Dialogue in and between Different Cultures - International ...

Cultural Dialogue between France and Spain
The Contrat Première Embauche in the News
Natàlia Izard & Clara-Ubaldina Lorda
Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona, Spain) 1
The article takes a look at the heterogeneous genre of television news. It compares the
different accounts of the same story by different television channels in France and Spain.
The comparison shows different modalities of ‘cultural translation’. Arguing and
demonstrating by means of an analysis of the Contrat Première Embauche the analysis
shows that the presentation of news or rather a conflict is either trivialized or enlarged
by the other countries media.
1. Introduction: The genre of television news
The genre of television news is becoming more and more heterogeneous. From a
textual point of view, this genre, no doubt, belongs to the mass media modality of
“reported event” 2 . However, there is a clear combination of narrative sequences
(of relation of actions/events) 3 and of descriptions and commentaries in the texts
produced by journalists addressing their viewers from a studio or from the place
of events. To this we must add the insertion of live witnesses’ accounts and
footage of the events.
The agenda setting varies from country to country and also depends on the
TV channel. We can nevertheless put forward the following hypotheses.
− The events are more widely shown in the countries where they happen
− These events are talked about in neighbouring countries; in which case, there
is a need for contextualization and extra information
− The comparison between the information given in the source country and the
target country constitutes a manifestation of the cultural dialogue between the
1
This paper is part of the research done in the project «Géneros dialogales del discurso político»
HUM2005-01604/FILO). The research by Dr. Izard is done in the frame of the Grup Consolidat
des Universités catalanes «Grup de Recerca del Centre d’Estudis de Discours i Traducció», and
Dr. Lorda’s in the group «Grup de Recerca d’Estudis de Discurs» (GED).
2
Charaudeau distinguishes three discursive treatment modes of the event: the reported event, the
commented event and the provoked event (1997:165-194).
3
According to the distinctions by the Centre d’Analyse des Discours de l’Université de Lausanne
(cf. Revaz 1997).