Preferred lexis of evaluation and exaggeration in the intune tv news corpus:the accent on affect

Comparing corpora• All work with corpora – just as all work with

discourse - is properly comparative (Tognini-Bonelli 2001)

• Corpus-assisted studies of discourse types are by definition comparative

• it is only possible to both uncover and evaluate the particular features of a discourse type by comparing it with others.

• Here we compare a corpus of TV news with print media corpora

Previous studies

• CORDIS Iraq: TV news corpus vs other corpora (White House Briefings, parliamentary discourse, newspaper discourse on the Iraq war)

• Intune -2 months of transcribed TV News (BBC and ITV) over a two month period compared with the same period for two British broadsheets

CORDIS a corpus on the Iraq war• Investigation of speech and thought

presentation (language and thought report signals)

• Each sub-corpus had its own preferred reporting signals, which formed part of the discourse.

• identifying signals which had higher values than for the rest of the overall corpus (and higher than British National Corpus values)

• Comparing for key items (statistically significant)

Methodology The compilation of specialised corpora, chosen with external criteria, such as date and source,

and analyses of word and word-cluster frequency lists, comparative keyword lists and, above all, concordances.

Comparison: Particular features of a discourse type, DT(a)?

Compare DT(a) – DT(b) – DT(n) Compare DT(a) – BNC / BoE

• These wordlists, a boiled down form of the texts, can be compared and the salient terms, those with statistical salience, are compared in terms of their keyness.

• The more frequent, functional words tend to give us an idea of the stylistic features of the discourse type in question

• The content words further down the lists give us an idea of the ‘aboutness’ of the discourse (NB Wordle does not include function words, only content words)

• With reference to the effects of corpus-based methods on language study Mike Scott mentions two causes of what he calls an ‘upheaval’ (Scott and Tribble, 2006: 5).

• The first are the technological innovations that permit us to plough through vast quantities of text in a short time and to reduce it or ‘boil it down’ to lists and concordance lines,

• whilst the second effect of corpus methodology is the way the pattern-perceiving predisposition of the brain comes into play when it examines such lists

Cordis corpusComparing the TV corpus with all others (White

House briefings, Hutton Inquiry, parliamentary discourse, newspapers)

In the tv corpus:A set of salient items : the common semantic

feature?

Ashamed/ discover/ terrified/ frightened/ furious

anxious/expecting/angry/mood/hoping/thanks/worried

Word Overall Iraq% %

TVsubcorpus %(highest in Cordis)% BNC %

ashamed 0,001 0,002 0,0011discover 0,002 0,004 0,0033terrified 0,001 0,004

frightened 0,001 0,005 0,0021furious 0,001 0,005 0,0013anxious 0,002 0,006 0,0031expecting 0,002 0,006 0,0021angry 0,002 0,008 0,0042mood 0,001 0,012 0,0033hoping 0,003 0,022 0,0035thanks 0,004 0,025 0,0062worried 0,003 0,01 0,0038

Common feature of the set?Ashamed, terrified, frightened, furious,

anxious, angry, worried

Intune corpus• There are 16,285 different word forms in the

Intune tv corpus, of which 6,275 are hapax i.e. only one occurrence.

• One could look at all of these but since comparison gives us more of an insight into the “aboutness” of texts we look at keyword lists.

• And look for sets. • And find a label for those sets.

Top twenty words of the keywords list of TVnews 07/British Broadsheets 07• TWENTY• NEWS• THOUSAND• PERCENT• NOW• HUNDRED• HERE• IS• THEY• TONIGHT

• THIRTY• TODAY• THANK• YOU• FIFTEEN• ITV• ARE• FIFTY• WELL• WE

deixisPerson place and timeTypical of context bound oral interactionNot a surprising finding: function words

reflect the style of the discourse type

But the key content words? Ashamed, terrified, frightened, furious, anxious, angry, worried

Word Overall Iraq% %

TVsubcorpus %(highest in Cordis)% BNC %

ashamed 0,001 0,002 0,0011discover 0,002 0,004 0,0033terrified 0,001 0,004

frightened 0,001 0,005 0,0021furious 0,001 0,005 0,0013anxious 0,002 0,006 0,0031expecting 0,002 0,006 0,0021angry 0,002 0,008 0,0042mood 0,001 0,012 0,0033hoping 0,003 0,022 0,0035thanks 0,004 0,025 0,0062worried 0,003 0,01 0,0038

Two sets from keywords TV2007

• Set A• 208 dangerous• 312 violence• 319 crime• 342 victims• 419 ordeal• 592 tragedy• 596 violent• 638 victim• 666 inferno

• Set B• 342 worried• 399 distressing• 483 terrifying• 544 shocking• 644 horrific• 661 tragic• 670 defenceless

Keyness data: >20rankrank

49 killed 239 0.07 1897 0.01

Keyness score: 482.8

Rank Keyword frequency % freqRC RC%

451 shocking 31 361

Keyness score: 41.91

Rank Keyword frequency % freqRC RC%

485 tragedy 35 478

Keyness score: 39.3

Concordance lines for worried

Well, the car industry are worried that some repair workshops are not

Business leaders are worried. Holly Bellingham has a hundred and

end of February two thousand and seven, people are worried, and

The Americans are very worried about Iranian behaviour. They are

that they have their own agenda, that they are worried about their own

Bingo companies in Wales are worried. When the smoking ban was

What can you say to the public who may be worried about more

Interaction profile (voices)Worried57 examples of which 30 are BBC6 newsreader of which three to camera 2 are

in exchanges with Reporter34 Reporter 19 to camera and three which

are Q’s to VOX

worried

Now the chancellor may not be worried about that. But he does have aAnd what is more, seventy five percent of drivers are not even

worriedThat is a real blow to the government, worried by a so called energy gap. at Westminster this evening. Daisy, how worried are the authorities

about So John, just how worried are the Chinese authorities that this could

actuallyIf the president is worried, it does not show. He threw a birthday party And Poland has a lot of this stuff, that makes it even more worried

about theThe millionaire Jose Mourinho explains why he is just not worried

aboutPeople are really worried about it now. They are certainly uncertain Some politicians are so worried, they think more help should be given

to I think a lot of broadcasters are very worried about what they might

find

sets• dangerous, violent, violence, killer

• ordeal, inferno, tragedy, victim, victims, defenceless.

• worried, distressing terrifying, shocking, horrific, tragic, frightening

• All are evaluative, many are examples of upscaling

Shocking a mini case study

An example of analysis in some detail:From the set concerning hyperbolic affect

terrifying, shocking, horrific, tragic, frightening)

Hyperbolic emotive evaluation• Word % TV %ref corpus Keyness score: • worried, 0.015 00.004 54.11• distressing 0.004 0.0003 52.83• terrifying 0.007 0.001 44.97• shocking 0.008 0.002 41.91• horrific 0.004 0.0007 32.30 • Tragic 0.007 0.001 31.65• Frightening 0.004 0.0008 27.32

preferred lexis of which channel?Horrific 17 examples of which only 6 BBCNewsreader to cam 4 headlines 2Reporter to cam 2 8 Voiceover1 LPSemantic preference for damage to

human body (burns, injuries, wounds though extended to crimes, murders which caused them and to car crash

Terrifying21 examples of which only 4 were BBCAll examples Newsreader(12, of which 5

headlines and 7 to camera) or reporter (9, of which 3 to camera and 6 voiceover)

Strong epistemic modality, lots of presupposition, use of demonstrative reference (exophoric) and comparative reference (experience, ordeal, moment)

 

Tragic 26 of which 9 BBCAlways about death but also causes

leading to death, accident, consequences

 Frightening 16 of which 2 BBC5 VOX5 Rep with voiceover4 newsreader of which 1 was headline2 LPcan be, is, is clearly Distressing: 12 examples of which 5 BBCRep: 5 to camera and 3 voiceover

Shocking concordance lines1 farm to get some answers. And again they are shocking 3 Tory leader David Cameron called the comments shocking and4 Today we got some shocking answers to those questions. Meanwhile, 5 this is grim. <s>shocking. Appalling. 6 It does make you feel sad and when you first see it it is quite

shocking. 7 months in Belgium. But no case has been as shocking as this. Robert 9 What they witnessed were stories of shocking brutality. Tonight we10 It is absolutely shocking, but I think we got to be very careful in

saying 12. ITV News has uncovered shocking conditions at the Hungarian

goose14 back to Hungary. And we discovered evidence of shocking

conditions.15 dangerous dogs act. In the weeks that followed the shocking death

of 16 New research seen exclusively by ITV News reveals the shocking

shocking17 If the murder of a young woman itself is not shocking enough, the18 She feared for her life. shocking evidence from the boyfriend of a19 Britain's gun culture, ITV News has uncovered shocking evidence20 Pakistan's shocking exit last week cost some people a fortune

and21 was captured on this cctv camera. And those shocking images will22 What is shocking is that such a short piece of film can be taken out23 It is just shocking. It is amazing that police can actually b 24 Alison Holt is here. Alison, this is a really rather shocking report, is25 Now, even by Baghdad standards they are shocking scenes. In

the26 Welcome back. Last night we brought you the shocking story of a27 tonight's main news. ITV News has witnessed shocking scenes of28 Brutal and apparently out of control. Scenes so shocking that

there29 under cover for an exclusive insight into a story that is shocking30 It is an incredibly complex area and it is perhaps a little shocking31 Even in the cold light of day its still very shocking what happened

Shocking profileSample size 317 were from BBC the rest were ITV25 were newsworker (reporter or

newsreader)5 LP1 VOXOf the reporter examples: 10 were to camera and 10 voiceover7 were newsreader headlines

A couple of points• 1. One of the headlines was spoken by the

newsreader but was quoting an LP:<u who="Nightingale_Mary"

role="reporter_newspresenter" sex="f" type="headlines">

<s>The Shadow Cabinet minister and former colonel who called some black soldiers useless. </s>

<s>He talked of racial abuse as a commonplace reality of life in the British army. </s>

<s>The Tory leader David Cameron called the comments shocking and completely unacceptable. </s>

</u>

Notice how it is the newsworkers who feed the lexis to the VOX and LP voices.

It is an induced evaluation and induced affect

Visuals are important too. Often it is the text which is written after the visuals but not always. Sometimes the visuals are chosen after.

Newsreader headline – visuals?“Tory leader David Cameron called the comments shocking and completely unacceptable”

Headline voiceover

“Another mainstream tv quiz, which thousands pay to play. Now suspended. Described as shocking. An apology issued for fictional winners and false information. “

Examples 22 and 23 police on cctvone LP and the other from a vox

. <u who="Hughes_Meredydd" role="LP" sex="m"

type="camera"> <s>What is shocking is that such a short piece

of film can be taken out of context and shown on the media. </s> <s>Without us having time to put the context around that. /s>

<u who="Walcott_Leroy" role="VOX" sex="m" type="camera">

<s>It is just shocking. </s> <s>It is amazing that police can actually believe

that that form of restraint and the level of that form of restraint is acceptable, you know in this day and age. </s>

We don’t hear the questionThe cleft sentence beginning “What is

shocking..” suggests that the question included the word shocking and the answer is contrasting the premise.

The second sample has particular intonation suggesting that it is a response to a question with the word shocking in it.

Notice how it is the newsworkers who feed the lexis to the VOX and LP voices.

It is an induced evaluation and induced affect

Visuals are important too. Often it is the text which is written after the visuals but not always. Sometimes the visuals are chosen after.

methodologyMarrying quantitative and qualitative

Comparisoninductive

CADShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus-assisted_discourse_studies

SiBol grouphttp://www3.lingue.unibo.it/blog/clb/

CADSCorpus Assisted Discourse Studies Partington 2004, 2008Its principal endeavour is the investigation,

and comparison of features of particular discourse types, integrating into the analysis the techniques and tools developed within corpus linguistics

TV news compared with pressComparable corpora over same period. 2

months in 2007 and 2009

We found that there are preferred forms of evaluation in tv news and that they show up in quantitative data. The items can then be examined qualitatively looking at concordance lines and the transcripts and a profile drawn up of their use in terms of their configuration in interaction (voice, headlines, camera, voiceover etc) and their match (if any) with the visual text.