Texts dealing with power or the government can be found in modern journals and newspapers almost everyday; they differ in terms of genre, function, style and pragmatics. Socio-political journals are among important sources of such articles; they are frequently categorised as a rather homogeneous group (e.g. in research on readership or in media studies), which nevertheless construct, as I demonstrate in my analyses, messages which are the result of completely different interpretations of the art of feature journalism. In this paper I analyse the feature article as a classic genre, considered by both theorists and practitioners to be the most typical form of feature journalism. Properties of feature articles can be arranged by means of several distinctive dualisms indicating certain compositional, textual and stylistic links (temporality-arguability, private perspective-public perspective, the specific-the abstract).
Redundancy, most frequently discussed in works on computer science, telecommunications and the theory of information, denotes in linguistics the excess of information, i.e. this amount of information that exceeds the minimum required for a message to be understood. The excess, that can perform a number of essential functions in spoken and written text, has not yet been comprehensively addressed linguistically. A study on redundancy in modern media makes it possible to indicate – with the application of stylistic and pragmalinguistic tools – the methods for influencing the recipient. The present article considers such issues as the function of a redundant transmission of information (message) and its linguistic exponents. One of the most important tasks of redundancy, i.e. making a media statement more attractive, is presented in detail. The author also indicates a group of media messages in which redundancy is applied to blur or disintegrate the text and verbosity is conducive to its further convolutedness and esotericism.
The rules of opinion journalism, presented in numerous source materials, indicate that an opinion article is constructed in line with the argumentative order: the right selection of arguments is to result in proving a thesis put forward in the text. However, more and more frequently opinion journalists offer the readers an attempt at finding out about the meanderings of politics or the economy single-handedly: temporal narration ordering fragments of texts allows to trace events “frame by frame”. Short sentences, nominal statements, verbs impersonal forms, in the present tense: the reader has no problem with following them. The reader learns about the answers to basic questions important in construing journalism information. Creation of some sort of a report is a transformation stage in an opinion journalist’s work; to a reader this is an extra and superfluous element. The phenomenon of temporality is also related to the fact that the analysed texts are about themselves: by resorting to the first person singular/plural, the author or authors describe their journalist activities, meetings with specific individuals (sources of information), problems with data verification, sometimes with obtaining data. In the course of analyses, the following relation emerges: redundancy – condensation necessitating a more in-depth analysis with respect to the rules underlying contemporary opinion journalism genres.
The text focuses on the analysis of the programme, which is categorised by the editorial team as “political journalism”. The author is trying to show her doubts regarding the lack of connection between the definition of the word ‘politics’ and anything that appears in media’s offer in such category. She points out how the broadcasters nurture in the audience the belief that the viewed programme deals with political problems and the issues of public area which are important for conscious citizens. Among the set of tools and means used throughout the programme, she highlights the following: usage of concealing type indicators, activation of keywords included in semantic fields derived from the noun ‘politics’; moving the focus from the public area to the private one; staging antagonistic scenes and critical situations. The presented tendencies to stage the reality fit into the mechanism of ‘seducing with politics’, using the citizen sphere as a pretext for focusing first and foremost on emotions, assumptions and controversies.
The concept of the text is built on several grounds: on the one hand, I am interested in the phenomenon of the beginning of the text, the rhetorical and pragmalinguistic potential of the introduction. On the other hand - literary correspondence, due to the above-average poetic talent of male and female authors, escapes the codified rules of epistolography. The matter becomes even more complicated (and, I think, more attractive) when we consider that from Szymborska's correspondence with Herbert and Barańczak emerge portraits of friendship, intimacy - and the public and private worlds intermingle, and with the intimacy, the greater closeness of the relationship, the question of escape from convention also arises. The perspective taken is micro-situational and as such relates to the different strategies of starting a letter, characteristic of these three writers. It allows us to point out what winning the favor of the recipient is all about, how it connects to the construction of the writer's identity, to the repetitive bonding activity.
PL
Koncepcja tekstu zbudowana jest na kilku podstawach: z jednej strony interesuje mnie fenomen początku tekstu, retoryczny i pragmalingwistyczny potencjał wstępu. Z drugiej strony – korespondencja literacka ze względu na ponadprzeciętny talent poetycki autorów i autorek wymyka się skodyfikowanym zasadom epistolografii. Sprawa komplikuje się jeszcze (i jak sądzę uatrakcyjnia), gdy weźmiemy pod uwagę, że z korespondencji Szymborskiej z Herbertem i Barańczakiem wyłaniają się portrety przyjaźni, bliskości – i przenikają się światy publiczne i prywatne, a wraz z intymizacją, większą bliskością relacji pojawia się także pytanie o ucieczkę od konwencji. Przyjęta perspektywa jest mikrosytuacyjna i jako taka odnosi się do różnych strategii rozpoczynania listu, charakterystycznych dla tych trojga literatów. Pozwala na wskazanie, na czym polega zjednywanie przychylności odbiorcy, jak łączy się z konstruowaniem tożsamości piszącego, z repetytywnym działaniem więziotwórczym.
The article presents ways of constructing stories about the state, included in the news magazines of public television during the pandemic. The use of R. Waksmund's concept of stealing a fairy tale allows us to reveal references on many levels: the construction of the presented world, the creation of characters, motifs, narrative approaches, plot solutions. The reference to fairy tales also exposes the functionality of repetition – a mechanism immanently inscribed in this genre, revealing itself on many levels of the rhetorical organization of the text (on the level of invention, disposition or elocution).
PL
Artykuł przedstawia sposoby konstruowania opowieści o państwie zawarte w magazynach wiadomości telewizji publicznej w czasie pandemii. Sięgnięcie po koncepcję R. Waksmunda o kradzieży baśni pozwala na ujawnienie związków między oboma porządkami wypowiedzi na wielu poziomach: konstrukcji świata przedstawionego, kreacji bohaterów, motywów, ujęć narracyjnych, rozwiązań fabularnych. Odniesienie się do baśni eksponuje także funkcjonalność repetycji – mechanizmu immanentnie wpisanego w ten gatunek, ujawniającego się na wielu poziomach retorycznej organizacji tekstu (na poziomie inwencji, dyspozycji czy elokucji).
The text has been devoted to the analysis of the publications of the Movement of Alternative Society (Pol. Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego, RSA), a group gathering people with neo-anarchist views, originally jointly creating underground Solidarity movement, and later operating independently. The adopted research perspective-primarily pragmatic and stylistic-enabled scholars to distinguish and describe several features of the analysed magazines of the second circulation: the magazine Homek (at the beginning published as a biweekly, then as a monthly and finally published erratically) and ephemeral prints constituting an important tool of the Movement’s (RSA) operation.
Messages presented by journalists bring the knowledge about the world, and their basic functions determine the validity underlying analysis of information texts in the context of truth within the presented content. Standards related to journalists’ activity refer to two notions: objectivism and truth as elementary categories. Among the most commonly indicated obligations of journalists we can enumerate image setting of the described fact, which is to be ensured, among others, by multi-vocality of the journalist text. Creating the network of correlations between the functional message in media and utterances of various people (citations) enables examining the semantics of the given text and indicating its position in genologic pattern. When mentioning the manner of using citations in medial message, it is essential to indicate the intratextual and extratextual status of people, whose utterances are included in medial message. Information texts mention multiple people, and talking individuals usually belong to two spheres — the public and private area. The first one covers representatives of various institutions, while the second one concerns private people, who do not exist individually within the public sector. And the utterances stated by representatives of the private zone — “the common people” — were discussed by us in a sequence indicated by several categories, significant as far as the analysis of information texts is concerned: a. anonymity and openness; b. affiliation to the given category of speaking persons and individuality; c. role of the speaker; d. function of the quoted utterance.
We would like to analyze TV news report. This term is frequently used, the researchers do not specify which charakteristics of this genre are the most specific and essential. We understand news as a component of television newscast, regularly scheduled TV program. The form of the news bulletin is apparently unchanged because the sending-receiving mechanisms are constant, with telegenic newscasters, aproperly arranged studio, two-, three-minute long news reports, and the roles the spectators are cast in. These tricks, however, only serve the senders’ strategies, which make it necessary to define the television news report in adynamically changing media reality. Since the genre is an open and dynamic structure and seamlessly adapts to current needs, it is possible to approach it “diachronically” and present its evolution — mild, fluid, predictable change, and revolution — radical, abrupt change.
The article is a part of outcome from a research project carried out by the author and devoted to quotations in Polish media and mass communication after 1989. The present elaboration includes an analysis of journalistic information, viewed as a particular kind of journalistic communication distinguishable from column writing due to its specific functions. A number of monographs and text books devoted to the development of the writing skills required for producing media texts are examined to single out those properties of journalistic information that the authors consider to be the most important. Within the context of the indications obtained in the process and the factographic pact between the author and the reader as it has been described by Zbigniew Bauer, the functions of quotation in direct speech are discussed. An attempt has been made to introduce a classification of persons using journalistic text in their presentations, while one of the their categories, a participant of described events, is examined more thoroughly.
This article is a part of research project that focuses on citations in media coverage in Poland after 1989; two earlier installments of the article have been included in earlier publications of “Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne”. Part Three provides a discussion on and characteristics of the category of the average man in the street, ordinary people whose utterances are increasingly included in the journalistic narration. Taking the notion of everyday life, with which the demand for an ordinary man in the media is closely linked, as a starting point in the discussion, the authors proceed to characterize citations, along with their explanatory attributions, indicate their textual functions and analyse the categories that are revealed within the process: anonymity, transparency and singularity.
One of the statutory provisions of public media is to popularize the knowledge of the Polish language – the present authors analyse diversified aspects determining the effectiveness of the execution of the task and the media’s commitment to its social responsibility, and proceed to evaluate the basic assignments and responsibilities involved in the journalistic profession. These responsibilities result largely from the reception of the profession by the general public, and from those that emerge within the context of studies on language authority figures in present-day Poland. The next stage of the analysis involves an evaluation of the activities of all-Polish national broadcasters in view of their practical implementation and execution of the commitments set in Art. 21, Section 1a, item 8 of the Radio and Television Act (diffusion and divulgation of the knowledge of the Polish language). The remaining part of the article, including postulative claims, results from an analysis of the activities popularizing the knowledge on Polish available in the media and from the conviction of the necessity of expanding them beyond just grammaticality and correctness in the language use.
This article reports part of a research project currently carried out by the authors devoted to the analysis of quoted speech used by Polish journalists in their discourse after 1989. The first part of the article was published in the previous volume of Poznańskie Studia Polonistyczne. The present part focuses on the characteristics of the participants (parties) in journalistic information. Prevailing and determining factors related to the number and the type of participants in journalistic information are presented, and fundamental functions of speech verbs (verba dicenti) are indicated. Citation is the most explicit form of inclusion of other-discourse in one’s discourse. The second part of the study provides more detailed analysis that includes the following categories: the category of witnesses, experts (practitioners) and that of experts (theoreticians). The third part of the article is due to be published soon.
This text analyses the Homek magazine published by Ruch Społeczeństwa Alternatywnego (RSA) [Alternative Society Movement] – a community of people with neoanarchist views first co-creating the underground Solidarność and later functioning independently. Homek, as an underground newspaper, was initially published bi-weekly, then monthly and later irregularly. This article focuses on, firstly, the RSA community’s position on hostile attitudes (including the so-called hate speech) and, secondly, on the use of the term walka [fight] as what we believe to have been a self-creation device.
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