ABSTRACT
News media provide discourse analysts with a rich source of texts, and at the same time provide students with access to a prominent and pervasive use of language in context. An analysis of news media can be used to see how differently text interacts with context and with language in a genre that radically alters certain components and introduces others that are absent in many other genres, perhaps the most notably different features being found in the roles of producer(s) and interpreter(s). Indeed, as the context and language of news media texts are examined, the differences between news media discourse and the discourses of education, medicine, law, and literature become evident. Although media discourse preserves some similarities with the discourse of advertising, here again there are some differences, largely because the main function of advertising is to persuade and that of news discourse is to inform (Whale, 1977).
