ABSTRACT
This book investigates the discursive repertoires drawn-upon by self-identified journalists in constructing and negotiating representations of their profession and the identity of a newspaper (The Guardian). The analysis is based on the examination of a specific discourse type: news discourse. The definition of ‘news discourse’ can be rather broad and accommodate various forms of journalistic output; Bednarek and Caple describe it as ‘the kind of discourse we encounter when we turn on the television, when we open the newspapers, when we go online or when we switch on the radio to get our dose of daily happenings’ (Bednarek and Caple, 2012a: 1). Research (within and without linguistics) covering such a large and versatile area of study is just as wide and varied. In this chapter, I will review some influential work done on newspaper corpora in corpus linguistics and discourse studies, I will give particular emphasis to analyses dealing with the construction/ representation of identities and highlight emerging examples of practice-oriented linguistic studies of news discourse. Finally, I will try to give ample space to non-linguistic research on journalism and show how language and discourse studies may benefit from knowledge and ideas developed in other disciplines.
