Tom Van Hout

Framing the news: an ethnographic view of business newswriting

Abstract This article is an ethnographic case study of a senior business reporter as he discovers, writes, and reflects on a news story. We “follow the story” from its entry in the newsroom through the review process during a story meeting and the writing process up to the point the story is filed for copy editing. Drawing on ethnographic data, this article sheds light on how a news story about Russian gas exports to France is discursively constructed. In this writing process, we focus in particular on a frame shift in the construction of the lead and argue that this shift is led primarily by technological rather than overt ideological concerns. The detailed description of one newswriting process supports the argument that framing is an interpretive practice achieved within the demands, relationships, and discourses that anchor business news as a social institution.

Competence on Display: Crafting Stories during Newsroom Editorial Conferences

How do journalists project an attitude of fairness and balance, not only in the interviews they conduct, or in the front page article they write, but also, often fleetingly, in interaction? How do they come across as knowledgeable, accurate, gritty, investigative reporters, not only frontstage, in the public conversation with their readers/viewers, but also backstage, in the private realm of a meeting room, interacting with their peers? In this chapter we explore these questions, relying on an ethnographic, linguistically sensitive approach to journalists’ talk during editorial meetings.

Between Text and Social Practice: Balancing Linguistics and Ethnography in Journalism Studies

Digital media technologies have given (and continue to give) way to new genres, forms and practices of public communication. These include mobile news consumption, digitally mediated social protest, data journalism, machine-written news, massive databases such as Wikileaks and NSA leaks, and the metajournalism of linking, modifying, reposting and commenting on news stories. The promise and potential of these new technologies stand in sharp contrast to the moribund discourses surrounding traditional news media, in particular print and broadcast media. Their political economy is fraught with declining numbers: circulation, advertising revenue, staff count and market capitalization. In addition, there is widespread concern about the future, quality and diversity of journalism in the face of industrial concentration, precarious labour conditions, increased productivity demands, news aggregation and saturation. Taken together, these changes in news production, content and consumption have sparked public and academic interest in journalism.

Lookalike Professional English

Background: Our teaching case reports on a fieldwork assignment designed to have master of arts students experience first-hand how entrepreneurs write for the globalized marketplace by examining public displays of language, such as billboards, shop windows, and posters. Research questions: How do entrepreneurs use English to “style” themselves? What is the status of English in public displays? Which relationship with customers is cultivated by using English (among other languages)? How does English, or lookalike versions thereof, create a more innovative business? Situating the case: We use linguistic landscaping (LL) as a pedagogical resource, drawing on similar cases in a local English as a foreign language (EFL) community in Oaxaca, Mexico; EFL programs in Chiba-shi, Japan; francophone and immersion French programs in Montreal, QC, Canada and Vancouver, BC, Canada; and a study of the entrepreneurial landscape in Observatorys business corridor of Lower Main Road in Cape Town, South Africa. How this case was studied: We interviewed 36 students about their learning process in one-to-one post hoc interviews. Recurrent themes were increased self-monitoring, improved professional communication literacy, and expanded real-world understanding. About the case: The teaching case follows a three-pronged approach. First, we have students decide on a survey area, determine their empirical focus, establish analytical units, decide how to collect data, collect (sociodemographic) information about their survey area, and determine the degree of researcher engagement. Next, students conduct fieldwork, documenting the linguistic landscape in small teams of three to four students. In the third phase, students have returned from the field and discuss their initial findings, ideas, and observations during a data session with the instructors. Students decide whether they still stand by the decisions they made before they entered the field and are then asked to qualify how language is used in public space. Results: The main takeaway of the assignment is that students were more aware of the degree of linguistic innovation, rhetorical creativity, and ethnocultural stereotyping of entrepreneurial communication in their cities. Conclusion: As a pedagogical tool, LL offers possibilities for exploring entrepreneurial communication in all of its breadth and variety, providing access to perhaps the most visible and creative materialities of entrepreneurs and service providers: shop windows and signs.

Text bite news: the metapragmatics of feature news

Abstract Drawing on a weekly news feature of recontextualized public discourse, this paper examines journalists’ uptake of political (mis)communication. We label such mediatized speech events text bites. Text bites present us with eye-catching bits of reported speech about the main characters: the politician whose words are being quoted and the journalist captioning the quote. Rather than speak for themselves, the quotes speak through recontextualization – that is, through the inflection of prior discourse with new meanings. Our data are taken from a corpus consisting of news quotes by politicians published in De Standaard, a Belgian news site. Drawing on the linguistic anthropology of intertextuality, we analyze how the journalistic responses evaluate the reported politicians, their statements and their communicative performance. Findings show how a media logic conditions what politicians can and cannot say, to whom and about whom, and how journalists portray politicians who do not comply with this logic. Evaluations of the moral and verbal merits of what politicians do with words evince an appreciation for colorful characters, self-deprecatory humor, plain language and stylistic craftsmanship. Media criticism is generally rebuffed: text bites do boundary work, demarcating the professional territory of journalists and politicians. Text bites address a highly media-literate readership of news consumers who recognize the “characters” in the plot line of political communication.

Discourse perspectives on competence in organizations

In their review of organizational discourse research, Grant and Iedema (2005) distinguish between two traditions: organizational discourse studies and organizational discourse analysis. The former is rooted in management and organization theory, the latter derives from work in theoretical and applied linguistics. While both traditions share an interest in the complexities of institutional life and in the application of discourse analysis to grasp those complexities, the authors note a lack of cross-fertilization between the two traditions. Acting on this observation, Grant and Iedema map the scientific conversations that are taking place in the organizational discourse studies literature.