Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

This study analyses five news articles extracted from three Ethiopian newspapers published in the English language in order to examine the type of knowledge journalists presuppose in news discourse and, in Relevance Theoretic terms, the amount of processing effort that readers are required to invest in accessing and/or activating what has been presupposed. The article also aims to reveal the existence of possible ideological reasons behind journalists’ use of ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ presuppositions in their texts. This analysis indicates that some news article writers unfairly presuppose different types of knowledge in news discourses and add an aura of mystification to certain issues which, in turn, might be for political/ideological reasons. It is thus argued that in producing news articles containing unfair presuppositions, journalists obscure certain issues and put their readers in a situation where they have to invest excessive processing efforts to achieve the required cognitive effect of the articles.

Keywords

cognitive effect fair/unfair presuppositions of knowledge ideology news discourse processing effort

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bell, A. (1991) The Language of News Media. Oxford: Blackwell .

Carston, R. (2002) Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Oxford: Blackwell .

Cotter, C. (2001) ‘Discourse and Media’, in D. Schiffrin et al. (ed.) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell .

Fairclough, N. (1992) Discourse and Social Change. Cambridge: Polity .

Fowler, R. , Hodge, B. , Kress, G. and Trew, T. (1979) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .

Grice, H.P. (1975) ‘Logic and Conversation’ in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, pp. 41-58. New York: Academic Press .

Grosz, B.J. and Sidner, C.L. (1986) ‘Attention, Intentions, and the Structure of Discourse’ , Computational Linguistics 12(3): 175-204 .

Grundy, P. (1995) Doing Pragmatics. London: Arnold .

Hartley, J. (1982) Understanding News. London: Routledge .

10.

Hodge, B. (1979) ‘Newspapers and Communities’, in R. Fowler et al. (ed.) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .

11.

Johnstone, B. (2002) Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell .

12.

Kadmon, N. (2001) Formal Pragmatics. Oxford: Blackwell .

13.

Kasher, A. (2000) Pragmatics: Critical Concepts, Vol. IV: Presupposition, Implicature and Indirect Speech Acts. London: Routledge .

14.

Keenan, E.L. (2000) ‘Two Kinds of Presupposition in Natural Language’, in A. Kasher (ed.) Pragmatics: Critical Concepts, Vol. IV: Presupposition, Implicature and Indirect Speech Acts. London: Routledge .

15.

Labov, W. (1972) ‘The Transformation of Experience in Narrative Syntax’, in W. Labov (ed.) Language in the Inner City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press .

16.

Levinson, S.C. (1983) Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press .

17.

Norrick, N.R. (2001) ‘Discourse and Semantics’, in Schiffrin D. , Tannen, D. , and Hamilton. H.E. (eds) The Handbook of Discourse Analysis. Oxford: Blackwell .

18.

O’Halloran, K. (2003) Critical Discourse Analysis and Language Cognition. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press .

19.

Rayner, P. , Wall, P. and Kruger, S. (2004) Media Studies: The Essential Resource. London: Routledge .

20.

Renkema, J. (1993) Discourse Studies: An Introductory Textbook. Amsterdam: John Benjamins .

21.

Schreiber, T. and Moring, C. (2001) ‘Codification of Knowledge Using Discourse Analysis’ , paper presented at the 11th Nordic conference on Information and Documentation, Reykjavik, Iceland, 30 May.

22.

Simons, M. (2002) ‘Presupposition and Relevance’, in Z. Szabo (ed.) Semantics vs. Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press .

23.

Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (1995[1986]) Relevance: Communication & Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell .

24.

Sperber, D. and Wilson, D. (2004) ‘Relevance Theory’, in G. Ward and L. Horn (eds) Handbook of Pragmatics, pp. 607-632. Oxford: Blackwell .

25.

Stalnaker, R.C. (2000) ‘Pragmatic Presupposition’, in A. Kasher (ed.) Pragmatics: Critical Concepts,Vol. IV: Presupposition, Implicature and Indirect Speech Acts. London: Routledge .

26.

Titscher, S. et al. (2000) Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis. London: Sage .

27.

Trew, T. (1979a) ‘Theory and Ideology at Work’, in R. Fowler et al. (eds.) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .

28.

Trew, T. (1979b) ‘What the Papers Say: Linguistic Variation and Ideological Difference’, in R. Fowler et al. (eds) Language and Control. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul .

29.

Van Dijk, T.A. (1988) News as Discourse. Hove: Erlbaum .

30.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2000) ‘Cognitive Discourse Analysis’, (October, 12, 2004) <http://www.discourse-in-society.org/cogn-dis-anal.htm>

31.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2001) ‘Knowledge and News’, paper for the Cuadernos de Filologia, Valencia , (October, 12, 2004) <http://www.discourse-in-society.org/know-news.html>

32.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2004) ‘Critical Context Studies’, (February, 5, 2005) <http://www.discourse-in-society.org/Critical%2520context%2520studies.htm>

33.

Van Dijk, T.A. (2005) ‘Contextual Knowledge Management in Discourse Production: A CDA Perspective’, in R. Wodak and P. Chilton (eds) A New Agenda in (Critical) Discourse Analysis: Theory, Methodology and Interdisciplinarity. Amsterdam: John Benjamins

34.

Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (2001) Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage .

Presupposition in news discourse

Abstract

Keywords

Get full access to this article

References