ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how language as discourse takes shape under conditions of mediation, where technological innovations have evolved and been adapted to amplify or extend our ability to communicate across time and space. It also explores a general perspective some of the interrelations between language as discourse, media, technology, and society; and examines some of these interrelationships in more detail by considering the particular case of television news reading. The chapter deals with language not so much as an abstract system of forms, frozen at one point in time, but as discourse–language in action–as communicative praxis in unfolding situations. One crucial dimension along which discourse interacts with mediation, which in turn interacts with technology, might be called 'address'. The chapter details the interactions between modes of address, genre, communicative ethos, participation framework, and technology in the particular case of television newsreading.
