Martin Luginbühl

Mediensprache : eine Einführung in Sprache und Kommunikationsformen der Massenmedien

The book provides a comprehensive introduction to the current status of media linguistics. The basic communication-theoretical concepts of media linguistics are introduced and, following a brief historical review, the most important linguistic phenomena of todays German-language mass media are described using current sample material, while taking the relationship of language to other systems of signs into account.

Producing genres: Pattern variation and genre development

Genres rely on conventionalized patterns of language use, yet at the same time they are not static, ontological entities, but rather socially situated, dynamic and changing artifacts. In this chapter, we discuss genres as cultural artifacts, constituting and reflecting situational and cultural change. We further argue that the values and norms of any discourse community have to be balanced and matched, thus demanding a display on a symbolic level. Genre choice and genre form, i.e. genre style can therefore be seen as key sites for the analysis of culture. Analyzing television news genres from the 20th and 21st century as well as asylum case histories from the 19th and 20th century, we show how a genre’s form, its variation and change can be related to “news cultures” and changing paradigms in psychiatry. We argue that genre change depends on the discourse community’s perception and interpretation of contextual factors and therefore cannot be deduced or predicted from changes of contextual factors alone. As genres and genre change themselves are part of this context, genre change itself can induce cultural change. We then discuss different forms of change and turn to genres in new media, showing how the opportunities of watching new genres arise, and discussing the challenge of separating the technological medium from the different genres realized within. We conclude with a summary of the controversial issues pertaining to the initiation of genre change, the role of the individual in this change and finally, the evidence for the emergence of new genres. 1 Two examples from two domains The definition of genre – be it in the “North American school” (cf. Bazerman 1994 ; Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995; Miller 1984 ), the “Sidney school” (cf. Halliday and Martin 1993; Martin, Christy, and Rothery 1987; Martin 1993) the “British ESP School” (cf. Swales 1990 , 2004 ; Bhatia 2004 : 10, 22–23) or in the “ Textlinguistik ” of German Studies (cf. Heinemann and Heinemann 2002: 129–132; Hausendorf and Kesselheim 2008: 29, 176–185) – is based on the observation that communicative settings and communicative goals are related to certain conventions of language use. As genres include habitualized and conventionalized patterns of language use they enable and facilitate communicative actions. Genres seem for language users to be fixed, almost ontological entities, they seem to emerge as categories out of their own form and content (Mittell 2004). Nevertheless it is common sense in the mentioned new genre theory that genres are not static, essentialistic entities, but are recurrent, socially situated, Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek Basel Authenticated Download Date | 12/18/17 1:00 PM 286 Carol Berkenkotter and Martin Luginbühl and dynamic (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995), varying and changing and thus reflecting situational and cultural changes as well as changes in generic contexts (Devitt 2004: 89). Although genres are socially-typified actions tied to situational contexts ( Bazerman 1994 ), they can also be adapted by persons belonging to different social groups (or discourse communities), to fit their goal-directed rhetorical purposes. Genres are conventionalized responses to recurring situations and at the same time they must be flexible, and because they are flexible, there always is (more or less) genre variation. Genres stabilize situations and social groups by staying identical, adapting flexibly to different communicative needs. If genre variation tends toward a certain direction in many instances and over a longer period of time, genres can be said to evolve, or in some cases become obsolete. Genre evolution can thus be conceptualized as variation, selection and (re-)stabilization (Gansel 2011: 110–120). Two examples will illustrate genre change and variation and questions that arise within this field: Genre change in television news shows and genre variation in psychiatric case histories in the 19th century. 1.1 Genre change: The television news packages “Packages” are (at least in US-American television news) the most common way to tell television news stories, and usually combine “voice over” (correspondents narration over footage (White 2005: 107–108)), sound bites (film segments that show someone speaking (Esser 2008: 402)) and a “stand-up” (correspondent on camera (White 2005: 490)). The generic features as well as the stylistic realization of packages in 1960s American television news shows (cf. for the “CBS Evening News” Luginbühl 2009, 2011, 2013) aim at staging closeness to the event by stressing local closeness (use of local deixis, locating the correspondent at the scene of the event, use of close shots), temporal closeness (“and now arriving for the funeral” [in a non-live package], “today”, etc.) and emotional closeness (mentally moving and touching the audience by addressing emotions or showing emotional footage). Nevertheless, the prime function of the correspondent is to tell the story. During the 1980s we also find cases in which the correspondent is no longer shown at the scene of the event but in a studio or some (quite random) public place. In these cases, it is not the eyewitnessing, but the trustworthiness and authorship that are stressed. And the narrative function of the correspondents shifts from eyewitness to that of an expert. In a new subgenre of the package, the “donut” (cf. Tuggle and Huffman 2001), the correspondent can be seen live at the beginning and the end of the package. This subgenre accentuates the immediacy of the reporting and implies very strongly that the information given could change at any time. As the anchor is giving the word to the correspondent (usually by addressing him or her with his or her first name and thus framing everything as a kind of informal chat ( Haarman 2004 )), the (local) distance between news studio and “news field” (Montgomery Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek Basel Authenticated Download Date | 12/18/17 1:00 PM Producing genres: Pattern variation and genre development 287 2007: 89) is reduced as well as the (temporal) distance between the event and the reporting. Today, correspondents are usually not seen live at the beginning of packages, but are still seen at the end. And in more and more cases, the anchor not only thanks the correspondent at the end, but starts interviewing him or her. The questions asked are not gathering factual information about the event but are expert questions asking for assessments, positioning the correspondent as expert – and conversationalizing news reporting (cf. Fairclough 1995 : 10). The changes of the package over time can be characterized as an increase in speed and thereby an increase in audience attraction, a changing role of the correspondents from reporter and eyewitness to expert, a more intense staging of temporal and local closeness, and a more informal and conversational way of reporting. 1.2 Genre variation in psychiatric case reports Like the scientific article, the psychiatric case history is a venerable genre with a 260-year history. Its evolution in 18th and 19th century England demonstrates a slow moving set of converging socio-historical factors that resulted in gradual changes in asylum patient histories. Some of these factors include: the 1844 Lunatics Act that standardized the conventions and content of the asylum patient case history; the influence of Freud and the psychoanalytic “thought-style” leading to a “narrative turn” in case history reporting and journal publication; and the influence of the Diagnosic and Statistical Manual-III ( DSM-III ), a classification system used in psychotherapists’ case reports, i.e. accounts which were required to conclude with a billable diagnosis. These developments occurred gradually from the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th century. After 2000, with the shift from paper to computer-generated case reports, the case history underwent yet another transformation from a narrative structure to a checklist of presenting symptoms accompanied by a brief summary of the patient’s problems and DSM -based diagnosis. This technological development needs to be viewed in the social-economic context; specifically, the rise of third-party payers (insurance companies, Medicaid) that covered the costs of a the patient’s diagnosis and treatment. Analyzing these changes, we can illustrate different general observations: genres do not come “out of the blue”, but usually depend on already existing genres. The television news package is, in fact, a hybrid genre, integrating features of (already common in the 1950s) voice overs, on-camera narrating and interview, which in turn rely on genres of news reels, radio and newspaper news. Of course, all these genres were adapted when they were “mixed” (cf. Bhatia 2004 : 73) into the package, fulfilling new purposes and realized in new forms and styles. The emergence of a new genre is thus, in fact, a transformation of one or more already existing genres (Warnke 2001). Brought to you by | Universitaetsbibliothek Basel Authenticated Download Date | 12/18/17 1:00 PM 288 Carol Berkenkotter and Martin Luginbühl When new genres arise in a “genre set” ( Devitt 1991 : 54–59; Bhatia 2004 : 53–55; see Part 3), it is important to look at the question of which new functions and meanings are realized by the new genre, and which already existing genres within this set become marginalized (looking at the genre frequency), or even replaced by the new genre, as these changes can be interpreted in terms of a norm and value change of a community of practice (Berkenkotter and Huckin 1995). Changing situations can bring about new communicative needs, and newly arising genres can fill “widening gaps” (Devitt 2004: 93) within genre repertoires. Of course, new genres not only originate as a reaction to new situations; they also create new situations. Genre change can occur slowly and gradually, yet it can also occur at a certain mo

„das, was wir in der Tagesschau den Rausschmeißer nennen“ : Altro- und Ethno-Kategorisierung von Textsorten im Handlungsfeld journalistischer Fernsehnachrichten

In diesem Beitrag vergleichen wir zwei Perspektiven der Kategorisierung von Textsorten: Altround Ethno-Kategorisierung. Einleitend verorten wir die beiden Perspektiven (Abschnitt 1), dann stellen wir für das Feld journalistischer Fernsehnachrichten je einen Ansatz vor: eine Altro-Kategorisierung, die sich auf die linguistische Analyse ausgestrahlter Fernsehnachrichten abstützt (Abschnitt 2), und eine EthnoKategorisierung, die auf der angewandt-linguistischen Analyse von Gesprächen und Schreibprozessen in Fernseh-Nachrichtenredaktionen beruht (Abschnitt 3). Wir vergleichen die Verfahren und Ergebnisse beider Ansätze (Abschnitt 4) und schließen: Die Reflektion von Ethnokategorien ergänzt das linguistische Wissen zu Sprachgebrauch und Kommunikation nicht nur um die Innensicht der Untersuchten, sondern kann auch dazu beitragen, Altro-Kategorisierungen theoretisch weiterzuspannen und den Gegenstand theoretisch plastischer zu erfassen (Abschnitt 5).

Welche Mündlichkeit - welche Schriftlichkeit? : Sprache unter medialen Bedingungen

Der Band dokumentiert sprachwissenschaftliche Sektionen des Kongresses der Internationalen Vereinigung fur Germanistik (IVG) in Shanghai 2015. Er beginnt mit den Sektionen ‚Beziehungsgestaltung durch Sprache‘ sowie ‚Diskurs und Politik‘. Daran schliesen sich ‚Welche Mundlichkeit, welche Schriftlichkeit? Sprache unter medialen Bedingungen‘ und ‚Die Poetizitat der Sprache‘ an. Die Sektionen ‚Diskursbedeutung und Grammatik: Transtextuelle und gesprachsubergreifende Aspekte grammatischer Inventare‘ sowie ‚Kontrastive Textologie‘ beschliesen den Band

„Fremde“ in den Nachrichten des Schweizer Fernsehens: 1957 – 1999

Wie bei allen sozialen Problemen sind auch in das Phanomen „Migration“ linguistische Fragestellungen involviert, insofern als Migration im offentlichen Diskurs sprachlich etabliert und verhandelt wird (vgl. Jung/Wengeler/Boke 1997; Niehr/Boke 2000; Wengeler 2005). Zentrale Institutionen in diesem Diskurs sind Fernsehnachrichten — besonders in einem Land wie der Schweiz mit nur einer Fernsehanstalt, welche nationale Nachrichtensendungen produziert. In unserer Studie wurden Beitrage aus Schweizer Fernsehnachrichtensendungen uber Fluchtlinge untersucht, und zwar anhand narrativer Muster (engl. „news narratives“), d.h. anhand einer narratologischen Analyse, welche fur die linguistische Textanalyse adaptiert wurde. Der Fokus der Untersuchung liegt dabei auf den Veranderungen in der Art und Weise, wie die Fluchtlinge in Schweizer Fernsehnachrichtensendungen seit den 1950er Jahren dargestellt wurden.