Research proposal

Research question: To what extent does the use of language in two contrasting news channels affect their broadcasts of the same story?

We have decided to research the way language is used in the contrasting news channels BBC One and MTV in their presentation of the same story, for example, the on-going story of Madeline McCann’s disappearance. The reason we have decided to investigate this is because this will clearly demonstrate any differences they possess in their approaches, such as the BBC’s more formal approach versus MTV’s more informal one. We will also briefly look at accent and dialect as this can impact the way a certain broadcaster or story is perceived.

The three elements which are of great importance to our research are: Ethos, whether the speaker is fair and honest, Pathos, whether the speaker has evoked emotion from the audience and Logos, if the audience is persuaded by the speaker’s argument. This is because these elements can be seen within the language of broadcasters, for example, in their word choices. Also, in the case of Logos, a broadcaster’s accent or dialect may affect the persuasiveness of their argument, as people may make general assumptions based upon these such as associations with intelligence or friendliness.  

Literature- There is a wide range of literature available on the language of the news/ media. They offer a range of theories regarding the effects and importance of the use of language in news broadcasts. The texts we will use to start our research project are:

·         Bell, A. The Language of News Media

·         Conboy, M. The Language of the News

·         Cotter, C. News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism

·         Durant, A and Lambrou, M. (2009) Language and Media. London: Routledge

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Methods- Our methods will include observing these particular news channels. This will allow us to see whether a broadcaster’s particular language choices and their accent or dialect affect our perception of the broadcaster and the story being told. For example, more emotional stories will contain word choices which create a serious tone, in comparison to more light hearted news. We will use a corpus in our project, as this will allow us to see which types of words are used more frequently within these contrasting channels and the connotations they possess. This should highlight any differences in register of these channels aiding our comparison of them. Another method of gaining data is to conduct questionnaires, as this would allow us to gain an understanding of viewers’ response to the presentation of a certain storyline, including the effect of the broadcaster’s tone and language choices. Also by asking a range of ages from young adults to older viewers we may be able to see which age groups watch the BBC or MTV and why. Does the language used by these contrasting channels purposefully appeal to specific age demographics?

Our final goal is to present our findings in our power point presentation during the exhibition. By this stage, we should ideally be able to answer our research question through the use of a range of data.