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ABSTRACT:
This paper introduces a methodological framework for analysing evaluative meaning in journalistic discourses such as news stories. Evaluative meaning deals with the function and usage of language to express the speaker/ writer's opinions along a number of evaluative parameters (such as positive/ negative, expected/unexpected, and important/unimportant). This paper proposes a number of different parameters along which journalists can evaluate aspects of the world in the stories they compose (or reproduce other people's evaluations). Crucially, the use of evaluative language can be related to journalistic practice, in particular, but not limited to, the attempt to increase news value or newsworthiness. Other implications for journalism are also discussed.
Introduction
Media language has a long history of being explored in a variety of disciplines - including journalism, sociology, linguistics, and semiotics - because its study 'has much to offer to the different disciplines on whose territory it touches' (Bell, 1991, p. 5). Recently, interdisciplinary approaches to analysis have become increasingly important. This paper describes a methodology for analysing evaluation - evaluative language - in journalistic discourse and outlines its potential applications in, and implications for, the discipline of journalism. Evaluation concerns the expression of any speaker/writer's opinions through language, and in news texts we can therefore trace the evaluations that are made through language to either a journalist, a news actor, or a source. Concerning authorship, it is important to remember that news is to be regarded as 'the product of organisational structures and professional practices' (Bell, 1991, p. 38). Accordingly, it is not possible to regard any story as the solo, first-hand product of the respective source journalist, unless we have witnessed that journalist at work; a newspaper by-line is 'no guarantee of authorship' (Bell, 1991, p. 42). There are many layers of communicative 'creation' and many versions of news stories edited by subeditors, editors, chief reporters, journalists, and so on (Bell, 1991, p. 39, 51). Thus, meanings in the news story - whether evaluative or not - do not necessarily originate with the journalist. Rather, I use the term 'the journalist' to refer to the conglomerate of people involved in generating the news story. This is an idealised construct and does not necessarily refer to a real person. Further, evaluative meanings can originate in...