Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse Series Editors Johannes Angermuller University of Warwick Coventry, United Kingdom Judith Baxter Aston University Birmingham, UK
Aim of the series Postdisciplinary Studies in Discourse engages in the exchange between discourse theory and analysis while putting emphasis on the intellectual challenges in discourse research. Moving beyond disciplinary divisions in today's social sciences, the contributions deal with critical issues at the intersections between language and society. More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/14534
Jane Gravells Semiotics and Verbal Texts How the News Media Construct a Crisis
Jane Gravells Aston University Birmingham, United Kingdom ISBN 978-1-137-58748-0 DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-58750-3 ISBN 978-1-137-58750-3 (ebook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959556 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image PM Images / Getty Cover design by Oscar Spigolon Printed on acid-free paper This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd. London The registered company address is The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
To Molly Schroder
Foreword I undertook the research for this book to satisfy an interest in the ways in which language and business interconnect, and in particular to consider the language surrounding companies in crisis. Many books have been written from a business perspective on crisis communication, but my concern was about how the lay person came to understand crisis events. It seemed to me that major news events such as disasters and crises came and went, and that our perception of them changed over time not just that we, or the media on our behalf, tired of them and moved on to the next big thing, although this may be true. But also that we understood them in a different way with the passage of time, that they came to represent something other than an agglomeration of events. I became interested in the BP Deepwater Horizon explosion of 2010 for its wide-reaching effects including business, environmental, financial and human outcomes. One of the things the book is about is certainly the Deepwater Horizon explosion and crisis. However, this is not a handbook about the language of crisis communication. It explores how we know what we think we know about crises such as the BP events. So another thing the book is about is news media representation how is a story such as Deepwater Horizon mediated by different publications, and over time? Exploring a phenomenon as broad and disjointed as the media representation of a crisis called for an ambitious research approach, and so the vii
viii Foreword main thing the book is about is considering ways in which we can investigate a linguistic representation and understand its way of making meaning. This book is importantly about methodology how, practically, can we investigate such a fragmented, diverse and unbounded phenomenon as the media coverage of a crisis? In particular, I was interested in ways of looking at written coverage. Many tools and approaches were available for me to do this, and I discuss some of these in Part I, but none were fully suited to the flexible, emergent and holistic research process I had in mind. I saw this as an area where an alternative and systematic research option can be useful, and from the study of semiotics I sought to reclaim some of the concepts and terminology which have most recently (and effectively) been more the province of the study of visual and other signs. Barthes view that communication makes meaning at different levels the sign, the code, mythic meaning and ideology provided a framework within which to situate a flexible analysis, and I set out such a framework in Part II. This section can be read as a how to guide to conducting research within a broad semiotic perspective. Using a wide range of examples from written news media texts about the BP Deepwater Horizon events, it demonstrates how to conduct a written analysis of those discursive features which are most relevant to the researcher s own particular data set. I drew, secondly, on Peirce s view that signs can be understood as having iconic, indexical and/or symbolic form, as an explanatory concept to describe and interpret the analysis findings, and this is explored in Part III. These several strands of semiotic theory, media social practice, realworld illustration and direct linguistic application relate closely to the concerns of this book series, which takes a postdisciplinary perspective on the study of language. The work in this book relates to topics of interest in the study of applied linguistics, media studies and business communication. It sets out a relationship between theory and practice, moving from the understanding of a theoretical framework to its practical application, to the explication of results through another theoretical approach. This book would not have been written without Judith Baxter s invaluable input and guidance and I thank her and Johannes Angermuller for the opportunity to write for this series. Thanks to Chloe Fitzsimmons at Palgrave Macmillan for her support in bringing the book to print and to Jonathan Gravells for his reading of the first drafts and his constant
Foreword ix encouragement. Any remaining failings in the book are my own. I am very grateful to the Spectator for allowing the use of the Bernie cartoon, which I found to my delight very early in the research process. I began my work on the BP crisis with a set of four interviews two in London and two in New Orleans with people who had been very close to the BP events in different ways. My informants generously shared their time and their insights about the events in the Gulf, allowing me to see the crisis from perspectives other than those of the media texts I was working with. I would like to add a final word about the BP crisis. Over the six years I have been involved with studying the media language of this crisis, it could have become too easy to treat it as an abstract, though fascinating, case study: an example of the multifarious ways in which we use language to fulfil a social need. Indeed, my contention is that our understanding of the crisis is, in one sense, a construction of language. Yet the explosion had tragic material consequences 11 people lost their lives and 17 were injured. The spill caused significant damage to wildlife as well as to the jobs and welfare of countless working people, particularly in the industries of fishing and tourism. As part of my research I visited a senior academic in marine environmental sciences at the University of New Orleans, and a journalist who had covered the story from the first day for a New Orleans newspaper, and I was left in no doubt about the human and environmental cost of the events of April 2010. I hope I treat these stories with respect in this book. Alrewas 2016 Jane Gravells
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Contents Part I Written language and semiotics 1 1 Researching the Representation of a Crisis 3 2 Semiotic Discourse Analysis 27 Part II A Barthesian conceptualisation of written language 43 3 Theoretical Foundations 45 4 Data Collection and Research Principles 75 5 A Barthesian Analysis of the BP Data in Four Stages 83 6 Stage 1: Contextualisation of the BP Texts 89 7 Stage 2: Preliminary Analysis of the BP Texts 101 xiii
xiv Contents 8 Stage 3: A Depth Analysis at the Level of the Sign 111 9 Stage 3: A Depth Analysis at the Level of the Code 127 10 Stage 3: A Depth Analysis at the Level of Mythic Meanings 167 11 Stage 3: A Depth Analysis at the Level of Ideology 179 12 Stage 4: A Holistic Analysis of a Single Text 191 Part III A Peircean conceptualisation of written language 199 13 Theoretical Foundations 201 14 A Peircean Interpretation of the BP Data 213 Part IV Concluding thoughts 241 15 Other Events, Other Contexts 243 References 249 Index 265
List of Figures Fig. 2.1 Perspectives and tools of written text analysis 28 Fig. 3.1 A semiotic heuristic for considering written language 48 Fig. 3.2 Barthes and Fairclough s views of language in context 72 Fig. 6.1 A genre categorisation of news texts 93 Fig. 7.1 Nine linguistic features for analysis 109 Fig. 9.1 Notional progression of text types in BP data 141 Fig. 9.2 Texts embedded intertextually In Too Deep: BP and the Drilling Race that Took it Down (M2 PressWIRE, 27.4.2011) 152 Fig. 13.1 Distance of sign forms from the object 208 Fig. 14.1 A linear view of iconic, indexical and symbolic phases 236 xv
List of Tables Table 4.1 Sample of BP-related texts from Nexis UK database 79 Table 5.1 Four stages of data analysis 87 Table 6.1 Geographical source of items mentioning BP events 2010 12 90 Table 6.2 BP oil spill texts by genre 2010 12 93 Table 6.3 Proportion of media text dealing directly with Table 8.1 BP oil spill 2010 12 98 Analysis of naming terms for the BP Deepwater Horizon events 113 Table 8.2 Social actors in 2010 12 BP texts 116 Table 9.1 Instances of modality in the 2010 12 texts 155 Table 9.2 Summary of findings modality and appraisal 165 Table 10.1 The occurrence of metonyms in the 2010 12 BP texts 168 Table 10.2 The occurrence of metaphors in the 2010 12 BP texts 174 Table 14.1 Summary of findings from depth analysis 214 Table 15.1 A comparative study by political party 245 Table 15.2 A comparative study of a political issue over time 246 Table 15.3 A comparative study by mediums 246 xvii