Analyzing the media

de Martin Kaltenbacher, Hartmut Stöckl

"Analyzing the Media provides original studies from established scholars in the field of SFL and/or multimodality as well as from young scholars who have already delivered remarkable contributions to the discipline. The volume starts with an introduction to media studies from an SFL perspective. The first chapters explore different functional approaches to analyzing journalistic genres (e.g., reports, editorials, letters to the editor, popular science features) with a clear emphasis on the examination of linguistic/semiotic textures, which are studied in terms of a range of aspects such as generic, thematic and rhetorical structures, the distribution and function of pronouns and of and-parentheticals, engagement, projection and the packaging of voices, modality and authorial voice, etc. Two chapters focus on the lexico-grammatical and functional changes that affect journalistic texts when they are translated for re-publication in a different news culture or adapted for use in the second language classroom. Other papers discuss how the new social media have led to new emerging linguistic practices as in internet forums, how specific multimodal textures, such as smell, can be co-deployed with other meaning making resources (verbal, visual, spatial) to create specific effects for particular situations, e.g., in open-house viewing events, and how Cultural Historical Activity Theory, an action oriented theory that does not integrate a model of social semiosis, can be fruitfully combined with SFL theory to explore hitherto unbeaten paths in human-computer interaction"--