the attentiveness demanded by the world of work and the relaxation
promoted by the TV fare of prime time drama and entertainment and
the exhaustion of work.

A number of these themes are echoed in Hjarvard’s (1994) account

of how news programmes perform a ritual function: by tying to-
gether the different elements of the schedule, news ‘provides varia-
tion as well as continuity’. The privileged status of the news as a
‘reality-oriented genre’ tends to be exploited by schedulers: ‘the
openness of the news structure creates the impression that the
earlier reported events continue in a parallel time, but “behind” the
screen while we watch other programmes’ (1994: 314). This is an
illusion, he argues, ‘since social reality is not made up by a limited
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 133

- number of events, but by an infinite number of social interactions’,

and yet it is an illusion which has arisen because ‘the reports of
events have already been initiated as continuous stories’ (1994: 314).
As cultural studies research on audiences or ‘interpretive com-
munities’ has recurrently pointed out, individual viewers invest
considerable amounts of energy into, and regularly negotiate sig-
nificant pleasure from, what they are watching in ways which by
their very normality are challenging to interpret in cultural terms.
The integration of televisual news into everyday routines is clearly
informed by this sense of normality; it is a casual, habitual, often
intimate part of domestic life. In Ellis’s (1992: 160) words, television
belongs ‘to the normal backdrop of expectations and mundane
pleasures’. The televisual institution, he argues, is a ‘scanning appa-
ratus’, one that ‘offers to present the world beyond the familiar and
the familial, but to present them in a familiar and familial guise’
992163):
Cultural studies attempts to document arguments of this type in
relation to televisual news discourse have drawn upon the research
strategies of ethnography to considerable advantage. Evidence
drawn from these ethnographic accounts often suggests that how
people watch televisual news is much less determined by the actual
programming than it is conditioned by the social relations of its
consumption. In tracing the contours of the social contexts of view-
ing within everyday domestic life in the household, a range of
studies have highlighted the need to explicate the gendered nature
of both televisual technology and the practices by which it is
negotiated.
In an early study, entitled ‘Housewives and the Mass Media’,
Dorothy Hobson (1980) examines how a range of factors inform a
sexual division of household labour which, in turn, conditions a
gender-specificity with regard to programming preferences. Her
female interviewees (young working-class mothers of small
children) revealed a tendency to demarcate televisual news into a
‘masculine’ domain. In Hobson’s (1980: 109) words:

There is an active choice of programmes which are understood to

constitute the ‘woman’s world’, coupled with a complete rejection of
programmes which are presenting the ‘man’s world’ [predominantly
news, current affairs, ‘scientific’ and documentary programmes].
134 Stuart Allan

However, there is also an acceptance that the ‘real’ or ‘man’s world’

is important, and the ‘right’ of their husbands to watch these pro-
grammes is respected: but it is not a world with which the women in
this study wanted to concern themselves. In fact, the ‘world’, in terms
of what is constructed as of ‘news’ value, is seen as both alien and
hostile to the values of women.

The social world, as represented in news discourse, is generally

seen by the women in this study to be ‘depressing’ and ‘boring’.
Still, Hobson (1980: 111) points out that ‘the importance of accepted
“news values” is recognised, and although their own world is seen
as more interesting and relevant to them, it is also seen as secondary
in rank to the “real” or “masculine” world’ (see also Feuer, 1986;
Gillespie, 1995; Gray, 1992).
Morley (1986), in his study entitled Family Television: Cultural
Power and Domestic Leisure, reaffirms the general trajectory of
Hobson’s findings. Employing a qualitative, interview-based re-
search strategy, Morley collected material from eighteen inner Lon-
don familial (‘white’, primarily working- and lower middle-class)
households. Overall, Morley is able to suggest that once a distinc-
tion is made between ‘viewing’ and ‘viewing attentively and with
enjoyment’, it is possible to discern a marked gendering of people’s
engagement with televisual news. Regarding programme type pref-
erence, Morley (1986: 162-3) writes:

My respondents displayed a notable consistency in this area,

whereby masculinity was primarily identified with a strong prefer-
ence for ‘factual’ programmes... and femininity identified with a
preference for fictional programmes. . . . Moreover the exceptions to
this rule (where the wife prefers ‘factual programmes’, etc.) are them-
selves systematic. This occurs only where the wife, by virtue of edu-
cational background, is in the dominant position in terms of cultural
capital.

By accentuating this sense of the lived nature of the televisual news

experience, Morley demonstrates why this medium needs to be
located as an integral part of everyday life in the household and as
such acknowledged as one of several sites of contestation.
Televisual news, as his work and that of Hobson illustrates, can be
the object of a micropolitics of domestic power, the material nature
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 135

_ of which may be shaped by the hierarchical dictates of familial

ideology.
This ‘turn to ethnography’ within cultural studies continues to
facilitate the development of new research agendas for investigat-
ing the decoding of televisual news. That said, however, most of the
more recent work has been directed to other genres, most notably
‘soap opera’ (which does exhibit a number of similar narrative
conventions: see Fiske, 1987). One important exception is the work
of Klaus Bruhn Jensen (1986, 1990, 1994), who has sought to exam-
ine the processes of meaning production in empirical terms by
focusing on the ‘oppositional decoding’ of televisual news content
by various groups in the USA.’ In taking issue with the claim that
the very process of watching televisual news may be properly con-
ceived of as a political, even oppositional activity in and by itself,
Jensen (1990: 58) argues that counter-hegemonic decodings are not
in themselves a concrete materialization of political power. Instead,
he maintains, the ‘wider ramifications of opposition at the textual
level depend on the social and political uses to which the opposition
may be put in contexts beyond the relative privacy of media recep-
tion’. It follows that in addition to questioning whether or not the
‘preferred meanings’ of the newscast are accepted by the viewer,
attention needs to turn to consider the designated social uses of this
genre of discourse (and how they have evolved over time), on the
one hand, and the changing forms of its actual relevance to the
viewer, on the other hand.
Briefly, Jensen (1990) identifies four general types of ‘uses’ which
the viewers in his study ascribed to televisual news in terms of its
significance for their daily lives.

1 Televisual news has contextual uses: that is, the (usually

gendered) roles and routines of ongoing activities in the house-
hold, especially with regard to domestic labour, are often par-
tially structured by news viewing. The daily rhythms associated
with news times, he argues, have become naturalized: “There are
no arguments [amongst the respondents], for example, that the
evening news might be scheduled differently, fitting news to
everyday life rather than vice versa’ (1990: 64).
2 There are informational uses of televisual news for the viewer,
particularly in their roles as ‘consumer, employee, and, above
136 = Stuart Allan

all, as citizen and voter’. Here he discerns a tension in the inter-

view material from his respondents between ‘the active and
public uses which are associated with the news genre in a politi-
cal perspective and ...its more limited practical relevance for
audiences in terms of “keeping up” with issues for the purpose
of conversation or voting in political elections’ (1990: 68). One
respondent, identified as a ‘printer’, is quoted by Jensen (1990:
67) as making a typical statement about the opportunity for
political participation:

Well, I can vote. As far as taking any further, I don’t know. I guess the
opportunity will have to arise. Being, you know, I feel I’m just the
average person out here...

3. The implications of this tension for the social definition of news

are even more pronounced with respect to what Jensen calls the
legitimating uses of televisual news. His interview material indi-
cates that the political relevance of news to the viewer may be
characterized in terms of the twin concepts of control and dis-
tance: “The news may give its audience a sense of control over
events in the world which would otherwise appear as
distant . . . it is the feeling of control which is crucial, even if “you
can’t do anything about it”’ (1990: 68, 69). To the degree that
televisual news is seen by the viewer to offer a ‘generalised sense
of community’, then, it is equally likely to be considered to be an
adequate forum for the articulation of public issues (see also
Allan, 1997a; Corner, 1995; Hartley, 1996).
4 Finally, Jensen pinpoints the diversional uses of televisual news as
discussed by his respondents, namely the variety of its visual
pleasures for the viewer. The designated social uses for news,
whilst generally defined by the respondents as distinct from
those of entertainment, nevertheless share with them several
important features. In particular, the ‘holding power’ of the
visual narrative is deemed to be significant. The respondents
attached salience not only to the visuals of the news events,
which were seen as communicating ‘a sense of experiential im-
mediacy’ (words such as ‘pleasing’, ‘enjoyable’, ‘easy’, ‘vivid’
and ‘exciting’ are used by the respondents), but also to the actual
performance of the news. In the case of newsreaders, for exam-
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 137

ple, both journalistic competence and personal appeal are

stressed, whilst other respondents emphasized the appeal of
‘nice, trivial information’.

These four types of ‘uses’, then, suggest to Jensen (1990: 73-4)

that:
The reception of television news may, accordingly, be seen as an
agent of hegemony which serves to reassert the limits of the political
imagination. . . . [E]ven though the social production of meaning can
be seen as a process in which the prevailing definition of reality
may be challenged and revised, the outcome of that process is
overdetermined by the historical and institutional frameworks of
communication. The polysemy of media texts is only a political po-
tential, and the oppositional decoding of media is not yet a manifes-
tation of political power. ...[P]eople make their own sense of the
media, but that sense is bounded by the social definitions of genres
[such as news].

It is to the issue of how best to advance new research strategies to

explore further the extent to which televisual news discourse oper-
ates to ‘reassert the limits of the political imagination’ that this
chapter now turns.

5 Conclusion
—. ont ae

The importance of cultural studies research is being increasingly

recognized by language analysts working in such diverse areas as
sociolinguistics, conversational analysis, pragmatics and, perhaps
most markedly, critical discourse analysis. As I have attempted to
show in this chapter, cultural studies provides a new vantage point
from which we may proceed to engage in a radical rethinking of the
ideological embeddedness of media discourse in relations of power
and resistance. By seeking to render problematic an array of concep-
tual and methodological assumptions which tend to underpin more
conventional approaches to the dynamics of meaning production,
cultural studies re-centres for critique a range of questions that
otherwise tend to be displaced as being ‘outside’ the realm of
language analysis proper.
138 Stuart Allan

At the same time, of course, it would be advantageous for cul-

tural studies researchers to look beyond semiotics to consider what
these other, more linguistic-centred approaches can contribute. The
finely detailed insights into the mechanisms of ideology being gen-
erated in areas such as critical discourse analysis, for example, have
much to offer a cultural studies approach which cannot attend to
the same degree of linguistic specificity. Perhaps now is the moment
to consider a closer alignment of these two modes of enquiry where
warranted by the discursive dynamics under investigation. An
effort to enhance the connections between these approaches may
have positive strategic advantages as well, given that they share a
commitment to an interventionary form of analysis directed toward
the advancement of a progressive cultural politics.
Over the course of its discussion, this chapter has endeavoured to
highlight several such points of connection so as to help to secure, in
turn, a basis for future collaborative efforts. It is with this aim in
mind that I wish to suggest that investigations into televisual news
may advantageously extend the theoretical trajectory outlined here
in a number of substantive ways. Specifically, |would argue that
the concept of hegemony needs to be further elaborated so as to
account more rigorously for the complex ways in which the news
media, as key terrains of the ongoing political struggle over the
right to define the ‘reality’ of public issues, operate to mediate the
risks, threats and dangers engendered across the society they
purport to describe.
This aim could be realized, in part, by focusing our analyses more
directly on the indeterminacies or contradictions (the exceptions to
the conventionalized rules) implicated in televisual news dis-
course’s preferred appropriations of ‘the world out there’. Here I
am suggesting, especially in light of the ethnographic research on
news audiences assessed above, that we need to be much more
sensitive to the contingent nature of the representational strategies
being used in news discourse. Attempts to demonstrate how these
strategies are organized to disallow or ‘rule out’ alternative inflec-
tions of reality should, at the same time, seek to identify the extent
to which the same strategies are being challenged, even trans-
gressed, over time. Given that the naturalization of any truth claim is
always a matter of degree, it is crucial that analyses recognize the
more subtle devices by which ‘common sense’ has to be continu-
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 139

ously revalidated as part of the reportorial performance, and

thereby avoid a reliance upon rigid, zero-sum formulations of
hegemony to sustain their theses.
Such an approach may enable us to identify much more precisely
the nature of the processes by which this form of media discourse
structures the public articulation of truth. Following Williams (1974:
130), who contends that the ‘reality of determination is the setting of
limits and the exertion of pressures, within which variable social
practices are profoundly affected but never necessarily controlled’,
I would agree with those who argue that a much greater conceptual
emphasis needs to be placed on how televisual news conditions
what counts as ‘truth’ in a given instance, and who has the right to
define that truth. At the same time, though, equal attention needs to
be given to discerning the openings for different interpretive com-
munities to potentially recast the terms by which ‘truth’ is defined
in relation to their lived experiences of injustice and inequalities
(once again, after Williams, determination is not a single force, but
rather an exertion of continuous, but often unpredictable, pres-
sures). Such a shift in focus would mean that research questions
posed within a narrowly framed ‘domination—opposition’ dynamic
could be clarified through a much more fundamental interrogation
of the very precepts informing the fluid configuration of facticity in
the first place.
Televisual news discourse could thus be deconstructed not only
through a critique of its projection of journalistic distance and ‘im-
partiality’, but also by resisting its movement toward closure
around ‘common-sense’ criteria of inclusion and exclusion. It fol-
lows that in addition to asking whose common sense is being defined
by the newscast as factual, we need to ask: by what representational
strategies is the viewer being invited to ‘fill in the gaps’, or being
encouraged to make the appropriate, rational inferences, in order to
reaffirm journalistic procedures for ‘handling’ contrary facts which
are otherwise discrepant to the news frame? In my view, once this
‘setting of limits’ on the narrativization of meaning has been de-
naturalized to the point that the politics of its naturalness are ren-
dered explicit, analyses may proceed to identify in televisual news
the slippages, fissures and silences which together are always
threatening to undermine its discursive authority. In other words,
this type of research may be able to contribute to the empowerment
140 = Stuart Allan

of those counter-hegemonic voices seeking to contest the truth poli-

tics of televisual news discourse, not least by helping to first disrupt
and then expand the ideological parameters of ‘the obvious facts of
the matter’.

NOTES

I wish to thank the editors of this volume, as well as Barbara Adam, Gill
Branston, Cynthia Carter and Tom O’Malley, for their helpful comments
on an earlier draft of this essay.

1 Four additional points are important here. First, while there is certainly
no one ‘approach’ that is representative of cultural studies research on
news discourse, I shall use the term here as a form of analytical short-
hand to stand in for an array of contending approaches that rely upon
some configuration of ‘cultural studies’ in their engagement with a
particular news problematic. Second, it is important to recognize that
even at that time there was much disagreement within the CCCS re-
garding what should constitute cultural studies, and what its ‘true
origins’ actually were (here several of the essays collected in Morley
and Chen (1996) offer insights into these developments; regrettably,
however, there is little mention of the work around news discourse).
Third, the notion of ‘discourse’ in much of this early work is loosely
derived either from Barthes (1967, 1973) or from Volosinov (1973), but
it would later undergo much more rigorous scrutiny in the subsequent
debates around Foucault’s provocative formulations. Finally, for a
consideration of various re-inflections of cultural studies in different
national contexts, particularly in North America and Australia respec-
tively, see Blundell, Shepherd and Taylor (1993); Brantlinger (1990);
Davies (1995); Grossberg Nelson and Treichler (1992); McGuigan
(1992); and Storey (1996).
2 Echoes of this study’s findings reverberate throughout Reeves and
Campbell’s (1994) examination of televisual news coverage of the so-
called ‘cocaine epidemic’ in the USA. Regarding the processing of ‘drug
stories’, they argue that ‘reporters seek out “appropriate” enforcement,
medical, and academic experts who typically provide enough conflict
to sustain the news narrative. Police, doctors, and social scientists con-
tribute their expert voices to the pool of knowledge that the reporter
then arranges and (re)presents. These news characters are from the land
of specialised knowledge. And the language of this realm is frequently
 News from NowHere: Televisual News Discourse 141

“jargonese”, which often has to be decoded and translated into “com-

mon sense” by the reporter’ (1994: 56).
Hall’s intervention took the form of a 1973 Stencilled Occasional Paper,
entitled ‘Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse’, pub-
lished by what was then the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies
at the University of Birmingham. An edited extract of that paper, en-
titled ‘Encoding /Decoding’, appeared as Hall (1980) and it is this ver-
sion which has been so widely cited.
Over the years, a number of different case studies have been launched
within cultural studies in order to try to interrogate the precepts under-
pinning the rather abstract neatness of these decoding positionalities.
For recent overviews of this work, see Ang (1996), Moores (1993) and
Nightingale (1996).
‘Ideological hegemony in the news media’, as Fishman (1980: 140)
writes, ‘can occur without the direct intervention of publishers or edi-
tors, without the existence of informal news policies into which report-
ers are socialised, and without secret programs in news organisations to
recruit reporters sharing a particular point of view. The ideological
character of news follows from journalists’ routine reliance on raw
materials which are already ideological.’
This discussion of the first minute of these two newscasts could clearly
be extended in a number of interesting ways. In addition to those
features briefly highlighted here, greater attention could be given to the
means by which ideological processes are being embedded in relations
of transitivity, nominalization, modality, and so forth. Moreover, and in
following the encoding—decoding agenda, researchers could also inves-
tigate the institutional relations which inform the production of the
opening sequences and headlines, as well as the extent to which audi-
ences actually negotiate this mode of address within the parameters
intended by the newsworkers. Examples, except where stated other-
wise, are drawn from six different newscasts (BBC: 1.00 p.m., 6.00 p.m.
and 9.00 p.m.; ITN 12.30 p.m., 5.40 p.m., 10.00 p.m.) broadcast in the
week of 10 July 1996.
Regarding the research methodology, Jensen (1990: 59) writes: ‘A total
of twelve news programmes and twenty-four interviews were recorded
in a metropolitan area of the north-eastern United States during three
randomly selected weeks in the autumn of 1983. On a given night,
a particular news programme was recorded, and on the following
day the recording was shown to two respondents individually, who
subsequently were interviewed individually.’
 Political Discourse
in the Media: An
Analytical Framework
Norman Fairclough

My main objective in this chapter is to set out an analytical frame-

work for researching political discourse in the contemporary mass
media. Political discourse is seen as an ‘order of discourse’ (the term
is explained shortly) which is continuously changing within wider
processes of social and cultural change affecting the media them-
selves and other social domains which are linked to them. The
proposed analytical framework is an application to a particular field
of a version of ‘critical discourse analysis’, and I therefore begin the
chapter with a summary account of it. I shall then set out the
analytical framework, and illustrate it with an analysis of extracts
from an edition of the BBC Radio 4 news and current affairs pro-
gramme Today.
My starting point for this chapter is a critical comment of
Bourdieu’s about discourse analysis:

it would be superficial (at best) to try to analyse political discourses

or ideologies by focusing on the utterances as such, without reference
to the constitution of the political field and the relations between this
field and the broader space of social positions and processes. This
kind of ‘internal analysis’ is commonplace . .. as exemplified by...
 Political Discourse in the Media 143

attempts to apply some form of semiotics or ‘discourse analysis’ to

political speeches. . . . all such attempts . . . take for granted but fail to
take account of the sociohistorical conditions within which the object
of analysis is produced, constructed and received. (Quoted in
Thompson, 1991: 28-9)

While I think that ‘internal analysis’ in the sense of close textual

analysis is essential if we are really to develop an understanding of
political discourse, Bourdieu is right to insist that internal analysis
of political discourses or texts which does not place them with
respect to the political field and its wider social frame is of limited
value. I propose to partially meet this criticism by arguing that
analysis of media political discourse (and indeed of any sort of
discourse) should have a duality of focus: on communicative
events, and on the order of discourse. It should aim to simulta-
neously illuminate particular communicative events, and the con-
stitution and transformation of the political order of discourse. By
the political order of discourse, I mean the structured configuration
of genres and discourses which constitutes political discourse, the
system — albeit an open and shifting one — which defines and delim-
its political discourse, at a given point in time. Bourdieu’s criticism
of discourse analysis is well grounded: much discourse analysis is
analysis of communicative events which does not attempt to map
them on to orders of discourse. Yet an adequate analysis of commu-
nicative events as forms of social practice - an adequate discourse
analysis of communicative events — does need to locate them within
fields of social practice and in relation to the social and cultural
forces and processes which shape and transform those fields. Or-
ders of discourse are fields of practice seen in specifically discursive
terms. I am suggesting that we can do discourse analysis in a way
which moves to meet Bourdieu’s criticism, although I am not sug-
gesting that this is the whole answer: discourse analysis also needs
to be properly integrated with other forms of social analysis.

1 Critical Discourse Analysis

I have space here only to give a summary account of main features

of the version of critical discourse analysis (henceforth CDA) which
144 Norman Fairclough

I work with that are particularly relevant to the issue at hand (for
more detailed descriptions, see Fairclough, 1992, 1995a, and 1995b).
This version of CDA is characterized by the combination of two
commitments: an interdisciplinary commitment, and a critical com-
mitment. The interdisciplinary commitment is to constitute CDA as
a resource for the investigation of changing discursive practices,
and thereby enable it to contribute to a major contemporary re-
search theme in social science: the analysis of ongoing social and
cultural change, often construed in terms of major shifts within or
shifts away from modernity (towards ‘late modernity’ or
‘postmodernity’). The critical commitment is to understanding from
a specifically discoursal and linguistic perspective how people’s
lives are determined and limited by the social formations we are
blessed or cursed with; to foregrounding the contingent nature of
given practices, and the possibilities for changing them. These two
commitments come together, for instance, in the study of contem-
porary processes of marketization of discourse — the tendency to
restructure the discursive practices of, for example, public service
domains such as education on the model of the discursive practices
of the market (entailing, for instance, a proliferation of forms of
advertising discourse).
This version of CDA is conceived as mapping three different
sorts of analysis on to one another in an attempt at integrated
statements which link social and cultural practices to properties of
texts. The three sorts of analysis are:

¢ analysis of texts (spoken, written, or involving a combination of

semiotic modalities, e.g. televisual texts);
¢ analysis of discourse practices of text production, distribution
and consumption;
¢ analysis of social and cultural practices which frame discourse
practices and texts.

A key feature of this version of CDA is that the link between texts
and society/culture is seen as mediated by discourse practices.
Since this mediating form of analysis is conceived of in a way that is
distinctive, a little more needs to be said about it.
The analysis of discourse practice is probably best thought of as
actually a complex of different sorts of analysis, including more
 Political Discourse in the Media 145

discursive aspects of institutional processes (e.g. practices of pro-

ducing TV news programmes), as well as sociocognitive aspects of
discourse processing. But my focus here and more generally is on
intertextuality: on how in the production and interpretation (as part
of what I called above ‘consumption’) of a text people draw upon
other texts and text types which are culturally available to them.
This cultural resource for text production and consumption is con-
ceptualized in terms of a concept borrowed but also adapted from
Foucault (1984) — ‘order of discourse’. The claim is that texts have a
dual orientation to ‘systems’ in a broad sense: there are language
systems, and there are orders of discourse. The text-system rela-
tionship in both cases is dialectical: texts draw upon but also consti-
tute (and reconstitute) systems. An order of discourse is a
structured configuration of genres and discourses (and maybe other
elements, such as voices, registers, styles) associated with a given
social domain — for example, the order of discourse of a school. In
describing such an order of discourse, one identifies its constituent
discursive practices (e.g. various sorts of classroom talk and writ-
ing, playground talk, staffroom talk, centrally produced documen-
tation, etc.), and crucially the relationships and boundaries between
them. The concern, however, is not just with the internal economy
of various separate orders of discourse. It is with relationships of
tension and flow across as well as within various local orders of
discourse in an (open) system that we might call the ‘societal order
of discourse’. For instance, two pervasive tendencies affecting
contemporary orders of discourse are what I have called
‘conversationalization of discourse’ — the colonization of public or-
ders of discourse by the conversational practices of the order of
discourse of everyday life (the ‘lifeworld’); and ‘marketization of
discourse’ as defined above (Fairclough, 1995b).
The framework combines the concepts of ‘heteroglossia’ and
hegemony: it stresses the diversity and proliferation of discursive
practices and generative processes in which they are creatively re-
articulated; but it sees these processes as limited by hegemonic
relations and structures, and as a terrain of hegemonic struggle.
The framework also foregrounds the texture of texts: it is ad-
dressed both to correcting the socially impoverished nature of much
analysis of language within linguistics, and the textually impover-
ished nature of much analysis of discourse in social science: hence
146 Norman Fairclough

the focus on what close analysis of texture can contribute to social

and cultural analysis of discourse.

2 Contemporary Politics and Political Discourse

There is a general perception that politics is currently changing, in

transition. For many, it is a crisis of politics. Some people see it
as the political being squeezed out of contemporary social life.
Others see it more as a partial relocation of the political, from the
empty shells of the political system, towards what some call
‘subpolitics’, the politics of new forms of grassroots social move-
ment like animal rights groups or roads protesters in European
countries (Beck, 1994). My longer-term aim in current work is to
bring a specifically discourse analytical perspective to bear on this
debate. My questions are these: how is the contemporary order of
political discourse structured, and what are the major tendencies of
change?
One major problem in such a project is delimiting the political.
Where does politics end? It is not just the analyst’s problem, it is a
structural problem of social life. I find it helpful here to use a
characterization of politics as an interaction of different societal
systems, suggested by Held (1987): in his terms, the interaction of
the political system (meaning the system of official professional
politics — the political parties, Parliament, and so forth), the social
system and the economy. The nature of politics in different times
and places is a matter of how these systems differently interact. This
means that the limits of the political are constantly at issue: what is
the relationship between the state and civil society? how politicized
is domestic life? and so forth. There is a discourse analytical reading
of this: the shifting nature of politics can be characterized and ex-
plored in terms of shifting relationships between — shifting articula-
tions of — orders of discourse. Thus contemporary political
discourse articulates together the orders of discourse of the political
system (conventional, official politics), of the media, of science and
technology, of grassroots sociopolitical movements, of ordinary pri-
vate life, and so forth — but in an unstable and shifting configura-
 Political Discourse in the Media 147

tion. Questions here are: what, at a given point in time, is the space
taken up by political discourse in terms of relationships between
orders of discourse, and what are the main points of tension, the
main flows, the main directions of movement?
Also helpful here is Bourdieu’s (1991) suggestion that the politi-
cal discourse of professional politicians is doubly determined. It is,
so to speak, ‘internally’ determined by its position within the rare-
fied field of professional politics, the political structures as such.
And it is, so to speak, ‘externally’ determined by its relationship to
fields outside politics — particularly to the lives of the people politi-
cians ‘represent’. Strangely, though, Bourdieu does not foreground
the mass media. Mediatized politics is an important part of contem-
porary politics. One would think that the media were an obvious
place to look to see processes of ‘external’ determination of profes-
sional political discourse.
In the terms of the CDA framework I have introduced, power
enters the picture here as power struggle to achieve hegemony in
two ways:

(a) ‘internally’ within the order of discourse of the political system

in the articulation of different discursive practices;
(b) ‘externally’ in the articulation of different systems and
different orders of discourse. The internal struggle for he-
gemony is a struggle between political parties and political
tendencies.

An example is the struggle to establish the hegemony of Thatcherite

political discourse in Britain first within the Conservative Party,
then within the political system as a whole, and ultimately beyond
it — so ‘internal’ struggle turns into ‘external’ struggle. The external
struggle for hegemony is a struggle between professional politi-
cians and other social agents in fields which intersect with the
political system — for example, between politicians and journalists
in the mass media, and between politicians and grassroots activists
in social movements such as the environmentalist and ecological
movements. In focusing on ‘struggle’, I do not wish to suggest a
struggle of each against all: accommodations and alliances are also
an important part of the picture (see below).
148 Norman Fairclough

3 Political Discourse in the Media

Agents

A way into the articulated structure of mediatized politics is to

identify the main categories of agents that figure in mass media
politics. Professional politicians are one, of course. Journalists are
another. They have a prominent political role in their own right;
they do not just ‘mediate’ others. Another category is ‘experts’ of
various sorts — political analysts, academic political scientists,
pundits. Another is people who are politicians, but in a non-
traditional sense: representatives of various new social movements,
such as ecologists or animal rights activists. Another is economic
agents — employers, trade unionists. And another is ‘ordinary
people’, who have for instance started to play a bigger part in
political conversation and debate in audience discussion pro-
grammes, like the Oprah Winfrey Show in the USA or Kilroy in
Britain. All of these categories of agent are potential protagonists
and antagonists in struggles for hegemony in the media, or poten-
tially in alliances and accommodations. The categories of agent that
I have identified are very general. They have their own internal
complexity. Politicians, for instance, belong to different parties and
tendencies. And there is the question of how social class, gender
and cultural membership cut across, inflect and diversify these
categories. Also, there are important movements between these
categories of agent. For instance, at a certain point some grassroots
environmentalist political activists shifted into the official political
system to form Green parties, whereas others stayed outside the
system.
The articulation of these categories of agent in mediatized politi-
cal discourse points to the articulation of different social systems, as
suggested by Held, and an articulation of different orders of dis-
course. So mediatized political discourse as an order of discourse is
constituted by a mixing of elements of the orders of discourse of the
political system — the lifeworld (ordinary life), sociopolitical move-
ments, various domains of academic and scientific expertise, and so
forth — with journalistic discourse. One issue is how well the
hybridity of mediatized political discourse represents the hybridity
 Political Discourse in the Media 149

of politics - whether, for example, the media give undue promi-

nence to the official political system, whether that is true of some
sections of the media, or some types of programme within the
broadcast media, more than others, and so forth. It is important to
focus not only upon the shifting discursive practices of politics but
also the shifting representations of those practices, which are an
important aspect of the practices and an important factor in strug-
gles over the direction of their articulatory movement. In addition
to struggle between agents and orders of discourse, we need to
look out for confluences and alliances. Derrida has warned of the
powerful emergent confluence between political discourse, aca-
demic discourse and media discourse. Indeed, one of the issues is
whether to see predominantly struggle or complicity between
agents in media discourse, and to decide how real or how superfi-
cial apparent struggle is, to decide who the real protagonists and
antagonists are.
There are strong associations between different categories of
agent and different discourses established in the orders of discourse
which are articulated together in mediatized politics. To an extent,
the different categories of agent ‘bring their discourses with them’
from other orders of discourse. But the matching of agents to dis-
courses is not simple. Professional politicians change their political
discourses in response to the shifting structure of the political field.
‘Blairism’ is in some ways like “Thatcherism’, for instance. But it is
more than this. Different categories of agent appropriate each oth-
er’s discourses in complex ways. For example, ordinary people may
appropriate professional political discourses and expert discourses
to varying degrees, and politicians certainly now systematically
appropriate the lifeworld discourse of ordinary people, as indeed
do experts. And professional politicians extensively appropriate
the discourses of ‘subpolitics’, for instance those of the environmen-
talist movements. Indeed, there is a dual movement: a
‘subpoliticization’ of official politics, but also an _ official
‘politicization’ of subpolitics, so that, to take the case of green dis-
courses, we find them within the environmentalist and ecological
social movements, in the Green parties and in the ‘mainstream’
parties. Their recontextualization entails transformation — green dis-
courses do not simply remain invariable across these sites
(Bernstein, 1990). What we might call ‘ownership’ of discourses, like
150 Norman Fairclough

access to discourses, is a significant aspect of hegemonic struggles

over orders of discourse.

Genres

To operate successfully in the media, agents from other domains

need to command the discourses and the genres of the media. One
of the problems for politicians in the new mediatized politics is
learning a new form of cultural capital: how to operate, for instance,
within media genres such as not only the political interview but also
phone-in programmes, chat shows, and even domains of ‘covert
politics’,' such as women’s magazine programmes. Media genres
involve a complex admixture of genres from other domains — such
as genres of political debate and political speaking from the political
system — which are recontextualized (and in the process may be
significantly transformed) within the media. The genres of broad-
casting often have a complex hybrid or heterogeneous character.
For instance, Livingstone and Lunt (1994) suggest that audience
discussion programmes like the Oprah Winfrey Show evolve a
heterogeneous genre which combines three established genres only
one of which is ‘political’ - debate, romance, therapy. A corollary of
this generic diversity is that the categories of agent that figure in
such programmes are plurally constructed. To quote Livingstone
and Lunt (1994: 56):

The generic ambiguity is clearly seen in the role of the host: is he or

she the chair of a debate, the adored hero of a talk show, a referee, a
conciliator, a judge, the compere of a game show, a therapist, the host
of a dinner party conversation, a manager or a spokesperson? At
times, the host plays any one of these roles, thus altering the roles of
other participants and listeners.

As the last sentence of this quotation suggests, the heterogeneity of

genres implies a shift in audience address and a change in the
cultural capital of audiences, and raises questions about audience
reception which also need to be part of researching mediatized
political discourse. Indeed, the issue is wider than that. Discourse
analysis cannot simply focus upon the texts and talk of mediatized
 Political Discourse in the Media 151

politics; it needs also to analyse the practices of political discourse

both on the side of production, and on the side of reception/con-
sumption. On the side of production, one might for instance trace
the development and projection of political programmes as pro-
cesses which systematically chain together various types of political
talk and text into ‘intertextual chains’ (Fairclough, 1992, 1995a) -
private and public discussion and debate, drafting and editing of
documents, news conferences, political interviews, and so forth.
A fruitful perspective may be to see the genres of mediatized
politics as devices for articulating together the adjacent orders of
discourse which define the space of political discourse. It is thus
perhaps better to talk about ‘generic complexes’ (see the Introduc-
tion to Fairclough, 1995b) of mediatized politics, given that they can
incorporate a number of genres. A generic complex articulates or-
ders of discourse (genres, discourses) together in particular ways,
and effects particular positionings of agents in relation to them. For
instance, contemporary political interview might be looked at as a
device for articulating together the orders of discourse of the politi-
cal system, the media and the ordinary lifeworld of the audience.
Political interviews typically mix their genres and their discourses.
In complex ways, politicians characteristically shift into conversa-
tional genre, and draw upon lifeworld discourses, in finding ways
to address mass audiences who are listening or watching in mainly
domestic environments. A particular articulation of genres and dis-
courses within a generic complex is a particular effect of power
corresponding to a particular state of hegemonic relations. It is also
a potential focus for resistance and struggle. To take an example,
not all professional politicians are willing to go along with more
aggressive and contestatory styles of political interview which fit in
with media priorities to make programmes more entertaining by
subordinating political discussion to gladiatorial contest.

4 Example: The Today Programme

The approach to political discourse set out above is formulated in

terms of a large-scale programme of research on the contemporary
order of political discourse. No single example can therefore really
152 Norman Fairclough

do justice to it. The illustration which follows is intended just to give

a sense of some of the potential of the approach. I have chosen an
edition (Saturday 13 July 1996) of the BBC Radio 4 Today pro-
gramme which is broadcast six days per week between 6.30 a.m.
and 8.40 a.m. (7 a.m.-9 a.m. on Saturdays). I suggested at the begin-
ning of this chapter that a response within discourse analysis to the
critical comments of Bourdieu would be to maintain a duality of
focus, on the order of discourse and on the communicative event. I
wish to do that with this example. More specifically, Iwould like to
address in turn two questions which respectively reflect these two
focuses:

¢ how does the Today programme contribute to articulating the

political order of discourse?
¢ how are the resources of the order of discourse interactively
used here?

The first of the questions draws attention to the different ways in

which different programmes on radio and television (and also dif-
ferent newspapers) not only manifest a political order of discourse
which transcends them, but also actively contribute to its constitu-
tion and transformation. A programme like Today assembles a dis-
tinctive set of political agents, discourses and genres and combines
them in a distinctive way: how similar to and how different from
other programmes and outlets needs to be established. It may con-
stitute a more or less influential intervention to push the political
order of discourse in a particular direction. Since I am focusing on
just one edition of Today, my aim here is simply to get a preliminary
sense of its particular contribution to the articulation of the political
order of discourse.
The news item which dominated the programme was a crisis in
Northern Ireland: the aftermath of the decision by the Chief Con-
stable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary to allow the unionist
Orange Order to march through a nationalist area in Portadown,
Northern Ireland. The decision led to vigorous and sometimes vio-
lent protests from the nationalist community against what was per-
ceived as British Government capitulation to the unionists, and
there was a perception that the whole peace process in Northern
Ireland was at risk.* I shall focus on this item. It is interspersed in the
 Political Discourse in the Media 153

‘programme with other items. For example, the programme begins

with a news bulletin which covers Northern Ireland along with
other issues, followed by two interviews appertaining to Northern
Ireland, but then two unconnected reports (on a dispute between
clergy at an English cathedral, and on a landless peasants’ move-
ment in Brazil), a review of readers’ letters (some about Northern
Ireland), a sports report, a weather forecast, and a news summary
(which again is partly about Northern Ireland). In total, there are six
interviews relating to the Northern Ireland crisis in the programme,
and thecrisis is also covered in two news bulletins and two news
summaries, readers’ letters, a report on the day’s press, as well as in
the religious spot Thought for the Day.
The main agents assembled by the programme are Northern
Ireland political leaders (Gerry Adams of nationalist Sinn Fein,
David Trimble of the Ulster Unionists and John Hulme of the Social
Democratic Labour Party); the British Northern Ireland Secretary
(Sir Patrick Mayhew); the Prime Minister of the Irish Republic John
Bruton); a former Chief Constable of the Royal Ulster Constabulary
(Sir John Herman); a former professor at a university in Northern
Ireland who is now a Minister in the South African government; the
Irish Catholic leader (Cardinal Daley) and an Anglican Bishop (Bill
Westwood), who does Thought for the Day. All of them speak for
themselves, though some are interviewed at length whereas others
are represented only through brief recorded excerpts. Ordinary
people (though from the British mainland, not from Ireland) also
have a presence in the programme but only in the highly mediated
form of selected extracts from their letters which are read by the two
presenters, John Humphrys and Sue McGregor. One of the objec-
tives of the analysis is to identify absences, and it is notable in this
case that the voices of ordinary people in Northern Ireland are not
included.
One striking feature of the programme is the extent to which it is
anchored in the presenters: there are relatively few reports from
journalists or correspondents; most of the features in the pro-
gramme are interviews involving one of the presenters. Even jour-
nalists and correspondents are in some cases interviewed by the
presenters rather than giving their own reports. The main exception
to this constant mediating presence of the presenters is the news
bulletins and summaries which are read by another journalist,
154 Norman Fairclough

though even in this case one of the presenters gives the news head-
lines before the news bulletin is read. There is a sharp contrast in
communicative style between the news and the rest of the pro-
gramme. The following is part of a news summary:
Anglo-Irish relations are under severe strain after the Irish
Prime Minister John Bruton attacked the Government's hand-
ling of the Orange Order march through Portadown. He said
the decision to allow the marchers through a Catholic area was
a serious mistake which had damaged the peace process. His
remarks have been condemned as offensive by the Northern
Ireland Secretary Sir Patrick Mayhew. There’s been further
violence in the nationalist areas across Northern Ireland over-
night. Police say hundreds of petrol bombs were thrown at
them. They responded by firing large numbers of plastic bul-
lets. Shots were fired at a police station in western Belfast.
Generically, this is a (monological) narrative of events, many of
them verbal events. This is written language which is read out
(which is why I have transcribed it as written sentences). It is
a series of categorical statements -— declarative sentences,
unmodalized — which authoritatively claim knowledge of events.
The discourses drawn upon are public discourses. This is evident in
the vocabulary, which is drawn from discourses of official politics
and diplomacy (e.g. under severe strain, the peace process) and official
police discourse (e.g. the categorization of nationalist reaction as
violence and of police reaction to it as responding). Categorization in
news (another example here is the categorization of certain areas as
nationalist rather than, say, Catholic) is carefully calculated in rela-
tion to the range of discourses within the field of politics, and is
itself a potential focus of political struggle. The public nature of the
discourse is also evident in the grammar — in the density of
nominalizations (in just the first two sentences: Anglo-Irish relations,
the Government's handling of the Orange Order march, the Orange Order
march, the decision to allow the marchers through, a serious mistake, the
peace process) and in agentless passive clauses (hundreds of petrol
bombs were thrown at them, shots were fired at a police station in west
Belfast). Both of these grammatical features background the actions
and agency of people.
In contrast with the news, the rest of the Today programme
is dominated by dialogue (and especially interview) between the
 Political Discourse in the Media 155

‘presenters and most of the agents referred to above. The different

agents bring a variety of discourses into the dialogue: political,
diplomatic, legal, administrative, religious. The presenters have a
crucial and distinctive role in articulating different discourses to-
gether: in their interaction with interviewees, they give voice to
discourses brought to the dialogue by other agents. But the dis-
course which is predominant in the talk of the presenters is one
which they bring to the dialogue themselves (apart from its
marginal presence in readers’ letters, which are in any case voiced —
selectively quoted from — by the presenters themselves): it is a
lifeworld discourse, the presenters’ version of the discourse of ordi-
nary people in ordinary life. I suggest that this is the crux of the
Today programme’s intervention to shape the way the political dis-
course is articulated: the programme centres the discourse of ordi-
nary life, confronting the various discourses within the political
order of discourse with the presenters’ lifeworld discourse. Today
projects a version of the order of political discourse in which all
other discourses are evaluated against this lifeworld discourse.
The following extract from an interview between John
Humphrys and the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, David
Trimble, illustrates this (a dot in parentheses indicates a pause of
less than a second; square brackets indicate overlapping talk; a
colon indicates prolongation of the immediately preceding sound):

BBC Radio 4, Today programme, 13 July 1996

Trimble: had the (.) Orange Order not reacted in the way that it
did and had it not given leadership in the way that it did the
consequences for the whole community in Northern Ireland
would have been much much worse
Humphrys: had the Orange Order withdrawn from Dumcree
Drumcree had it said alright we will not go ahead with this
march becau- peace is more important than a march none of
this would have happened
Trimble: no that’s quite wrong that’s completely and utterly
wrong because had the Orange Order acted in the way that
you said (.) or suggested (.) then the situation would have
been much worse [now
Humphrys: ba
Trimble: well this is what (.) I’m sorry to say (.) neither Mr
Alderdyce (.) nor the Northern Ireland Office appreciated (.)
156 Norman Fairclough

they didn’t appreciate the strength of feeling that existed

throughout the community in Northern Ireland (.) and had
the Orange Order collapsed in the way you suggested (.)
then there would have been (.) spontaneous e: (.) outbursts
in Northern Ireland there would have been a flood of sup-
port for the paramilitaries and the loyalist paramil- the
loyal- the loyalist truce would have collapsed
Humphrys: well what you’re telling me is the be
Trimble: (unclear)
serious disorder
Humphrys: what you're telling me is that the Unionist leader-
ship cannot control its members

Humphrys’ first contribution is discoursally heterogeneous. His

first clause (had the Orange Order withdrawn from Dumcree Drumcree)
echoes Trimble’s discourse of political argumentation, repeating
both the formal hypothetical syntactic construction and the expres-
sion the Orange Order. But his second combines the same syntactic
construction with a shift into direct speech (alright we will not go
ahead with this march . . .) which effects a shift from a discourse of the
political system into the lifeworld discourse (also evoked by none of
this would have happened). In the case of peace is more important than
a march, on the other hand, Humphrys is perhaps confronting
Trimble with an echo of the discourse of political agents critical of
the Unionists (cf. Greatbatch, this volume). Humphrys’ closing con-
tribution is a challenging reformulation of what Trimble has said
which the latter unsurprisingly does not accept. There are a number
of others in the interview: well what you're telling me again in that case
is that the mob rules; well is it that or is it one group of people in Northern
Ireland reminding another group of people who is top dog. These
reformulations involve again a shift in discourse, a shift to the
lifeworld discourse in the latter two examples, a shift to the dis-
course of anti-Unionist political agents in the case of the example in
the extract above.
Humphrys’ other turn, when he interrupts Trimble with the
question why?, points to the need to elaborate the analytical frame-
work I am using. The word is articulated with a rise + fall intona-
tion contour which reaches a high pitch level. It is a rather
aggressive challenge, not just a question, and it expresses incredu-
 Political Discourse in the Media 157

lity. What is significant about it is that it works sensually and

effectively to evoke a particular voice, a particular personality type,
and associated values — what I wish to sum up as a particular ethos
(see Fairclough, 1992). It is the ethos of common sense — common-
sense values, common-sense attitudes, people who possess com-
mon sense. Obviously it goes together with the lifeworld discourse
I have been referring to: the presenters’ version of the discourse of
ordinary life. But whereas the concept of a discourse is centrally
ideational/referential and to do with how the world is constructed,
the concept of ethos centres upon the identities and values that are
evoked by particular communicative styles, including quite subtle
aspects of pronunciation and prosody.
Today is not only effecting a particular articulation between
discourses which privileges the lifeworld discourse; it is also effect-
ing a parallel articulation between ethoses which privileges com-
mon sense. In that Humphrys does the main interviews in this
particular programme, the privileged ethos is more specifically a
white, male and English common sense. For example, why? in the
extract above evokes for me a talkative lower-middle-class white
Englishman propping up the lounge bar on a Sunday lunchtime.
This is, of course, just my personal reaction, but the general point is
that discoursal markers of ethos do work sensuously by evoking
particular people, places, emotions and sensations. The confronting
of the political ethos of David Trimble (or the markedly different
one of Gerry Adams) with the ethos of common sense therefore
carries an undercurrent of the confrontation of Irishness by
Englishness.
In the case of Sir Patrick Mayhew, by contrast, it strikes me that
there is a social class dimension to the confrontation:

Mayhew: the Chief Constable has made it clear he was faced (.)
with a new situation when there was a risk of 50,000 or
many more Unionist e: Orange supporters (.) converging
upon Portadown and he was faced with the serious risk of
lives being lost and he said it was not worth the risk of
losing a (.) life I think (.) that those who are critical now of e:
what took place and of the Chief Constable’s decision (.)
have to be asked and have to answer the question how
many lives would it have been satisfactory to have lost
158 Norman Fairclough

acceptable to have lost (.) in order to stand by a decision

taken in different circumstances five days ago
Humphrys: so in other words if there are enough of them the
rule of law gives way
Mayhew: no the rule of law is applied (.) the Ee
Humphrys: but we didn’t
see the rule of law (Mayhew: no no) the Chief Constable did
not want that march to go ahead. (Mayhew: no just) he gave
in because there were so many of them that’s what he
said
Mayhew: the Chief Constable applied the same law that he
applied on Thursday on the sixth of July and that law re-
quires him (.) to take account of likely (.) serious (.) disorder
(.) he applied a consistent test what had changed were the
circumstances now I regard it (.) as absolutely wrong and
irresponsible (.) that a vast number of people should have
been threatening to overwhelm the police lines supported
as they would have been (.) by (.) the army I regard that as
calculated to cause (.) very serious disorder and (.) serious
(.) risk of loss of life that was exactly what the Chief Con-
stable assumed
Humphrys: but they got their way so they can do it again

There is a strong presence of legal discourse in Mayhew’s contribu-

tions throughout this interview, evident here for instance in that law
requires him to take account of likely serious disorder. In this case,
Mayhew is stating what the law is (in others above, he is making
assertions about how the Chief Constable applied the law), and
doing so in an authoritative, even pontificating, way. It is a categori-
cal assertion (like many of Mayhew’s sentences), and one feature of
its authoritative delivery which is indicated in the transcription is
the rhythm of the last three words — likely (.) serious (.) disorder —
(presumably quoted from the law) which is even and slow (note the
pauses between the words), giving a weightiness to the words.
Claiming a specialist knowledge of the law and a capacity to judge
its application is itself a basis for authoritative talk. But Mayhew’s
authoritativeness also has another basis which is not evident from
the transcription: his marked upper-middle-class accent and the
easy authority of his delivery overall manifest a social facility which
is a feature of upper-middle-class cultural capital and ethos
 Political Discourse in the Media 159

(Bourdieu, 1984). Humphrys’ lifeworld discourse and common-

sense ethos undermine the taken-for-granted superiority of this
upper-middle-class cultural capital, challenge Mayhew’s authorita-
tiveness, and in so doing take on a class force in this context which
they do not have elsewhere.
This example is already shifting us from the first to the second of
my questions, which I just wish to touch briefly upon — how are the
resources of the order of discourse interactively used? In addition
to looking at the transcriptions above from a structural perspective
in terms of the articulations they effect between discourses, one
can look at them from an interactive perspective in terms of how
participants use the resources available to interactively manage
their social relations. For instance, in the interview with Mayhew,
Humphrys is faced with the difficult task of challenging a
Minister who has played a questionable role in the emergence
of this new crisis in Northern Ireland but who has exceptional
cultural and rhetorical resources and authority at his disposal.
Perhaps it is because Humphrys sees a danger that Mayhew’s auth-
oritative pronouncements will swamp his challenges that he is
rather aggressive in repeating them, as in the extract above, inter-
rupting Mayhew to do so and talking over his attempts to retake the
floor:
but we didn’t see the rule of law (Mayhew: no no) the Chief
Constable did not want that march to go ahead. (Mayhew: no
just) he gave in because there were so many of them that’s
what he said
The particular style of interview used here, including Humphrys’
willingness to argue rather than just ask questions, to object, inter-
rupt, is a matter of genre: interviewers have a repertoire of variants
of interview genre available which they can deploy strategically
according to interactional circumstances, as well as developing their
own preferred interviewing styles. Another strategy here which
Humphrys often uses in moments of difficulty is attribution —
claiming to be reporting what the Chief Constable said (cf.
Greatbatch, this volume). However, the formulation of this reported
statement draws upon a lifeworld discourse which the Chief Con-
stable himself would be very unlikely to use — I gave in because there
were so many of them is quite implausible. Humphrys is using
lifeworld discourse (including also deictic features: we, that march)
160 Norman Fairclough

in a rhetorically effective way here to deal with the interactional

problem of challenging Mayhew’s account.
To close the discussion of this example, I wish to return to the
sharp distinction I noted earlier between news and dialogical ele-
ments in the Today programme. We might see this distinction in
terms of a bifurcation of the institutional voice: news maintains
some of the authority and distance traditionally associated with the
voice of the BBC, whereas the dialogical elements mark a shift away
from authority and distance to a voice which simulates and takes its
legitimation from the voices and discourses of ordinary life and
their common-sense ethos. This appears to be a democratizing
move, but it is at the same time an institutionally controlled democ-
ratization: the voices of ordinary people are ‘ventriloquized’ rather
than directly heard. It is also arguably a democratization which is
open to manipulation: it lends a democratic legitimacy which can be
used.
The Today programme manifests a more general tendency affect-
ing contemporary public discourse which I have referred to as the
‘conversationalization’ of public discourse: that is, the modelling of
public discourse on ordinary conversation (Fairclough, 1994). An
optimistic reading of this development would see it simply as a
facet of cultural democratization. But there are difficulties with such
an account: conversationalization is generally imposed from above,
ordinary people have little control over it, and the relationship
between the simulated versions of conversation which it generates
and people’s real conversation is problematic.
Conversationalization strikes me as neither simply democratic,
nor simply engineered for institutional purposes, but as ambivalent,
and a focus of struggle. This points again to the importance of
Bourdieu’s argument that any particular discursive event should be
located within a field of discourse and the social forces which shape
it. In the case of political discourse, one needs to know first how
political talk in a programme like Today stands in relation to other
political discourse inside and outside the media — its relationship to
the structured order of political discourse — and then how it stands
in relation to the whole field and practice of politics and the wider
social forces which frame it. Only within such a perspective can one
decide what to make of the conversationalized discourse of the
Today programme.
 Political Discourse in the Media 161

5 Conclusion

I have given only a very partial illustration of how the proposed

analytical framework for mediatized political discourse might be
used. The framework is also, I think, of value in exploring the
emergence of new practices — new genres, new discourses, through
the articulation together in new ways of existing ones. I have dis-
cussed such processes elsewhere with respect to transformations of
the genre of political interview (Fairclough, 1995b) and with respect
to the constitution of a new political discourse, that of Thatcherism
(Fairclough, 1989, 1995a).
The value of this approach is that it avoids particular discursive
events and texts being treated in isolation from the orders of dis-
course and the wider social fields and processes they are embedded
within. A corresponding difficulty with the approach is that one
needs an overall sense of the order of discourse and the social order
in analysing individual discursive events and texts. One needs,
for instance, a sense of the range of genres and discourses used
within the political order of discourse as a horizon against which to
assess the genres and discourses drawn upon in a particular discur-
sive event. It is ultimately the objective of a research programme
using the framework I have suggested to map the genres and dis-
courses of the order of discourse. But meanwhile, readers using
this approach have to rely upon a mixture of their own cultural
knowledge and what published accounts there are of political
discourse.
I will conclude with a summary of the approach in terms of six
questions which one can ask about a particular discursive event
(e.g. a newspaper article, or a radio or television programme) within
mediatized politics:

1 Who are the political agents involved, and what genres, dis-
courses and ethoses are drawn upon?
2 How are they articulated together?
3 How is this articulation realized in the forms and meanings of
the text?
4 How are the resources of the order of discourse drawn upon in
the management of interaction?
162 Norman Fairclough

5 What particular direction does this (type of) discursive event

give to the articulation of the political order of discourse?
6 What wider social and cultural processes shape and are shaped
by the way this discursive event articulates genres, discourses
and ethoses?

NOTES

Iam grateful to Erzsebet Barat, Carlos Gouveia and Anna Mauranen, Celia
Ladeira Mota, and Sari Pietikainen, for their comments on a draft of this
paper.

1 A term suggested to me by Anna Mauranen.

2 The unionists are in favour of the continuation of the union (i.e. North-
ern Ireland being a part of the UK), whereas the nationalists favour the
reunification of Ireland.
 Conversation Analysis:
Neutralism in British
News Interviews
~David Greatbatch

1 Introduction

The approach and findings of Conversation Analysis (henceforth

CA) have been used to examine several forms of broadcast talk,
including news interviews, talk shows and phone-in programmes
(Crow, 1986; Clayman, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993; Clayman and
Whalen, 1988/89; Greatbatch, 1986, 1988, 1992; Heritage, 1985;
Heritage, Clayman and Zimmerman, 1988; Heritage and
Greatbatch, 1991; Heritage and Roth, 1995; Hutchby, 1991). This
research aims to explicate the routine, institutionalized speaking
practices associated with particular forms of broadcast talk, and to
consider how these practices enable and constrain programme par-
ticipants as they pursue their various tasks and objectives. In this
chapter, I illustrate the perspective of CA through an exemplary
study of television and radio news interviews broadcast in the
United Kingdom.
Several studies of the news interview have been conducted by
researchers using analytical frameworks other than CA (e.g. Bull,
164 David Greatbatch

1994; Harris, 1991). However, whereas these investigations code

and assess news interview conduct, CA studies focus on the locally
produced orderliness of news interview encounters. That is to say,
they describe the practices and conventions that speakers use and
rely upon in order to ‘bring off’ their interactions as news inter-
views. In so doing, these studies illuminate the ways in which the
statements of news-makers and commentators are shaped and
informed by the conventionalized speaking practices which
characterize this form of broadcast talk.
Having outlined the methodological framework of CA, I illus-
trate the approach by examining the relationship between the con-
duct of participants in UK news interviews and a central constraint
associated with broadcast journalism in the UK, namely that broad-
cast journalists should maintain balance and impartiality in their
coverage of news and current affairs. I conclude by discussing some
of the analytic implications of the research, and by suggesting some
directions for future research.

2 Conversation Analysis

CA emerged in the 1960s, as part of the research programme of

ethnomethodology which developed from a series of seminal stud-
ies conducted by Harold Garfinkel (1967). From the 1950s onwards,
Garfinkel developed an approach to the study of social life which
recognizes the interpretative character of situated human action
and which is concerned with explicating the competencies which
underlie the production and intelligibility of everyday social actions
and activities.
The pioneering research of Sacks and his colleagues, Schegloff
and Jefferson, led to the emergence of a substantial corpus of
ethnomethodological studies concerned with illuminating the
social organization which underlies intelligible spoken interaction.
These studies were inspired, in particular, by Sacks’ proposal that
the analysis of tape recordings of talk-in-interaction provides the
possibility of developing a ‘naturalistic observation discipline
which [can] deal with the details of social action(s) rigorously, em-
pirically, and formally’ (Schegloff and Sacks, 1974: 233). The meth-
odological framework developed in these studies came to be known
as Conversation Analysis.
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 165

CA involves detailed, qualitative analysis of audio and video

recordings of naturally occurring social interaction. CA research
does not involve the formulation and empirical testing of a priori
hypotheses; rather, it uses inductive search procedures to identify
regularities in verbal and/or non-verbal interaction. The objective is
to explicate the practices and reasoning which speakers use and rely
upon in producing their own behaviour and interpreting and deal-
ing with the behaviour of others. The central resource out of which
analysis emerges are the moment-to-moment understandings of
their circumstances that parties unavoidably display as they inter-
act with each other.
In locating and analysing recurring patterns of action and inter-
action, CA researchers repeatedly replay their audio or video re-
cordings of naturally occurring interaction, carefully transcribing
the events. The transcripts capture not only what is said, but also a
variety of details of speech production, such as overlapping talk,
pauses within and between utterances, stress, pitch and volume.
They may also track visual conduct such as gaze direction and
gesture. These transcripts facilitate the fine-grained analysis of
the recordings, enabling researchers to reveal and analyse tacit,
‘seen but unnoticed’ aspects of human conduct which would other-
wise be unavailable for systematic study. Moreover, extracts from
the transcripts are included in research reports as exemplars of
interactional phenomena under investigation.
Although CA began from the study of ordinary conversations, it
has increasingly been used to explicate the competencies underly-
ing social activities within a range of other forms of interaction,
including medical consultations, broadcast interviews, calls for
emergency assistance, business meetings, divorce mediation ses-
sions, small claims courts, and psychiatric intake interviews (see, for
example, Atkinson and Heritage, 1984; Button and Lee, 1986; Boden
and Zimmerman, 1992; Drew and Heritage, 1992). It has also been
extended to encompass visual as well as vocal conduct (e.g.
Goodwin, 1981; Heath, 1986). Thus, despite its name, CA represents
a generic approach to the study of social interaction. (For introduc-
tions to CA, see Goodwin and Heritage, 1990; Heath and Luff, 1993;
Heritage, 1989; Zimmerman, 1988; Greatbatch, Heath, Luff and
Campion, 1995.)
CA research on the news interview has focused on various as-
pects of news interview interaction in the UK and the USA. These
166 David Greatbatch

include the allocation of opportunities to speak (Greatbatch, 1988;

Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991), the design of interviewer utter-
ances and interviewee responses (Greatbatch, 1986; Clayman, 1988,
1992, 1993; Heritage and Roth, 1995; Schegloff, 1988/1989), topic
introduction and change (Greatbatch, 1986), openings and closings
(Clayman, 1989, 1991) and disagreement between interviewees
(Greatbatch, 1992). These studies describe recurrent patterns of
interaction and the normative orientations and conventions which
underpin them. They explicate how various features embody and
exhibit the institutionality of an interaction in general, and its char-
acter as a news interview in particular. This involves detailed con-
sideration not only of cases which exhibit conformity with news
interview conventions, but also those which involve departures
from them (Clayman and Whalen, 1988/89; Schegloff, 1988/89;
Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991).
CA research has, then, illuminated the relationship between the
interactional practices used in news interviews and the tasks and
constraints associated with this form of broadcast journalism (cf. the
approach taken by Fairclough, this volume). Below, I illustrate this
through a consideration of several aspects of conduct in contem-
porary news interviews in the UK. In so doing, I draw on previous
research by Steven Clayman, John Heritage and myself (Clayman,
1988, 1992; Heritage, 1985; Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991; Heritage,
Clayman and Zimmerman, 1988; Greatbatch, 1988). The data are
audio and video recordings of television and radio interviews
broadcast by the BBC in the UK. These are part of a larger corpus of
recordings collected since the late 1970s from a variety of sources.

3 Neutrality and the British News Interview

The news interview has been an important component of broadcast

journalism in the UK since the mid-1950s. Its basic function is, of
course, the communication of information or opinion from public
figures, experts or other persons in the news for the benefit of the
news audience. The task of the news interviewer (henceforth IR)
is to elicit information and opinion from them and, in some
circumstances, to probe or test the views they express.
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 167

However, in managing these tasks, IRs must attend to a con-

straint that bears on all broadcast journalists in the UK. This is the
legal requirement that they should maintain impartiality and
balance in their coverage of news and current affairs and should
refrain from editorial comment on matters of public policy.
This requirement is laid down in the charters, licences and Broad-
casting Act which set the terms of reference for television and radio
broadcasting organizations, and there are penalties for infringe-
ment. In the context of the news interview (in which professional
journalists are regarded as representatives of the news organiza-
tions that employ them), these obligations effectively translate into
the requirement that IRs should (1) refrain from the direct assertion
of opinions on their own or their employers’ behalf, and (2) refrain
from overt affiliation with, or disaffiliation from, those expressed by
interviewees (henceforth IEs) (Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991). Rec-
ognizing that IRs’ neutralistic utterances often embody assump-
tions that are either supportive of or hostile to the positions of IEs
and cannot be regarded as neutral, CA researchers refer to this
stance ‘as embodying a position of “formal neutrality” or, more
simply, as a “neutralistic stance”’ (Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991:
107).
It is important to be clear about how the term ‘neutralistic’ is
being used here. The term describes a manner or style of interview-
ing; it refers to patterns of IR conduct which can escape formal
charges of bias — whether in the interview context itself or beyond.
As such, it does not involve judgements about the substantive neu-
trality or bias which may be held to inhere in IR conduct (Heritage
and Greatbatch, 1991; Clayman, 1992). The maintenance of a
neutralistic stance by IRs does not, then, guarantee that their con-
duct will be viewed as neutral in a substantive sense. IRs may
obviously be accused of bias even though they have avoided the
direct expression of opinion. For example, the use of aggressive or
hostile lines of questioning may be taken as reflecting bias on the
part of an IR (Clayman and Whalen, 1988/89). Or relatedly, accusa-
tions of bias may be based on apparent discrepancies between the
ways in which different categories of IE are interviewed (Hall,
1973b; Schlesinger, Murdock and Elliot, 1983; Jucker, 1986). None
the less, the maintenance of a neutralistic stance provides IRs with
a first line of defence against such charges.
168 David Greatbatch

4 The Maintenance of Interviewer Neutralism

IRs characteristically display an orientation to the constraint that

they should maintain a neutralistic stance by producing utterances
that are at least minimally recognizable as ‘questions’ and/or dis-
tancing themselves from evaluative statements by attributing them
to third parties (who may or may not be named) (Heritage, 1985;
Greatbatch, 1988; Clayman, 1988, 1992). IRs also avoid responses
which are characteristically produced by ‘questioners’ in private
conversation, as well as other forms of broadcast talk (Greatbatch,
1988; Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991), but which could be taken as
indications of agreement or disagreement with what an IE has said.
Thus there is an almost complete absence of acknowledgment
tokens (‘mm hm’, ‘huh huh’, ‘yes’ etc.), news receipt objects (‘oh’,
‘really’, ‘did you’ etc.) and assessments (Heritage, 1985). By these
means, IRs present themselves as soliciting the opinions of others,
rather than expressing their own views: that is, they advance a
neutralistic stance.
However, as Clayman notes, ‘neutralism’ does not inhere solely
in the conduct of individuals, in this case news IRs (Clayman, 1988,
1992; and see also Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991; Greatbatch and
Dingwall, forthcoming). Other participants may challenge or
undermine the neutralistic stance advanced by an individual by
constituting them as advocates of either personal or institutional
positions. The ability of an individual to occupy a neutralistic posi-
tion in talk-in-interaction is thus dependent upon the collaboration
of other participants.
IEs usually collaborate in the maintenance of the neutralistic
stance advanced by IRs. They do not generally treat IR utterances as
expressing or indexing personal standpoints, regardless of their
private opinions about the IRs’ motivations. Instead, IEs treat IR
utterances as soliciting their viewpoint on the issues raised. This is
illustrated by the following case which is taken from an interview
between Sir Robin Day and Arthur Scargill, then president of the
National Union of Mineworkers, broadcast on 13 March 1979. At
the time of the interview, Scargill and Mick McGahey, the Scottish
mineworkers’ leader, were rivals for the presidency of the NUM.
Transcription conventions are set out in the appendix to this
chapter.
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 169

(1) BBC Radio 4: World at One

IR: .hhh er What's the difference between your marxism and
Mister McGahey’s communism.
AS: er The difference is that it’s the press that constantly call
me a ma:rxist when I do not, (.) and never have (.) er er
given that description of myself.
[hh I-
IR: [But I’ve heard...
In responding to the IR’s question, Scargill rejects its presupposition
that he is a marxist. However, he does so without directly challeng-
ing the neutralistic stance of the IR. First, he explicitly frames his
response as an answer to the IR’s question by repeating its frame
(‘the difference is’). Second, he treats the presupposition as involv-
ing an error of fact (ascribed to ‘the press’), not as the expression of
the IR’s opinion. During the course of the answer, the IR underlines
his role as a ‘neutralistic’ elicitor of opinion by withholding re-
sponse tokens which could be taken as agreement or disagreement
with what the IE is saying.
In Extract 2, we find a similar process after an IR produces a free-
standing evaluative statement which directly counters what the IE
has said in response to an earlier question. This case is drawn from
a BBC interview with Neil Kinnock, then leader of the Labour Party.
It begins just after Kinnock has asserted that a recent Labour Party
policy review is consistent with traditional socialist values.
(2) BBC Television: Newsnight
1 Kin: ...What you gain of course is a ma:jor (.) taproot .hh
of socialism.
2 IR: The argument goes of course that (.) this sort of social-
ism which you
3 descri:be is defined by Missus Thatcher the fact that
you've -hhh
4 given up (.) old nationalization you've given up (.) .h
the sort of
2: taxa:tion which you would have employed ten years
ago you've
6 given up unilateral nuclear disarmament. She has
defined the way
7 you have changed.
170 David Greatbatch

8 Kin: Anyone would (.) who thought that ten years could
pass (0.5) in: any
9g (.) point of history and not make any difference to the
terrain .hhh eh
10 (.) in which you have to fight and the appeal that you
have to make
11 would be: an absolute (.) fool. I suppose I could rebut
the claim by
12 quoting (.) Idon’t know (0.2) Trotsky. I:t was not from
our own
13 genius that we made the revolution but from: the
inheritance
14 bequeathed to us by capitalism. .hhh And that was an
15 acknowledgement a pragmatic acknowledgement of
reality just as we
16 know now. .hhh But the passage of time (0.3) the
change in the
lige economy (0.1) .h the fact that ten years have gone on:
(0.2) .h means
18 that (.) it is now (.) in the early nineties that we have to
relate to (0.1)
19 n:ot to the late seventies or even (.) .h the nineteen
fo:rties.

At lines 2-7, the IR produces an assertion which directly challenges

Kinnock’s view that the Labour Party’s policy review is in accord
with socialist values by proposing that the review has been ‘de-
fined’ by the agenda and policies of Margaret Thatcher’s Conserva-
tive administration. However, he does not do this on his own
behalf; rather he describes it as an argument that is made (although
he does not attribute the argument to anyone in particular). As such,
the IR does not go on the record with a personal endorsement of the
counter-assertion and thereby avoids direct disagreement with the
IE (Clayman, 1988, 1992). Correspondingly, Kinnock does not treat
the utterance as expressing the IR’s own opinion. Instead he treats
the assertion anonymously (‘I suppose I could rebut the claim
by ...’). As he does so, moreover, the IR remains silent, thereby
withholding response tokens which might compromise his institu-
tionalized role.
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 171

In each of these cases, IRs produce utterances which embody

contentious propositions with which the IE may be expected to
disagree. However, they are careful not to present them as overt
expressions of their own or their employers’ opinions. The proposi-
tions are respectively formulated as a ‘factual’ presupposition of a
question and as the view of unnamed third parties. Correspond-
ingly, the IEs do not challenge or comment on the presuppositions
or character of the IRs’ utterances. They treat the IRs’ utterances as
interactionally neutralistic; as designed to solicit their opinions,
rather than to express those of the IRs themselves (Clayman, 1988,
1992; Greatbatch, 1988; Heritage, 1985; Heritage and Greatbatch,
1991). As such, they collaborate in the constitution of IRs as
neutralistic ‘questioners’.

5 Departures from Neutralistic Interviewing

The collaborative maintenance of the IR’s neutralistic stance is not

inevitable. To begin with, IRs may openly constitute themselves as
advocates of particular standpoints. Examples of this are extremely
rare and are largely restricted to interviews with the representatives
of groups or nations that are widely perceived in the West to be
criminal, terrorist or anti-democratic. The following example froma
radio interview with a Soviet journalist, broadcast on 24 January
1980, provides a rare example of an IR openly and unilaterally
abandoning a neutralistic stance.
The journalist had written a letter to The Times objecting to at-
tempts by the United States government to organize a boycott of the
forthcoming Olympic Games in Moscow in protest at the Soviet
Union’s recent invasion of Afghanistan. The IR, Sir Robin Day,
points to an apparent contradiction in the IE’s position after the
latter argues that the call for a boycott is illegitimate because the
Olympics should be above politics. If the IE believes this, then why
is he against the Olympic Games being held in South Africa? The IE
responds by suggesting that the South African case concerns the
denial of human rights to the black majority, whereas the Soviet
situation is a political matter. The IR responds with a hostile ques-
tion which challenges the JE’s right to talk about human rights
172 David Greatbatch

given that the Soviet Union has exiled a leading dissident, Andrei
Sakharov.

(3) BBC Radio 4: World at One

1 IR: What right have you got to talk about human rights
when your (.)
2 country has just er .h taken away the liberty of Andrei
Sakharov er
3 -hh for his er -hh opinio:ns.
4 (.)
SB: Well it’s not for his opinions. Bu::t .h for e::r u- what (.)
you .hhh er
may er ( )- er what we say here in the Soviet Union for
-hhh usi:ng (.)
er the Soviet people to become (_ )- (to influence of er
hostile ad-
er- er - er- hostile actions) and interferences into the
Soviet .hhh
K )]
RG [But how could y-] how could you talk about human
rights when
Doctor Sakharov has been banished .hhh without (.)
tria::1 (.) .hh er
and without as far as we can see any form of just (.)
process.
SB: Well e can say about an- er uhm any of the administra-
tive actions
taken by the British government
[in Ulste or NorthlJern Ireland or in other=
IR: [Well I’m talking about the-]
SB: =parts. But this has [had nothing to do with] the
human=
IR: [Well if you’d like tu-]
SB: =rights of sportsmen.=
IR: =If you’d like [to] give- if you’d like to give
me an=
SB: lof-]
IR: =exam[ple I'll deal with it.]
SB: [They are infringed] by the: uhm by this threat
to boycott
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 173

24 Olympic Ga:[mes.
258K: [But why- why is Doctor Sakharov . . .

At lines 5-9 the IE, Begloff, takes issue with the IR’s proposition that
Sakharov has been exiled because of his opinions. He begins by
disagreeing with the proposition (‘Well it’s not for his opinions’)
and then provides an alternative reason for Sakharov’s imprison-
ment. However, despite the hostility of the IR’s ‘question’, the IE
does not directly undermine the neutralistic stance which the IR has
thus far sought to maintain in the interview. Subsequently, how-
ever, the IR himself departs from this stance.
Notice, first, that in his response (at lines 5-9), the IE uses the
collective pronoun ‘we’ (’... but what we say here in the Soviet
Union’), rather than a third person reference such as ‘what they
say’ or ‘what the government say(s)’. As such, he explicitly con-
stitutes himself as a ‘spokesperson’ for the Soviet nation as opposed
to, for example, an independent political commentator. The IR
subsequently adopts a similar stance. Thus, although the IR
produces a question-formatted utterance, he explicitly aligns
(through the use of ‘we’) with the proposition that Sakharov
has been banished ‘without as far as we can see any form of
just (.) process’ (lines 10-12). Here, then, the IR departs from a
neutralistic stance by speaking on behalf of ‘we’ in the ‘West’.
Moreover, the IR continues to act in this vein after the IE attempts to
draw a comparison between the case of Sakharov and the actions of
the British government in Northern Ireland (lines 13-24). Instead of
merely asking the IE to substantiate this claim, he invites him to
provide an example and announces his willingness to deal with
it. The IR thus abandons a neutralistic interviewing style, adopt-
ing instead the role of advocate. The situation is transformed
from a neutralistic interview with a Soviet journalist into a
‘debate’ between spokespersons representing different political
perspectives.’
In cases such as this, IRs step outside the normal bounds of
acceptability by constituting themselves as the representatives of
particular groups or nations. This results in the interview being
transformed into a radically different event than is the norm; one
in which the actions, views or intentions of IEs and/or the
organizations or nations that they represent are treated as ‘beyond
the pale’.” Here broadcasters become advocates, speaking on behalf
174 David Greatbatch

of ‘democracy’, ‘decency’, ‘basic human rights’ and the like. Such

cases define the boundaries of neutralism in news interview con-
duct and emphasize the caution exercised by IRs when dealing with
mainstream political figures, even in ostensibly hostile interviews.
However, the collaborative constitution of IRs as neutralistic is
more commonly undermined as a result of the actions of IEs. Such
departures are normally brief (even when JEs openly characterize
IRs as having expressed a point of view on their own behalf)
(Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991). On the one hand, IRs defend their
neutralism by, for example, distancing themselves from contested
propositions or presuppositions or, alternatively, reasserting their
factual status. On the other hand, IEs quickly revert to the tacit rules
of the ‘interview game’ by once again collaborating in the constitu-
tion of the IR as an elicitor, as opposed to an advocate of opinion
(Heritage and Greatbatch, 1991).
However, IEs sometimes do mount sustained attacks on the con-
duct of IRs. The following example is from an interview with the
leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, Paddy Ashdown. The inter-
view was conducted on BBC Television’s news and current affairs
programme Newsnight on 7 December 1993, shortly after the Liberal
Democratic Party in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets was
accused of circulating racist literature in order to enhance its pros-
pects in local elections. The extract opens with the IR asking
Ashdown to respond to the proposition that the Liberal Democratic
Party is ‘immature... irresponsible... undisciplined... un-
serious’ (lines 1-5).

(4) BBC Television: Newsnight

1 IR: S:o (0.2) you have loose cannons. (0.2) on your deck
jus:t (.)
2 as you rightly say a:ll parties have. -hh But if we
generously put
3 this do:wn to (0.1) over exuberance. (0.2) tch .hh (0.1)
doesn’t
4 that suggest that your party is still: (0.2) immatur:e.
(0.3)
5 irresponsible (.) undisciplin:ed h (0.2) unserious.
6 Ash: Well, (0.2) prove tha:t.
7 (0.6)
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 175

Ash: You made th’proposition, (0.2) propose it to me.=

IR: =Well, (0.1) I’m saying t’you: that h (e)this (.) e:h(w)-
is what
appears that the: allegations in:- in[: uh (ha ha ha)
Ash: [So you have one
council:
[which question ( )-
TR: [No, (.) hang on, there are also allegations in: uh- eh-
uh- by
Emma Nicholson of <dirty tricks, .hh there is-=but
this leads t’
th’more>[se:rious cha:rge. if I mayl[put it like this.
[ .h that you=
Ash: [But- [But Ja:mes,
[whatever
IR: =are- maybe you are opportu:ne- that you are
opportunists. ]
Ash: you- ( ) (never) made a very serious cha:rge. Perhaps
you let-]
(.)
Ash: Perhaps you- (.) Well- (0.1) again:, (.) .h before you:
recy:cl:e.
(0.2) conservative (0.1) propaga:nda. (0.2) as fact, (0.2)
justify
(.)
IR: -hhh lam putting th’char:[ges Mister Ashdo:wn.
Ash: [But you see you ca:n’t, that’s
th [‘point.
IR: [I- oh a:bsolutely you can: because .hh it i:s- it is:
uch not
just conservative propaganda nor is _ labour
propaganda=it is .hh
(.) it is (.) wi:dely belie:ved. h .h that [you::- (.) that you
Ash: [huh huh.
(0.2)
IR: tailor (0.2) your politica[l (pote). you massa:ge (0.2)
your:
Ash: [C’n-
176 David Greatbatch

34 IR: message.=
35 Ash: =But Jame[s-
SGr IR: [That you- .h That [you are (to:rie:s)
Dr aeASIE [James-
38 (0.2)
39 IR: ( [ ) [(that you) () labour and labour[().
40 Ash: [James, [you’ve made- [you’ve
made a
41 very se:rious (Tower) ( ). (0.1) We’re dealing with
that. .hh give
42 justification. .hh Were you _ the:re? (0.2) at
Christchurch (0.1)
43 When I made it gu:ite clear t/people, .h that the al-
ternative
44 to VAT, (0.2) in order t’c- o:vercome our economic
problems
45 may well be raising income tax? (.) an’ a:sked them
t’vote f’r it?
46 IR: (.hh{hh.)
47 Ash: [Ninety percent put up their ha:nds, .hh you can-
not sa:y on
48 th’one ha:nd that we’ve got th’clearest an’you claim
most
49 unpopular policies in Europe. .hh and say that we
tailor our
50 policie:s. We’re the only pa:rty at th’last election. .hhh
who
51 put forward very clearly th’need t’have .hh an energy
maz:rket
52 system that would encourage efficiency, th’tories
campaigned up
53 and down th’country against it .hh and put some-
thing in place
54 a:fterwards.=

The IE does not treat the IR’s question as a neutral elicitor of opin-
ion. Rather, he responds by treating the IR as having made an
assertion that he can be challenged to ‘prove’ (‘Well prove that’)
and, subsequently, asserting that the IR has made a proposition
(‘You made the proposition (0.2) propose it to me’). Although the IR
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 177

defends the proposition, he reacts to the threat to his neutralism by

moving to distance himself from it (lines 9-10). However, before he
can name the authors of the allegations to which he refers, the IE
interrupts to complain that the allegations centre on the activities of
only a single council, Tower Hamlets. The implication here is
clearly that this is insufficient grounds on which to base the pro-
position that has been put to him by the IR. The IR counters by
suggesting that the allegations made against the Liberal Democratic
Party extend beyond the case of Tower Hamlets. In support of this
he references the allegations of ‘dirty tricks’ which have been made
against his party by Conservative MP Emma Nicholson (lines 9-15).
He then suggests that this leads to the still more serious charge that
the Liberal Democratic Party may be opportunists (lines 14-15, 17).
Although the IR’s conduct is consistent with the adoption of a
neutralistic stance, the IE responds by upgrading his attack on the
IR’s conduct. He states that the IR has made (not merely reported)
a very serious charge (line 18), and then accuses the IR of having
recycled Conservative Party propaganda (lines 20-21).
This is followed by an exchange during which the IR counters
continued IE criticism by justifying his actions on the grounds that
he is putting to Ashdown charges that have been widely raised, and
which are neither Tory nor Labour propaganda (lines 24-39).
Again, then, the IR continues to defend the introduction of the
proposition to which Ashdown has objected on the basis of the
views expressed by third parties. In doing this, he not only defends
his conduct, whilst exerting pressure on the IE to deal with the
issue; he also attempts to distance himself from the ‘allegations’ to
which he is asking Ashdown to respond. At no point, then, does the
IR personally affiliate with the proposition to which the IE so
strongly objects. As such, even in the heat of a sustained attack on
his conduct, his conduct remains largely, if not wholly, consistent
with the advancement of a neutralistic stance. However, Ashdown
declines to collaborate in the restoration of the IR’s neutralism. He
repeatedly treats the IR as having ‘taken a position’ by asking him
to ‘prove’ his proposition (lines 6 and 8), by asserting that the IR
‘has made a very serious charge’ (line 18), by accusing him of recyc-
ling Tory propaganda (lines 20-21), and, even after the IR has
repeatedly sought to distance himself from the charges through
third-party attribution, by again treating the proposition as one
for which the IR is personally accountable (lines 40—45). Lastly,
178 David Greatbatch

although he does finally respond to the propositions raised by the

IR (42ff), he directly formulates his statements as in opposition to
the IR (lines 47-49), rather than to the other parties mentioned by
the IR.
In sum, an orientation to IR neutrality is a pervasive feature of
news interviews in the UK. It infuses the conduct of both IRs and
IEs, informing the ways in which they solicit and proffer informa-
tion and opinion. IRs avoid the expression of opinionated state-
ments on their own behalf and refrain from open affiliation with, or
disaffiliation from, IE responses. [Es normally collaborate in the
preservation of the IRs’ neutralistic stance. As a general rule, they
treat IR conduct, regardless of how presuppositionally weighted
against their positions it might be, as part of the cut and thrust of the
modern interview. IRs are not treated as advocates of personal or
institutional positions, although IEs may well on occasion believe
them to be so. In contributing to the maintenance of neutralistic
interviewing, IEs exhibit a considerable degree of restraint, legiti-
mizing the conduct of IRs on a moment-to-moment basis and
thereby enabling IRs to present themselves as eliciting, testing and
probing the views of others without expressing opinions on their
own behalf. But this co-operation is not guaranteed. IEs may re-
spond to IR utterances in ways which, to varying degrees, challenge
or doubt their neutralism; that is, they may treat IRs as having taken
a position. Such threats to IR neutralism are usually relatively brief,
with IRs moving to repair the situation and IEs collaborating in the
restoration of ‘business as usual’. However, as the Ashdown exam-
ple illustrates, extended attacks on IR neutralism do occur and,
indeed, represent a potent weapon in the armoury of experienced
and accomplished public figures.

6 The Limits of Neutralism within the

News Interview

Attacks on IR neutralism are commonly associated with IR ques-

tions which display an expectation in favour of answers that are the
opposite to the stated or known positions of IEs. Thus, for example,
in extract (4) above, the IR uses a form of question which strongly
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 179

conveys an ‘expectation or preference for a particular type of re-

sponse’. Specifically, he uses a question frame which projects ac-
ceptance by the IE of the proposition that follows it, a proposition
with which the IE, as leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, can be
expected to strongly disagree.
The use of question forms such as this in conjunction with highly
contentious propositions lies at the limits of IR neutralism in the
contemporary UK interview. It is here that the co-operation be-
tween IR and IE which underpins ostensibly combative interviews
often breaks down, with IEs treating IRs as ‘taking a position’. In the
light of this, it is perhaps not surprising that when using these types
of question, IRs often take care to attribute the contentious proposi-
tions to third parties, with the use of third-party attribution acting
inter alia as an additional shield against attacks on their neutralism.
In the following example, John Redwood, a Conservative Minister
who subsequently resigned from the Cabinet in order to challenge
John Major for the leadership of the Conservative Party, is being
questioned about his opposition to the adoption by the UK of
European Union employment regulations.

(5) BBC Television: Newsnight

IR: Isn’t it a fact that the rather negative approach that you
seem to take (0.1) uh and I:’d and I’m using words charac-
terized by Mister Heseltine Mister Heath and o[thers -hhh
uh is in=
Red: [Mm
IR: =fact damaging (0.3) your chances of contributinlg to
the=
Red: [No
IR: =future of the community.
Red: What I've been saying tonight is not negative at a:ll I don’t
take a negative view of the community I think there’s a lot
to be gai:ned by Britain being an active member of Europe
(0.2) and being an active member of Europe means argu-
ing these very points and trying to point out to our (.)
community partners (0.2) that certain types of social regu-
lation and intervention (.) could wreck (.) .h the dream of
a more prosperous more open Europe (.) which is the one
that we suppo:rt.
180 David Greatbatch

Here the IR begins a question which clearly projects an expectation

or preference for acceptance of the proposition that is to follow
(‘Isn’t it a fact that . . .’). As the proposition emerges it becomes clear
that it is one which will characterize the IE’s position in terms that
he is unlikely to accept. However, instead of straightforwardly con-
tinuing through to completion, the IR interrupts himself in the
midst of the emerging proposition in order to attribute it to a
number of the IE’s colleagues in the Conservative Party (‘Mister
Heseltine Mister Heath and others’). In so doing, he produces a
question which strongly projects acceptance of a proposition that is
counter to the IE’s stated position, but, in contrast to the case above,
he distances himself from the proposition. Subsequently, the IE
rejects the proposition and in so doing treats the question as a
neutralistic object.”

7 The Relative Vulnerability of Free-Standing

Assertions By Interviewers

A number of IRs quite often produce evaluative statements without

either interrogative components or third-party attribution. What is
more, these utterances often involve provocative propositions
which are counter to the expected, known and/or stated views of
IEs. Interestingly, however, these utterances generally escape treat-
ment as non-neutralistic by IEs.
One reason for this may be that these statements are often de-
signed in ways which provide IEs with more room for manoeuvre
than do, for example, questions which project ‘preferred’ responses.
Consider the following example, which is taken from a BBC radio
interview with the Labour Party’s election campaign manager,
Brian Wilson. The interview concerns the dismissal of Baroness
Turner from the Labour Party’s front bench over her defence of a
political lobbying company, Ian Greer Associates, of which she is a
director. The company stands accused of paying Conservative MPs
to ask parliamentary questions. Although she had made no secret of
her involvement with the company, the Labour Party took no action
against her until she spoke out to reject the allegations against the
company. However, Labour Party spokespersons, in attempting to
retain the political advantage, have tried to emphasize the differ-
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 181

ence between their ‘swift action’ and what they describe as the
reluctance of the Conservative Party to act decisively against mem-
bers of their party.
(6) BBC Radio 4: AM
1 IR: .hh No question of impropriety: and yet you decided
she had to go.=
z Now the fact is .hhh she spoke out but you had
kno::wn (.) in the
3) Labour Party you’d known for a very long time in-
deed .h that she
+ was a non-executive member of Ian Greer’s company.
She’d never
5 made any secret of the fact?
6 BW: Oh absolutely not.=No. It’s- it’s in the register of
interests a well
Z known fa:ct a legitimate business and er:: and er she
had an
8 association with it.
9 IR: [So we're back to the question of why you got rid of
her?
10 BW: [(There’s ab- abs- absolutely nothing wrong with
that).
After the IE has confirmed that Baroness Turner was not herself
guilty of any impropriety, the IR begins by contrasting the absence
of any wrong-doing with the fact that the Labour Party has re-
moved her from office (line 1). He then goes on to state that al-
though she spoke out on this occasion, her association with the
company was well known to the Party (lines 2-5). This raises the
question of the timing of the action against her: namely, why was
she not removed from office earlier. The suggestion here is that the
Party’s standards are not as clear-cut as is being suggested. Notice,
however, that this is implied, not asserted. That the ‘accusation’ is
done in an indirect fashion means that the IR’s utterance does not
directly solicit a response to it. In responding, the IE takes advan-
tage of this by addressing the relationship between Baroness Turner
and Jan Greer Associates as described by the IR (lines 6-8 and 10).
This enables him to stress an aspect of the case which is positive in
so far as his party is concerned (namely, that there is no suggestion
that a party member failed to fulfil their parliamentary duties),
182 David Greatbatch

whilst avoiding any reference to the underlying negative implica-

tions of the IR’s utterance.
The indirectness associated with utterances such as the one in
this example, then, provides IEs with considerable room for ma-
noeuvre. By contrast, questions which project preferred or expected
responses that run counter to IE positions establish a much more
interactionally hostile context for IEs to communicate their perspec-
tives. It is for this reason, perhaps, that, despite their being gram-
matically formatted as interrogatives, the latter are more vulnerable
to attack by IEs.

8 Concluding Remarks

In this chapter we have explored the relationship between the

interactional organization of news interviews and the requirement
that broadcast journalists maintain impartiality and balance in their
coverage of news and current affairs. In so doing, we have not
attempted to assess the neutrality of broadcast journalists in their
interviews with politicians and other public figures. Instead, using
the approach and findings of CA, we have considered ‘neutrality’ as
a members’ phenomenon: a constraint that participants in news
interviews demonstrably orient to as their interactions unfold.
Specifically, we have explicated some of the ways in which IRs
advance a neutralistic stance and in which IEs either ratify or chal-
lenge this stance.
The research reported here raises a number of important issues
for future research. First, the limits of neutralism are obviously not
fixed. On the one hand, definitions of neutralistic interviewing can
change over time according to the varying degrees of freedom al-
lowed to broadcasters in different eras and by different broadcast-
ing organizations. On the other hand, some IRs may be more willing
than others to test the boundaries of neutralism, whilst some IEs
may be more prone than others to challenge the neutralistic stance
advanced by IRs. An understanding of how neutralism is differen-
tially defined and challenged both within the interview and beyond
is critical to understanding the ways in which news and opinion is
generated and shaped in news interviews.
Another important topic for future research is the comparative
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 183

analysis of interviewing in different countries. Preliminary work in

this area has begun to identify important differences between inter-
viewing in the UK, USA and Australia (Heritage et al., forthcom-
ing). Interviews in the USA, for example, are often less formal than
those in the UK. Relatedly, Australian interviews regularly appear
to involve styles of questioning that would lie beyond the bounda-
ries of the permissible in either the USA or the UK. Cross-cultural
comparative studies should thus reveal the implications of politi-
cians and others communicating their opinions in interviews in
which broadcast journalists advance and defend a neutralistic
stance, as opposed to contexts in which journalists do not display
the same degree of expressive caution.
More generally, the approach we have illustrated provides a
distinctive means of explicating the details of all forms of broadcast
talk which, like the news interview, are, at least in part, ‘sponta-
neous’. As noted in the introduction, a start has already been made
in this direction in studies of talk shows. Consequently, CA research
in the field of media discourse is beginning to reveal the ways in
which participation in broadcast programmes is shaped and con-
strained by interactional practices which are related to the tasks,
constraints and conventions associated with different forms of
broadcast talk.
It is perhaps worth mentioning that, in addition to illuminating
the social interactional organization of the output of the broadcast
media, CA could also be used to study its production and consump-
tion. Returning to the theme of our exemplary analysis, for example,
CA studies of neutralism could be extended beyond the news inter-
view and other forms of broadcast talk in order to examine the ways
in which ‘neutrality’ and ‘neutralism’ feature both as a constraint
and as a resource in the interaction and work of broadcasters,
programme participants, news production personnel and those
who watch or listen to broadcast programmes — such as politicians,
ordinary members of the public, pressure groups and, perhaps,
social scientists. In treating the assessment of the neutrality of
broadcast journalists as an empirical phenomenon to be investi-
gated, rather than as an objective of social scientific analysis, CA
studies of the production and consumption of broadcast news and
current affairs programmes would address such questions as the
following: In what ways do people assess or otherwise mention the
184 David Greatbatch

‘neutrality’ of IRs in the course of their everyday encounters? Which

aspects of IR conduct do they refer to? In what contexts? For which
purposes? In order to undertake such research, however, it would
be necessary to secure access to the sites in which such interactions
take place and to obtain consent to record them. The difficulty in
doing this is, perhaps, reflected in the absence of research of this
type. Studies of ‘output’ are, by contrast, relatively easy to under-
take since data can be easily collected by recording television and
radio programmes.

NOTES

1 See Clayman and Whalen (1988/89) for a detailed consideration of an

encounter in the USA between Dan Rather and President George Bush,
which was widely perceived to have followed a similar course.
2 See Schlesinger et al. (1983) for a consideration of the ways in which the
representatives of ‘terrorist’ organizations receive similar treatment.
3 Clayman (1992) details a range of the, often subtle, ways in which IRs
attribute positions to third parties during the production of questions in
television news interviews in the USA.

APPENDIX: TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOLS

Speakers are identified to the left of the talk: IR is the interviewer; IEs are
identified by abbreviation of their name. The transcription symbols are
drawn from the transcription notation developed by Gail Jefferson. For
details of this notation, see Atkinson and Heritage (1984) and Button and
Lee (1986).

[ A left bracket indicates the point at which overlapping talk

begins.
] A right bracket indicates the point at which overlapping talk
ends.
= Equals signs are used to indicate that the utterances of different
speakers are ‘latched’. They are also used to link continuous
talk by a single speaker that has been distributed across non-
adjacent lines due to another speaker's overlapping utterance.
 Neutralism in British News Interviews 185

(0.5) Numbers in parentheses indicate the length of silences in

tenths of a second.
A dot in parentheses indicates a gap of less than two tenths of
a second.
Underlining indicates some form of stress via pitch and/or
amplitude.
Colons indicate prolongation of the immediately preceding
sound.
Periods, commas and question marks are used to indicate fall-
ing, non-terminal and rising intonation respectively.
Parenthesized words indicate that the transcriber was not sure
of what was said.
Empty parentheses indicate that the transcriber was unable to
hear what was said.
Double parentheses contain transcriber’s comments and/or
descriptions.
h’s preceded by a period represent inhalations.
h’s without a preceding period represent aspirations.
 Chapter 7
Front Pages:
(The Critical) Analysis
of Newspaper Layout
Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

1 Multimodality

All texts are multimodal. Language always has to be realized

through, and comes in the company of, other semiotic modes. When
we speak, we articulate our message not just with words, but
through a complex interplay of speech-sound, of rhythm, of intona-
tion; accompanied by facial expression, gesture and posture. When
we write, our message is expressed not only linguistically, but also
through a visual arrangement of marks on a page. Any form of text
analysis which ignores this will not be able to account for all the
meanings expressed in texts.
Nevertheless, there has long been an insistence on the
monomodal, especially in the most ‘serious’, the most highly valued
kinds of speech and writing. Television newsreaders minimize
facial expression and gesture, and in the early days of BBC televi-
sion they were not even shown, since ‘illustration would destroy
balance’ (Inglis, 1983: 211). Many academic papers, important docu-
ments and ‘high’ literature worked, and to some extent still work,
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 187

with words alone, in densely printed pages, with a minimum of

visual illustration, and without much overt attention to layout and
presentation.
This situation is now being reversed. There is a trend in which,
increasingly, the written text is no longer structured by linguistic
means, through verbal connectors and verbal cohesive devices (e.g.
‘in what follows’, ‘as was pointed out above’, ‘as my final point’) but
visually, through layout, through the spatial arrangement of blocks
of text, of pictures and other graphic elements on the page. The
wordprocessor has accelerated this trend. Everywhere writing now
involves close attention to typeface choices and layout. News-
papers, magazines, company reports, school textbooks and many
other kinds of texts are no longer just written, but ‘designed’, and
multimodally articulated.
The semiotic modes in such texts can interrelate in different
ways. Writing may remain dominant, with the visual fulfilling a
‘prosodic’ role of highlighting important points and emphasizing
structural connections. But it may also diminish in importance, with
the message articulated primarily in the visual mode, and the words
serving as commentary and elaboration. Visually and verbally ex-
pressed meaning may be each other’s double and express the same
meanings, or they may complement and extend each other, or even
clash and contradict.
Given these changes in writing practices, it is essential that we
develop modes of text analysis which can adequately describe the
interplay between the verbal and the visual, and adequately analyse
visually expressed meanings. Hence, in this chapter, we hope to go
some way towards achieving these aims by presenting a descriptive
framework we are currently developing for the analysis of layout.
The framework builds on our previous work in this area (Kress and
van Leeuwen, 1996), and, in this chapter, we extend and further
refine it in various ways.
Throughout the chapter, we use newspaper front pages as our
examples, and in the final section we present a full analysis of some
of these pages, to show the relevance of our approach for critical
studies of the press and its function in contemporary society. That
is, within our broad social semiotic framework, we treat front pages
as (complex) signs, which invite and require an initial reading as
one sign. This initial reading is then followed by a more detailed,
188 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

specific reading, which draws its initial orientation from the first
reading of the large sign.

2 Signifying Systems in Layout

We consider that layout simultaneously involves three signifying

systems, all serving to structure the text, to bring the various ele-
ments of the page (e.g. photographs, headlines, blocks of text) to-
gether into a coherent and meaningful whole.

Information value

Our work assumes that the placement of elements in a layout en-

dows these elements with the specific information values that are
attached to the various zones of the visual space. A given element
does not have the same value and meaning when it is placed on the
right or on the left, in the upper or in the lower section of the page,
in the centre or in the margins. Each of these zones accords specific
values to the elements placed within it. We discuss these values in
section 3.

Salience

The elements of a layout attract the reader’s attention to different

degrees, and through a wide variety of means: placement in the
foreground or background, relative size, contrasts in tonal value or
colour, differences in sharpness, and so on. We discuss this in sec-
tion 4.

Framing

Framing devices, such as framelines or white space between ele-

ments, can simultaneously both disconnect the elements of a layout
from each other, signifying that they are to be read as, in some
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 189

sense, separate and independent, perhaps even contrasting items of

information, and at the same time, framing devices establish what
elements, namely those within the frame, are to be read together.
Connective devices, such as vectors between elements or repetition
of shapes and colour, have the effect of expressing that the elements
thus connected are to be read as belonging together in some sense,
as continuous or complementary, for instance. We discuss this in
section 5. In addition, in section 6 we focus on the ‘reading path’, the
trajectory established on a page (though not necessarily followed)
by the reader in reading or scanning the text.
These signifying systems operate simultaneously and are inde-
pendently variable. In fact, they apply not just to layout, but also to
the composition of single pictures, and there too they have an inte-
grating function, bringing the elements of the picture together into
a coherent and meaningful whole. In this chapter, however, we
concentrate on page layout.

3 Information Value

Given and New

We posit that when a layout opposes left and right, placing one
kind of element on the left, and another, perhaps contrasting
element, on the right, the elements on the left are presented as
Given, and the elements on the right as New. For something to be
Given means that it is presented as something the reader already
knows, as a familiar and agreed departure point for the message.
For something to be New means that it is presented as something
which is not yet known to the reader, hence as the crucial point
of the message, the issue to which the reader must pay special
attention. The New is therefore in principle presented as problem-
atic, contestable, the information at issue, while the Given is
presented as common-sense and self-evident. This makes both
Given and New problematic, though in quite distinct ways:
challenging the Given is to challenge what has been presented
as established; challenging the New is to challenge issues not
presented as established.
190 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

The Daily Mirror page (figure 7.1) features on the left an article
about a woman stabbed to death by her boyfriend, and on the right
an article about the movie star Michelle Pfeiffer adopting a baby, as
a single mother. Given, then, is the bad news: an instance of discord
between lovers, with dramatic results. This is what we are exposed
to day after day in press reports about everyday ‘private’ relation-
ships: infidelity, break-ups, abuse. New is the good news, a story
about a new (and therefore potentially problematic, not yet quite
accepted) kind of relationship, that between the single mother and
her child, here endorsed by the authority of the movie star as role
model. Within the article, Pfeiffer’s glamorous image is Given, the
story of her adoption of a baby New.
Figure 7.2 shows a front page from the Austrian tabloid Taglich
Alles. The top section of the page features on the left a short editorial
about a politician embroiled in scandal, and on the right a photo of
the actor Jiirgen Prochnow, who, in a movie to be screened on
television that night, plays a journalist uncovering a scandal.
Here, too, we have, between Given and New, a thematic link (‘scan-
dal’), an opposition between the Given-ness of the bad news and
New-ness of the good news, of the redemption of evil, and an
opposition between the world of politics and the world of
showbusiness in which it is the latter that the reader must turn to for
the good news, for the redemption of traumatic or disturbing
events.
Such structures are ideological in the sense that they may not
correspond to what is the case either for the producer or for the
consumer of the layout. The important point is that the information
is presented as though it had that status or value for the reader, and
that readers have to read it within that structure initially, even if
they then produce a reading which rejects it.
These structures are ideological in another sense. Both in the
Daily Mirror example and in the Taglich Alles example, particular
states of affairs are at least implicitly suggested as established com-
mon sense. In the Taglich Alles example, there is a further set of
meanings at issue, namely around the categories of public and
private — the public affair and the public commentary of the editor-
ial vs. the private person of the actor (though he is, of course,
brought into the public domain here); the mediation between the
‘facts’ of the political scandal, and the ‘fictive’ resolution in the
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 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 193

-movie; between the public concern of the reader as citizen, and the
private pleasure of the reader as viewer.
The Given—New structure exists in spoken language too, of
course. There it may be realized by intonation (Halliday, 1985:
274ff). This does not imply, in our view, that the visual Given—New
structure is modelled on the linguistic Given—New structure (or on
the fact that English and German are read from left to right). It
points to the existence of functions which can be realized in differ-
ent semiotic modes (albeit in different ways — by a ‘before—after’
structure in spoken language, and by a ‘left-right’ structure in
visual communication). We expect such structures to be culturally
specific, and not necessarily applicable, in this form of realization, to
cultures in which, for instance, writing is from top to bottom or
from right to left. But there are also structures which do not have a
clear linguistic parallel (for instance, the structures described in the
next three sections) just as there are linguistic structures for which
no visual parallel exists.

Real and Ideal

In our framework, when a layout polarizes top and bottom, placing

different, perhaps contrasting elements in the upper and lower
sections of the page, the elements placed at the top are presented as
the Ideal and those placed at the bottom as the Real. For something
to be Ideal means that it is presented as the idealized or generalized
essence of the information, and therefore also as having ideologi-
cally one kind of salience. The Real is then opposed to this, in that it
presents more specific information (e.g. details) and/or more ‘down
to earth’ information (e.g. photographs as documentary evidence,
or maps, or statistics) and/or more practical information (e.g.
practical consequences, directions for action, etc.).
The opposition between Ideal and Real often structures text-—
image relations. If the upper part of a page is occupied by text and
the lower part by one or more pictures (or maps or charts or dia-
grams), the text will play, ideologically, the role implied in our gloss
of ‘Ideal’ and the pictures the role implied in our gloss of ‘Real’.
Each is important in its own right, as abstraction or generalization
as model perhaps on the one hand, and as specification, exemplifi-
194 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

cation, evidence, practical consequence and so on, on the other. If

the roles are reversed, so that one or more pictures occupy the top
section, then the Ideal is communicated visually and the text serves
to comment or elaborate.
It should be noted that our use of the term ‘Ideal’ does not
necessarily represent a (positive) value judgement. It is possible that
in a particular community or culture the values of ‘Ideal’ or ‘Real’
are ranked in a hierarchical relation. It is said of the English that
they value the practical, the empirical, the pragmatic. Clearly, for
the reader /viewer with those values the ‘grounded’ statement may
have higher value. Other cultures may by contrast value the more
general, abstract, theoretical; readers/viewers with those values
will read the pages in the light of their habitual valuations. Nor are
these habits entirely monolithic: a text or an event may address me
and place me into an ‘inspirational’ mode — a religious occasion, a
party rally, and so on, so that my otherwise pragmatic orientation is
suspended for the duration of the event.
This can be seen in figure 7.3, a Guardian front page from March
1993. A salient image of the burial of the 3-year-old victim of an IRA
bombing is presented as the Ideal. It visually formulates the essence
of the day’s events and solicits condemnation of the bombing by
virtue of its emotive impact. The bottom half of the page elaborates
on this event and places it among the other events of the day. But
the top section of the page is itself also divided into an Ideal and
Real, with the masthead comprising the essence of the newspaper's
content and role as ‘guardian’, and the photo constituting the day’s
specific instantiation of its fulfilment of that role.
In figure 7.2, the top section of the page focuses on the paper’s
role in covering everything (Alles), providing independent
(unabhangig) comment, and uncovering scandals on behalf of the
public. The bottom section contains a news headline (signifying
the more factual ‘report’), and two items of practical interest to
the reader: an appeal for vaccination against ticks, and a pointer
for finding the classified ads. Advertisements and other items
of practical interest are usually found in this position, just as,
within advertisements themselves, it is here that one finds the
address and telephone number of the advertiser, or the tear-out
coupon one can send to obtain further information or to order the
product.
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196 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

Centre and Margin

Visual composition may also be structured along the dimensions of

Centre and Margin. In contemporary Western layouts this is rela-
tively less common. Most layouts polarize Given and New and/or
Ideal and Real. But when teaching on a media design course in
Singapore, we found that it plays an important role in the visual
imagination of young Asian designers. Perhaps it is the greater
emphasis on hierarchy, harmony and continuity in Confucian
thinking that makes centring such a fundamental organizational
principle in their culture. Much of the work produced by these
students had strong, dominant centres, surrounded or flanked
by relatively unpolarized elements. In the West too, centralizing
designs are found more frequently in certain domains: the reli-
giously inspired paintings of the Virgin and Child, or of the
Adoration of the Magi, stand as ancestors to visual represent-
ation in which objects of desire or of reverence are given a central
place.
When a layout makes significant use of the Centre, placing one
element in the middle and the other elements around it, we will
refer to the central element as the Centre and to the elements that
flank it as Margins. For something to be presented as Centre means
that it is presented as the nucleus of the information to which all the
other elements are in some sense subservient. The Margins then are
these ancillary, dependent elements. In many cases the Margins are
identical or at least very similar to each other in some criterial
respect, so that there is no sense of polarization, no sense of division
between Given and New and/or Ideal and Real. We will reserve the
term ‘Margin’ for this kind of symmetrical structure. In other cases,
Centre and Margin combine with Given and New and/or Ideal and
Real.
This is the case with figure 7.4, a ‘Business’ section front page
from the Sydney Morning Herald. The central picture is a cartoon
based on Van Doesburg’s The Cardplayers: two men playing a game
of monopoly. News articles are arranged around it, in concentric
layers. But there is some evidence of polarization also: the column
of expert comment is New, hence presented as the crucial element
of the page.
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Figure 7.4 Front page of Business Section of the Sydney Morning Herald
198 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

It follows from our discussion in this and the previous two sec-
tions that the dimensions of visual space constitute the figure of the
Cross, a fundamental spatial symbol in Western culture (see figure
7.5). Just how marginal the Margins are will depend on the size,
and, more generally, the salience of the Centre. But even when the
Centre is empty, it will continue to exist in absentia, as the invisible
(or denied) pivot around which everything else turns. The relative
infrequency of centred compositions in contemporary Western rep-
resentation perhaps signifies, in the words of Yeats, that ‘the centre
does not hold’ any longer in many sectors of contemporary society.

The triptych

One common mode of combining Given and New with Centre and
Margin is the triptych. In many medieval triptychs, there is no sense
of Given and New. The Centre shows a key religious theme, such as
the Crucifixion or the Virgin and Child, and the side panels show

Figure 7.5 The dimensions of visual space

 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 199

saints or donors, kneeling down in admiration. The composition is

symmetrical rather than polarized, although the left was regarded
as a slightly less honorific position. In the sixteenth century altar-
pieces became more narrative and showed, for instance, the birth of
Christ or the road to Golgotha on the left panel, the Crucifixion in
the Centre, and the Resurrection on the right panel. This could
involve some polarization, albeit subordinated to a temporal order,
with the left, for instance, as the ‘bad’ side (e.g. the transgression of
Adam), the right as the ‘good’ side (e.g. the ascent of the blessed)
and the middle panel representing Christ’s role as Mediator and
Saviour (e.g. the Crucifixion).
The triptychs in the layout of modern newspapers and maga-
zines are generally polarized, with a Given on the left, a New on the
right, and with the central element as Mediator, bridging and link-
ing the two extremes. This is illustrated in figure 7.6, a triptych from
The Observer. It forms the Ideal of an article about major building
projects for the year 2000. Given is the photo of Crystal Palace,
which to readers in the UK is a familiar example of past styles of

ees THE OBSERVER

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200 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

public building. New is a detail from the Sackler Building in the

Royal Academy, presented as an example of good contemporary
building. The Mediator is formed by the architect’s drawings which
will transform the Given into the New.

4 Salience

The fundamental function of layout is textual. Layout places the

various meaningful elements into the whole, and provides ordering
and coherence among them. So far, we have discussed how it deter-
mines ‘where things go’, and how the positioning of the elements on
the page endows them with specific information values in relation
to each other. But layout also involves assigning degrees of salience
to the elements of the page. Regardless of where they are placed,
salience can create a hierarchy of importance among the elements,
selecting some as more important and more worthy of (immediate)
attention than others. The Given may be made more salient than the
New, for instance, or the New more salient than the Given, or both
may be equally salient.
We judge salience on the basis of visual cues. Readers are able to
judge the ‘weight’ of the various elements of the layout, and the
greater the weight of an element, the greater its salience. This sali-
ence is not objectively measurable but results from a complex trad-
ing-off relationship between a number of factors: size; sharpness of
focus, or, more generally, amount of detail and texture shown; tonal
contrast (areas of high tonal contrast, for instance borders between
black and white, have high salience); colour contrasts (for instance,
the contrast between highly saturated and ‘soft’ colours, or the
contrast between red and blue); placement in the visual field (ele-
ments not only become ‘heavier’ as they are moved towards the top,
but also appear ‘heavier’ the further they are moved towards the
left, due to an asymmetry in the visual field); perspective (fore-
ground objects are more salient than background objects, and ele-
ments that overlap other elements are more salient than the
elements they overlap). There are also quite specific cultural factors,
such as the appearance of a human figure or a potent cultural
symbol.
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 201

In other words, the reading and consequent assessment of sali-

ence is a complex process. We do not wish to make a particular
judgement here about the relative importance of psychological and
physiological as against cultural and social factors. Without doubt
both are present and both significant; and as always, particular
cultures provide particular trainings for readers/viewers. For in-
stance, in literate ‘Western’ cultures, some readers/viewers (prob-
ably older and middle-class) may find written text more significant;
other reader/viewers may find the visual more attractive. Assess-
ments of the salience of elements on the same page would therefore
differ between readers: not anarchically, but on the basis of cultural
histories.
Being able to judge the visual weight of the elements of a layout
is being able to judge how they ‘balance’. The weight they put in the
scales derives from one or more of the factors just mentioned. Taken
together, the elements create a balancing centre, the point, one
might say, from which, if one conceived of the elements as parts of
a mobile, that mobile would have to be suspended. Regardless of
whether this point is in the actual centre of the composition or off-
centre, it often becomes the space of the central message, and this
attests to the ‘power of the centre’ (Arnheim, 1982) to which we
have alluded already, and which exerts itself even when the Centre
is an empty space. It follows that balance and therefore layout is a
truly bodily aspect of the text, an interface between our biological
and our semiotic selves. Without balance, co-ordination in space is
not possible. Balance forms an indispensable matrix for the produc-
tion and reception of spatially organized messages, and for this
reason it also plays a key role in producing the aesthetic pleasure in
layout, and hence our affective relation towards it. Via this affective
process the effects and functions of a message are deepened, and it
is in such aspects that ideology, affect, and subjectivity become
inextricably mixed.
But salience not only has an aesthetic function; it also plays a vital
role in structuring the message. In figure 7.1, for instance, it is the
picture of Michelle Pfeiffer which has the greatest salience, due to its
size, the bright colour of her dress (red), and the salience of her look
at the viewer. Her sexual allure in the end overrides the story of her
adopting a baby, or is at least as important as the contrast between
the ‘bad news’ and ‘good news’ items which flank it. This contrasts
202 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

with figure 7.7, where, despite strong similarities in overall layout

and Given-New structure (two ‘European’ stories), it is the headline
which is most salient, due to its size and to the strong tonal contrast
with the black background.
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Figure 7.7 Front page of the Sun

 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 203

5 Framing Devices: Connecting and

Disconnecting Items

The elements of a layout may either be disconnected, marked

off from each other, or connected, joined together. Connection
and disconnection are a matter of degree. Elements may be
strongly or weakly framed, and the stronger the framing, the
more the elements in different frames are presented as separate
units of information. The context can then colour in the more
precise nature of this separation. Elements may also be strongly
or weakly connected, and the stronger the connection, the
more they are presented as one unit of information, as belonging
together.
Disconnection can be realized in many different ways, for in-
stance by framelines (the thickness or colour of which can then
indicate the strength of the framing), by discontinuities of colour or
shape, or simply by empty space between the elements. Connection
can be realized by the repetition of formal features of the connected
elements, shapes or colours for instance, as in figure 7.1. Here, blue
is the colour of the background of the Michelle Pfeiffer photo and
the two frames on top (‘Mirror Gives Shoe Scandal The Boot’ and
‘Which Famous Fan Owns This Motor?’), of the small photos in the
article on the left, and of the frame around the ‘Catwoman Star Buys
Baby’ article. Connection can also be realized by vectors, formed
either by features of depicted objects, e.g. the head tilt and eyeline of
the British Prime Minister, John Major, in figure 7.7 (a frontal shot in
a rectangular frame would have produced much less connection),
or by the tilting of layout elements, as in the ‘pinboard’ layout in
figure 7.8.
Newspaper pages generally, and tabloid pages especially, tend
to use strong framing (e.g. see figures 7.3 and 7.7 for the dif-
ference between a ‘quality newspaper’ and a tabloid). Yet, on closer
inspection there are many subtle continuities, especially in the
use of colour, and these almost subliminally hint at the thematic
continuities between what at first sight appear to be discrete
items.
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Figure 7.8 Pinboard layout

 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 205

6 Framing: Reading Paths

In densely printed pages of text, we suggest that reading is linear

and strictly coded. Such pages are read, at least at a first reading, the
way they are designed to be read: from left to right and from top to
bottom, line by line. Any other form of reading (skipping, looking
at the last page to see how the plot will be resolved or what the
conclusion will be) is regarded as a form of cheating and may
produce a faint sense of guilt in the reader. Other kinds of pages,
such as traditional comic strips, are also designed to be read in this
way.
Newspaper front pages are read differently, and can be read in
more than one way. Their reading path is less strictly coded, less
fully prescribed. They are scanned before they are read, and this
scanning process sets up connections between the different ele-
ments, relating them to each other in terms of their relative impor-
tance, and in terms of the information values we have discussed.
Thus the page as a whole is visually grasped before any article is
read, if, indeed, any article is read. In some cases (cf. the headline in
figure 7.2) the article does not even appear on the front page, so that
the page becomes a kind of summary, signalling both the relation
between the paper and its readers and the relation between these
two and the events and issues represented on the page, and in the
newspaper as a whole.
In scanning the page, the reader will follow a certain reading
path. In some cases this reading path will be encoded in the design
of the page. The layout of pages can set up particular reading paths,
particular hierarchies of the movement of the hypothetical reader
within and across its different elements. Such reading paths begin
with the most salient element, from there move on to the next most
salient element, and so on. We would assume, for instance, that
the picture of Michelle Pfeiffer in figure 7.1 is noticed before any
of the text is read, and that the ‘Catwoman Star Buys Baby’ headline
is scanned before the article on the left. And whether the reader
‘reads’ only the pictures and headlines or also part or all of the
text, a complementarity, a to-and-fro between text and image,
and between the various elements of the page generally, is
guaranteed.
206 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

Analysing reading paths with students, we found that some are

easy to agree on, others harder, others impossible. This was not, we
think, due to a lack of analytical ability on our part or on the part
of our students, but to the issues of cultural differences between
reader /viewers which we have raised above and to the structure of
the pages themselves. Pages encode reading paths to different
degrees. Some, though no longer densely printed pages, still take
readers by the hand, and attempt to guide them firmly through
the text, or at least through the key elements of the text. This is
the case, for instance, in many magazines and contemporary
school textbooks. On other pages we cannot detect any reading
path that is more plausible than any other, and this is the case
with many newspaper pages. Such pages seem to offer their
readers a choice of reading path, and leave it up to them how to
traverse the textual space. To use the currently fashionable term,
they were already ‘interactive’ before interactive multimedia had
been invented, and they would appear to be becoming increasingly
sO.
This is not a trivial phenomenon but is an instance, we believe, of
a more general trend away from certain forms of textual order,
certain forms of textual coherence: for instance, a relative decline of
the importance of sequentially ordered text (e.g. ‘narrative’) and a
move towards ‘textual resources’, whether as a database, or as the
‘resource-books’ now common in schools.
Nevertheless, the way the elements of such pages are arranged is
not random. It is not random that a picture of an attractive movie
star should be placed in the centre of a Daily Mirror front page, or a
picture of the mishaps that can befall ‘ordinary people’ in the centre
of many of the front pages of the popular Austrian tabloid Neue
Kronenzeitung (figure 7.9), or that a picture of an important political
event should become the Ideal in a Guardian front page (figure 7.10).
The values of Given and New, Ideal and Real, and Centre and
Margin are not dependent on an order of reading. Layout selects
the elements that can be read, and presents them according to a
certain spatial logic, the logic of Centre and Margin, for instance,
or of Given and New, but it leaves it up to the reader how to
sequence and connect them. Readers thus perceive, consciously or
otherwise, the non-linear, spatial structure of the page, and are
involved in the active, ‘linear’ process of traversing that structure,
of ‘navigation’.
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 207

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Figure 7.9 Front page of Neue Kronenzeitung

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of aseemingly unchanging set of norms and values. However, other
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 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 209

newspapers have quite different structures, and as a result may

produce quite different habits of reading and hence quite different
orientations to the world.

7 The Framework Applied

The distinctions we have introduced so far are summarized in

figure 7.11. The double-headed arrows stand for graded contrasts
(‘more or less’ rather than ‘either/or’) and the curly brackets for
simultaneous choices (e.g. ‘a polarized layout can have both a
Given/New and Ideal/Real structure’). The superscript ‘I’ means
‘if and the superscript “T’ means ‘then’ (hence, e.g. ‘if there is no
horizontal polarization, then there must be vertical polarization’ —
the opposite follows from this).

Guardian and Sun layouts

Putting a number of Guardian front pages from the period March—

April 1993 side by side (see e.g. figure 7.3 and figure 7.10) immedi-
ately reveals a regular pattern, even though every front page has a
slightly different layout. Overall, the pages have a predominantly
vertical structure. They prioritize and idealize one story, and then
ground this story in the Real of a plethora of other newsworthy
events.
The Ideal comprises the masthead, symbol of the paper’s identity
and mission, and an article which deals with a major national and
international public event, an event from the world of the politics of
nation states and global institutions. It is dominated by a large and
salient photograph whose ‘universal’ connotations contribute to an
interpretation and evaluation of the event and play on the emotions
of the viewer: Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin, surrounded by sun-
dappled spring foliage, with Clinton as Given and active, Yeltsin
as New, and listening with bowed head; UN soldiers in Bosnia
rescuing women and children; mourners for 3-year-old IRA bomb
victim.
A grey bar, thicker than any other bar on the page, separates this
Ideal from the Real, which comprises a jumble of national and
 —> [ Circular
Triptych
Centred Bary
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value
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No horizontal polarization!
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Salience eee salience
Minimum salience
ee ee disconnection
Framing ty connection
Maximum

Centred An element (the Centre) is placed in the centre of the composition.

Polarized There is no element in the centre of the composition.
Triptych The non-central elements in a centred composition are placed
either on the right and left or above and below the Centre.
Circular The non-central elements in a centred composition are placed both
above and below and to the sides of the Centre, and further
elements may be placed in between these polarized positions.
Margin The non-central elements in a centred composition are identical or
near-identical, so creating symmetry in the composition.
Mediator The Centre of a polarized centred composition forms a bridge
between Given and New and/or Ideal and Real, so reconciling
polarized elements to each other in some way.
Given The left element in a polarized composition or the left polarized
element in a centred composition. This element is not identical or
near-identical to the corresponding right element.
New The right element in a polarized composition or the right polarized
element in a centred composition. This element is not identical or
near-identical to the corresponding left element.
Ideal The top element in a polarized composition or the top polarized
element in a centred composition. This element is not identical or
near-identical to the corresponding bottom element.
Real The bottom element in a polarized composition or the bottom
polarized element in a centred composition. This element is not
identical or near-identical to the corresponding top element.
Salience The degree to which an element draws attention to itself, due to its
size, its place in the foreground or its overlapping of other
elements, its colour, its tonal values, its sharpness or definition,
and other features.
Disconnection The degree to which an element is visually separated from other
elements through framelines, pictorial framing devices, empty
space between elements, discontinuities of colour and shape, and
other features.
Connection The degree to which an element is visually joined to another
element, through the absence of framing devices, through vectors
and through continuities or similarities of colour, visual shape, etc.

Figure 7.11 Realizations

 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 211

international events, all, again, from the world of public events.

They are presented without any clear pattern, distinct only by vir-
tue of their relative salience, as realized by the size of the articles,
and the size and boldness of their headlines. The Real also contains
an advertisement, and though it may seem small and insignificant,
its position is nevertheless important. New and Real, it is the posi-
tion of the pragmatic imperative. In advertisements, it is here that
one finds the information necessary to obtain the product. In school
textbooks it is here that one finds the questions and the assignments
— in other words, the things the pupil must do. And on these pages
it is here that the reader is addressed as a consumer, and that the
underlying economic reality of the press is revealed.
Comparing Sun front pages from the same period (see figure 7.7)
is equally revealing. Here the overall structure is horizontal. The
Sun selects one event as a Given, and then relates it to another,
much more salient event, which is presented as New, as the most
controversial and dramatic event of the day, and the event to which
the reader should pay most attention.
The Given event is a good deal less salient and comparatively
undramatic. It generally bears some relation to the everyday con-
cerns of ordinary people: celebrating a victory with champagne;
Euro MPs banning the English ‘banger’; the author of A Year in
Provence selling his house. This event then forms a backdrop for,
and a contrast to, the New event, which is invariably dramatic and
sensational. Its internal vertical structure idealizes its dramatic
values in a screamer headline and enhances its salience through a
comparatively salient colour photo. The nature of these New events
varies. Political events, events from the world of showbusiness and
events befalling ordinary people seem indiscriminately mixed, and
all interpreted in terms of the same dramatic values (cf. “A Knife In
Major’s Heart’). The precise link between Given and New also
varies. Sometimes there is a thematic link, as in the case of the two
‘European’ stories. Sometimes ‘good news’ and ‘bad news’ are con-
trasted. But there are always two events, brought together in a
Given—New relation, and made distinct by a much stronger framing
than can be found on the front pages of the Guardian.
The seemingly indiscriminate mixing of kinds of events leads us
to ask about further, less immediately visible regularities. One such
regularity seems to concern, as we mentioned in relation to Tiglich
212 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

Alles, the boundaries of the public and the private, and their media-
tion/regulation by the newspaper. ‘A Knife In Major’s Heart’ is an
example precisely of this: an event of the public sphere — involving
the Prime Minister of a nation and members of the governing party
— is portrayed via the use of metaphor as a physical event befalling
a private person. The other point worth drawing attention to here is
the contrast between the Guardian’s vertical orientation and the
meanings of that (Real vs. Ideal, and its various instantiations: writ-
ten language vs. image; pragmatic vs. abstracted; local vs. global)
and the Sun’s horizontal orientation and its meaning (Given vs.
New, and its various instantiations). This is a distinction which
aligns the Guardian much more with the Daily Telegraph than with,
say, the Daily Mirror, despite the clear political differences between
the first two, and the greater political affinities between the first and
the third.
Table 7.1 summarizes these observations.

Neue Kronenzeitung and Taglich Alles

The Neue Kronenzeitung is Austria’s largest tabloid, and easily as

controversial as is the Sun in the UK, though for different, more
explicitly political reasons. As with the British papers, its layout
displays a regular pattern (cf. figure 7.9).
The pages constitute vertical triptychs, with a large photo acting
as Mediator between a bold headline and a collection of three or
four miscellaneous items. The headline is the Ideal. Sometimes it
relates to the same story as the central photograph, sometimes to a
separate story (‘New Arms Purchase Scandal’; ‘Hash Parties In
Graz Barracks’). But it is always sensational. The paper signifies the
public domain as ridden by corruption and scandal, and presents
itself as essentially and ‘ideally’ a ‘scandal sheet’.
The Real contains a variety of items: short items of political,
human interest or sports news; advertisements; short poems (the
one shown is a rhyme about taxation, its last lines ‘No chance to
save, you have to pay tax . . . Effort does not bring rewards’). These
categories are therefore presented as relatively interchangeable.
They all appear in the same boxes, like the items in a supermarket
advertisement. But the advertisements are less salient, because,
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 213

- Table 7.1 Comparison of the Guardian and the Sun front pages

Guardian Sun

National and international public Political, showbusiness and human

events interest events are mixed and all
interpreted as private dreams
Large variety of events Only two events selected
An Ideal-Real structure idealizes, A Given-New structure presents
interprets and evaluates one event one event as relatively
unexceptional and the other as
dramatic and sensational
One advertisement positioned as No advertisements
New and Real
Comparatively weak framing: the | Comparatively strong framing: the
events must be seen as similar events must be seen as contrasting
The Ideal is most salient The New is most salient

Dominant classifications: ‘public Dominant classifications: ‘private

domain’ / NEWS domain’ /NEWS

Dominant semiotic orientation: Dominant semiotic orientation:

Ideal/Real Given/New

unlike the other items, they are printed in sober black and white,
rather than against a coloured background, and ina coloured frame.
Bridging the Ideal and the Real, and most salient on the page as
a whole, is a composite element. On the left, as Given, is the mast-
head, in salient red; on the right is a photo which often portrays
ordinary people involved in dramatic events (car crashes, fires).
These photos therefore have elements in common with the Ideal
(drama) as well as with the Real (ordinary people). But they may
also show happy events (two children dressed for their confirma-
tion) or be drawn from the world of showbusiness, as in the case of
the publicity photo of the stars of the new James Bond film (caption:
‘The deadliest weapon in the new James Bond film is a lady’). The
significance of the central space, however, remains the same: it is
214 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

these photos which are presented as most crucially instantiating the

Given of the identity and mission of the Kronenzeitung, and which
form a bridge between the headlines and the Real world of the
reader, in which small human interest events and issues mix with
the role of the consumer.
Taglich Alles (see figure 7.2) is the main competitor of the
Kronenzeitung. Here the structure is again vertical. The Ideal com-
bines a short editorial and a photo which generally shows a celeb-
rity from the world of showbusiness or sport, who will appear on
television that night, or is interviewed in the paper: Brooke Shields
(‘Brooke Shields has plenty of reason to smile: her friend, the tennis
star Andre Agassi goes from strength to strength at the Australian
open’); tennis stars Arantxa Sanchez and Mary Pierce (‘Don’t let this
picture deceive you... they are going to fight a relentless battle’);
an Austrian radio personality whose horoscope is discussed in the
paper.
The short, populist editorials deal with public events: terrorism
(‘murderous madness’); the Auschwitz commemorations (‘People
need to forget...it is too painful to remember how inhuman
people can be to each other’); the habit of politicians to speak
denigratingly of ‘the little man’ (‘A pity we have not found suitable
new terms, now that the vocabulary of the class struggle has been
abolished’). They appear as the Real of the masthead, and so exem-
plify the paper’s identity and mission, and realize it as the explicit
affirmation of a set of norms and values. Taglich Alles differs here
from the other papers we have discussed, which do not feature
opinion on their front pages.
These editorials, however, are a Given for the most salient ele-
ments of the pages, the photographs: it is in sport, the movies, the
media, that these values now find their most crucial expression and
address us directly, through the look of the stars and role models, or
so the layout of Taglich Alles suggests.
The Real is sharply disconnected from this Ideal: the top section
of these pages is all colour, with the masthead in bright blue, the
editorial printed on strong yellow, with a red headline, and the
photo printed in strong colour. The bottom section is predomi-
nantly in black and white, with the exception of the ‘Unsere Haltung’
(‘Our View’) box, which is bright red. It is itself also divided into an
Ideal and a Real, with the Ideal a bold headline, centring on some
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 215

_ scandal (the hash-smoking soldiers; the arms purchase scandal) and

the Real a set of three or four miscellaneous items: short items of
political, human interest and sports news; an announcement of the
paper’s TV guide supplement; advertisements; and the ‘Our View’
block (‘Critical of the powerful, helpful to the weak, committed to
the facts’). Taglich Alles thus compresses the essentials of the layout
of the Kronenzeitung in its Real and adds a new Ideal which com-
bines prominently placed opinion and a strong shift in the direction
of the symbolic world of showbusiness and sport (and colour).
We summarize these observations in table 7.2.

Table 7.2 . Comparison of Neue Kronenzeitung and Taglich Alles

Neue Kronenzeitung Taglich Alles

Treats (by mixing them) public and Treats (by mixing them) public
private events, and politics and and private events, and politics
showbusiness, as ‘the same’ and showbusiness, as ‘the same’

Sport is included, but not saliently Sport can be saliently included

Combines one main scandal story Combines one main scandal story
and a selection of miscellaneous and a selection of miscellaneous
items items

A vertical triptych structure An Ideal—Real structure prioritizes

idealizes the scandal and, in a large opinion and sports/showbusiness,
photo, links it to the Real world and constructs the latter as the
of a mixture of advertisements and New of the former. The Real
miscellaneous items combines the scandal (Ideal) and a
mixture of advertisements and
miscellaneous items

Advertisements are Advertisements are

interchangeable with other items interchangeable with other items
but not very salient and equally salient
The Mediator is most salient and The Ideal is most salient, and,
forms the New of the masthead within it, the New

Medium framing Strong framing between the Ideal

and the Real, and, within the Ideal,
between Given and New
216 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen
a

8 Conclusions

In the previous sections we have applied our descriptive framework

to the front pages of two UK and two Austrian newspapers. Our
analysis indicates that:

1 Newspaper front pages orient their readers to the world. They

may, for instance, present the reader with a world of public
events (the Guardian) or with a world in which the boundaries
between public and private events have become blurred, and in
which the symbolic worlds of sport and showbusiness have to
some extent taken over from the world of the politics of nation
states (the Sun; the Neue Kronenzeitung; Taglich Alles). They may
orient their readers to a structure of Ideal/Real (general/par-
ticular, global/local, etc.) or to a structure of Given/New (what
is assumed /what is startling).
Newspaper front pages position genres such as opinion, report
and advertisement in relation to each other, and provide them
with different degrees of salience and framing, and thereby en-
dow them with particular valuations.
Newspaper front pages construct relations between different
events in the news, for instance by positioning some as Ideal and
others as Real, or some as Given and others as New.
Different newspapers do all these things in different ways and to
different degrees, which relate to the nature of their readership
and to the wider (national) cultural context.
Front page layout is subject to change. We have looked at two
months’ issues of the Sun from 1993. Figure 7.12 shows an issue
from June 1995, which has a quite different layout, although
there are also some continuities. The timings of and reasons for
changes would be well worth investigating. But as a general
point we can say that front pages as signs are subject to the same
social, cultural, ideological factors in their making and in their
reading as are all signs. History as change is therefore normal.

With these few examples we have not, of course, given an ex-

haustive analysis. We nevertheless hope that we have been able to
provide some pointers and ideas for a further exploration of this
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 217

Figure 7.12 Front page of the Sun from June 1995

field, and some support for our assertion that layout analysis has an
important role in the critical study of newspaper language.
To us, this last requirement seems entirely uncontentious. The
novelty of our approach nevertheless arouses at times kinds of
218 Gunther Kress and Theo van Leeuwen

critique which we find surprising. We proceed from the assumption

that the visual as a mode of representation and communica-
tion displays regularities which are discoverable. If it did not, com-
munication would not happen, unless the visual is an entirely
transparent medium of expression. Noticeable and entirely regular
cultural differences rule that possibility out as an implausible
one.
The major challenges to our approach take the form: ‘How do
you know?’ That is, they are challenges to the epistemological status
of our claims. For instance, how can we know that, in ‘Western’
visual semiosis, left and right, top and bottom have the values we
attribute to them, or, more fundamentally, have any value at all? We
regard these as legitimate challenges, and of exactly the same kind
which can be raised in relation to linguistic structures. How do we
know that there is a difference in meaning between Bill married
Mary, and Mary married Bill? How do we know not only that agency
has shifted from one participant to the other, but also that if I utter
Mary married Bill, 1am saying something about my presuppositions
concerning gender relations: that is, |am saying things of a wider
cultural and social provenance? How do I know that there is a
difference between Mary and Bill married and Bill and Mary married,
so that when I hear one or the other of them uttered, Imake (and am
entitled to make) inferences about the closer relationship of the
speaker with one or the other of these two people: in other words, I
make legitimate inferences about the interest of the utterer in this
described event?
In our view, these and other questions apply equally to all semi-
otic systems. The greater familiarity with the linguistic (some 3,000
to 4,000 years of detailed sustained study in the ‘West’) has, to a
large extent, made these issues less visible or even invisible in
relation to language. We regard our efforts here as a beginning, an
attempt to put this issue on the map in the broadest terms, and an
attempt to begin to assemble items for a new agenda of research.
The unquestionable increase in the use of the visual mode from the
1970s on makes this unavoidable in relation to many enterprises —
media studies, education, information science, psychology, and
others. But this development will also, inevitably, have effects on
‘language itself’, in what we believe will be quite fundamental
ways. It is an issue that can no longer be avoided.
 Front Pages: Analysis of Newspaper Layout 219

Note

Nik Coupland acted as respondent to an oral presentation of the first

version of this chapter. His meticulous, empathetic critique proved most
helpful to us in our redrafting and we wish to record our thanks to him. No
blame should attach to him, however, for errors of any kind.
Chapter 8
Signs and Wonders:
Interpreting the
Economy through
Television
Kay Richardson

1 Introduction

The analysis of media discourse can be approached in many differ-

ent ways, as is shown by the variety of approaches reflected in the
contributions to this volume. The present chapter focuses upon the
role of the audience in mass media communication, not in order to
displace these textual studies, but in order to investigate a little
more closely how we might seek to relate textual and reception
analysis. The substantive focus of the enquiry is upon representa-
tions of the economy through television: a news domain which has
been very little studied to date, and one which presents a challenge
to both broadcasters and viewers.

2 Textual Analysis and Reception Analysis

Textual analysis is very commonly concerned with questions of

representation in media discourse and often with the object of deter-
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 221

‘mining the ideological character of representations, whilst still

allowing psychoanalytic theories, Marxist theories, structuralist
theories, postmodernist theories to inflect their analytic accounts in
their different ways (Allen, 1992 offers a wide range of different
approaches in accessible form). Sometimes the analytic focus is
directed more towards the interactional character of media dis-
course (as in Scannell, 1991; Livingstone and Lunt, 1994). Sociolin-
guists such as Bell (1991) have been more concerned with the textual
structures by means of which media discourse achieves its distinc-
tiveness, recognizing the variability to be found across media and
genres.
The standpoint of reception analysis as this has developed since
the early 1980s is one which takes issue with ‘textualism’: that is to
say, it takes issue with the assumption that meaning is always and
only a product of the text alone. In reception analysis, the claim
is that meaning is negotiated between a text and its readers
(viewers, listeners . . .). Hence, since media readers are plural, read-
ings are likewise plural. The assumption of textual determinacy is
rejected.
Of course, textual analysis increasingly does appreciate the possi-
bility of divergent interpretations (Kress, 1994), thus legitimizing a
‘division of labour’ for academic work on media discourse. And the
empirical results of ‘reception analysis’ do not necessarily invali-
date textual analysis. Different responses to characters such as ‘JR
Ewing’ in Dallas, different judgements of his moral worth, are com-
patible with the same understandings of that character’s relations
with other characters in the diegesis (see Ang, 1985). As far as
research is concerned, the result is that there is still a question mark
over the potential for divergence at ‘lower levels’ of interpretation —
‘before’ JR Ewing is evaluated as a fine example of a capitalist entre-
preneur, he is (presumably) understood in terms of his relations with
other characters in the diegesis. However, it is not so much in
connection with popular TV fiction as with TV material of a more
propositional character (news, current affairs, documentary) where
the question of variable meanings seems most worth asking. It is the
project of such broadcasting to influence its viewers and listeners by
causing them to modify their understandings in the light of its
propositional information. These issues are usefully discussed in
Corner (1991).
222 Kay Richardson

In this context we can begin to appreciate why researchers such

as Hoijer (1993) have begun to argue for a return to questions of
comprehension within the field of reception studies. Hoijer makes the
point that an existing literature in this area is all but ignored within
currently influential approaches to the study of reception. We can
view these influential approaches, notwithstanding their differ-
ences, as belonging to a ‘cultural studies’ tradition.’ It is not difficult
to explain the neglect Hoijer identifies. The cultural studies tradi-
tion inherited a different agenda: one in which comprehension took
second place to questions of ideological influence, or alternatively,
in which the emphasis was upon the ‘meaning’ of viewing as a
situated social practice, rather than the meaning of texts. The
experimentalism of comprehension studies, and their under-
theorized and psychologistic conception of the audience, are re-
garded with suspicion within this framework. As well, there is
considerable resistance to research with an unproblematic notion of
media content, which pays insufficient attention to communicative
form and which can be regarded as ignoring or denying the
openness of the text to different interpretations.
Hoijer’s paper does not mention the research of linguists such
as Bell, Wodak and van Dijk, some of which has been likewise
concerned with comprehension, and has likewise been ignored
within the cultural studies tradition (see Bell, 1991 chapter 11; van
Dijk, 1988b chapter 4; Wodak, 1987). This research has itself under-
gone a movement away from the limitations of the earlier compre-
hension studies. As yet, however, there has been very little work,
apart from Hoijer’s own, which attempts to reconceptualize the
study of comprehension from within the perspective of reception
research, as this is now understood in media studies. But it is now
possible to think about what this reconceptualization might in-
volve. There is a place in reception research for the study of compre-
hension: this should be a suitably enriched view of the nature of
textual meaning, of the viewers’ own meaning systems, and of the
processes of textual interpretation, in which ‘comprehension’ is
only one part.
The present chapter is intended as a contribution to the ‘public
information’ project within audience studies, and one which takes
the role of the text, and textual analysis, in that project very seri-
ously. As Corner (1991) argues, it is not desirable to follow the
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 223

currently fashionable doctrine of textual polysemy to the extent of

abolishing all ideas of textual determinacy:

Whatever the reason for this assumption of general textual ‘open-

ness’, such a perspective neglects among other things the consider-
able degree of determinacy possessed by texts. This determinacy is
simply a result of their using, among other things, systems of signifi-
cation based on widespread social/national acceptance, and having
relatively low levels of ambiguity . . . it clearly remains true, as the
new interpretative perspective is keen to point out, that ‘meaning’
does not inhere within texts, and is far better seen as a property of
interpretative production (and therefore as inherently ‘unstable’)
even where the most uncomplicated and familiar of routine
significations are concerned (e.g. NO ENTRY, ‘Hello David’). But the
effect of determinate signification upon this production is something
which the use of the term ‘polysemy’ has not always recognised, and,
at its worst, has dismissed. (Corner, 1991: 274-5)

Textual determinacy has its limits, for we know that there are
levels of meaning which are not underwritten by fully shared codes
and coding orientations. But ‘low level’ textual determinacy is fully
compatible with the principle of textual ‘constructivism’: the notion
that viewers, readers and listeners are active in the processes of
meaning construction. It is even compatible with that part of textual
constructivism which puts emphasis upon the contribution of view-
ers’ own frameworks of knowledge and understanding. The point
here is that there are some very widely shared frameworks of
understanding, and viewers can internalize complex articulations
of frameworks. They can, for example, ‘hear’ in media texts, beliefs
and values which they are familiar with but do not share, do not
hold as their own beliefs and values. This is what happens when
left-wing and liberal viewers watch a text which appears to sustain
a right-wing view of the unemployed as work-shy scroungers
(Richardson and Corner, 1986). What they do not do is ascribe their
own values to the text. They hear it as reactionary, and they contest
this: they do not try to hear it as radical.
Textual determinacy is not incompatible with the empirical dis-
covery of large-scale interpretative variation throughout the mass
audience. Reception studies is committed to the study of this varia-
tion, but it is theoretically inadequate to view all interpretative
224 Kay Richardson

differences as evidence of viewers’ ‘creativity’. Analytic differentia-

tion is essential. Some variation will be describable in terms of
distance from the offered meaning, including ‘simple’ misunder-
standing and incomplete readings. An early attempt to articulate
something along these lines was Hall’s so-called ‘encoding-
decoding’ model, originally published in 1973 (cf. Allan’s chapter in
this volume). This was later criticized by Lewis (Wren-Lewis, 1983),
among others, for being too determinist. The approach adopted in
this chapter is certainly influenced by Hall’s account: however, it is
not a direct adaptation of that model, for two reasons. Firstly, Hall’s
principal concern was not, as in the present case, with audience
comprehension and understanding, but with the limits of mass
media power to reproduce dominant ideology. Secondly, we need
to get away from some of the conceptual confusions which have
been the legacy of the encoding—decoding model. There has been a
tendency to treat the model as a theory of different ways of reading
a text: hegemonic reading, oppositional reading, negotiated read-
ing. This is a misguided interpretation. It is much better to treat it as
an account of different ways of reading or understanding reality (i.e.
what the text is about) and of the extent to which the text is compat-
ible or incompatible with that understanding. Some variation will
be describable in terms of differential appropriation of ambiguous
or polysemic possibilities (no doubt some taken meanings are textu-
ally underdetermined), and some will be describable, not at the
level of comprehension/understanding, but as variation in ‘uptake’
or response to the text.

3 The Economy on Television

The considerations above are ones which apply quite generally to

reception research with a ‘public knowledge’ agenda. Within that
agenda, the specific news domain of ‘the economy’ has distinctive
features of its own. Our approach both to television economic re-
porting and to viewer interpretation is informed by a recognition of
‘the economy’ as essentially a systemic notion (see Emmison, 1983,
for a historical account of the term as indicating a sphere of national
polity). That is to say, as an entity, ‘the economy’ is dispersed across
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 225

a range of interrelated processes, states and indicators (e.g. interest

rates, unemployment levels, exchange rates, balance of payments,
public sector borrowing, inflation). But the configuration of this
dispersal is subject to change in various ways. Different factors
can be included or excluded as parts of the system, the relation-
ship assumed to be desirable between parts (the economy ‘in bal-
ance’) can vary, and the priority accorded to given parts can alter
too.
Economic news is most often led by a reported change in one
or more components of the economy. Such change requires con-
nections to be made in order that some overall assessment of shifts
in the systemic condition can be offered. This assessment, articu-
lated within the requirements of news immediacy, is essentially
one of the short term (indeed, the ‘picture’ it offers is sometimes
referred to as a ‘snapshot’). However, it gets news value from its
relation to longer-term expectations, which in turn are set by the
reporting of broad trends. During the period over which our study
was conducted, news of shifts in the British national economy were
set against the larger trend of a ‘recovery’ whose ‘fragility’ was
widely recognized. The primary significance of an item therefore
often lay in the degree to which reported change served to confirm
or to put in question the trend towards recovery. Within the broad
terms of ‘progress’ it was also possible to extract news value from
variations in pace, and the vocabulary of the news over this period
shows a rich variety of possible modes of movement (e.g. from
faltering, inching and lumbering through to accelerating and
racing). When the point was reached at which the fact of ‘recovery’
was beyond doubt among economists, then ‘sustainable recovery’
became the new expectational framework for the according of news
value.
It has since been joined by ‘the feelgood factor’. Unlike the two
previous news thresholds, ‘the feelgood factor’ is an explicitly subjec-
tive measure of how the economy is performing, although objective
improvements may be dependent upon it being established. ‘The
feelgood factor’ turns on the public experiencing economic upturn,
in part, perhaps, on their belief that there is a trend ‘coming their
way’. It is a moot point as to whether, within the present definitions,
arrival of the ‘feelgood factor’ is a necessary preliminary to the
attainment of ‘sustainable recovery’ or vice versa:
226 Kay Richardson

‘But there’ll be few celebrations, few cries of joy while the feelgood
factor remains so elusive’ (economic story sign-off, News at Ten, 12
October 1994)

4 Researching Television and the Economy

An ongoing study at Liverpool of TV and the economy is attempt-

ing to explore what the TV news makes of ‘the economy’ in Britain
and how, in turn, TV news discourse on economic matters is under-
stood by the viewers. Six viewing groups participated in a pilot
study: science students, Labour and Conservative Party members,
university security staff, local government officers, and participants
from the local Unemployed Resource Centre. These volunteers
watched extracts from the news programmes of the two major
channels, including some Budget Day coverage and some later
material. These channels were the BBC and ITV. The latter is the
main commercial, terrestrial channel on British television, and
shows the ITN news. On Budget Day, the incumbent Government,
in the person of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, gives an official
assessment of the state of the economy and the policy measures to
be introduced in the light of that assessment. Budget Day speeches
always attract a lot of media coverage. At the time of the broadcast
the Chancellor of the Exchequer was Norman Lamont. The inter-
view /screenings were conducted in the School of Politics and Com-
munication Studies at the University of Liverpool within six weeks
of the original broadcasts.
The small-scale nature of this project of course raises many ques-
tions for further research respecting the specificity of the viewing /
knowing experience for different sections of the public. I would not
wish to claim that the viewers who participated in the study were
‘representative’ either of the viewing public in general or of the
interest groups from which they were drawn. I would wish to claim
that in spreading the net over this particular set of participants,
clustered by groups to ensure a ‘spread’ of response constituencies,
we did all that could be expected in a pilot study to draw out
reactions along ‘fault lines’ of attitude/opinion (those of political
affiliation and of relation to the world of paid employment) which
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 227

‘seemed likely to be of significance in relation to this particular topic.

But the dangers of oversimplification are real enough and the usual
caveats about relying too much upon small samples apply.

5 Texts

For the purposes of the present chapter, I wish to focus upon one
particular economic news item from the tape which we used in the
pilot study. My discussion will be more intensive than is usually the
case in studies of this kind: it is very ‘narrow’ in focus, yet deliber-
ately so, as the purpose is to demonstrate the possibility of relating
text to interpretation at the most detailed levels of linguistic form. A
full transcription is provided below.
The selected item of news coverage is about a rise in ‘growth
rates’ in the national economy. This rise in growth rates gets its
news value from a narrative which is pushed back as far as the
1930s. This is a move which undoubtedly enhances the dramatic
qualities of the story. Most viewers were not alive in the 1930s, and
know of it as ‘the Depression’ with a cluster of meanings to do with
the experience of poverty and unemployment. It also signifies, here,
‘a long time’: a scale-enhancing device of a type common in news
discourse, and one which is repeated in other terms elsewhere in the
text:

Britain’s worst recession since the thirties is now over, accord-

ing to the government.
From the middle of 1990 to the end of last year, total produc-
tion in the economy stagnated and fell in what proved to be the
longest recession in half a century. But in the first three months
of 1993, output jumped by 0.6 per cent.

At an annual rate, growth in the first three months of the year

was two and a half per cent. Only just back up to the annual
rate of growth in the UK in the last 40 years.

The chronology of the story divides time into four successive

sections: the depression of the 1930s, followed by a long period
228 Kay Richardson

BBC 9.00 News, 26 April 1993

Michael Buerk, The Government’s declared the recession

presenter over. The latest figures show the economy
Voice-over Leyland growing again for the first time in two and
workers a half years.
[headlines for other stories edited out]
Michael Buerk Good evening. Britain’s worst recession
Studio, to camera since the thirties is now over, according to
the Government. Official figures show the
gross domestic product — that’s the total
value of goods and services produced after
ruling out erratic oil production — rose by
0.6 per cent in the first three months of this
year. Until then, production had been flat
or falling for more than two and a half
years. The Chancellor said there were now
clear signs of recovery across a broad
front. During the recession, unemploy-
ment doubled and sixty thousand compa-
nies went bust.
Gerry Baker, At the Leyland Daf plant in Birmingham
economics this morning they had plenty to celebrate.
correspondent The news of the economy’s return to
Voice-over Leyland growth coincided with the completion of
Daf footage the management buy-out there, that will
[launch] save a thousand jobs.
Leyland Daf Today we are reborn. A brand new com-
chairman pany. Tomorrow, just watch us go.
Speaking on film at
launch
Gerry Baker The van maker’s employees will be able to
Voice-over Leyland work with renewed enthusiasm now that
Daf footage the recovery is finally under way. From the
[workers middle of 1990 to the end of last year, total
- assembling vans] ] production in the economy stagnated and
Voice-over growth fell in what proved to be the longest reces-
oo bar chart
sion in half a century. But in the first
months of 1993, output jumped by 0.6 per
cent. Although this kind of growth hasn’t
been seen for three years, manufacturers
remain cautious.
Geoff White, We're seeing different signs of recovery in
Pressac the various markets we operate in. Cer-
Holdings tainly I think sentiment has improved. But
_ [interview] I think we’re seeing a batch of indicators,
and at this stage we are looking forward to
recovery but not confident that it is really
there and really sustainable.
Gerry Baker The caution is understandable. At an an-
Voice-over different nual rate, growth in the first three months
production scene of the year was two and a half per cent.
Only just back up to the annual rate of
growth in the UK in the last 40 years.
Professor David We're not yet making up lost ground. We
Currie, London need to get growth above two and a half
Business School per cent up to 3 per cent or 4 per cent, to
[interview] make up the ground we lost in the reces-
sion and to bring unemployment clearly in
a downward direction.
Gerry Baker It’s now clear that the economy spent most
Studio: on camera of last year bumping along the bottom
after two years of decline. At the start of
this year, a series of economic figures
pointed somewhat inconclusively to a re-
vival in economic prospects. Now today’s
GDP figure provides the chapter and verse
that Britain is gradually moving out of re-
cession. But before a complete recovery
can be declared, even faster growth must
be achieved, and maintained. And with a
daunting trade deficit and huge govern-
ment borrowing, that won’t prove easy.
Michael Buerk — : :The Chancellor says it’s now up to manu-—
Studio: on camera facturers to take advantage of the changed
economic conditions and create a sustain-
able recovery. But Labour has warned
against complacency, and says Britain’s
productive base has been so damaged by
the recession, new measures are needed to
ensure lasting growth.
Robin Oakley, Britain’s export flag will be flying ever
political editor more vigorously as a result of the recovery
Voice-over footage heralded in today’s GDP figures, the
from Lamont’s Government hopes. Today at a European
meeting. Bank for Reconstruction and Development
Exterior shot meeting in London the Chancellor argued
from Union Jack that sales to Europe will flourish, even
to building: then though some EU partners are starting their
interior recessions as Britain begins to pull out of
hers. Mr Lamont was distinctly bullish.
Norman Lamont Recession, in the sense of output actually
Studio [interview] falling, probably ended quite some time
ago. But we’ve now got a recovery that I
believe will be firmly based. We have low
inflation. We have the lowest interest rates
in Europe. Productivity has been rising so
that our exports are very competitively
priced. There is no reason at all, provided
companies keep control of their costs,
there is no reason at all why this recovery
should not be sustained.
Gordon Brown, The key question is whether we have the
Shadow productive capacity to succeed in the
Chancellor world markets of the future. And for that
Studio [interview] to happen we have to have levels of invest-
ment in skills and in industry that are ona
par with our competitors. And unfortu-
nately there is as yet no sign that govern-
ment ministers recognize that instead of
complacency and self-congratulation we
need to set in place the industry and skills
policy.
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 231

without notable problems, followed by the recession of the 1990s

and culminating with the return to growth in January, February and
March 1993. The structure of the piece is fairly straightforward. It
begins in the studio with Michael Buerk as the news presenter, who
produces both the headline at the top of the programme as a whole,
and the lead at the top of the item itself. What follows is offered in
two sections: an economic section and a political section. Buerk
hands over to the economics correspondent, who goes into more
detail, using the Leyland Daf footage as a hook for a sub-theme on
business confidence: this is further elaborated by accessing the voice
of manufacturing industry (the Pressac Holdings executive): the
more general perspective is developed with the voice of academic
business expertise (the university professor). The economics corre-
spondent’s contribution moves from facts about the economic
present to speculation about the future, and this focus on the future,
via a short sequence back in the studio, forms a link between the
economic and the political sections. During the latter both the (Con-
servative) Government and (Labour) Opposition have their say.

6 Reception

Using this item, in conjunction with the audience data, I will discuss
the viewers’ ‘discourse of interpretation’ under three headings.
Firstly, I will talk about what viewers recall from this material,
focusing upon how they appropriate remembered information to
their own perspectives. Secondly, I will provide some evidence for
viewers’ attention to textual form in this situation. This will also
include some specific discussion of variant comprehensions, and
how these relate to the textual form. And thirdly, I will address
the question of comprehension and understanding: that is to say, I will
talk about the role of prior understanding in the construction of
comprehended meaning, and the function of the text in allowing
respondents to elaborate their understanding of the economy.

Recall and thematic memory

Traditionally, research on comprehension proceeds through tests of

what viewers and readers recall from their exposure to news texts.
232 Kay Richardson

Comprehension and recall are, of course, not the same thing: a

proposition comprehended at the time may fall out of active
memory, so that the recipient needs reminding of what she has
seen. However, recall testing does provide one useful way into the
investigation of comprehension. It is also relatively easy to
operationalize under experimental conditions. There is a good
case, though, for methodologies which are ‘ethnodiscursive’ rather
than experimental in character, designed to elicit data in the form
of talk, allowing the respondents to discuss the texts in their
own terms. This provides a different type of access to the details of
recall.
The pilot study reported here did not set out to test the viewers’
recall of the material screened. Nevertheless, they inevitably did
invoke propositions and images — ‘meanings’ of a general or of a
specific character — from the text. There was substantial conver-
gence in the details of what viewers recalled. As far as the verbal
discourse is concerned, all groups recalled this BBC item in global
terms as being about the end of the recession. From the visual track,
most groups mentioned either the ‘growth rate’ graphic, or the
Chancellor of the Exchequer’s interview, or both.
Undoubtedly people’s memory for detail is selective. It is also
thematic: details are recalled when and as they fit in with general
interpretations which are being developed. This means that the
same proposition can be recalled by different groups and yet be
appropriated in very different ways by those groups. A notable
example of this concerns the way that two groups recall from the
BBC item the proposition that 60,000 companies went bust during
the recession. The security staff are reminded of this proposition
when talking about the imagery of ‘happy workers’ during the
Leyland Daf sequence. Their point about the Leyland workers is
that this firm is a single company, and hence not reliable as a piece
of evidence for the end of the recession. For the security staff, the
statistics on company failure provide support for a sceptical view of
that sequence:

Speaker A: They could have showed plenty of industries

were — are — still running down, but they chose a little bit of
good news like that, and you're not partic... That’s like a
biased opinion isn’t it?
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 233

Speaker B: Cos they did actually say there was... was it

sixty thousand, sixty-five thousand businesses gone bust,
you know?

The other group to recall this detail is the Conservative group. Like
the security staff, they want to question the BBC’s impartiality
(though to prove a left-wing rather than a right-wing bias), but they
do not connect the information on business failure with the Leyland
Daf sequence. For them the issue is how to interpret the significance
of such a statistic:

I mean, one thing we keep hearing about is that how many

small businesses have gone into liquidation — record numbers
— but people seldom point out that in fact there’s more people
who’ve opened more businesses for that to happen. If those
small businesses had not opened in the first place there
wouldn’t be that number to in fact go down.

The security staff do not question that the management buy-out at

Leyland Daf is good news; the Conservative viewers do not ques-
tion that there have been record numbers of company liquidations,
nor that this is a bad thing.
In the next section I will talk about the role of textual form in
guiding interpretations. In anticipation of that discussion, it is
worth pointing out that reception research of this kind can encoun-
ter some surprises in the data. It would be wrong to expect total
convergence in what viewers remember. It is surprising when small
details are recalled which are given very little prominence in the
text. In such cases, viewers’ own frameworks of understanding, pre-
existing the encounter with the text, enable them to ‘hear’ things
which other viewers would miss without considerable prompting.
This is idiosyncratic recall: only one viewer in our study recalled
that the ITN recovery story (four days earlier) had mentioned a
survey of business confidence:

When they say ‘recovery’ though, I think the most important

thing they said was the confidence that business had. I thought
that was the most important thing. That’s sort of the usual
implication of recovery, cos like, like you say, you can’t get the
234 Kay Richardson

up to date figures, so you have to go on some form of indica-

tion, which is like how much confidence there is.
(Interviewer: Did you think that was important then?)
I thought that was the important part of the... They said, was
it a four-year high of the business confidence?

His recall is correct, down to the very phrasing of the measurement

as ‘four-year high’:

Registered job vacancies were up. Also up were house sales

and production figures to their highest in March for 19 years,
and business confidence. That’s at a four-year high, according
to a survey by the British Chambers of Commerce.

This statistic was not given much of a chance, textually speaking. It

is one amongst four positive indicators, all of which are incidental
support for the key indicator as featured in the news lead: the
improvement in the unemployment figures. There is no supporting
visualization, and it occurs just before a shift of format from studio
presentation to filmed report. And yet, despite its low prominence,
there is this one viewer who is able to pull it out of its context and
elevate it to the status of ‘the most important thing they said’.

Comprehension and the text

Economic reality is not a ‘given’ which the news discourse seeks

simply to pass on to the viewers. The ‘reality’ itself is of a complex
and contested kind. ‘The economy’ as an entity is real enough, since
so much economic activity is oriented towards it or interpreted in
terms of it. But it is an abstract entity. Its properties are not, there-
fore, directly manifest but show themselves through ‘indicators’:
interest rates; investment rates; cost of living indices; inflation rates;
unemployment rates, and so on. These are the outward, manifest
signs of a deeper underlying reality, and they have to be interpreted
before they tell us anything about that reality.
Sometimes the indicators of economic change are directly
contestable. Unemployment figures are a case in point: there is a
well-established reflex of contestation in Britain to the official un-
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 235

employment figures which are issued by the Government each

month. The government figures do not give the full picture of the
true extent of unemployment in Britain. The unemployed viewers
who participated in our study had a lot to say along these lines,
some provoked by the ITN ‘recovery’ story which used a fall in
unemployment rates as its news lead.

It’s totally convincing as a programme, but if you actually

know about it, you know, they’re just telling lies, basically — in
the sense that, OK, the figures dropped, but why have the
figures dropped? Because people are not signing on or they’re
in part-time work, or they’re going on a scheme which they’ ve
been forced on to, you know. That’s the reason.

This is a critical reading: the text is convincing, but he is not con-

vinced. Such a response presupposes a split view of the audience: a
minority who have resources like his own, and can therefore distin-
guish truth from falsehood, and a majority without such resources.
It is important to pay attention to such claimed understanding of
what others’ interpretative resources include and exclude, in deter-
mining the extent of the shared knowledge which informs recep-
tion. Even where the indicators are not contestable in themselves as
figures, the interpretation of the indicators is always contestable. In
the case of the growth rate story, the issue is the relationship be-
tween the core news fact, and the interpretation of that fact as a sign
of ‘recovery’ in the economy. The BBC partly endorses the Govern-
ment’s ‘recovery’ interpretation, partly withholds endorsement.
This is a very precisely analysable textual equivocation, and turns
on how to interpret signs of a ‘trend’, where trends involve relations
between the present and the future, as well as the past. We can
begin with the headline and the lead paragraph:

The Government’s declared the recession over. The latest

figures show the economy growing again for the first time in
two and a half years. Good evening. Britain’s worst recession
since the thirties is now over, according to the Government.
Official figures show the gross domestic product — that’s the
total value of goods and services produced after ruling out
erratic oil production — rose by 0.6 per cent in the first three
236 Kay Richardson

months of this year. Until then, production had been flat or

falling for more than two and a half years. The Chancellor said
there were now clear signs of recovery across a broad front.
During the recession, unemployment doubled and sixty thou-
sand companies went bust.
The core news fact here is a newsworthy change of direction in a key
economic indicator: namely, growth rates. Upon that fact is pro-
jected an interpretation: the change signifies economic ‘recovery’.
This interpretation of the rise in growth rates is attributed to the
Government, both in the headline and in the intro, though in textu-
ally distinctive ways. In the headline, the attribution is via the
reporting clause ‘The Government’s declared .. .’ But this attribu-
tion is a ‘soft’ one. The initial sentence is followed by a second one
which stands in a relation of evidentiality to it. The latter sentence is
the evidence for what the first sentence claims to be true. The fact
that it is the Government making the claim thus recedes into the
background.
There is a gesture of attribution in the lead paragraph as well as
in the headline. In the case of the lead paragraph, however, the
attribution is held over to the end of the sentence: ’. . . according to
the Government’. What the viewer hears first is the claim itself. This
is temporarily accorded the status of a fact, uttered on the authority
of the presenter and thus of the programme. And it is a strong claim
with high news value. A high-impact initial statement like this is
likely to resonate much more strongly with viewers than the sub-
sequent dutiful but weakening attribution, which requires them to
rework their understanding of the authority for the proposition. It is
moved down the hierarchy of voices: it is the Government, not the
BBC, asserting that the recession is over.
It is not only Buerk but also Baker the economics correspondent
who endorses the Government's recovery claim. In Baker’s dis-
course, the relation of economic growth and recovery is not one of
interpretation, but one of synonymy: his second sentence refers to
‘the news of the economy’s return to growth’ whilst in his third
sentence (after the Daf chairman’s soundbite) he paraphrases this as
‘the recovery is finally under way’:
The news of the economy’s return to growth coincided with
the completion of the management buy-out there [at Leyland
Daf] that will save a thousand jobs.
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 237

The van maker’s employees will be able to work with renewed

enthusiasm now that the recovery is finally under way.

Even the more modest formulation by Baker is problematic as a

truth claim: through nominalization, time reference disappears and
this helps to project the present fact (the January/February /March
data) into the future, for which there is no evidence. Eventually,
Baker is as explicit as it is possible to be that the recovery has
arrived:

Now today’s GDP figure provides the chapter and verse that
Britain is gradually moving out of recession.

(The phrasing of this ‘beyond doubt’ formulation is interesting in its

connotations of biblical levels of authority, although one has to
wonder about the residual power of such expressions in a secular
age.)
The recovery interpretation is nevertheless undermined from
within the text, and not just through attribution to the Government.
Other voices partly agree and partly disagree with the ‘recovery’
interpretation in making the issue one of ‘sustainable recovery’.
Baker undermines himself in his sympathy for the manufacturers’
cautiousness. Geoff White of Pressac Holdings says: ‘we are looking
forward to recovery but not confident that it is really there and
really sustainable’ and Baker comments: ‘The caution is under-
standable’. Later, he acknowledges, in line with what the business
expert says, that ‘complete’ recovery requires better figures than the
ones just announced:

But before a complete recovery can be declared, even faster

growth must be achieved, and maintained. And with a daunt-
ing trade deficit and huge government borrowing, that won’t
prove easy.

Lamont complicates matters by proposing that only falling growth

rates define recession, rather than falling and static growth rates,
which was the implication previously:

Recession, in the sense of output actually falling, probably

ended quite some time ago.
238 Kay Richardson

A different kind of complication occurs when the programme

stops talking in terms of a quarterly growth rate increase of 0.6 per
cent and starts projecting that rate as an annual one of two and a
half per cent:

At an annual rate, growth in the first three months of the year

was two and a half per cent. Only just back up to the annual
rate of growth in the UK in the last 40 years.

For viewers who are uncertain how economic reasoning works, and
need interpretative guidance from the text, this is not very helpful.
There is no inferable single account of what constitutes recovery,
and hence no definitive warrant for believing that the recovery has
arrived, despite what Gerry Baker says. The ‘recovery’ interpreta-
tion, though it is ‘pulled up’ from the Government's discourse into
the broadcasters’ own, is too thoroughly undermined by difficult-
to-assess contra-indications: the ‘experts’ don’t quite believe it, and
the broadcasters appear to endorse their caution just as initially they
appeared to endorse the Government’s confidence.
It would not be productive to develop this account of what
the text means by ‘recovery’ any further. There is a real danger
of producing textual analysis which is too detailed in its attention
to nuances of formulation. The danger is of attributing sig-
nificance to features that viewers are not attentive to. For the
reception study to make sense, it is important to concentrate upon
those features which seem likely to have the potential to affect
reception.

Comprehension and the viewers

So what do the viewers make of this? News discourse is understood

by viewers as sequences of authored messages. To comprehend
those messages is thus not necessarily to believe them to be true. A
viewer ‘comprehends’, not that the recession has ended, but that
they are being told that it has ended, and told on the authority of
someone with greater or lesser credibility. Thus much interpretative
sophistication is a feature of all the discussions we conducted with
respondents, as the following quotations show:
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 239

...on the ITN one [a story from four days earlier than the BBC
one, with unemployment rates as its news lead, not repro-
duced here] it was quite clear that the whole message of the
bulletin was that the recession had actually ended, whereas on
the BBC one the report was about ‘the Government says the
recession has ended .. .’ (Conservative viewers)
... this time the BBC really did take the Chancellor’s line. This
sort of assumption that we were in a recovery, which proved
to be junk. (Labour viewers)

Speaker A: I mean, how anyone can stand up on the twenty-

sixth of March at three o’clock and say ‘The recession’s now
OVER... :
Speaker B: |Hurrah!
Speaker C: Er, it seemed to me...
Speaker A: ...is something beyond me.
Speaker D: And how many times have we heard it before?
Speaker B: And both sides tried to do it, like, and
they... really ‘Hurrah! It’s all over’, like. Nobody actually
pinpointed that it isn’t.
(Unemployed viewers)

The Conservative speaker here seems to believe that the recovery is

a reality which the BBC’s discourse, in effect, misreports as no more
than Government propaganda, and undermines through its use of
other voices. Most other viewers take the line that the recovery is
Government discourse, though some think that the BBC endorses
the Government's view and some do not. Thus, viewers diverge
in their propensity to believe the proposition that the recession is
over, with the Conservatives notably more confident than the rest.
And they also diverge in their comprehension of it as reportage on
the authority of the broadcasters or on that of the Government
alone.
We cannot tell from these data whether the Conservative speaker
believes in the recovery as a consequence of the text alone (reading
‘against the grain’ of what he perceives as the broadcasters’ strategy
of playing down that recovery; privileging the voice of the Govern-
ment over that of the broadcasters) or whether his belief in the
recovery is an element in his own systemic understanding which
240 Kay Richardson

has been established over the week intervening between the item
being broadcast on 26 April and the project screening and interview
on 2 May. The effect would be the same in either case. For him, the
BBC item is a univocal discourse, one which, in being ‘balanced’,
improperly authorizes sceptical doubts about the reality of the
recovery.
Of the other five groups, all but the local government officers
hear the BBC announcing the reality of the recovery. Two groups,
however, the students and the security staff, also hear the BBC
authorizing sceptical doubts about the reality of the recovery. For
them, the text seems multivocal in a way that is deviant or unsatis-
factory, and not what they expect or desire from TV news:

I found the word[?] ‘recovery’ misleading, because they were

saying that . . . big headline was ‘the recovery has started’ and
then what they seemed to say part-way through the report
was: ‘the recovery’s not here yet’, basically. (Student viewers)
And the BBC side, I thought, you know, the opening . . . the
opening titles were very sensationally announcing that the re-
cession was over, and then they went on to tell us that it wasn’t
over, you know, using experts to emphasize the fact that it’s
not over. Whereas, you know, they announced that it is, you
know. I thought that was a little bit confusing. (Security staff)

The other two groups, the Labour viewers and the unemployed
viewers, do not hear this second, contradictory authorization: they
hear a univocal discourse endorsing the Chancellor’s view:

The thing that was so appalling . .. was it was just a Govern-

ment press release that they repeated verbatim. And they only
gave two clues to that. The one said that ‘according to the
Government’, and I think the other said ‘the Government
hopes’. And the rest of it was just quoting the Government line
— that we’re coming out of recession. (Labour viewers)
I think it was more like a Party Political Broadcast by the Tory
Party. I mean it was put that way, especially the BBC one: Big
music, ‘oh it’s great, everything’s over now, no problems’. And
then, they give it to Lamont, as if to say ‘there’s no problems,
everything’s worked now’... (Unemployed viewers)
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 241

(Party Political Broadcasts are time slots in broadcast output across

all channels allocated to the political parties on the basis of their
voting strength. Broadcasting organizations are legally obliged
to provide these slots, but editorial control is entirely with the
parties.)
Finally, there is one group — the local government officers —
which hears a univocal discourse with no view of its own, only an
honourably balanced account of conflicting views:
when the BBC came on, they stressed . . . they balanced it up,
didn’t they? They said ‘this has happened, this has happened,
but this is still there and this is still there’. And I thought that
was really much more balanced in their approach.

At the risk of oversimplification, these differences between the

viewers can be presented as in table 8.1.

Table 8.1 Comparing readings

Group How it hears How it hears the How it hears Own view
the BBC Government other voices

Conservative Questioning Announcing Recovery

recovery recovery
Labour Announcing Announcing No
recovery recovery recovery
Unemployed Announcing Announcing No
recovery recovery recovery
Students Announcing Announcing Questioning
and recovery recovery
questioning
recovery
Security staff Announcing Announcing Questioning
and recovery recovery
questioning
recovery
Local govt Announcing Questioning
officers recovery recovery
242 Kay Richardson

The differences we have identified between viewers are interest-

ing for what they tell us about the role of textual form in the
comprehension process. Textual form is ‘read’ for signs of authori-
zation. Viewers refer to such formal properties as the use of report-
ing clauses, and to the terms upon which the voices of interested
parties are accessed, as when the security staff say: ‘they went on to
tell us that it [the recession] wasn’t over, using experts to emphasize
the fact that it’s not over’. In some cases a top-down reading
induces a very selective appropriation of such signs of authoriza-
tion. The following viewer is happy to ignore the contributions of
the sceptical manufacturer and business expert in deriving his ‘pro-
Government’ interpretation of the text:

just jumping up and down with a point six per cent increase,
jumping up and down screaming: ‘it’s over, it’s over’. I think it
was obviously good news and should have been portrayed as
such, but it should have been more guarded. A very small
jump like that could be a blip. It’s a long road. I think the main
thing, it’s going to take a long time to get out. I just think it
didn’t really say anything. It just reported Lamont being...
going round telling everybody how wonderful it was. (Labour
viewer)

What we cannot confidently say on the basis of this material,

though it is an interesting speculation, is that the least politically
committed viewers are the ones who register the text’s equivocation
between endorsing and not endorsing the Government's ‘recovery’
interpretation. If this is true, we could explain it as a function of
paying greater attention to the text than the more politically com-
mitted viewers are inclined to do. Clearly, though, it would be
imprudent to offer this as a ‘finding’ of the study reported here on
the basis of such slight evidence, though it would be an interesting
hypothesis to pursue.
Other examples from the respondents’ discussions show further
how viewers talk about the form of the text in producing their
interpretations:

But then they cut away and showed us this buy-out thing in
this Daf firm. And I thought, well they’re trying to convince us
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 243

by using the storyline as well that there was some substance to

it [the ‘recovery’ idea]. (Local government officers)
When they showed you the bit about the — what was it? — the
jump in the economic out . . . sorry, the manufacturing output
— it jumped, like, nought-point-six per cent — and it showed
this big . . . it looked like a really significant thing. It reminded
me of that... have you read a book called: How To Lie With
Statistics?
(Interviewer: Yes)
Darrell Huff. And I thought to myself, that’s an example of
how to do it, you know. I mean you show it in such a way that
it looks huge, but when you get down to it, what does it mean?
(Local government officers)

This last example is of interest because it touches upon the visual

characteristics of television news. This viewer has a critical interpre-
tation of a particular visualization: he believes that the size of the
bar which represents the last quarter’s GDP of 0.6 is misleadingly
large on the screen. Unfortunately for his argument, bars represent-
ing negative growth in earlier quarters are on exactly the same scale,
though of course these appear below rather than above the median
line which runs horizontally across the screen. Nevertheless, there
is some sense in what he says, suggesting that it is easier for viewers
to attend to a ‘primary’ level of visual codification (how much
screen-space does the bar representing ‘growth’ occupy?) than to
secondary recodification via alphanumeric signifiers (what is the
scale this graph is based on?).

Comprehension and understanding

There is more to understanding than its propositional base. Cogni-

tive representations take the form of mental maps, schemas, scripts
and frames, and draw upon the discourses which are publicly avail-
able for sense-making. Meanings are articulated within discourses,
and discourses are institutionally grounded, inter-articulated, sets
of propositions which organize and constitute domains of knowl-
edge and experience. These discourses pre-exist specific texts. In
linguistic terms, we are talking about the domain of the given, the
244 Kay Richardson

taken for granted, the known, the presupposed, the axiomatic. To offer
up, for comprehension, an account which has been constructed
within the terms of a specific discourse is to propose that discourse
as the necessary or appropriate one for understanding its domain of
knowledge. Now the project of comprehension is oriented not to the
‘givens’ of the discourse, but to the ‘news’ of the text. We customari-
ly say that someone has ‘understood’ a message if they are capable
of reproducing its overt propositional content. When they go be-
yond this, for example, by ‘explaining’ something they have seen on
TV, they are producing a new text, but drawing (or so it seems)
upon the same discourse (in this case, of national economic policy)
which informs the text — as well as drawing directly upon the text
itself:

... He’s doing it [taxing] because he’s borrowing fifty billion

next year, and to do that he’s got to put tax on everybody,
right? And it’s how he’s distributing the taxes basically, you
know, to cover that fifty billion which he’s borrowed, you
know. At the end of the day, he’s got to... spend, get enough
taxes back to pay for that fifty billion he’s going to borrow, you
know? (Unemployed viewers)

This is from a discussion of some material which was originally

broadcast earlier than the text we have been exploring here: our
viewers also watched the coverage on two channels (BBC and ITN)
of the 1993 Budget, in which the shock news was the proposal to
raise a consumer tax on gas and electricity for the first time. The
reference to ‘fifty billion’ here relates to the size of the official
Budget Deficit (Public Sector Borrowing Requirement) as an-
nounced by the Chancellor in the Budget. This was registered on all
sides as surprisingly (and unacceptably) high: previous predictions
had set it much lower.
The Chancellor’s rationale for this tax measure went on to be-
come a much-repeated piece of information, throughout the period
of ensuing parliamentary debate. It was still a very salient piece of
information by the time of our screenings in early May 1993. It is not
surprising that viewers, sympathetic and unsympathetic, are famil-
iar with the basic ideas. What is more interesting is the modality of
the sentences in our unemployed viewer's account. He is critical of
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 245

government policy and yet he essentially accepts the economic

necessity of tax raises to offset a high PSBR. There was very little
coverage during that period which indicated that there might be
other possibilities, and in our respondent groups there is evident
difficulty in their attempts to think in terms of other possibilities:

And the point about the borrowing I couldn’t understand is

why they couldn’t actually borrow more than what they al-
ready did. That was very sort of ske..., badly outlined, cos
America’s got a huge budget deficit. Imean, where do they get
their money from? Why can’t Britain get as much money as
they can? I mean it just seemed like it was basically explaining
why the Government was doing that, and um not really
showing alternative options where the City wouldn’t be so
heavily involved. Breaking away from the City. (Student
viewers)

References to ‘the City’ in this context act as a shorthand for the

financial institutions operating out of the London Stock Exchange.
The modern visual imagery of financial trading is internationally
recognizable. It is certainly true, as this viewer says, that the Budget
programmes we screened do not entertain the thought that deficit
financing might be viewed as a satisfactory national economic
policy. We can go further: nowhere within mainstream media cov-
erage had there been any support for such an idea. Of course a
viewer who knows that America has a huge budget deficit might
also be expected to know something about the problems which
followed from that: but this viewer does not know, and is left with
questions about the Government’s economic policy options.
Buerk’s script here embeds a more formal discourse of economics
with a fairly light touch. The second sentence of the headline can be
compared with the second sentence of the intro:

The latest figures show the economy growing again for the
first time in two and a half years.
Official figures show the gross domestic product — that’s the
total value of goods and services produced after ruling out
erratic oil production — rose by 0.6 per cent in the first three
months of this year.
246 Kay Richardson

The second of these sentences is an expanded version of the first and

one which moves more in the direction of economic and policy
discourses, both in using the technical term ‘gross domestic prod-
uct’ and in offering a parenthetic gloss on that term for uninitiated
viewers. One viewer, from the student group, remembered this
gesture and commented favourably upon it:

I didn’t think it was brilliantly done although they did try to

explain what GDP was. That was quite good, the way they
actually gave a definition almost.

Elsewhere in the item, however, the journalists’ responsibility

towards these official frames of reference is not discharged in this
fashion. There is very little use of technical vocabulary as such, and
there are no further examples of explicit explanatory statements
such as the definition of GDP that Buerk provides here.
Instead there are a variety of linkages made through juxtaposi-
tions which indicate to the viewer in fairly non-technical terms the
kinds of things that they ought to understand about the economy
and economic reasoning. Buerk does this himself at the end of his
introduction before handing over to the economics correspondent:

During the recession, unemployment doubled and sixty thou-

sand companies went bust.

This sentence, positioned as it is, serves to enhance dramatic values

by telling or reminding viewers how bad the recession was. This is
to read it as a scale-enhancing device, like those which rely upon
emphasizing how long it has been since things were as bad as they
became in the early 1990s. It can be read in other ways too. It can be
read as a device for showing what a recession is. We have already
learned, or previously knew, that a recession is about falling or
static growth rates. This sentence reminds or tells us that it is also
about job losses and company bankruptcies. It can also be read as a
device of justification, as well as one of explanation. It justifies con-
structing recession as a Bad Thing by relating it to facts which are
obviously bad. Any other evaluation of recession/negative growth
would be perverse, at least in terms of the dominant public dis-
course on offer via the broadcast media, for it would entail a neutral
or a positive assessment of job losses and bankruptcies. Of course,
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 247

‘there are ways of thinking within which redundancies and bank-

ruptcies can be welcomed. The discourse of ‘downsizing’ offers a
way of constructing job losses positively, from within the perspec-
tive of those who have to implement them. From the perspective of
national government, high unemployment keeps wage demands
down, unions weak, and workers more compliant. Yet within the
public discourse, these are not the officially sanctioned perspec-
tives, and they are not usually the ones employed to organize news
accounts.
The text also helps to reinforce the idea that the recovery hypoth-
esis cannot be sustained on a single indicator: many signs are better
than one. Buerk’s introduction carries this thought initially when he
reports:

The Chancellor said there were now clear signs of recovery

across a broad front.

Then, later, Lamont is actually seen to say:

We have low inflation. We have the lowest interest rates in

Europe. Productivity has been rising so that our exports are
very competitively priced.

This thought, too, is one that we found our respondents readily able
to reproduce, as this Labour viewer does:

Well, I mean, after two years of talking about ‘green shoots’,

you'd have thought that they’d have learnt to be a little bit
cautious, a little bit qualified or guarded, about reporting
growth and, you know, any ...I mean all... admittedly now
there are a lot of indicators that are beginning to show encour-
aging signs of recovery, but they’re all . .. very small moves in
the right direction. And it’s still too early to show whether
they’re sustained, I believe.

7 Conclusions

In this chapter I have tried to demonstrate the value of coupling the

analysis of media discourse with the analysis of reception of that
248 Kay Richardson

discourse. Very little work of this kind has been done, in spite of the
enormous growth of reception research within media studies. There
are theoretical pay-offs from undertaking such work: it pushes us
into analysing more clearly how ‘comprehension’ is produced and
how it is put to use within the informational and evaluative frame-
works which viewers possess. Likewise, there are substantive pay-
offs. In the present case, the research would not be of value unless
it produced greater understanding regarding the kinds and levels of
understanding of ‘the economy’ which underlie the communication
between television news and its audience.
One of the lessons of this research concerns the possibility of
approaching respondent data as ‘text’, which requires as much
analytic attention as the ‘primary texts’ to which it responds. Tran-
scripts of interviews with respondents are a different kind of data
from broadcast news programmes: the interviews are conducted
face-to-face; the primary medium is that of speech; group dynamics
and power relations play a part in determining who says what and
whether or not ‘consensus’ is displayed; there is scope for views to
change (and be changed) as discussion progresses, and so on. But if
it is important in analysing media texts to attend to unspoken but
implied or assumed meanings as well as explicit ones, so too is it
important to do this in analysing the texts which result from the
viewing experience and the invitation to discuss it. The most suc-
cessful reception analyses will be those which can insightfully map
between the different framings of knowledge — those offered by the
broadcasters and those offered by the respondents. In doing this,
however, it will always be necessary to recognize the complex char-
acter of the discursive relations involved. The broadcasters’ text
interprets reality, and so does that of the respondents. But the text of
the latter is also an interpretation of a text — that of the broadcasters.
It is the custom of audience research to regard it primarily in this
character, and only secondarily as an alternative account of reality.
This ‘double discourse’ can result in such characteristics as judge-
ments about the veracity of the broadcasters’ account in the light of
the viewers’ independent sources of information.
It must be acknowledged that the research setting is a favourable
site for eliciting critical responses to TV material: perhaps more
critical than is the case under ‘normal’ viewing conditions. Even if
this is true, it is not without value to show what viewers are capable
 Interpreting the Economy through Television 249

of under these more artificial conditions. The conditions are not

especially testing for the participants: it is by no means unnatural
for them to produce critical TV talk about programmes of this type,
even if it is not normal for them to do so all the time in the domestic
situation.
The approach adopted for the present study could certainly be
extended to other kinds of media discourse, though any reception
analysis which does take seriously the goal of relating textual form/
meaning to audience response is committed to ‘intensive’ forms of
analysis impossible to reconcile with survey requirements desirable
in certain kinds of social science research. Only a very limited
amount of quantification of broadcast or audience data is possible
when the methods of analysis are as intensive as the ones recom-
mended here, and as in all research, there are opportunity costs.
What is gained in analytic depth is lost in generalizability. Never-
theless, argument-by-example and case-study models are not un-
familiar in the social sciences either, and have much to recommend
them as contributions to a field of study in which different method-
ologies are seen to complement one another.

NOTES

1 Previous relevant work includes: Glasgow University Media Group,

1976; Morley, 1980, which contains work on Budget coverage;
Emmison, 1983, which considers various media depictions (Emmison,
1985 is also relevant); Jensen, 1986, which looks at economic news and
‘political ritual’; Rae and Drury, 1993, which uses discourse analysis to
examine the construction of ‘recession’ in the print media.
2 For the benefit of readers unfamiliar with the now extensive literature
in reception studies, the best place to begin is chapter 3 of Morley’s
(1992) book Television, Audiences and Cultural Studies, which is an edited
version of Morley’s influential 1980 publication The ‘Nationwide’ Audi-
ence. Tracing Morley’s ideas ‘backwards’ leads to Stuart Hall’s encod-
ing—decoding paper of 1973 (see also Hall, 1994a and 1994b) and, in
sociology, to Parkin (1971). Subsequently the field can be divided into
work concerned principally with questions of taste, pleasure and
domestic leisure (e.g. Ang, 1985), or with questions of public knowl-
edge (e.g. Jensen, 1986). The collected articles in Seiter et al. (1989)
250 Kay Richardson

provide a useful set of examples of the ‘state of the art’ in the mid- to
late 1980s. Corner (1991) is a critical overview of developments in
reception studies, and Morley (1992) responds to these and other points
in his introduction. Recent book-length works in this field besides
Morley’s own include Ang (1991), Lewis (1991), Moores (1993), Cruz
and Lewis (1994).
 Media — Language — World

What is the question to ask in respect of the media and language? Is

it about language in the media? Or the language of the media? And
in either case, what is the point of the question? Is it to discover
something about language or media or both? Simple though these
questions may seem, they are seldom asked. Our aim here is to pose
those questions that tend to be presumed in most studies of some-
thing that might be called ‘media language’. In order to do so, we
will try to reconstruct the attitudes to media and language as we find
them in various approaches to these themes. A broad distinction
can be made between two prevailing ways of approaching media
and language: the ideological and the pragmatic. We will review the
gross implications of these two approaches before finally compar-
ing them with our own approach, which is phenomenological.

1 Ideology and Media

‘The concept of ideology stands like a colossus over the field of

media studies’, writes Masterman (1985: 123) in a textbook for
252 Paddy Scannell

teaching this emerging academic subject. It was erected as such in

the UK, in the 1970s, at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural
Studies at Birmingham University when Stuart Hall was Director of
Studies there. For Hall, the question of ideology was central to the
analysis of the impact of the media — the press and broadcasting -—
on modern societies. The concept was derived from Marx and given
a particular inflection in relation to the Centre’s object of study,
namely contemporary popular culture. As a critique of contem-
porary culture, it differed from the earlier critique of mass culture
elaborated by the members of the ‘Frankfurt School’ in the 1930s
and 1940s.
For Adorno and Horkheimer (1985), the key issue was the
commodification of culture; the penetration, into the sphere of cul-
ture, of the rationale and techniques of the capitalist mode of pro-
duction. Mass-produced goods, characterized by standardization
and uniformity, pointed to the liquidation of difference and indi-
viduality. As such, they were part of the logic of domination
whereby the daily life of individuals was colonized by increasingly
centralized social forces: economic (monopoly capitalism), political
(the authoritarian state) and cultural (the ‘culture industry’,
epitomized by Hollywood).
This critique no longer ‘fitted’ the conditions of the 1960s and
1970s, the period in which Hall developed a new synthesis for the
study of contemporary culture (cf. Allan, this volume). On the one
hand the study of contemporary ‘popular’ culture needed rescuing
from the condescensions of ‘high culture’ (and the Frankfurt
School’s position now seemed ‘pessimistic’ and ‘elitist’). At the
same time, it was necessary to avoid an uncritical populism, a
simple cultural pluralism. Hall’s work attempted to repoliticize
the question of culture (the Frankfurt School by then seemed guilty
of political quietism) by returning to class struggle not in the
workplace but on the terrain of contemporary culture. And lastly, in
this return to Marx, it was necessary to rescue the cultural from
economic determinism — that tendency of ‘vulgar’ Marxism to inter-
pret the political and the cultural as mere superstructural indicators
of economic forces. ‘The relative autonomy’ of the cultural was a
key to the New Left readings of contemporary culture that began to
develop in the 1970s. The media — the press, broadcasting and
cinema — became primary sites for the analysis of contemporary
 Media — Language — World 253

popular culture and the mediating critical concept for this analysis
was that of ‘the dominant ideology’.
Whereas the Frankfurt School's cultural-critical reading of Marx
focused on his analysis of commodity fetishism in Capital, Hall’s
reading of Marx focused on The German Ideology and in particular
Marx and Engel’s formulation about the class-based nature of ‘rul-
ing ideas’ at any one time (Hall, 1977). Those who control the means
of material production tend to control the means of mental produc-
tion as well. The ‘dominant ideology’ thesis, elaborated around this
proposition, regarded beliefs, attitudes and values as they were
expressed at any time as universalizing the interests of dominant
social forces. This process was not a simple one whereby values
were simply imposed on subordinate social groups. Meanings
and values were always understood historically (as ‘in process’)
and as the site and source of struggles over the control and defini-
tions of meanings. The media were seen as a prime site in which
the contestation of meanings was played out in contemporary
society.
Hall set out a highly influential model for the analysis of this
process in his ‘encoding / decoding’ article (1980), which attempted
to account for the social relations of cultural production in respect of
television (cf. Allan’s and Richardson’s chapters in this volume).
The object of analysis was the relationship between the processes of
production, the products (programmes) and the processes of recep-
tion. The key argument was that there was no necessary corre-
spondence between the moments of encoding (production) and
decoding (reception). Although programmes might encode a ‘pre-
ferred meaning’ that supported, say, official definitions of contro-
versial issues in broadcast news, it was not to be supposed that in
any simple way such meanings would be ‘bought’ by viewers. How
they themselves interpreted what they saw and heard depended in
part on their social position, on such factors as class, ethnicity and
gender. Hall proposed three types of possible decoding of ‘the
television message’: dominant, negotiated and oppositional.
Media products were considered as texts to be subjected to criti-
cal readings of their ideological effectivity. To this end, an updated
version of semiotics (a mix of Saussure, Volosinov and Barthes) was
applied to the signifying practices of the press and television (Hall,
1982). The kind of analysis that developed was a mix of semiotic
254 Paddy Scannell

theory, marxist aesthetics and literary criticism. What it lacked was

any specific linguistic input. That was supplied by a group of lin-
guists — notably Kress, Fowler and Fairclough — who attempted to
formulate a critical linguistics that focused particularly on the ques-
tion of ideology as a feature of language (Fowler et al., 1979; Kress
and Hodge, 1979; Fairclough, 1989). The ideological was ‘shown’ in
language in various ways: by the analysis of specific lexicons that
contained negative evaluations of that to which they referred (race
and gender, most obviously); by the analysis of aspects of grammar
(pronouns of power, for instance) and more ambitiously by the
attempt to demonstrate that certain syntactical structures (agency
deletion and passivization, for example) were devices that effec-
tively rendered invisible the operations of power in language and
society (Fowler, 1991).
It is not our purpose here to review the considerable contribution
to the development of ideology critique made by these and other
writers (notably, van Dijk) who can broadly be described as critical
discourse analysts. Their work is well represented in this collection.
Rather it is a question of seeing not only ‘where they are coming
from’ but also where they think they are going. What is their ‘take’
on language and on media, and why and how is it focused in and
through the concept of ideology? Rather than attempt yet again to
pin down this notoriously elusive term, we will try a different tack
and consider it as both articulating and legitimating a particular
attitude towards language and world.

2 Suspicion: Depth Theories

There are, broadly speaking, two possible attitudes towards ‘reality’

(the reality of world and language): either to take it at face value or
not. The former accepts and recognizes, in the first instance, reality
as it is. The latter regards this reality with a principled suspicion. At
the least, it wishes to put in question what appears as unquestion-
able from the former stance. Each attitude embodies a particular
way of interpreting reality. We will call them the hermeneutics of
trust and of suspicion, a distinction first suggested by Ricoeur
(1974). Ideology critique is a hermeneutics of suspicion. This is
 Media — Language — World 255

particularly evident, as we will show, in its attitude to common

sense and everyday life (cf. Allan, this volume).
Ideology critique is an instance of Depth Theory, a way of think-
ing that regards the appearance of things as potentially unreliable
and deceptive. To get beneath the superficial ‘naturalism’ of phe-
nomena is the task of Theory. It must find the hidden structural,
structuring causes that produce things as they are. Much modern
theorizing is, in this way, a structuralism of one kind or another
(Hall, 1986). It hypothesizes an underlying structure that, when
found, will serve to explain the form and content of things as they
ordinarily appear to us.
Two other Depth Theories that are highly relevant to ideology
critique, and which inform its analysis, are Freudian psychoanalysis
and Saussurian linguistics. Freud’s momentous discovery of the
unconscious claimed that it structured conscious psychic life ‘behind
the back’ of the individual. The unconscious manifests itself
indirectly; ordinarily it ‘speaks’ in dreams and in the small
psychopathologies of everyday life (momentary forgettings, slips of
the tongue etc.). In cases of severe psychic disorder, the unconscious
reveals itself as a full-blown neurosis (hysteria was the classic
instance analysed by Freud). Freud always insisted on the
determinacy of the unconscious which made its presence felt in
hidden ways, in ways that individuals were themselves entirely
unaware of and which it was the task of the analyst patiently to
interpret for the patient.
Saussurian linguistics as a Depth Theory shows most obviously
in the famous distinction between parole and langue. Parole as utter-
ance (language in use) is discarded as incapable (unworthy) of
analysis. To understand language, it must be thought of as langue,
an abstract system of signification. Langue is pure structure. It is a
system of difference whose differences allow for various possible
combinations that are actualized in and as lexical, grammatical
and syntactic structures. Langue is shown to be arbitrary in the
first instance and conventional in the second instance. This is
demonstrated in respect of the sign, and the nature of the relation-
ship between signifier and signified. The effect of this approach
is to denaturalize language, to reveal it as a social construct. It
is not a given, natural thing, and to treat it as if it were is to
misrecognize it.
256 Paddy Scannell

These three Depth Theories or Structuralisms, here briefly

sketched in — marxism, psychoanalysis and linguistics — converge in
ideology critique. Ideology can be understood in two ways. As a
neutral term it refers to any articulate system of values and beliefs
(Catholicism, marxism, Thatcherisin etc.). As a critical term it refers
to distorted value systems, beliefs which — the theory supposes — ‘in
reality’ work against the interests of the majority. Ideology critique
identifies a process whereby the interests of some (property owners;
men; whites) are universalized as the interests of all (the pro-
pertyless; women; non-whites). Particular ideologies (class, sexism,
racism) work by concealing their real (exploitative) nature. But how
do they do this? How is it that the exploited fail to see the real
nature of their conditions of life? Ideology critique presupposes that
rational self-interest (that great principle of the Enlightenment)
would stir the exploited to overcome their exploitation, if only they
understood it properly. The aim of ideology critique is to make that
understanding available as a basis for political action to overcome
oppression. Its task is to expose the ways in which ideologies render
themselves invisible in such ways as to escape notice. In so doing, it
demystifies experience, freeing it up for conscious, critical, political
praxis.
This entails a critique of everyday life as ‘lived experience’ or the
terrain of common sense. Everyday practices rest upon taken-for-
granted attitudes, deeply ingrained habits of doing and thinking.
As such, they do not put themselves in question and hence are
unreflexive and uncritical. The language of everyday usage and the
everyday practices of the media are part of this unthinking (unwit-
ting, unconscious) process whereby the world reproduces itself as it
is (Hall, 1982). This means, in effect, that it reproduces unquestion-
ingly (without putting in question) a distorted dominant reality that
mystifies social inequalities. The media and language are both sys-
tems of representation that, in ordinary practice and use, misrepre-
sent the reality which they re-present. Hall insists that the primary
function of media is ideological: Bennett (1982) has called language
‘the home of all ideology’.
Neither language nor media are, in this analysis, to be trusted.
Both should be regarded with caution. The aim of media studies as
ideology critique is to teach students that both media and language
should not be thought of as natural phenomena but as social con-
 Media — Language — World 257

structions of reality. Ideology critique takes a constructivist view of

media and language. Both are conventional systems of representa-
tion which unreflectingly misrepresent the social reality (world)
that they construct. The educative task of media studies is to de-
construct media and language; to alert students to their dangers,
their slipperiness, their deceptiveness. In all these ways ideology
critique mobilizes a hermeneutics of suspicion against media and
language.

3 Trust: Reception Studies and

Conversation Analysis

Let us now, by way of contrast, turn to approaches to media and

language that accept them as naturally occurring social phenomena
and regard them — without preconceptions — as things that simply,
routinely and ordinarily work (whether for or against human inter-
ests is not, in the first instance, at issue). Such ‘pragmatic’ approaches
presuppose, we will try to show, a hermeneutics of trust. ‘Pragmat-
ics’ is used here in a fairly broad (non-linguistic) sense as referring
to any kind of study of broadcasting and the press that considers
both the institutions and their output (programmes, newspapers) in
the contexts in which and for which they exist. Pragmatics is always
context-sensitive: it attends to the specificities of things in respect of
their where and when and the way that they occur. Two established
lines of pragmatic enquiry into media discourses are reception
studies and conversation analysis.
Reception studies makes a cardinal distinction between ‘the act
of reading and the text as read’ (Radway, 1984). That is, it treats the
contexts of reception — the actual spaces within which television is
watched, radio is listened to, etc. — as significant in themselves.
Radway’s seminal study of Reading the Romance emphasized the
ways in which the women she studied created a space for them-
selves, within their daily routines, in which they allowed them-
selves the pleasure of ‘escaping’ into the fictional world of the
romance. Morley’s study of the ways in which families watch televi-
sion showed, amongst other things, the small tensions and power-
plays between family members over who decided, for example,
258 Paddy Scannell

what channel to watch. This seemed to depend on who had the TV-
remote, and that usually turned out to be the dominant male
(Morley, 1986). This kind of work indicated the ‘relative autonomy’
of the moment of decoding, by emphasizing the active nature of
media reception or, more exactly, the ways in which media were
used as everyday resources in everyday contexts of use.
However, there was a tendency for this kind of work, and the
closely related field of ‘qualitative’ audience studies (for a review of
both, see Moores, 1993), to uncouple the moment of decoding from
that which was to be decoded (the ‘text’) and the manner of its
encoding. Thus what began to be lost sight of was the great virtue of
Hall’s model — the effort to think of the social relations of cultural
production as a whole (production—products—audiences). At worst,
audience/reception studies of (mainly) television ended up in a
celebration of active viewers (a reaction against earlier notions of
the ‘passive viewer’) and their freedom to interpret what they saw
more or less as they liked. Richardson’s contribution to this collec-
tion indicates a welcome return to linking texts to their ‘readers’.
She emphasizes the relative determinacy of the text — the ways in
which (in her example) the discourses of television news affect the
ways in which it is understood. A key instance is the presence (or
not) of source attribution (‘The government claims ...’) which is
both attended to by viewers in discussion and interpreted variously
according to different social positions and attitudes. Thus what
Richardson and others are beginning to develop is a fuller under-
standing of the moment of decoding, in which text and the situation
of the ‘decoder’ are taken together (cf. Corner, 1996).
Conversation analysis (CA) came to the study of media, if not
accidentally, at least tangentially. What is CA’s object of study? It is
not language, but social interaction. Sacks more or less stumbled
across ordinary talk as an object of study because the tape-recorder
seemed to make it available as a naturally occurring social phenom-
enon. For Sacks, talk instantiates social interaction in a very perva-
sive and universal way. The production of talk is understood as a
jointly managed co-operative enterprise between two or more par-
ticipants who collaborate in the task of initiating, sustaining and
disengaging from it as a primary kind of human, social (sociable)
activity. It was part of Sacks’ genius to see this, and to show the fine-
grained detail of the intelligibility of talk-in-its-unfolding. The de-
 Media — Language — World 259

_ tailed studies of such things as an adolescent telling of a dirty joke,

of a depressive’s suicidal remark (‘you do it to see if anybody cares’)
or, perhaps most famously, a small child’s story (‘The baby cried.
The mommy picked it up’) are astonishingly brilliant. In each case,
starting from the smallest details, Sacks’ investigations open up
much wider issues about the nature of social life and what it is to be
human.
CA points up the cardinal importance of attention to even the
smallest of social phenomena. Its study of talk opens up entirely
new perspectives on language and particularly the fundamental
question of how understanding in language is routinely accom-
plished. CA does this by showing how participants in talk show
each other — from moment to moment — how they are (or are not)
with each other: ‘with’ in the sense of understanding (uhuh [I’m with
you. Go on]); ‘with’ in the sense of involvement (displayed by
response tokens: mmm, uhuh, oh, really, etc.); ‘with’ in the sense of a
focused attentiveness to all aspects of the matter to hand (displayed
by noticings and remarkings of the smallest aspects of what is being
said and how, including what is not said; CA shows the meaning-
fulness of small silences and momentary hesitations). In all its work
CA has attended to what has simply been ignored and overlooked
by classical linguistics and ordinary language philosophy, which
have failed to recognize the meaningfulness of talk in all its particu-
larities as the proper locus for the study of language — if, that is, it is
properly to be thought of as a human, social activity. CA is con-
cerned to show how people go about the utterly mundane task of
being in conversation by attending to how they do it. In so doing, it
illuminates from within the involvement-structures of talk. It is
parsimonious in respect of Theory, preferring to go about its task
without preconceptions other than the firm conviction that the pro-
cedural regularities of talk are there to be found by those with eyes
to see and ears to hear.
Whereas Sacks focused mainly on ‘ordinary, plain talk’ as it
occurred in various everyday settings, those who have followed
him have begun to contrast it with talk in institutional settings in
order to display the differences and continuities between them. An
essential difference is that, in institutional contexts, turns at talk are
pre-allocated according to established distributions of performative
roles. Thus, in the classroom, courtroom or broadcasting studio the
260 Paddy Scannell

distribution of communicative entitlements (who is entitled to

speak and when) are pre-allocated in such ways as to contribute to
establishing the nature of the institutional occasion in each case.
The work of Heritage and his colleagues, Greatbatch and
Clayman, has focused on a particular instance of broadcast talk —
the political news interview (e.g. Greatbatch, this volume; Heritage,
Clayman and Greatbatch, forthcoming). It points to the ways in
which the political interview requires the collaboration of the par-
ticipants in this kind of talk for it to appear as such, not just or only
for the participants in the interview but, crucially, for absent lis-
teners or viewers. They show that the design features of the news
interview indicate that it is meant for reception by absent audiences.
And this, in turn, establishes the intrinsically public nature of
broadcast talk. Talk-in-public, especially political talk, is ‘on the
record’ and this has consequences for what can and cannot be
said and for ways of saying or not saying. The close study of the
news interview establishes how, within its frame, interviewers and
interviewees struggle for control and definition of the topic. When
the struggle becomes too fierce the interview goes beyond its
boundaries and becomes something else: a confrontation.
In his celebrated ‘breaching experiments’, Garfinkel (1984) dem-
onstrated the extent to which ordinary social members — routinely
and ‘as a matter of fact’ — take for granted the normality of the
situation (whatever it may be) as that which is always already
shared and between themselves and others. Indeed this must be so:
for a lecture to be a lecture, a joke to be a joke, or TV news to be TV
news — for the world to be that which in fact it is — depends upon a
hermeneutics of trust; an always already given and _taken-for-
granted mutual and shared anticipation of whatever it is as that
which it is and is meant to be. The very possibility of the appearance
of things as what they are normally (and normatively) taken to be
depends upon them being always already anticipated as such.
Garfinkel’s experiments demonstrated the extent to which a faith in
the normality of the situation was, from moment to moment, a
taken-for-granted moral basis for ordinary, everyday contexts of
social interaction. Trust in the ordinary meaningfulness of talk
in everyday contexts sustains trust in the meaningfulness of the
everyday world as such.
 Media — Language —- World 261

4 Phenomenology and the Media

We have contrasted two broad approaches to the study of language

and media in terms of two different hermeneutics: one of suspicion,
the other of trust. Let us now attempt an ontological interpretation
of them both. Ontology’s question is: ‘What is being?’ What, then, is
the being of these two hermeneutics? Let us turn them around a
little by describing a hermeneutics of suspicion as being-in-doubt,
and a hermeneutics of trust as the undoubtedness of being. What
is the relationship between these two ontologies? Consider
Wittgenstein’s argument for the necessarily: public character of lan-
guage. He points out that a radically private (a purely subjective)
language is impossible. For it to be such, it would have to be a
language that was in principle and practice intelligible only to the
one and only begetter of that (thus essentially) private language.
But this is not possible. For such a language could have no rules (i.e.
recognizable procedural regularities) and if it did, then it would be
— of course — intrinsically public (open to being understood by
others). Private language is thus impossible because it would al-
ways be unintelligible. The necessary intelligibility of language in-
dicates the necessary intelligibility of the world as a matter we can,
in the first instance, take on trust.
A hermeneutics of distrust must always already presuppose, as
the condition of its possibility, a taken-for-granted trust in the world
in which it operates. Suppose we try to imagine a world which
operated on the principle ‘Shoot first and ask questions later’. Such
a world, if it adhered strictly to this as its first principle, would
rapidly depopulate itself. Or again, counter-factually, imagine a
world in which every morning one could never be sure that things
today would be as they had been yesterday. Such a nightmarish
world of uncertainty is, of course, by and large impossible (except
for those suffering from such distressing neurological disorders as
described by Oliver Sacks). Trust in the given facticity of language
and world is a necessary condition for the very possibility of each
and both.
This points to the question of where each ontology is located.
Being in suspicion is in the head, while the undoubtedness of being
262 Paddy Scannell

is (undoubtedly) in the world. Being-in-the-head knows itself (vari-

ously) as the philosophy of consciousness, the Cartesian cogito or
the Western episteme. It is this ontology that is vigorously attacked
by Heidegger for privileging consciousness at the expense of being,
the cogito at the expense of the sum and knowledge at the expense of
truth (Heidegger, 1962). But how is being as consciousness being in
distrust? In a principled way, Descartes’ ‘method’ was to doubt
everything in principle in order to discover that of which, in fact,
one could be certain. A radical scepticism — a principled suspension
of ‘faith’ — underpins the whole modern search for that which can be
known beyond doubt. Enlightenment thinking is cast in this mould,
as is ideology critique.
In a well-known passage, Heidegger quotes Kant’s remark that
the scandal of philosophy is that it can give no sure and certain
proof of an external reality (a world outside consciousness). To this,
Heidegger retorts that the real scandal is that such proofs are de-
manded over and over again (Heidegger, 1962: 249). The critique of
the philosophy of consciousness, so devastatingly developed in
Being and Time, is that it has lost sight of where it is coming from. It
has engaged with the cogito to the exclusion of the sum; the funda-
mental claim that human beings, in each case, make is: ‘I am.’ This
assertion of being is earlier than any claims of consciousness. Con-
sciousness (being-in-the head) is a derived possibility of being in the
world, and not the other way round. It is not that I think am in the
world, or that I choose to be in it, or that I am in it now and then.
Overwhelmingly being-in-the-world indicates the facticity of being
as that which I (or anyone) am in and have to be. Being is, first and
last, not a matter of choice, reason or consciousness, all of which
indicate various ways of detached (abstracted, abstract) being in
which I-or-anyone momentarily stand outside my self and the
world. The philosophy of consciousness starts from a worldless,
self-doubting subject struggling to insert itself into a world external
to its self, yet of which it cannot be certain. It has forgotten the world
from which it has abstracted its self.
Modern views of language encourage a view of an external real-
ity that is outside the subject and outside language, because lan-
guage is thought in ways that remove it from the world. The effect
is to establish language as an object of knowledge only by un-
coupling it from praxis and being. But whatever theoretical abstrac-
 Media — Language — World 263

tions we may make of language (as ‘the symbolic’, ‘representation’,

‘signification’, ‘difference’ and so on), and despite ‘proving’ that
Language is a social construct (arbitrary, conventional etc.), we
must surely admit that we are closer to language than this. Human
being is being-in-language, which is another way of saying that
language worlds. The world in which we dwell includes language.
Our world languages. It speaks us and we speak it. This is its near-
ness to us. It is what we live in. Although CA has refrained on the
whole from reflecting on what its work shows about language, this
indeed is a primary thing that it discloses through its careful atten-
tion to the matter to hand: namely that in initiating, sustaining and
disengaging from talk human beings are in the business (the
busyness, the concern, the care) of talking into being that of which
they speak in the ways in which they speak of the matter(s) to hand,
whatever they may be. This is how language worlds. It brings into
being the common world that is between the participants in the
interaction. This world may be one that is literally talked into being
(e.g. the news interview), or it may be that the talk produced is of a
particular world (an event, a person, a place).
This last point indicates the limits we encounter in attempting to
think ‘the media and language’. Although language is at the heart of
the social, sociable, communicative practices of the press and broad-
casting, it does not fully encompass what they are about. Language
points beyond its sociable self. Intrinsically in the world, it con-
stantly speaks about and of the world. A purely social view of
language does not get to engage with this. CA, in its recent formal
modalities, for instance does not think its object beyond the ‘merely’
social (though Sacks always did). If language is world-disclosing,
we must attend to the world and worlds that it discloses. A
mediatized world is not a hyper-reality or indicative of an ‘external
reality’ (external to what or whom, we may ask?). It is a historically
specific, specifically historical way of being for those who live in
such a world. A phenomenology of media language would have as
its task the job of investigating the connections between media,
language and world (e.g. Scannell, 1997).
Phenomenology indicates the temporality of being: not being
in time, but the time of being. Dasein’s temporality is indicated
in two ways: in its finitude (its being-towards-death) and in its
being caught up in the time of its being. The time of being is the
264 Paddy Scannell

phenomenal now, the ‘that which is’, the da of dasein (Heidegger’s

neutral term for human being) as being in concern. The liveness of
radio and television indicates in all its ways the phenomenal now of
being in the world. It is this that shows in all its practices. Through
its being-there (its da-sein), broadcasting creates new ways of being
in the world — of being in two places at once, two times at once.
Marriott’s (1996) scrupulous linguistic analysis of the temporality
of instant replays on live TV sports programmes shows how time
is doubled in such moments. The ‘then’ (the moment just past) has
re-entered the ‘now’, creating a now-and-then. Bell’s examination
of the chronologic of news stories, in this collection, indicates
that the moment for which they are written to be read is the
phenomenal now, the now of concern, the how it matters now for
me-or-anyone. The newness, the newsiness, of news indicates that
central characteristic of human being as being in concern, that what
matters is what matters here and now for me-or-anyone. All news
practices point to that moment (the now that matters: the what
matters now) and that is why news stories take it as their point of
departure.
This concern to show the liveness of everyday media as indicat-
ing the aliveness of being is not some kind of Panglossian celebra-
tion of the best of all possible worlds. To the contrary, its concern is
with the world as it is — as it shows itself and is found to be. If in the
first instance what is to be shown is the facticity of world (how it is
that which it is) such investigations will certainly point to ways in
which this ‘how it is’ serves to cover over the truth of the world.
Such uncovering is a proper critical task for the study of media,
language and world. Nevertheless, such uncovering only makes
sense — can only be undertaken — from a prior assumption of truth
(which rests on an understanding of the manifest, manifold nature
of things). Critical Theory could never ground its point of critique.
If it saw its task as that of exposing falsehood, lies and deception,
that task always already presumed the truth as its point of depar-
ture. But what that truth was could not be named by Critical
Theory. Its lame appeals to ‘marxism’, ‘autonomy’, ‘happiness’ or
some such thing were always unpersuasive. If it sought to mobilize
people in the name of justice, freedom ete., it could only see these as
future, utopian possibilities in a kind of world as yet not existing.
 Media — Language — World 265

But whatever truth there is, whatever truth there is to be pursued, is

always already there to be found by those who seek it. It is not to be
found in some imagined future world, but in the manifold manifest
world in which we dwell.
The central critical concept of Critical Theory is reification. This,
as synthesized by Lukacs, drew on Marx’s analysis of commodity
fetishism (brilliantly anticipating the then unpublished early writ-
ings on alienation) and on Weber’s critique of instrumental (bureau-
cratic) rationality. In Lukacs’s synthesis, it is consciousness as such
that is reified (Lukacs, 1971). The world-in-thought (the world as
thought) is thingified as a dead Thing. This insight is shared by
Heidegger and is basic to the whole project of Division One of Being
and Time. His concern is to get behind modernity’s ontology (ab-
stract consciousness) and recover that which it has covered over;
namely the primacy of the facticity of world. This world — this
everyday world in which I or anyone have my being — is not the
abstract world of consciousness, theory, etc.; it is the world in its
immediacy and aliveness, the pre-Theoretical world of praxis, of
being-in and being-with as active and engaged agency. It is care and
concern. It is what matters and how, here and now, for me or
anyone.
In rediscovering the lost ontology of being as being in the world,
Heidegger restored what Critical Theory mourned as its lost Object
of Desire: namely the wholeness of being and the wholeness of
world. Modernity could no longer think the world as a whole, for it
had lost any sense of the wholeness of being. Marcuse expressed
this cryptically at the end of a short essay on ‘The Dialectic’: ‘The
whole is the truth. But the whole is false’ (Marcuse, 1978). What had
been falsified, by the commodification of the world, was substantive
(ends-oriented) reason. Modernity had perfected a technical, for-
mal, means-oriented rationality. The technical-scientific calculation
of means really worked. It enormously valorized human control of
Nature. But to what ends? The private accumulation of wealth by
the few to the deprivation of the many and the degradation of
Nature itself. Modernity was thus characterized by a rationality of
the parts and the irrationality of the whole. If it increasingly experi-
enced the world as meaningless, this was because it had, in fact,
made it so. The mark of this loss of meaning was reification: the
266 Paddy Scannell

specific pathology of modernity. Heidegger reunited the torn halves

of a lost understanding: being and world. In returning one to the
other, he restored the meaningfulness of both. He showed that
being-in-the-head is, in fact, a specific found possibility that derives
from the lost and prior ontology of the immediacy of being. The
differences between these two ontologies can be expressed in vari-
ous ways — one is between Theory (being-in-the-head) and Praxis
(being-in-the-world). But the vital difference is between an inert,
reified view of things as Things, as Nature morte (and hence as mere
‘stuff’ to be mastered, exploited, manipulated etc.), and a returning
sense of the aliveness of the world in all its manifold, manifest truth
of being. This world is, and always has been, magical.
Magical language bears witness, now as ever, to the magic of
world and of being in it. It is caught in poetry and song — this sense
of the ecstasy of being. Love poetry expresses the Being of being-
in-love, of Being caught up in an enchanted now that cannot
fade. Song (which knows no reason) every day everywhere bears
witness to the everyday joys and sorrows of being in the world. The
ordinary magic of language shows in voice as the expressive regis-
ter of being. Being angry or sad, being funny or serious, being
sincere or insincere, being seductive . . . all such and other ways of
being are marked in ways of saying. Ways of saying are always
noticed and attended to (including ‘pointed ignorings’ etc.). And
all these things can be shown in the ordinary talk on radio and
television.
Voice especially shows in radio, that beautiful medium so largely
overlooked by current preoccupations with television. In radio,
attention is necessarily focused on voice, since it is the only manifes-
tation of the embodied presence of the speaker(s) at the micro-
phone. To attend to voice means that you must listen. In listening
you are hearing the self of speaker and the self of language: lan-
guage itself. The ontological moment of language is not in speaking
but in hearing what is said in speaking. Listening before speaking,
for listening is a necessary precondition for anything to be said at
all. To listen, then, is to hear what speaks in saying: the being of the
speaker in his or her way of saying (Scannell, 1996). Listening is
understanding and, as such, has a fundamentally anticipatory char-
acter; for understanding is futural, a structural indication of human
being as being-ahead-of-itself (Heidegger, 1962: 236ff).
 Media — Language — World 267

~5 Conclusion

The structure of this chapter might seem to suggest that it seeks to

privilege an ontology of being-in-the-world at the expense of being-
in-the-head, and to privilege being and praxis at the expense of
theory and consciousness. But to do so would be to replace one
absurdity (the denial of world) by another (the denial of self-
reflecting reason). It seeks rather to draw attention to the existence
of these two ontologies, or ways of being, and to explore their
differences in respect of the study of media and language. Their
differences are real and incommensurate. The aim of epistemology
is knowledge of Things, whereas that of ontology is understanding
of Being. Knowledge is what is always already not yet known,
whereas understanding always already is. The outcome of knowl-
edge is power. The outcome of understanding is truth. Modernity
has degraded truth by regarding it as the sum of knowledge and
power. But truth is the fruit of a different tree.
The relationship between media, language and world can be
thought along the axis of power/knowledge and that of
understanding /truth. These two ontologies, each with their par-
ticular hermeneutic (distrust/trust), should not be thought in an
either/or fashion. To privilege one at the expense or exclusion of the
other is to distort the manifold reality of the world that we are in. To
clarify their differences is to restore that manifold reality. Language
and media can be thought in various ways, but to think them truly
will be to return them to the common world that each and both, in
their different ways, reveal as the world that we and they (language
and media) are in.
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abstract, 67, 93 BBC, 119, 123, 127-41, 142, 152, 155,
Accrington, 81-93 160, 166, 169, 172, 174, 179, 180-2,
agents, 32, 33, 48, 154 186; Newsnight, 169-70, 174-8, 179-
Allan, S., ix, 4-5, 10-11, 105-41 80; Nine O'Clock News, 127-31,
ambiguity, 9, 16, 66, 74, 75, 82, 83, 228-47; Today, 142, 151-60; World
85, 86, 87, 89, 90, 93, 102, 126 at One, 169, 172-3, 186, 226, 228-47
Apparent Concessions, 39-40 beliefs, factual vs. evaluative, 29-31
Apparent Denial, 39-40 Bell, A., ix—x, 3-5, 8-10, 19, 64-104,
Apparent Empathy, 39-40 22d 222
Ashdown, P., 174-8 Billig, M., 40
attitudes to media and language, 251 Blairism, 149
attribution, causal, 33, 43, 58; of Bourdieu, P., 142-3, 147, 152, 158-9,
source, 67, 77, 83-4, 90, 159, 236, 160
258; of story, 67, 70, 77; see also Broadcasting Act, 112, 167
third party attribution Buerk, M., 228-47
audience effects, 107
audience groups, responses of, 226, Cardiff Round Table, 1, 18, 104
231-50; see also recall and CCCS (Centre for Contemporary
comprehension Cultural Studies), 23, 106, 110, 123,
140, 141, 252; see also Hall, S.
background, 67, 72, 79, 88, 95, 100 Centre and Margins, 196-8, 199, 201,
Bakhtin, M., 124 206, 209-18
Barthes, R., 113, 140, 253 Clayman, S., 163-8, 171, 184, 260
284 Index

Clinton, President, 36, 38-9, 127-31, Derrida, J., 149

208-9 Descartes, R., 262
cognitive structures, 23, 24 dialogic, 124-5
coherence, local, 8, 36-8; global, 8, discourse and text, definitions of,
38-9, 42; opinion, 51, 58, 63; see 2-3
also levels of discourse discourse practices, 144, 145, 147,
cohesion, 80, 91-1, 97, 102 149, 151, 161
collaboration by interviewees, 168— discourse structures, 7, 21-8, 31-45;
TAN, AWE, WL Whe: illustration of, 45-61; see also story
commentary, 67-9, 79, 88-9 structure
commodification, 12, 252; see also Doane, M., 126, 130
marketization Duszak, A., 100
common sense, 10, 105, 107-12, 113,
117, 126, 138, 157-60 economic recovery, 225-50
comprehension, 9, 28, 45, 72, 75, 93, encoding /decoding model, 10, 107,
99-101, 104, 222, 231-2, 234-49; 113-16, 141, 224, 249, 253, 258
role of textual form, 242; role of episodes, 67, 68
visual features, 243; role of time ethnography, 133-7, 138
structure, 99-101 ethnomethodology, 120, 164
confusion, 80, 91-2; see also ethos, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162
ambiguity Evening Post (Wellington, NZ), 94-7
Connection and Disconnection, 203— events, 67, 68
4, 205, 209-18 event-structure, 66, 75, 79, 81, 82, 83,
constructivism, 257 87, 89, 94
Conversation Analysis, 4, 5, 13-14,
137, 163-85, 257, 258-60, 263 facticity, will to, 123
conversationalization, 12-13, 145, 160 Fairclough, N., x, 4-6, 11-13, 19, 125,
Corner, J., 115, 136, 221-3, 250, 258 142-62, 254
Critical Discourse Analysis, 4, 5-6, false consciousness, 111
7-8, 9, 11-13, 137, 142-62, 186-218, follow-up, 67, 69, 79, 89, 90, 91
254 Foucault, M., 11, 12, 140, 145, see also
critical linguistics, 254; see also orders of discourse
Critical Discourse Analysis Fowler, R., 5, 18, 33, 254
Critical Theory, 264-5; see also framing, 120-1, 248; in front page
Critical Discourse Analysis layout, 188-9, 203-9, 213, 215, 216
Cultural Studies, 10-11, 105-41, 222: Frnkfurt School, 252-3
scope of, 106 Freud, S., 255
front page layout, 15, 186-218
Daily Mirror, 75, 81-93, 190-1, 201-2,
203, 205, 206, 207, 212 Gadhafi, 5, 8, 46-57, 59, 61
Daily Telegraph, 212 Garfinkel, H., 164, 260
dasein, 263 gender differences, 133-5
Day, R., Sir, 168-9, 171 Gitlin, T., 120-1
democratization, 12, 160 Given and New, 15, 189-93, 196-218
Depth Theory, 254-7; see also given vs. new, 243-4
structuralism Gramsci, A., 10, 109-11
 Index 285

‘Greatbatch, D., x, 4-5, 13-14, 156, Jensen, K.B., 135-7, 141, 249
163-85, 260 juxtapositions, 246
Guardian, 194-5, 203, 206, 208, 209-
13, 216 Kant, I., 262
Kinnock, N., 169-70
Hall, S., 10, 106, 107, 110-12, Kress, G., x-xi, 3-6, 14-15, 19, 186—
113-16, 118, 131, 140, 141, 167, Pils) wal ey:
224, 249, 252-7, 258; see Iso
CEGS Labov, W., 66-7, 96
Halliday, M.A.K., 11, 193 Lamont, N., 228-47
headline, 31, 45, 48-9, 63, 66, 67, 70, lead, 45, 67, 69, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83, 88,
76, 82, 83, 88, 89, 102, 126-7, 130, 89, 91, 95-6, 97, 98, 99, 100, 102,
131, 231, 235-6, 240, 245 231, 235-6, 239
hegemony, 10-11, 145, 147, 148, 150, levels of discourse, 31—45; lexical
151; construction of, 105-41; items, 31-2; propositions, 34-5;
codification of, 112-16 implications, 33-4;
Heidegger, M., 262, 265-6 presuppositions, 34-5;
Held, D., 146, 148 descriptions, 35-6, 58; semantic
Heritage, J., 163-8, 171, 174 moves, 39-40; integration, 40-5;
hermeneutics: of suspicion, 17, surface structures, 45; see also
254-7, 261, 267; of trust, 17, 254, coherence, local and global
257-60, 261, 267 lexicon, 74
Hjarvard, S., 132-3 Leyland Daf, 228-47
Hoagland, J., 45, 48-57 lifeworld, 145, 148, 149, 151, 155, 156,
Hobson, D., 133-4 157, 159
Hoijer, B., 222 Lukacs, G., 265
Humphrys, J., 153, 155-60
macrostructures, 7, 38, 42, 45
ideological approach, 17, 251-7; see Marcuse, H., 265
also ideology marketization, 12, 144, 145
ideological square, 8, 33, 35, 41, 44, Marriott, S., 264; see also time,
45, 49, 63 location of
ideology, 17, 21-63, 65-6, 79, 108-12, Marxism, 221, 252-4, 256, 264, 265
11S 14-16, 117 118; 122) 1247135; Mayhew, P., 153, 157-60
138, 140, 141, 190, 193, 201, 216, McDonald, T., 124
221-2, 224, 251-7 mental models, 7, 12, 26, 27, 33, 41,
ideology critique, 254-7, 262 42, 44, 63; context models, 28, 33,
impartiality, 107-8, 112, 115, 118, 41, 42, 44; event models, 28, 33, 34
119, 120-1, 122, 125, 139, 164, 167, microstructures, 7, 38, 42
233; see also neutralism Morley, D., 18, 115, 117, 134-5, 140,
intertextuality, 12, 145, 151 249-50, 257-8
IRA, 81-93, 102, 103, 194, 209; see also Morse, M., 132
Northern Ireland multimodality, 14, 186-8
ITN, 123, 124, 128-41, 226, 233, 235,
239, 244; Lunchtime News, 124 narrative, 105, 122-3; structure, 9, 66,
ITV, 226 97-100, 126, 135; visual, 42
286 Index

national economy, 220-50; on postmodernity, 105, 144

television, 224-6 power, 65, 147, 151
naturalization, 10, 106, 108, 120, 125, pragmatic approach, 17, 251, 257
135, 138; see also common sense preferred definitions, 105, 109, 115,
Neue Kronenzeitung, 206, 207, 212-15, 130
216 preferred meanings, 116, 117, 118,
neutralism, 163-84; maintenance of, 135
168-71, 178; departures from, 171- preferred readings, 117, 126
8; limits of, 178-80; see also third
party attribution and question question forms, 156, 168, 171, 173,
forms 178-82
neutralistic stance, 14, 167, 168-84
New York Times, 34-6, 38-9, 40 reading paths, 189, 205-9
New Zealand Herald, 97-8 Real and Ideal, 193-5, 196, 206, 209—
news actors, 67, 74, 75, 77, 80, 84-5, 18
86, 89, 91, 93 recall, 16, 104, 2314
News at Ten, 123, 127-31, 226 reception analysis, 220-50; related to
news interviews, 13-14, 150-62, 163— textual analysis, 220-4
84, 260 reception studies, 4, 16, 18-19, 150-1,
news programmes, uses of, 135-7; 257-8
ritual functions of, 131-7 Redwood, J., 179-80
news values, 10, 69, 74, 83, 93, 96, reification, 265-6
101, 103 Richardson, K., xi, 4-5, 16, 115, 220-
nominalization, 18, 48, 141, 154, 237 50
Northern Ireland, 152-60, 162 Royal Ulster Constabulary, 152-60

ontology, 261-7 Sacks, H., 164, 258-9, 263

opinion articles, 21-63 Saddam Hussein, 5, 8, 34, 40, 46, 47—
opinion, notion of, 29-31; see also 8, 49, 50, 56, 57, 59-60, 61, 127-31
coherence, opinion salience, 188, 193, 194, 198, 200-2,
Orange Order, 152-60 205, 211, 213, 214, 216
orders of discourse, 12, 142-52, 155, Saussure, F. de, 253, 255
159, 160, 161-2; see also Foucault, Scannell, P., xi, 16-17, 115, 221, 251—
M. 67
Over-assertion, 83 Scargill, A., 168-9
Schegloff, E., 164-6
page layout, 15, 186-218 Schlesinger, P., 13, 119-20, 167, 184
passivization, 18, 33, 74 semantic moves, 39-40
phenomenological approach, 17, 251, semantic strategies in discourse, 41—
261-7 4; volume, 41-2; importance, 42;
pinboard layout, 203-4 relevance, 42-3; implicitness/
place structure, 78 explicitness, 43, 59, 63; attribution,
polarization, 33, 50, 52, 56, 57-8, 61, 43; perspective, 43-4; see also levels
62; in layout, 209 of discourse
political discourse, 142-62 semiotics, 14, 15, 112-38, 186-218,
polysemy, 113, 116, 126, 223-4 253-4
 Index 287

-single-sentence story, 9, 66, 69-75, time structure, 10, 71, 75, 78, 81, 87—
102 8, 89, 90, 93-101; see also
slugline, 93 comprehension
social functions, 23, 24 transcription symbols, 184-5
sociocognitive theory, 21-63 Trimble, D., 153, 155-7
story structure, 9, 64-103 triptych, 198-200, 212, 215
structuralism, 255-6; see also Depth
Theory unmentionables, 60
subordinate constructions, 39, 40
Us and Them, 5, 8, 25, 32, 34, 35, 37,
Sun, 202, 203, 207, 209-13, 216-17 40-4, 49, 52, 55-6, 58, 59-61, 63,
surface structures, 45
130
Sydney Morning Herald, 196-7

Taglich Alles, 190-3, 194, 203, 204, van Dijk, T.A., xi-xii, 4-8, 21-63, 66,
205, 211-15, 216 Is, Wi, NSO), PAD
van Leeuwen, T., xii, 3-5, 14-15, 19,
televisual space, 122-3
textual determinacy, 16, 115, 221-4 186-219
Thatcherism, 147, 149, 161, 256 vectors, 189, 203
The Observer, 199-200 visual weight, 201
The Times (UK), 171 visual zones, 188
thematic memory, 231-4 vulnerability of interviewers, 180—4
third party attribution, 14, 159, 168,
170-1, 173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 184; Washington Post, 45, 52, 61
see also attribution Williams, R., 10, 106, 109-10, 113,
time, location of, 17, 126, 237, 263-4, 123, 139
266 Wittgenstein, L., 261
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‘A state-of-the-art presentation, invaluable for students and researchers in the growing
field of media discourse.’ Roger Fowler; University of East Anglia

‘This admirable collection of papers by some of the most eminent scholars in the field
of media studies combines breadth of coverage with depth of analysis, and programmatic
methodological statements with detailed empirical studies. It will be an indispensable
text in its field for many years to come.’
Andreas H. Jucker, Professor of English Linguistics, Justus Liebig University Giessen

‘A useful entry point for anyone seeking to understand the diverse approaches found
under the umbrella label of “media discourse”.’
Jean Aitchison, Professor of Language and Communication, University of Oxford

a R-Yorol fale MV AELclE Mola ManlctelloMol<olUlex-Mlalicelol (<M ial-timial-Lole-uxel Muil-ialele Molaro mantelct
them work on specific instances from the press, radio and television. Readers can test
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ll linaolaleMK-1(-adelalacMeolmZela(elUMe] ololcele(aal-cMelaleMelolo]o)mial-18)
to their own examination of the media.’ Ulrike H. Meinhof, University of Bradford

Malemeco)| (-Leurolamelatare move [-sial-lalamelar-mUeol ela -Maelecclaim(-leleliale Mels)elcolelaal- MoM inl-myieleh7

of media discourse.

Contributors include Stuart Allan, Allan Bell, Teun A. van Dijk, Norman Fairclough,
Peter Garrett, David Greatbatch, Gunther Kress, Theo van Leeuwen, Kay Richardson
rolate mere
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Allan Bell is affiliated as a Senior Research Fellow to the Linguistics Programme,

Department of English, University of Auckland. He is author of The Language of News
Media (Blackwell Publishers 1991). He is co-founder and editor of the Journal of
Sociolinguistics, also published by Blackwell.

Peter Garrett is Senior Lecturer in Language and Communication at the Centre for
Language and Communication Research, University of Wales Cardiff. He has
published articles in many journals and is editor of the journal Language Awareness.
Peter Garrett is the co-editor of Language Awareness in the Classroom (1991).

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