Inglese per la comunicazione:

INGLESE PER LA
COMUNICAZIONE
Appunti di Emma Lampa
Università degli Studi di Macerata
Facoltà di Scienze della comunicazione
Corso di laurea in Comunicazione e Culture Digitali
Esame di Lingua inglese per la comunicazione mediatica
Docente: Raffaela Merlini
Anno accademico - 2021/2022TEORIA
A1
Media is a plural term from Latin and communication has been possible thanks to the media since ancient times because people
communicate through the media since antiquity with for example rock paintings in caves, papyrus, slates, megaphones…
Communication necessarily involves the use of a medium with a technological infrastructure or an electronic device.
Everyday face-to-face interaction is an ordinary conversation and it is a different language to conversation with media so there is a
different use of language in different media.
In the media language it is important to identify the recurring and consistent patterns that make the style of a genre. The repetitive
patterns of genre are the basic component of genre and they are:
-lexis (word choice)
-syntax (sentence structure)
-pronunciation and intonation
-turn taking
-topics and themes
The historical evolution of media language starts with a first step that is the oral societies where communication took the form of
speech that was the primary channel of communication and it is also called primary orality. The second step is the advert of writing
where speech coexists with writing. The third step is printing where writing prevailed over speech; writing changed the mind because
it changed the way of remembering and of thinking and then changed the way of communication. With telephone, radio and tv come
back the dominance of speech with the second orality. Today there is an internet revolution with a shift back towards written and
multimodal texts; it is a new step of writing with a hybrid text.
A2
The term register refers to a variety of language that is specific to a context; the register matches what is being said (the topic), to how
it is said (in terms of vocabulary, level of formality, layout and design, pronunciation...) and to whom (the addresses of the message).
Register creates the style of a discourse.
The term Received pronunciation (RP) was coined in the 1920s by the phonetician Daniel Jones and it is the accent most usually
heard in everyday speech in the families of southern English whit persons educated at the great public schools, for this the accent was
associated to high socio-economicus status and it was used by a BBC (British broadcasting corporation) and it was also known as
queen’s English or public schools English.
1Baron in 2000 classified 2 approaches/views when he talks about the differences between speech and writing:
1) opposition view is based on clear and contrasting features; there are 13 differences between speech and writing:
WRITING SPEECH
objective interpersonal
monologic=no immediate feedback but not talk
alone because there is a presumed addressee
dialogic=speech with two or more people with
immediate feedback
durable=it is in a physical form ephemeral=it is vanishing
scannable (can be re-read)=vision of the co-text
and all information are all together at the same
time
only linearly accessible=no global vision, no co-
text but only sound and the construction of
meaning is progressive
planned=the content is organized spontaneous=the content isn’t organized
highly structured loosely structured=speech is more fluid but it
isn’t more easy
syntactically complex syntactically simple
concerned with past and future=writing was born
to talk about the past and the history
concerned with the present=because when i talk i
tell about the present
formal informal
expository=writing was based on facts/date narrative=speech is based on story, there is a plot
but not a details
argument-oriented=writing is factual because is
based on facts
event-oriented=speech is based on context and
where it happens the conversation
decontextualized contextualized
abstract concrete
2) continuum view is based on hybrid forms along a sequence between two extreme forms
TRADITIONAL WRITING
with
in between
FACE-TO-FACE SPEECH
with
word-processor telephones videophones teleconferencing
newspaper television news personal report on events
script of a play radio discussion phone conversation
3) cross-over view is the most important view of the difference between speech and writing, with cross over there are hybrid forms
because a message originally designed for one medium is conveyed through a different one like audio-books, written lectures,
blogs, text messaging, e-mails
In media discourse, spoken and written styles are varied unexpectedly and sometimes combined together; for this reason, media
discourse plays an important part in social style change.
2A3-Mediated communication
Media utterances are communicative events or acts in which the relationship between participants is mediated by technology.
Mediated communication is different from the canonical speech situation that is the ordinary face-to-face conversation.
Face-to-face interaction was studied by Ferdinand De Saussure in 1916 and the model of communication of De Saussure forecast two
people exchanging messages. In practice the thoughts of A are converted into an utterance that passes through a channel to reach B,
who is the recipient and then B decodes the message. In face-to-face spoken interaction the roles are reversed and for that this model
is also called from-to model or dyadic model of communication because it is based on turn-taking between two people interactions
with one another and it is the first model from A to B with coding-decoding for elaboration of information.
John Lyons in 1977 explains that the canonical speech situation involves one-one, or one-many, signalling in the phonic medium
along the vocal-auditory channel, with all the participants present in the same actual situation able to see one another and to perceive
the associated non-vocal paralinguistic features of their utterances, and each assuming the role of sender and receiver in turn.
Another model of communication is by Roman Jakobson in 1986 with linguistic functions. He identifies addresser and addressee
with a contact, context, message and code in communication. Each language function is associated with a key element of
communication and all functions are present in any text. The addresser has emotive function with the focus on itself; the addressee
has conative function because he is persuaded by the message sent by the sender; the message has poetic function with the focus on
the message; the context has referential function with the focus on media of communication; the contact has phatic function with the
focus on channel using for communication; the case has metalinguistic function with the focus on language used. The context
dimension of a communication plays an important role in how information is conveyed.
Another one communication model was by Lasswell in 1948 with a formula model composed of 5 questions:
-who speaks? that is the communicator with control studies
-says what? that is the message with content analysis
-in which channel? that is the medium with media analysis
-to whom? that is the receiver with audience analysis
-with what effect? that is the effect with effect analysis
This model is used for media communication.
Most media discourse takes place in events that differ from the model of the canonical discourse situation. "Mediated"
communication involves adaptations of the resources of face-to-face verbal interaction. Communicative events in the media take
many forms.
Communication theorist Denis McQuail (1969) found seven main characteristics of mass communication; the distinctive features of
mass communication are:
1) It requires complex formal organizations
2) Is directed to a large audience
3) Is public because the content is open to all
4) The audience contains different kinds of people
5) Mass media can establish simultaneous contact with very large numbers of people at a distance
6) Communicator-audience relationships are managed by people who are known only in their public role, as communicators.
7) The audience involves people who don’t know one another, have limited interaction and they come together by some common
interest
The dimensions of communications media are:
1- role-reversibility, called also interactivity: unidirectional (where you can only listen or watch) or bidirectional (with feedback)
2- co-presence in space vs distance communication
3- co-temporality: on air or off air
4- fixation or permanence if media discourse exists only at the moment of its utterance or if it has been made durable
5- spontaneity if the discourse is unplanned or if it is prepared and scripted
Today most contemporary media involve some degree of interaction with users. There is low interactivity with textual materials (for
example google searches, choice of hypertext links, interactive television…) and there is high interactivity with interaction between
users (for example emails, mobile phones, online electronic games...).
3