Pragmalinguistic Categories in Discourse Analysis of Science Journalism

Drawing on selected approaches from pragmatics, functional linguistics, discourse space theories and evaluation theories, this article proposes a methodological framework for the study of science journalism. It presents the institutional context of science journalism, which is considered a hybrid di...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Lodz papers in pragmatics 2016-03, Vol.11 (2), p.157-179
Main Author: Molek-Kozakowska, Katarzyna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Corpus analysis
Credibility
Discourse analysis
Functional linguistics
hybrid discourse
Illocutionary force
Journalism
Linguistics
Medicine
newsworthiness
pragma-linguistics
Pragmatics
Qualitative research
science journalism
Studies
Theoretical linguistics
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Summary:Drawing on selected approaches from pragmatics, functional linguistics, discourse space theories and evaluation theories, this article proposes a methodological framework for the study of science journalism. It presents the institutional context of science journalism, which is considered a hybrid discourse, as it combines features of science communication and of market-driven journalism, particularly the need for the coverage to meet the criteria of newsworthiness. To enable the study of how science journalists tend to engage the readers linguistically without foregoing the appearances of credibility, the article demonstrates the analytic potential of such pragmalinguistic categories as illocutionary force, reference and positioning, agency and stance, proximization and alignment, as well as emotivity and evaluation. Finally, the article illustrates the applicability of the above categories in a qualitative analysis of a special corpus of “most-read” medicine and biotechnology reports published in the online version of the popular international science magazine New Scientist. The analysis shows how to combine these categories in a productive way in order to develop a methodologically viable and theoretically grounded approach to doing (critical) discourse analysis of science journalism.
ISSN:1895-6106
1898-4436
DOI:10.1515/lpp-2015-0009