CDA analysis

Compare the way in which these two newspapers present the same item of news. Focus
especially on language use, the idea of prominence, and the way the readership is
represented.

Background information about the newspapers:

The Sun is a tabloid newspaper published in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It has the
largest circularion of any daily newspaper in the United Kingdom, but in late 2013 slipped to
second largest Saturday newspaper. It had an average daily circulation of 2.2 million
copies in March 2014, with an average daily readership of approximately 5.5 million.
Approximately 41% of readers are women and 59% are men. The Sun has been involved
in many controversies in its history.

The Guardian is a British daily newspaper. The paper's readership is generally on the
mainstream left of British political opinion. The newspaper has the reputation of a platform
for liberal and left-wing editorial. Its combined print and online editions reach nearly 9
million British readers.The Guardian has been named Newspaper of the Year four times at
the annual British Press Awards the most recent in 2014 for reporting on government
surveillance.

Both newspapers treat the same topic from different perspectives. In the case of The
Guardian the headline refers to people (man and child) involved in the accident and where
it took place. The deck expands on the headline and gives more information. In the case of
The Sun, the headline is shorter and makes use of deictic “two” to refer to the people dead.
The deck is shorter than the other and enlarges the information of the headline. It focuses
on the tragedy and amount of people dead. Both texts refer to people passing away in the
boat accident.

The Guardian continues the story focusing on the people and the well-being of the
survivors using vocabulary to mitigate the result of the accident, for example: recovered,
declared, found dead, serious but stable condition, incident, cardiac arrest, major recovery
operation. The text is written mainly in passive voice (were recovered from the water
earlier, are being treated, has now been transferred), uses reported speech (police said,
Midlands Ambulance Service said) and gives official sources of information (West Midlands
Ambulance Service, ambulance service, Emergency services, the policeman, paramedics,
Warwickshire Police, Warwickshire Fire, Rescue Service, Severn Area Rescue). The
Guardian is respectful of the reader and presents information as factual as possible.

The Sun continues the story focusing on the tragedy itselp using impersonal vocabulary
(one, all, two) and it is shorter than the one written by The Guardian. Additionally, it has a
picture of rescuers looking for dead people to add to the sensationalist news. The
vocabulary used lacks mitigation strategies and goes as: desperate, tragic, dead, tragedy,
incident, bereaved, nasty, rescue. The text is written in passive voice (was given, are
believed) and active voice (have expressed, will not release), uses reported speech in a
direct form (A Warwickshire Police spokesman said: “All the emergency services have
expressed their thanks to...), uses only one official source (Warwickshire police) and the
rest are comments from the witnesses to the accident. The Sun wants to create an impact
on the reader outlining the tragedy and death.

Vanesa Gonzalez
 Compare the way in which these two newspapers present the same item of news. Focus
especially on language use, the idea of prominence, and the way the readership is
represented.

COMMENTS

TWO THE GUARDIAN THE SUN These are traditional

NEWSPAPERS newspapers about
PAGES current events.
Main Headline: “Man and a Main Headline: “Two dead The two headlines
Child die in a boat as family boat flips” relates to the same topic.
accident” They use descriptive
Sub Headline: “Two language to grab the
Very specific information people - a man and a reader’s attention.
that only shows content and child- died yesterday after
geographic significance. a boat capsized on a weir” The relationship of the
headlines in the Sun
The sub headline gives newspaper page shows
more details. content, use of
photograph and
Genre: News denoting geographic significance
Genre: News tragedy and death to the readership. The
denoting tragedy and death reader would read in
LANGUAGE USE Recovering of the dead a specific order because
Recovering of the dead bodies of the use of the two
bodies headlines
Time setting: 8:30 pm
Time setting: 8:30 pm
10:00 pm
Half an hour Context indicates the
later. environment in which
the accident occurs,
Place setting: River Avon using word phrases and
at Bart ford Warwick sounds so as to produce
Place setting: River Avon at extreme impact on the
Bart ford Warwick. reader.

Systematic
FunctionalGrammar:
Systematic events and conceptual
FunctionalGrammar: events meaning
and conceptual meaning According to Van Dijk
Linguistic elements: 2007: news is focused
Linguistic elements: Lexical Lexical structure and on Systematic
structure and transitivity: transitivity: Subject-verb- Functional Grammar as
Subject-verb-object-family object- desperate search – events and conceptual
boating accident – tragic man and child – meaning. Linguistic
serious but stable condition elements such as
 –weir incident- cardiac small rowing boat transitivity and lexical
arrest structure are used as
Examples of events: powerful tools.
Examples of events:
“Two other children were Both articles shows a
“Emergency services were in hospital last night after vivid descriptive
first called to the weir being pulled from water” language as they
incident at around 5:35 “ describe the scene so
THE WAY Example of conceptual well that the reader can
THE READERSHIP Example of conceptual meaning: create a highly detailed
IS PRESENTED meaning picture in their mind,
“an extremely difficult and especially the readership
“in a serious but stable tragic incident” of the Guardian which
condition” “ “as conscious does not include a
but poorly child” photograph of the
accident.
Passive Voice:
Any time a subject, a
Passive Voice: The man’s body was found verb or the object is
an hour and a half later. modified in a descriptive
Emergency service were way.
first called to the weir
incident Conceptual meaning is
Quotations and used to convey ideas in
ReportedSpeech: a woman order to describe the
resident named Ali added accident. Thus the
“It’s nasty weir. The reader has different
Quotations and river’s very high and the associations attached to
ReportedSpeech: “the adult current’s very fast” the words: condition-
and three children had been child- incident.
in a small rowing boat
which had capsized”, the
ambulance service said

In both articles the

passive language
includes forms of the
verb “be” which
includes was-were-has-
had.

In both articles
Journalists use quotation
marks when reporting
someone’s speech. This
 helps the reader to
understand that it is not
the speaker’s words they
are reporting, but other
those of another person.

The picture used is

much more prominent
 More prominent than the text. The layout
because of the use of The Sun’s newspaper
 Less prominence of the two page leads the reader’s
 It has no headlines and the eye to the picture. The
photograph. picture photo tells the reader
 The format is  The format is what it is about or what
a little longer shorter. is going on.

THE IDEA OF Both articles have

PROMINENCE different format: the size
of the text depends in
the use of the picture.

CONCLUSION: Both
Media texts
communicate meaning
using a variety of
vocabulary and certain
key elements of style.
By analyzing these
languages we know how
media use language to
convey ideas or meaning
to denote breaking
news.

Maria del Rosario Arguello

THE MEDIA

These two newspapers present in a very different way the same item of news. While The
Guardian is more objectiveand uses neutrality for the title: “Man and child die in boat
accident on River Avon”, The Sun, which is a tabloid or “red top”, uses a simple style,
putting emphasis in the story to make it more dramatic and interesting: “Two dead as
family boat flips”. The broadsheet paper uses more facts than emotions with longer
sentences and complicated vocabulary: “The names of the dead will not be released
until formal identification processes have been completed, police said”. On the other
hand, The Sun uses a mixed of facts and emotions with short sentences and less complex
vocabulary: “Cops will not release the names of the victims until they have been
formally identified”. Here the new has a photograph and it is presented with
sensationalism. It uses a spoken and informal style and it has a dynamic
structure: “Rescuers had mounted a desperate search for the tragic man and child.
They recovered the youngster’s body from the River Avon at Barford, Warks, at 8.30
p.m. The man’s body was found an hour and a half later.” Whereas, The
Guardian uses a more synoptic and more carefully designed style. It has a very well-
structured organization of the information: “The child was recovered from the water in
Barford, near Warwick, shortly before 8.30 p.m. on Saturday. The man found shortly
after 10 p.m.”

GABRIELA CASTRO

__________________________________________________________________

The media

There is no doubt that that the influence of media on people’s minds has begun a long time
ago. However, nowadays as a result of technology growing (newscasts, TV shows,
newspapers, advertising, the Internet etc) we all realize that we hear the same “discourse”
everywhere. It seems that people have lost their critical thinking and they repeat what they
listen or watch. The result of this is media influence on society.

As we all know mass media’s objective is persuasion and mind control. As it is stated in the
text “Persuasion and manipulation are two key concepts (….) which is controlled by our
minds, can be modified by influencing people’s minds. This is directly related to access to
specific forms of discourse (politics, the media, science, etc.), which is, then, a resource of
power (…) groups that control influential discourse have more chances to control the minds
and actions of others”. So a person who has the skill to persuade others is the one who
has the power to influence in a positive or negative way. In many cases, the result is
negative (we find newscasters behaving like funny actors when they are reporting a serious
piece of news or we read fake piece of news on the Internet). In few words, people who
have this ability use their own tools to persuade (titles, pictures, videos, colours, music etc)

The question is how can we realize when we are being persuaded by a piece of
information? The only thing we can do is diving into deep analysis. We can give an
example about the same piece of news published by two famous newspapers: The
Guardian and The Sun.

Piece of new The Guardian The Sun

-The piece of information is -“Man and child die in boat - “Two dead as family boat
about a boat accident on accident on River Avon” (the flips”
River Avon. Main headline gives
information about the topic (the Main headline refers to
and the place where the two dead people in a family.
accident took place. It doesn’t specify the
members of it.)

-Genre: the piece of news

gives information about
tragedy.
-Genre: the piece of news
gives information about
 -Vocabulary and grammar: tragedy.

Grammar: Passive voice

Vocabulary:–weir incident- -Vocabulary and grammar:

boat accident- serious but
stable condition…. Grammar: Passive voice

Vocabulary: tragedy,
incident desperate, tragic,
-Idea of prominence: dead…..

The text has no pictures.

The title is catching

- Idea of prominence:

The text is longer and we

can find more detailed
information about the
tragedy

The text has many pictures

To conclude we find that both texts are about the same Tragedy. In both texts we can find
similarities and differences. There are a lot of examples about pieces of new every day.
People need to analyze the information they watch on Tv or read.

MAIDA GUALINI

CDA Analysis:The media

Introduction:

It is impossible to study language as an isolated phenomenon since language is social,

deeply influenced by social processes and interaction. Through language human beings
express feelings, emotions, and ideas, but also, they manifest ideologies, prejudices,
racism, etc. For this reason its analysis has to be done above the level of a sentence or a
clause. It is in the analysis of discourse that intended meaning is actually revealed.
Therefore, Critical Discourse Analysis studies primarily the way social power abuse,
dominance and inequality are reproduced by discourse in societies. One important social
area that has been analysed by CDA is the Media, and within this area, a traditional way of
communication is the newspaper. Newspapers use particular patterns of language in their
discourse to reveal various ideologies, especially about social issues. The style of
expression employed in newspapers changes remarkably from a source to another.
Headlines, for instance, are useful tools which most of the time implicitly express the
ideology of newspapers.

Some of these distinctive features are present in the two British newspapers proposed.

The Language used: Language evidence is used to support the ideological frame. It
includes issues of narratives and discourse.

Newspapers language is formal and impersonal. The use of passive voice in the article for
The Guardian, showcases the efforts of the writer to remain faithful to the facts, while The
Sun attempts a more narrative approach in order to engage the reader to the story.
Although the news narratives are written in the past tense, headlines are in present tense.
Since headlines are meant to arise reader’s interest, the use of specific lexicon from the
heading onwards shows their difference in effect. The Sun’s heading capitalizes on the
“shock value” of the words “dead” and “flip”, while The Guardian prefers a more stern use
of words with “accident” and the mentioning of the location, also showing writer's
perspective on what aspect of the story is more relevant. Colloquial words and expressions
are not found except in quotations, as is the case of The Sun’s article where witnesses’
exact words are included, making the story livelier, more colourful and more authentic.

Approach: the approach used in the Guardian is “critical” in the sense of looking at social
impact, while the one used in The Sun is “discourse analytic” since it presents quotations
offered as evidence.

Method: both texts use a narrative-pragmatic style, they focus on discourse-level

elements and explanations, with pragmatic analyses, discussions of presentation and

perspective, style and register, and issues of audience response.

The readership: is considered from cognitive perspectives, due to the cognitive factors
used in the processing of information that influence the reader’s comprehension of the text.
Texts can be interpreted in different ways by different people, because of their different
backgrounds, knowledge, and power positions, that is to say, shared knowledge. Moreover,
the style provides content about social facts, since discourse is not produced without
context and cannot be understood without taking the current and historical context into
consideration.

Regarding this topic, the approach of The Sun tends to be more “traditional” than The
Guardian’s. The former presents the story focusing in facts, with pictures and quotation to
support it. Meanwhile the latter presents the same story with a different overview, the
approach taken is more critical as they summon what the police and doctors did as well as
more details about the survivors. This has a clearly intention to get to the readers’ feelings.

The Idea of Prominence: As regards layout, The Sun focuses more on the picture and the
headings, while The Guardian is less prominent because of their more cautious use of
stylistic elements, such as font size and vocabulary.