the ISFC39 Proceedings - International Systemic-Functional ...

Papers from the 39th ISFCLoops of spoken language in Danish Broadcasting CorporationnewsMichael Ejstrup, and Bjarne le Fevre JakobsenDanish School of Media and Journalism and Institute of Language and Communication, University of SouthernDenmarkme@dmjx.dk and bjarne@language.sdu.dkAbstractThe tempo of Danish television news broadcasts has changed markedly over the past 40 years, while thelanguage has essentially always been conservative, and remains so today. The development in the tempo of thebroadcasts has gone through a number of phases from a newsreader in a rigid structure with well-editedmaterial, in 1965, to an anchor who hands over to journalists in live feeds from all over the world via satellite,Skype, or mobile telephone, in 2011. The narrative rhythm is faster and sometimes more spontaneous. In thisarticle we will discuss aspects of the use of language and the tempo of programmes, and we will anchortelevision news in a wider context.1 Introduction1.1 Television news on DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation) as amedia-cultural genre, and as a sub-element of the news media realityAs a genre, television news on DR has undergone a root-and-branch transformation, whichcan be seen as a consequence of the societal, media, and technological contexts in which theTV news forms a part. In overall terms (Eggins (1994/96: 34) the genre can be defined as thecommunication of news executed disparately, and through multiple mediums, for example,the press, radio, TV, the internet, and smartphone. It is under continuous development in thesame way as the literary novel or film drama. Television news on DR should be seen as anelement of the communication of news, and television news in 2011 is the analytical centre ofgravity of this process in this paper. Its contrast can be found in the 1965 genre whichrepresents the starting point on a timescale while the 2011 genre is the current end-point ofthe development. This is defined in Eggins and in functional linguistic, communication, andmedia science, as the impact of the context of culture on language:The concept of genre is (...) the impact of the context of culture on language, by exploring thestaged, step-by-step structure cultures institutionalize as ways of achieving goals.(Eggins (2004/2007): 9)Television news should be seen as a concrete impact on the general cultural context (i.e.all of the surrounding world), in which the linguistically anchored interaction occurs on twofronts: that between the newsreader/reporter speaking directly to the viewers, and thatbetween the interviewer and the interviewee, which in turn, has the viewer as the targetgroup. The broadcast sets the scene with time, place, and participant, and is organized andstructured through items selected on the criteria of news value and importance at a particularpoint in time.2 Language in the TV news, 15 October 1965By way of introduction, we will look back to the infancy of television and television news,when the only channel Danes could relate to was the Danish Broadcasting Corporation, and153