Language guardian BBC? Investigating the BBC's language advice in its 2003 News Styleguide

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn this paper, the BBC's stance on English language use is investigated by analysing its language guidelines provided in the 2003 BBC News Styleguide. Before the analysis is tackled, a brief discussion of the use of language and style guides in the media is given to illustrate its complexities and effects on news providers. In order to assess how prescriptive or descriptive the BBC's language advice is, a comparison is made with two usage guides, Fowler's A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926) and Burchfield's The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (1996). This comparison, based on a selection of disputed usage items, requires a differentiation of style and usage guides as text types. By compiling three mini-corpora containing the selected disputed usage items a more in-depth analysis is made by identifying keywords and analysing keywords in context. The study concludes that the BBC attempts to balance prescriptive and descriptive views on language to satisfy its audience, which is illustrated by two specific usage problems (concede and data).