Text bite news: the metapragmatics of feature news

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.

Jaar van publicatie:2017

Trefwoorden:A1 Journal article

BOF-keylabel:ja

BOF-publication weight:1

CSS-citation score:1

Auteurs:International

Authors from:Higher Education

Toegankelijkheid:Open