Changing Channels - Media Language in (Inter)action

This text is targeted for an undergraduate student readership of English Language and media studies. Its aim is to identify recurrent features in speaker/listener/viewer and writer/reader interaction in different channels of communication and to highlight the linguistic devices exploited in the manipulation of language for communicative purposes. With particular reference to the language of information (news reporting), the characteristic features of each channel will be identified and evidence given not only of how the content of the message is influenced by the channel itself, but also of the linguistic and paralinguistic features that the latter presents. Each chapter is concluded with a series of suggestions for further activities in the analysis of the single channel of communication.