- •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
Unit 2 newspaper headlines and their linguistic peculiarities
Syntactical features of newspaper headlines
From the communicative point of view most of the newspaper headlines are:
- declarative sentences:
Chinese Premier Declares Inflation Victory. – Китайский премьер заявляет о победе над инфляцией;
That’s Rich. – Богатые по-своему воспринимают мир;
- interrogative sentences:
Will the US Lose Europe to Russia? – Уступят ли Соединенные Штаты Европу России?;
Is This the Start of Civil War? – Это гражданская война?;
- nominative sentences:
Wonder Cure for Diabetes. – Чудесное лекарство против диабета;
IMF Loan Accord Вelay. – Задержка соглашения о кредите МВФ;
- сomposite sentences:
Whatever Obama Decides, Brown Must Set Withdrawal Date. – Что бы ни решил Б. Обама, Г. Браун должен назначить дату вывода британских войск из Афганистана;
- sentences containing direct discourse (or quotation):
Cameron: UK Caused Many of the World’s Problems. – Д. Камерон заявляет о том, что Великобритания является источником многих мировых проблем;
- verbal structures (an infinitive, participle and gerund):
Britain Urges Arab Countries to Train Rebels. – Великобритания призывает арабские страны готовить повстанцев;
Fighting Wages. – Борьба за повышение заработной платы;
Keeping up the Pace. – Сохраняя темп / Идя в ногу;
Police Cars Axed in Petrol Crisis. – Топливный кризис вызвал сокращение количества полицейских патрульных машин;
Betrayed: Soldier Who Lost Both Legs in Afghanistan Kicked out of Army on Cameron’s Cuts. – Предательство: солдат, потерявший в Афганистане обе ноги, уволен из армии из-за бюджетных сокращений, начатых премьер-министром;
- elliptical sentences:
Obama Rallying Support. – Обама стремится заручиться поддержкой.
Very often a part of the predicate is omitted:
8-Year-Old Boy Kidnapped in Miami. – Восьмилетний мальчик похищен в Майами;
All Piers Paralysed on East Coast. – На восточном побережье парализованы все пирсы.
Sometimes the subject of the sentence can be omitted:
Hires Teen-Agers as Scabs. – Подростков используют в качестве штрейкбрехеров;
Want No War Hysteria in Toronto Schools. – Кампания «Нет военной истерии!» в школах Торонто.
Quite often articles are omitted in the headlines:
Portugal in Plea for EU Bail-Out. – Португалия умоляет Евросоюз оказать ей финансовую помощь;
Same Old Mistakes in New Afghan War. – Старые ошибки в новой афганской войне.
Grammatical features of newspaper headlines
Verbal tenses is an essential feature of a newspaper headline that makes it different from other functional styles of modern English. As a rule, English and American newspaper headlines do not use perfect tenses. Recent events are reflected by the Present Historical Tense:
Russia Condemns West Provocation. – Россия осудила провокацию Запада;
Concorde Lands at Heathrow. – «Конкорд» приземлился в Хитроу.
Such headlines are the most widespread type of headings. Present historical tense gives them vivacity, nears the reader to the unfolding events.
The use of the Simple Past Tense in the headline refers it to past events, especially when the headline contains an adverbial modifier of time. Another case of the Simple Past use is when the reader is aware of the fact that the event in the spotlight occurred at a certain moment in the past:
Husband Disappeared Two Years Ago. – Муж пропал два года назад;
Wave of Peace Action Swept the Nation. – Волна мирных акций охватила страну.
To refer to the future action an infinitive is widely used:
America To Resume Testing. – Америка возобновляет испытания;
World Unions To Fight Monopoly. – Профсоюзы многих стран мира будут бороться с монополией.
Lexical characteristics of newspaper headlines
In terms of lexical features many English newspaper headlines are characterised by frequent use of a limited number of special words making some kind of “a headline slang” (ban, bid, claim, crack, crush, cut, dash, hit, move, pact, plea, probe, quit, quiz, rap, rush, slash, etc.):
Bid to Stop New Police Powers. – Призыв не допустить расширения прав полиции;
Fury as Our EU Bill Hits £9 bn. – Наш ежегодный взнос в бюджет ЕС превысил 9 миллиардов фунтов стерлингов!
Newspaper headlines widely employ colloquial lexical units:
Report Raps Lack of Law Reform. – Доклад резко критикует отсутствие законодательной реформы;
Dief Lends JFK a Helping Hand. – Диеф протягивает руку помощи Дж.Ф. Кеннеди.
Newspaper headlines are characterised by the same lexical features as newspaper style in general. They list abundance of names and political terms, abbreviations and attributive groups, colloquial and slang words.
Stylistic features of newspaper headlines
A number of newspapers use humour, pun, alliteration or other word play devices in their headlines. Sometimes headlines contain elements of appraisal, derision or mockery.
Equally, the need to keep headlines brief occasionally leads to unintentional double meanings, if not double entendres. For example, if the story is about the president of Iraq trying to acquire weapons, the headline might be Iraqi Head Seeks Arms, or if some agricultural legislation is defeated in the United States House of Representatives, the title could read Farmer Bill Dies in House.
Headlines contain emotionally coloured words and phrases. A deliberate breaking-up of set expressions is also common as in Cakes & Bitter Ale (an allusion to “Cakes & Ale” by W.S. Maugham), or To Save or Not to Save (an allusion to “Hamlet” by W. Shakespeare).
Large eye catching front page headlines ran by tabloids are known as captions.