Book review: News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism
Abstract
DASspdasDiscourse & Society0957-92651460-3624SAGE PublicationsSage UK: London, England10.1177/095792651140683010.1177_0957926511406830Book reviewsBook review: News Talk: Investigating the Language of JournalismShikeWangCenter for the Study of Language and Cognition, Zhejiang University, People’s Republic of China112011226808810CotterColleen, News Talk: Investigating the Language of Journalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. pp.© SAGE Publications 20112011SAGE PublicationsNo one could doubt the ubiquitous impact of the media today which has long been scrutinized by scholars across many disciplines. This newly published monograph authored by Colleen Cotter reveals how this impact is fostered by the practice of journalists. As a journalist-turned-academic, Cotter not only offers a picture showing how journalists choose and construct their news every day, leading us to a hidden world in which journalists weave together all the ingredients to shape an item of news, but also analyzes linguistically a wide range of data gathered on both sides of the Atlantic with an ethnographic perspective. Cotter intends to shift the research focus from the study of bias in the news, which has predominated in the current literature, to an understanding of media language production from the perspective of news practitioners.Part I, ‘The process and practice of everyday journalism’, is composed of the first three chapters. Chapter 1 basically introduces