PhD seminar: Rhetorical analysis of journalist discourse

Description

Readers construct a major part (99+ %) of what they consider to be reality from journalist discourse. Many Chinese citizens, for example, consider it part of reality that on August 24 an earthquake hit Italy, killing at least 159 people, only because news media told them this did happen. Most of what we consider facts we construct from journalist reporting. A more complicated example: from media reports only many Chinese citizens have constructed a rich mental image of the build-up to the American presidential elections that they consider to be part of reality and from which they infer expectations about the future. Most of such ‘narratives’ covering complicated events that we assume to happen in our reality we construct from journalist discourse. Journalist reporting guides an audience towards constructing, enriching, adjusting its perception of reality and it influences its future behavior. This characterizes journalist reporting as an outstanding example of rhetorical discourse. Journalists construe discourse worlds (as every rhetor does). These discourse worlds entail a specific claim on their relation to reality (namely: to be true). Journalism as an institution guides its audiences towards acceptance of construed discourse worlds as valid elements in their mental representation of reality. This guidance is largely based on formal and institutional grounds, and is indicated by specific presentational choices. That is why Marcel Broersma, professor in journalist studies at Groningen university, considers journalist reporting performative discourse. It is as if the journalist institution performs a declaration: “Herewith I, respected journalist source, declare this to be your reality”, and the audience accepts this construction as valid. Readers of journalist reporting do not interpret the journalist reports as truthful because they correspond with other knowledge of the topic (although intertextual coherency is important). The construction is not from ‘world’ to discourse, but from discourse to ‘world’. They construct their reality because of the assumed truthfulness of the mediated discourse world. This is why rhetoric is so important to understand the dynamics of journalist reporting. Most of the journalist profession experiences typifying journalist reporting as rhetorical discourse as an attack. This is because journalist reporting is embedded in an ideology of ‘objectivity’, similar to judicial discourse and forms of historical discourse. This ideology of ‘objectivity’ goes along with an ideology of not being rhetorical, or being non-rhetorical. The professional institutions adhere to the conviction that not the discourse, but reality itself construes the audience’s perception of reality. The journalist (as well as the judge and the historian when reporting the facts) is merely a ‘neutrally mediating institution’. It is not entirely clear what this journalist ‘objectivity’ entails. Journalist theory on this issue is remarkably backward compared to the complicated and elaborated legal theories that try to back up the objectivity of judicial discourse or the historiographic theories that try to do the same for historical discourse. Among journalist professionals usually three requirements are emphasized: the reader can assume that factual expressions are always checked and can therefore be considered ‘true’; if an issue involves opinions from more than one side, the reader can assume that voices from all relevant sides were given an opportunity to be correctly reported; if the journalist source adds interpretations or even evaluations, the reader can easily identify these as they are clearly distinguished from the reporting parts. Observing these three requirements is assumed to result in a discourse that ‘truly’ presents reality while interpretations and evaluations of the journalist source merely transparently facilitate the reader to make sense of the facts. In this meeting I will argue that typifying journalist reporting as rhetorical discourse is not an attack at all. Considering journalist reporting as rhetorical discourse is compatible with adhering to ‘objectivity’ as an ideal of journalist reporting. It is necessary to apply rhetorical analysis on journalist reporting to understand and develop this ‘objectivity’ ideal. Without rhetorical theory, the only benchmark for journalist reporting is (an imaginary, unmediated perception of) reality. Departing, however, from the fundamental rhetorical insight that no discourse is ‘merely neutrally mediating’ and no discourse producer is ‘a neutrally mediating institution’, rhetorical discourse becomes an informative benchmark for journalist reporting. It makes sense to compare how in journalist discourse rhetorical devices are employed to construe discourse worlds compared to how these devices are employed in other rhetorical genres. It positions journalist reporting in close relation to other discourses that claim to maintain similar ‘truth’ and ‘validity’ relations with the audience’s reality: judicial and forms of historical discourse. It creates an articulated opposition to genres that do not claim to convey a ‘truth’ relation and ground their ‘validity’ on different principles (fiction films), or employ different ‘truth’ relations (documentaries). Rhetorical analysis of similarities and differences reveals the specific way journalist reporting construes its rhetorical claims and can even help to evaluate specific reports. We can trace the rhetorical dynamics that the use of rhetorical devices evokes, compare these with alternative presentations and evaluate the results in terms of the ‘objectivity’ ideology. During the meeting we will elaborate on the complex relations between the world conveyed by the discourse and the audience’s reality that this discourse claims to be relevant for. I will explain four devices (narrative comparison, argumentation, framing) that we employ when making meaning out of the ongoing, vastly complex stream of data to our senses and show how in the construction of rhetorical discourse the narrator employs the same four devices to structure the discourse world and therefore to guide the audience to attaching (ideational, interpersonal and textual) meaning to the discourse. In the course you will analyze brief reporting journalist discourses to experience and determine their rhetorical structure yourself. However, I hope and expect the course to be interactive. We can extend the discussion to genres with similar underlying ideologies (legal discourse, historical discourse); we can explore differences between journalist report and documentary report. This all depends on the interests of the participants (and the time available).

Period	9 Oct 2016
Held at	Tsinghua University, China