Gillian Mansfield – Università degli Studi di Parma

Changing Channels
Media Language in (Inter)Action

Collana: «Lingue di Oggi» – 15,5 x 22 cm - pagg. 308 - 2006 - ISBN 88-7916-307-8
€ 23,50

CONTENTS: Preface. The impact of different communication channels and critical approaches to media discourse. Chapter 1. The Channels of Communication - language and the shaping of news: the essential channels of information (the Press, Radio, TV and the Internet) and their communicative purposes in the light of their linguistic and technological means. Chapter 2. The newspaper - reading today's news of yesterday: the language of information and the newspaper article, different forms of interaction and manipulation of language. Chapter 3. Radio - listening to today's news today: forms of interaction in the blind medium of the radio. Chapter 4. Television - watching today's news today: the audio and visual components of interaction. Chapter 5. The Internet - retrieving news now, today and yesterday: the characteristic technical and linguistic features of the Internet and the concept of hypertext. Glossary. Brief explanation of the main linguistic and media terminology used. Bibliography.

This text is targeted for an undergraduate student readership of English language and media studies. Its aim is to identify recurrent features in speaker/listener and writer/reader interaction in different channels of communication and to highlight the linguistic devices exploited in the manipulation of language for communicative purposes. With particular reference to the language of information (news reporting), the characteristic features of each channel will be identified and evidence given not only of how the content of the message is influenced by the channel itself, but also of the linguistic and paralinguistic features that the latter presents. Each chapter is concluded with a series of suggestions for further activities in the analysis of the single channel of communication.

Gillian Mansfield is associate professor of English Language at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Parma. She is also head of the University Language Centre. Her research interests lie in two distinct areas: Discourse Analysis, including studies of numerous spoken and written text types; the use of technology and distance language learning. Apart from various contributions in academic journals, she has published a monograph on Discourse Intonation and has devised an on-line English language course for the University of Parma, to be published also in DVD format.