An analysis of media discourses employed in CBC's coverage of

Bill C-30

Presented by Jonathan Giles and Sorina Dragusanu on 13 March 2012

Introduction

-This presentation will explore the linguistic features that are salient in the introduction of Bill-C30 to the public by CBC

-By studying these features, we will have a better understanding of the ways in which news broadcasters draw upon certain linguistic resources in order to inform the public

- Showing how these linguistic resources are employed will allow us to further reflect on some of the differences and similarities between face-to-face conversation and media discourse

What is Bill C-30?

Bill C-30 is a piece of legislation that was tabled in the House of Commons on February 14th 2012, which was designed to enable police to collect information from Internet Service Providers and cellphone companies without a warrant

CBC's The National covered this story on February 13th, 14th, and 19th.

The bill was eventually sent to a committee for review after a substantial public reaction

Situating our analysis of The National

Dyadic speaker-hearer models are not suitable frameworks for describing diverse instances of talk

Goffman's Participation Framework (1981) allows for a diversity of hearers' roles which could accomodate those watching or listening to a newscast

The specific configuration of speaker-hearer is determined by the institution shaping the speech event

The National as an institutional genre of media discourse

''Genre, therefore, for the purposes of investigating media discourse, requires a flexible definition that will accommodate both the orthodoxy of a stable structure and the instantaneous and spontaneous activity of those who participate within it.'' (O'Keefe 2005:23)

Structure of The National

1) Participant structure

Newscast: introduces ''stories'' (narratives) that the public are interested in knowing (which is why they are tuning in, presumably)

Reporter: Corroborates the story with experience

Hearer: (anywhere from 800 000 to 2 million on CBC) – the person for whom the information is gathered, as well as whose opinion is shaped based on the information they are given

The news clips

The news clips and transcripts can be made available to interested parties

Please leave a comment

Contexutalization and Reported Speech

Recontextualization of Question Time QT is a genre; QT is institutionalized

prefabricated, televised, and adversarial in nature (Fenton-Smith)

Recontextualization process Rephrase the question Describe the thoughts/actions of the politician Use following context to create a dialogue between

parties that separate in space, time or both (Ekström)

...Contextualization and Reported Speech (cont'd)

‘-he can either stand with us or with the child pornographers'

(Towes, Feb. 13,14 & 19)

The employment of narratives

News reports, or stories, roughly follow the framework of narrative, as it seeks to relate something that happened to the other participants in a conversation.

Labov's (2006) framework:

Abstract

Orientation

Complicating action

Evaluation

Result

Some considerations about news reports as narrative

- Newscasters are relaying things they did not personally experience

- This authority is also enhanced by video edits

- The abstract and orientation are very close together

- Evaluation seems to be tied up into the orientation, as well as the result

The positioning of stances in The National's coverage of Bill-C30

Who are positioned as proponents? The conservative government, the police or Vic

Towes Who are positioned as opponents?

Many faces including advocacy groups, privacy specialists and the opposition parties

The positioning of stances in The National's coverage of Bill-C30

What about the hearer/audience? ’we’ and ’us’ ’canadians’, ’the canadian’, and ’citizens’

How are they all positioned in relation to each other? Bill C-30 as framed by CBC's The National is an

intrusive spy mechanism. This indexes our ideological need for a certain degree of privacy and distance from the government and police bodies.

Conclusion

Discourse analysis elucidates the inner workings of something that is usually taken for granted:

It shows the specific linguistic strategies that are used by newscasters in their particular genre that piece by piece, word by word, strategy by strategy contribute to the public debate on an issue.

Although many of the conversational strategies are the same, the way in which they are used, combined with the status and number of hearers provide the CBC with the ability to shape our understanding of the event

Questions to Consider

• Was it manipulation on purpose?

• How much can we say about intentionality in this, and how much does it even matter?

Bibliography (edit - + goffman & ctv)

Bakhtin, M. M. (1999).  The problem of speech genres. In The discourse reader, Jaworski, A., & Coupland, N. eds. New York: Routledge.

Briggs, Charels, & Bauman, R. (2009). Genre, Intertextuality and social power. In Linguistic anthropology. Duranti, A. ed. New York: Cambridge University Press.

CBC (2012). The National. In  CBC Program Guide. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/program/the_national

Ekström, M. (2001). Politicians interviewed on television news.  Discourse & Society,  12(5), 563-584. doi:10.1177/0957926501012005001

Fenton-Smith, B. (2008). Discourse structure and political performance in adversarial parliamentary questioning.  Journal of Language and Politics,  7(1), 97-97. doi:10.1075/jlp.7.1.05smi

Holt, E., & Clift, R. (2007).  Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Mesley, W. (Host). (2012, February 14). Online surveillance bill.  The National. Video retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2196890824

Montgomery, M. (2007).  The discourse of broadcast news: A linguistic approach. New York: Routledge.

O'Keeffe, A. (2006).  Investigating media discourse. New York: Routledge.

Webster, F. (2002).  Information management and manipulation: Jürgen Habermas and the concept of the public sphere (Chapter 7). Theories of the information society. New York: Routledge.