Gry językowe we współczesnej komunikacji medialnej – semantyczna i pragmatyczna analiza języka mediów

• Authors: Kępa-Figura Danuta

Title variants

EN

Language games in contemporary media: a semantic and pragmatic analysis

• Languages of publication: PL

Abstracts

EN

The article discusses the problem of language games in the media, more specifically in social communication facilitated by the media. It aims to reconcile, while analyzing the texts of the media, the semantic perspective based on the linguistic worldview conception with the pragmatic approach. Language games, as a manifestation of changes in mass media, can be described from the semantic perspective (with regard to the formal-semantic basis of each game) as well as from the pragmatic perspective (with regard to their intentionality). The semantic perspective allows one not only to reconstruct meaning shifts (through a description of conventional or innovative semantic relations between the elements of the utterance) but also to relate to the linguistic worldview methodology, according to which language is both a result and an instrument of “learning” and “assimilating” the world by humans. Language games utilize the linguistic worldview conception both when they relate to the linguistic form and when they transform the form in producing nonstandard meanings. Texts produced within a specific journalistic genre entail a specific speech genre, which in its presuppositions does or does not contain the acceptance of the predominating linguistic worldview. Intentionality, which belongs to the essence of games and to the macro-act of media communication, leads one to adopt a perspective which extends beyond a semantic analysis. Pragmatic considerations allow to answer the question why a particular language game has been employed. They also function as a tool of reconstructing the structure of the message in which the game has been applied. The combined semantic-pragmatic perspective in the analysis of language games used in contemporary media provides answers to the question of the nature of media communication. Language games appear to be the most expressive manifestation of language change in the realm of media discourse. Language games relate to the author’s and receiver’s knowledge of the grammatical and semantic rules of the language code and the use and norms of this code. They also relate to the rules which define the shaping of the text (also as a representative of a given genre), as well as to the rules regulating the communication process. A language game would thus be a kind of behaviour based on the knowledge of these rules, sometimes resulting from their breach, actual or apparent. These are for example all kinds of language usage whose aim is an intensification of the receiver’s thinking processes. This operational stage is a way to achieve the ultimate objective, i.e. to invoke in the receiver a reaction intended by the author. This kind of linguistic shaping is a manifestation of the attempt to achieve a symmetrical, two-sided (n-sided), dialogic nature of communication, or better, to invoke an impression of such communication. Language games result not so much in interactivity but in interaction-stimulating phaticity. The present analysis also corroborates the theory of communication as a process of generating meanings.

Keywords

PL

medioznawstwo; JOS; pragmatyka; gry językowe

EN

media studies; linguistic worldview conception; pragmatics; language games

• Publisher: Uniwersytet Warmińsko-Mazurski w Olsztynie
• Journal: Prace Językoznawcze
• Year: 2009
• Issue: 11
• Pages: 95-113

Contributors

author

Kępa-Figura Danuta

• Lublin