Coulmas Handbook of Sociolinguistics / Part 2 - Social dimensions of Language / part 2 - 11. The Sociolinguistics of Communication Media

11. The Sociolinguistics of Communication Media : The Handbook of Sociolinguist... Page 11 of 12

been seen as something to avoid. Such criticisms have been mentioned above but, on a wider scale, media language has been charged with killing dialects and influencing language shift in multilingual societies (Andrzejewski, 1971).

And finally, some specific applied linguistic research starts from the premise that media language comes close to being “real,” i.e., nonmonitored language performance. In light of the preceding sections that demonstrated that it is the object of substantial planning, this is clearly wrong. But the sheer quantity of media discourse output, its significance as a public idiom, still makes it a good tool in language teaching. Applications have been seen in both native and foreign language teaching. For instance, Baumgardner (1987) argues that Pakistani English should be used not only as a way of teaching English but of teaching it in its localized Pakistani format. In localized forms, English no longer carries the ideological overtones of the West. In contrast, many courses from the BBC English company incorporate “live,” unmonitored media language, with the aim of familiarizing learners with varieties of English. Such efforts were initially based on a native Anglo-American model but increasingly accept the argument that English must be taught as an international language with widely differing manifestations (Leitner, 1989). The claim that it would necessarily carry a Western ideology is not accepted. Within that framework one must mention also Hosali and Tongue's dictionary for Indian users of English (1989), largely based on print media. Similarly, the (East) German dictionary of pronunciation, based on newsreaders’use of German, was used as a teaching tool for native and foreign language teaching.

3 Conclusions and New Challenges

In this paper I have provided a framework for media and messages in general. Media have been defined as communication domains, mass communication as essentially linking domains, the “outside” as reported domains, and recipients as embedded in their own social networks as individuals and members of groups. Media discourse was considered a public idiom located at the center of conflicting forces whose resolution leads to a temporary, dynamic, and variable compromise, and that is true with underlying norms, practices, and perceptions. But media discourse also represents one of the large communicative concerns of society.

The premises allowed an emphasis on methodological background and a survey of past research. There were some omissions, the most serious being the impact of wider international media context and the consideration of new user needs. Let me briefly turn to these.

There is a conflict between global and local media and production practices that calls for a redefinition of the notion of domain. Domains exist in particular societies, implying a language community, its norms, practices, and language ecology. But today's media increasingly transcend such boundaries. CNN, the BBC's World Service, the Australian ABC's Asian TV, Sports Channel, Sky Channel, the Voice of America, The European (newspaper), or The Herald Tribune are international media, consumed outside the country of origin. Like currency markets, media operate globally, ownership may be international, and large parts of media discourse develop in a global context. While talk of media imperialism and an imperialistic public domain may not be inappropriate, media will narrow down the inevitably growing gap in discourse expectations of national and international audiences.

The second point, new media uses, is related to the observation made above that the impact of small and/or socially disadvantaged languages is on the increase in media. Traditional text linguistics models the consumption of some specific output, a program, an article, and hence its discourse. Consumption is seen as occurring after, or at best simultaneously, with the transmission of the message. All media are trying to move away from this prototypical situation and to increase “audience design” features.

Print media, increasingly available electronically, anticipate a demand for user-defined stretches of text, not for single media texts. As that demand is growing with business companies, political parties, or diplomatic services, software is being developed in artificial intelligence and corpus linguistics that allows the scanning of user-defined, unlimited text (a whole page, a whole issue, a whole week's or year's output). As for electronic media, they are increasing output such as shows or newscasts in front of audiences that permit participation; they overcome the limits of the single locus of reporting, and even aim for interactive TV. As these developments become more relevant, media discourse as a public idiom will consider recipient-orientation in a new light. Novel connections between enand decoders

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may lead not only to greater audience design but also to greater media standardization.

1 See Bell (1991) and Burger (1990) for general introductions.

2 Some media are mainly carriers of advertisements, others have party political functions or develop a corporate image. But, as all contain journalistic content as well, that definition can still be applied.

3 No term covers the entire spectrum of the media-external world. For news, etc. reality is used (Schlesinger, 1978; Fowler, 1991; Bell, 1991). I will suggest the term “reported domain” below.

4 As for the problem of differentiating discourse from the content it transports, see sections 2.4 and 1.3.

5 Cf. the bibliographies published by ICAME, Computer Centre of the Humanities, University of Bergen, Norway.

6 They refer to the well-known empirical problem of finding an intersubjectively verifiable classification. Van Dijk's application of his model to specific data, for instance, presents problems in this respect.

7 See section 2.5 for an expansion of this explanation.

8 The ABC accepted in 1973 that Aboriginal is a count noun and said Aborigine “remains … acceptable English” although it is “etymologically unsound” (95th meeting, 1973). Later, an Aboriginal member of the Senate said he “strongly favoured the use of the word ABORIGINE as a noun” (124th meeting, 1978). In 1989 the ABC reinterpreted the debate in terms of bias (representation).

9 Cf. also the studies on translation needs in Nigeria and lexical interference in Arabic by Simpson (1985) and Hussein and Zughoul (1993) respectively. Mention should also be made again of Krishnamurti and Mukherjee's collection of papers on language modernization (1984), and Shastri's study of code-mixing in India (n.d.).

Cite this article

LEITNER, GERHARD. "The Sociolinguistics of Communication Media." The Handbook of Sociolinguistics. Coulmas, Florian (ed). Blackwell Publishing, 1998. Blackwell Reference Online. 28 December 2007 <http://www.blackwellreference.com/subscriber/tocnode? id=g9780631211938_chunk_g978063121193813>

Bibliographic Details

The Handbook of Sociolinguistics

Edited by: Florian Coulmas eISBN: 9780631211938

Print publication date: 1998

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