- •Contents
- •Preface
- •Part I. Print media Unit 1 mass media: general notion
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •It’s wrong to portray fathers as domestic incompetents – but women still
- •Unit 2 newspaper headlines and their linguistic peculiarities
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 3 lexical features of newspaper articles
- •Names of some organisations, establishments, parties
- •Abbreviations
- •Acronyms
- •Neologisms
- •Colloquial words
- •Shortened words
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Former Mandela Fund Official Says Model Gave Him Diamonds
- •The International Herald Tribune, August 6, 2010
- •A. Too many clichés, at the end of the day
- •B. Social class affects white pupils’ exam results more than those of ethnic minorities – study
- •C. Blair’s job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism
- •In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in.
- •Question time in Oldham Data profiling is helping Oldham police analyse the work of its community support officers
- •Airport and station get walk-in nhs centres
- •People's peers take back seat in the Lords
- •Not off to uni? What an excellent idea...
- •VIII Welsh Assembly launches £44m learning grants
- •4. Three men jailed for rape in Oxford after victim sees film on mobile.
- •Unit 4 grammatical and syntactical properties of newspaper articles
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Cronyism alert on plan for more people’s peers
- •Revealed: Queen’s dismay at Blair legacy
- •Victim / radiation / in £50m drugs / cancer / is denied
- •Unit 5 feature articles: essence, structure, lexical means, stylictic properties
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks Task 1. Read Article a and comment on its genre. What sphere of public life does it reflect? a. After 40 years, the terrorists turn to politics
- •In the East Belfast Mission hall, the uvf, uda and Red Hand Commando announced they had put weapons “beyond use”
- •С. A slice of Middle England Ruaridh Nicoll journeys in search of the perfect pork pie and finds himself seduced by the olde worlde charms of... Leicestershire
- •D. Gordon Brown: There is life after No 10
- •In his first major interview since losing the election, the former Prime Minister tells Christina Patterson why he’s thriving as a constituency mp – and happily living without the trappings of power
- •Unit 6 analytical genres of print media: editorial, op-ed, column, lte
- •I. Editorial
- •III. Сolumn
- •IV. Letters to the editor
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •How Not to Fight Colds
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •Clean and Open American Elections
- •It’s our class, not our colour, that screws us up
- •Task 12. Read the two ltEs below. What motive was behind writing those letters?
- •I. Giving an Edge to Children of Alumni
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •II. Childhood misery
- •Task 13. Read the two letters again, and observe the difference between them. What arguments does the author of first letter put forward to drive his message across?
- •Unit 7 print media: revision
- •Task 3. Read the article below and define its genre. What are the constituent parts of the text? House prices: Heading south
- •I was a terrible teenage drinker – I couldn't get hold of alcohol How do young people drink so much today? And how do they get served, asks Michael Deacon
- •Task 7. Read the article below and say what genre it is. Translate the italicised words and word combinations, analyse them. Twitter: Bad sports
- •Test 1. Print media
- •Variants 1-16.
- •Part II. Broadcast media Unit 8 learning to understand broadcast media texts
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 9 learning to differentiate broadcast media news and analytical genres
- •The press conference and the statement are an integral part of the live reporting and are not accompanied by the news presenter’s comments.
- •Fragments of the press-conference, the statement, as well as the parliamentary debate could be quoted in the video brief news, the report and the commentary that are part of the news bulletin.
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Audio Track 6
- •Audio Track 7
- •Bonfire of the quangos? It’s more like a barbecue: Despite all the fanfare, just 29 will be completely abolished
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •A shot in the arm – поиск наркотика; стимул (перен.) a soft touch – обходительный человек; pie in the sky – журавль в небе, пустые посулы
- •He wants the Scottish government to give a shot in the arm to the tourist industry (Sky News)
- •A flop – unsuccessful film or play gazumping – cheating a potential buyer of a house
- •Nifty – very good or attractive (nifty fifties – «золотой возраст»)
- •Some examples of former slang words to booze – to drink alcohol
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 12 stylistic and syntactical peculiarities of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Hungarians battle to hold back toxic sludge spill from Danube
- •Vessel mishap
- •Test 2. Lexical and syntactical propertires of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •Unit 13 grammatical properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Uk’s official economic growth estimates revised down
- •Austerity won’t trigger double-dip recession, economists say
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsens
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsened on Monday as the country’s central bank
- •Unit 14 learning to work with broadcast media texts
- •Sun turns its back on Labour after 12 years of support
- •General election 2010: did it really happen?
- •The coalition government: Sweetening the pill
- •Test 3. Morphological properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •Unit 15 regional accents of british broadcast media (scottish, welsh, irish)
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 16 broadcast media: revision
- •Murder rate at lowest for 20 years
- •Rogue Trader at Société Générale Gets Jail Term
- •The Guardian, October 5, 2010 Task 9. Find special terms in the second half of the material (they are not marked). Read the piece again, find clichés and idioms in it.
- •Task 38. Read the article below and say what crime is reflected in it. What are its underlying reasons?
- •Sham marriages on “unprecedented scale”
- •Final test on mass media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •References
- •Учимся понимать и интерпретировать медийные тексты на английском языке
Test 3. Morphological properties of broadcast media discourse
Variants 1-16.
Task 1
At home:
. Watch File TV in Folder V1 - V16. Identify all the sentences containing grammatical features typical of television discourse (elliptical sentences (or grammatical reduction) should also be revealed).
Print the sentences you have got.
Task 2
At home:
2.1. Listen to the Audiotrack Radio in Folder V1 - V16, define its genre.
2.2. Transcribe the piece.
2.3. Print the material. Be ready to work with it in class.
Task 3
In class:
3.1. Name the piece (the headline should not exceed six words).
3.2. Identify several clichés or an idiom in the transcript. Put them down, translate into Russian.
3.3. Identify several grammatical features in the piece. Put them down, translate them into Russian.
3.4. Find a complex and a compound sentence in the material. Translate them into Russian.
Unit 15 regional accents of british broadcast media (scottish, welsh, irish)
British broadcast media discourse reflects regional accents of British English, spoken in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. These accents are determined by the influence of the Scottish and Irish Gaelic, as well as Celtic (Welsh) language. These languages are taught at school and used on a daily basis by a large section of the population in Scotland, Ireland and Wales.
British broadcasting policy in those areas of the country reflects the multilingual diversity of its inhabitants. For example, BBC Alba is a television channel broadcast in Scottish Gaelic, the numerous BBC radio channels list BBC Cymru (broadcast in Welsh), BBC Gaelic and others. Sky News and BBC News television channels employ plenty of journalists speaking with distinct Scottish or Irish accent while reporting for their news channel.
With respect to phonology, Scottish English has the following characteristics:
- Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning [r] is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Received Pronunciation, [r] may be an alveolar approximant [ɹ], although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap [ɾ];
- for most speakers, the short vowels [ʌ], [ɛ], [ɪ] are kept distinct before [r], so that burn, earth, and bird have three different vowels, unlike in most other accents;
- the contrast between [o:] and [ɔ] before [r] (as in hoarse vs horse) is preserved;
- the contrast between [hw] (as in which) and [w] (as in witch) is preserved;
- Scottish English has no [ʊ], instead transferring Scots [u]. Phonetically, this vowel may be pronounced [ʉ] or even [ʏ]. Thus pull and pool are homophones;
- for many speakers, the vowel of cot and that of caught are merged, usually to [ɔ];
- for many speakers, there is no short A-broad A distinction, so that palm, trap and bath have the same vowel, typically [a].
- [l] is dark in all positions (the palatalisation of [l] occurs, [l] is usually velarised).
Welsh English is strongly influenced by the phonology of the Welsh language, which more than 20 % of the population of Wales speak as their first or second language. The Welsh accent has distinct intonation pattern of a falling-rising tone of the affirmative sentences (thereby the rhythmical pattern of a sentence becomes uneven). It makes that accent different from the Scottish and Irish accents.
Other phonetic peculiarities of the Welsh accent list:
- the substitution of [iə] by [ø]: here ([hiə]) is pronounced as [(h)jø] in the broader form;
- a more open pronunciation of [ʌ] as in love and other;
- [æ] is widely realised as [a:];
- the vowel of cat [æ] is pronounced as a more central near-open front unrounded vowel [æ];
- a strong tendency (shared with Scottish English) towards using an alveolar tap [ɾ] (a tapped r) in place of an approximant [ɹ] (the r used in most accents in England);
- some gemination between vowels is often encountered, e.g. money is pronounced [mɜ:ni];
- also in northern accents, [l] is frequently strongly velarised. In much of the south-east, clear and dark [l] alternate much like they do in Received Pronunciation.
Some wide spread characteristics of the Ulster accent include:
- with some local exceptions, [r] occurs postvocally;
- [t] is not pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially in some Irish accents; instead, it is often pronounced as a slit fricative [θ̠];
- as in Scotland, the vowels [ʊ] and [u] are merged, so that look and Luke are homophonous;
- the distinction between w [w] and wh [hw], as in wine vs. whine, is preserved;
- the diphthong [aʊ] is pronounced approximately [əʉ];
- in words like took where oo usually represents [ʊ], speakers may use [u];
- the alveolar stops [t, d] become dental before [r], [ər], e.g. tree and spider;
- [eɪ] often becomes [ɛ] in words such as gave and came (becoming [gev] and [kem]);
- [t] often undergoes flapping to [ɾ] before an unstressed syllable, e.g. eighty [eəɾi];
- Irish English also always uses the alveolar or light L sound, as opposed to other English dialects which use a velar or dark L in word-final position.
British radio and television discourse also embraces social accents that are characteristic of the people with a rather low educational level. The social accent can be found in interviews as a constituent part of the report. In essence such accent is characterised by the following features:
- indistinct articulation;
- the omission of initial or final sounds in pronunciation of some words;
- the break (deviation) from the standard phonetic pattern of a phrase;
- a wide use of reduced words and elliptical grammatical structures.