English-language Newspapers Research Articles

Exploring the Portrayal of Institutional Translators and Interpreters in the Republic of Ireland’s English-Language Print Media

Although the Republic of Ireland has been a member of the European Union for nearly five decades, the country’s first official language, Irish, was only recognised as an official EU language on 1 January 2007. However, a lack of appropriately qualified linguistic personnel means that the language is currently subject to a derogation on its use in the EU institutions, which is scheduled to be lifted in 2022. Interviews conducted previously with interpreters in the Republic of Ireland (Hoyte-West 2020a) noted that practitioners generally viewed media coverage of the derogation as contributing to a positive image of the translational professions within the EU context; however, further research needed to be carried out on the topic. Accordingly, this article looks at how institutional translators and interpreters have been depicted in the Republic of Ireland’s English-language print media from 2007 to 2019. Using data obtained through a qualitative content analysis of the country’s three major English-language newspapers, an overview of the current situation is provided through analysis of the attitudes and opinions expressed.

MASS MEDIA LANGUAGE AND ITS ROLE IN TRANSLATION ACTIVITIES (BASED ON ENGLISH MEDIA TEXTS)

Reporting information by mass media reflects the current state of public and state systems and relations between them. Since modern Western media are sponsored and controlled by large political parties, associations and corporations, and the authors of texts and messages act as conductors of the ideology of these organizations, in modern media texts a purely informative function (impartial news reporting) is increasingly combined with the intention of influencing the audience with the goal of using both purely linguistic and some extra-linguistic means ‒ to form in the addressee’s mind a certain picture of the modern world, at the behest of the ruling elites. In this light, knowledge of socio-political terminology (SPT), as well as of scientific, technical and humanitarian terms, which inevitably penetrate the media, provided that these terms acquire the status of social or political significance, is of particular importance for translators. On becoming generally known, the terms of various branches of scientific knowledge form, within SPT, special microfields which embrace the concepts of statehood, authorities and public order, administrative-territorial structure of the country, its social structure, systems of party and public associations, organizations; cultural life of society; rights and obligations of society members, international relations, institutions, state associations, their political systems, etc. Translators who track and assimilate the vocabulary of these microfields on a regular basis find it much easier to cope with the translation of pertinent texts. In this article particular attention is paid to the English-language newspaper information style: the headlines of publications, lexical and syntactic features of media texts, the modern tendency of mixing the official style with the colloquial one, means of achieving imagery, etc. The article notes an increasing use of evaluative and expressive vocabulary for certain pragmatic purposes. It also emphasizes that for the successful conduct of interpreting activities, translators need to pay special attention to the assimilation and knowledgeable acquisition of set expressions, clichés, their translation equivalents and analogues ‒ all to the point of automaticity.

Reporting on the opioid crisis (2000\u20132018): role of The Globe and Mail, a Canadian English-language newspaper in influencing public opinion

BackgroundWe aim to describe the general characteristics of how the Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reports on opioid-related news, the opioid crisis and its victims, and explore how Canadians’ perceptions of the opioid crisis could have developed over time from this reporting. The Globe and Mail has the highest circulation among Canadian newspapers and is Canada’s newspaper of record.MethodsReviewers performed independent, blinded bibliometric searches of all The Globe and Mail articles archived in the Canadian Periodicals Index Quarterly spanning an 18-year period (1 January 2000–1 June 2018) related to the keywords “opioids” or “drugs and opioids” and “opiates”. Independently and in duplicate, reviewers manually extracted qualitative data from articles and identified emergent themes. Articles were screened independently by both reviewers based on the inclusion criteria. Conflicts were resolved by discussion and consensus. Social representation theory was used as a framework for describing how the opioid crisis is portrayed in Canada.ResultsOur search yielded 650 relevant opioid articles. The number of articles peaked in 2009, 2012, and in 2016, coinciding with major developments in the epidemic. The language used in this discourse has evolved over the years and has slowly shifted towards less stigmatizing language. Content analysis of the articles revealed common social representations attributing responsibility to pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and foreign countries.ConclusionsThe Globe and Mail’s coverage of the opioid crisis is focused on basic social representations and attributed responsibility for the crisis to a few collectives. A shift toward coverage of the root causes of the opioid epidemic could positively influence the general public’s perception of the opioid crisis and promote deeper understanding of the issue. Journalists face several obstacles to achieve greater focus and framing of the opioid crisis; a closer working relationship between the media and the research community is needed.

A war or merely friction? Examining news reports on the current Sino-U.S. trade dispute in The New York Times and China Daily

ABSTRACT The ongoing Sino-U.S. trade dispute between the world’s two largest economies has since 2018 attracted much attention from the international media. This study used the approach of corpus-assisted discourse studies to compare how leading English-language newspapers from each side—The New York Times (NYT) and China Daily (CD) — discursively constructed this issue. The findings indicated that while NYT tended to profile the trade conflict as a ‘war’ in line with mainstream hard-line ideologies that emphasize China’s presumed threat to national security of the U.S., CD sought to dial down the rhetoric and showed a preference for defining the matter as a ‘friction’, consistent with the tenet of ‘pragmatic nationalism’ endorsed by the Communist Party of China. Accordingly, the two newspapers framed the causes, moral evaluation/consequences, and treatment of the issue in congruence with their respective dominant metaphors by means of various linguistic patterns. These differences are interpreted with regard to each side’s underlying ideologies and national interests.

Macau martyr or Portuguese traitor? The Macanese communities of Macau, Hong Kong and Shanghai and the Portuguese nation

Abstract This article rethinks a Luso-Asian community that existing literature has termed ‘Portuguese’ or ‘Macanese’ by exploring the differences between the Macanese communities of Macau, Hong Kong and Shanghai. It examines inter-port debates between 1926 and 1929 that triggered wide discussion in Portuguese and English-language newspapers regarding the political loyalty of the Macanese. Set against the framework of a burgeoning print capitalism and vibrant associational culture in Asia’s port-cities, the article argues that varying urban circumstances and political structures influenced the negotiation of the Macanese between imperial, civic and colonial identities to eventually construct three new imagined communities.

CONTESTING PLACE NAMES: THE EAST SEA/SEA OF JAPAN NAMING ISSUE

ABSTRACT Building on the work of critical toponymy, this paper provides an example of the active contestation of a place name. Since the early 1990s, successive Korean governments have argued that the singular use of “Sea of Japan” is a colonial legacy. We provide a brief historical context for this dispute. We identify the array of names currently used in newspapers, journals, educational texts, and internet sites and show that a dual naming is now a more common usage, especially in international English-language newspapers, atlases, educational textbooks and internet materials. A colonial naming practice has been challenged.

Is there any link between celebrity suicide and further suicidal behaviour in India?

Little is known about the factors that determine vulnerability to subsequent suicide in the community following a celebrity suicide. Our objective was to investigate the link between an alleged celebrity suicide and further suicidal behaviour in the community in India. Relevant news articles that reported suicidal behaviour in the population were retrieved from online news portals of regional and English language newspapers in the immediate month following the actor's death. A deductive analysis of the retrieved suicide news articles was carried out using a pre-designed data extraction form. A total of 1160 relevant news articles were identified from the local language (n = 985) and English (n = 175) newspapers. For a sizeable percentage of these reports (n = 65, 5.6%), the media reported links with celebrity suicide. Odds of subsequent suicide among young (Odds Ratios [OR] - 9.24), female (OR - 1.94), unemployed (OR - 7.26), those without precipitating life events (OR - 2.94) or mental illness (OR - 1.69) were higher among those with link to celebrity suicide; likewise, odds of death by hanging (OR - 49.84) and leaving a suicide note (OR - 2.03) were higher among those linked to celebrity suicide. English newspapers (OR - 4.23) were more likely to report events linked to celebrity suicide than local language newspapers. Persons who died by suicide by hanging after a celebrity suicide are more likely to be young, female, unemployed, have a mental disorder or precipitating life events. Suicide prevention efforts must focus on this group and prevent the same method of suicide like that of the celebrity.

Особенности употребления фразеологических единиц в онлайн-комментариях к англоязычным электронным газетным статьям

Особенности употребления фразеологических единиц в онлайн-комментариях к англоязычным электронным газетным статьям

Quality of Thai media reporting of suicidal behavior: Compliance against the World Health Organization media guidelines

BackgroundAlthough media reporting has influence on suicide there has no report in Thailand regarding the quality of media in reporting suicidal news. ObjectivesThis study aimed to assess the quality of English language media reports of suicidal behaviors in Thailand against the World Health Organization (WHO) media guidelines. MethodsWe scrutinized the suicide news contents of four purposively selected English language newspapers in Thailand. Using Google search function of the online newspapers, the keywords of “suicide”, “hanging self”, and “drink poison” were used to search the suicide-related news contents. ResultsThe vast majority of English newspapers in Thailand reported harmful information in reporting suicide-related news. Almost all reported locations where the suicide took place, methods of suicide, gender and age of the victim. Approximately one-fourth also showed a picture of the person who died by suicide. ConclusionsThe English online newspaper in Thailand did not follow the WHO media guidelines in reporting suicide news. Harmful information to the readers was presented in both title and content of the news. Meanwhile, potentially helpful information such as who to contact or where to seek help had been rarely reported.

Newspaper-Style Expressivization and Dialogization Trends (News Block of English-Language Newspapers)

The article is devoted to the analysis of the state of the modern newspaper style. The author notes that the theory of newspaper style was developed in the 60s of the last century and since then has undergone a number of changes that have not received sufficient coverage in linguistics. Attention is paid to the changes in the modern newspaper style, among which one can single out the strengthening of emotionality and dialogue. It is emphasized that these features are generally characteristic of media texts and, correspondingly, newspaper-style texts included in the media space. According to the presented research results, these tendencies are realized in newspaper-style texts through the use of colloquial vocabulary, repetition, quotation and question in the narrative (or rhetorical question), word play. It is shown that, at the same time, the majority of news reports (81 %), which constitute the core of the newspaper style and most clearly reflect its features, retain the key style characteristics: the prevalence of the message function, conciseness, brevity, the desire for emotionless and non-judgmental presentation. It seems that the statements about the “blurring” and disappearance of the newspaper style are premature and are caused by its evolution and dynamics.

Quality of media reporting following a celebrity suicide in India

Celebrity suicides have the potential to trigger suicide contagion, particularly when media reporting is detailed and imbalanced. We aimed to assess the quality of media reporting of suicide of a popular Indian entertainment celebrity against the World Health Organization (WHO) suicide reporting guidelines. Relevant news articles that reported the actor's suicide were retrieved from online news portals of regional and English language newspapers and television channels in the immediate week following the event. Deductive content analysis of these articles was done using a pre-designed data extraction form. A total of 573 news articles were analyzed. Several breaches of reporting were noted in relation to mentioning the word 'celebrity' in the title of report (14.7%), inclusion of the deceased's photograph (88.5%), detailed descriptions of the method (50.4%) and location of suicide (70.6%); local language newspapers were more culpable than English newspapers. Helpful reporting characteristics such as mentioning warning signs (4.1%), including educational information (2.7%) and suicide support line details (14.0%) were rarely practiced. Media reporting of celebrity suicide in India is imbalanced and poorly adherent to suicide reporting recommendations. Local language news reports display more frequent and serious violations in reporting as opposed to English news articles.

The Shanghai News (1950–1952): New Democracy and External Propaganda in Early 1950s Shanghai

AbstractThe Shanghai News was the People's Republic of China's (PRC's) first English-language newspaper. The News played an important, but forgotten, role in the development of the PRC's “external propaganda” apparatus, used to fight the ideological Cold War. The News was unusual in that it adopted a commercial business model and juxtaposed vehement anti-imperialist propaganda with advertising for multinational companies from “imperialist-capitalist countries.” This article argues that the News was a product of “New Democracy,” the central political paradigm of the PRC between 1949 and 1953. New Democracy, a policy of cross-class cooperation in the name of national reconstruction, is often dismissed as cynical tactic deployed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to diminish resistance during the takeover of China. The author argues for taking the real world impacts of New Democracy on life and work in early 1950s Shanghai seriously and cautions against teleological narratives.

Mainstream English Language Press Journalists’ Perceptions Towards the Indigenous-Language Press in Zimbabwe

ABSTRACT Indigenous-language media in Zimbabwe and Africa have not elicited as much academic scrutiny as the English-language media. However, there is an emerging scholarship that focuses on indigenous-language media in Zimbabwe. This scholarship focuses more on audiences and texts. This paper takes a different dimension by interrogating the perceptions of English-language newspaper journalists towards indigenous language newspapers, indigenous language newspaper journalists and journalism. The paper, grounded in decoloniality, seeks to demonstrate that coloniality is a key determinant of the poor performance of indigenous-language newspapers in Zimbabwe. Data were gathered through in-depth interviews with selected mainstream English-language newspaper journalists. The findings demonstrate that the journalists view a career in indigenous-language media as not being lucrative, less respectable, and leading nowhere; and view the indigenous-language newspapers journalists as “rejects”. The content of the indigenous-language newspapers is generally viewed as trivial and therefore inconsequential, while indigenous languages are viewed as difficult. The paper concludes that these views are reflective of the pervasive nature of coloniality and western modernity’s “othering” of non-western realities and knowledge.

Power and Voices of Authority in the Media Narrative of Malaysian Natives: Combining Corpus Linguistics and Discourse Analysis Approaches

Orang Asli is a group of indigenous people who live according to a set of lifestyle and belief system and speak the native language. Previous studies have found that the Orang Asli are mostly depicted in the news media as backwards and dependent on others (Marlina Jamal & Shakila Abdul Manan, 2016). Such stereotypical depiction is shared with other research undertaken in various countries, particularly those in Canada or Australia. While many of these studies analysed findings from the media and communication or socio-cultural perspectives, the present study examines the representation of Orang Asli in Malaysian news/media by focusing on the use of language, i.e. linguistic viewpoint. The examination undertaken in this study focuses on headlines and lead paragraphs of one of the most influential English language newspapers in Malaysia. This study demonstrates the synergy of two methodological approaches in linguistics namely critical discourse analysis and corpus linguistics. Our main findings show how Orang Asli is consistently depicted around stereotypical news narratives such as issues of land rights and other resources. We also found that the voices of Orang Asli leaders are overshadowed by other authorities such as the state government. Thus, this study contributes to shed light on the linguistics resources and language patterns used to portray the Orang Asli in Malaysian newspapers. Keywords: Orang Asli; news discourse; corpus linguistics; critical discourse analysis; indigenous people

The 23rd Language: Official EU Status for Irish as Portrayed in the Republic of Ireland's English-Language Press

Irish became the 23rd official language of the European Union (EU) in 2007. Due to a lack of qualified translators and interpreters, it is currently subject to a derogation which restricts its use in the EU institutions, a situation which aims to be remedied by 2022. Yet the Irish language represents a unique case even within the Republic of Ireland itself. Under British rule, centuries of repression confined its usage to the rural fringes of society, a state of affairs that an independent Ireland has attempted to improve with limited success. This article analyses how recognition of official EU status for Irish has been depicted in the Republic of Ireland’s English-language print media. By performing a qualitative content analysis of the online archives of the country’s three major English-language newspapers, the aim is to illustrate how official EU status for Irish has been portrayed, paying specific attention to political, cultural and economic factors.

DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON TERRORISM-RELATED ARTICLES IN INDONESIAN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE NEWSPAPER EDITORIALS

This paper examines the discursive construction of terrorism-related information conveyed on the Indonesian newspapers. The Jakarta Post, one of the most notable Indonesian English-language newspapers, have been covering terrorism related encounters in its editorial especially after the 2002 Bali bombing. This paper finds out the use of common definitions and terms as well as the discrepancies in the produced expression related to terrorism and extremism in the editorials the newspaper has published since 2014. It is found that the newspaper has symphatetically portrayed and supported the victims while it represented the perpetrators from their ideological perspectives and separating their ideologies from religious teaching practices in the country. Additionally, the newspaper identifies terrorism as threat to Indonesian democratic values and classifies terrorism as a serious issue endangering the country’s security and social stability. To the latter end, the newspaper suggested policy recommendation while at the same time criticizing the law enforcement for failures and in the end promoting secular values for the country in order to eradicate terrorism.

Does the Media’s Anti-Western Bias Affect its Portrayal of NGOs in the Muslim World? Assessing Newspapers in Pakistan

The media has a major influence on public opinions and legitimacy for NGOs, which can have a serious impact on the effectiveness of NGOs’ programs. However, media biases often affect the framing of media objects. For instance, western countries are often portrayed negatively by the media of the Muslims countries. This anti-western bias is less prevalent in English-language media when compared to the local languages newspapers as the English-language media generally target the elites who often hold less anti-western opinions than the general population. As NGOs are usually considered a western construct in the Muslim world, I test whether the media’s sensitivity to its consumers’ sentiments extends to the coverage of NGOs by comparing English and local language (Urdu) newspapers in Pakistan. I confirm that Urdu newspapers portray NGOs more negatively than English-language newspapers and are more likely to question NGOs’ effectiveness and accountability.

A corpus-based lexical analysis of Indonesian English as a new variety

The fact that English has been embraced globally by most countries as a second language has prompted its adoption in various media, such as television and newspaper. As a language is adopted by a community of non-native speakers, a new variety of it tends to emerge due to the influence of the linguistic features of those non-native speakers’ arterial language. In Indonesia, where English is spoken as a second or foreign language, there has been a growing number of newspapers published in it. Along with the trend of world Englishes, this raises a question about the possibility of a new variety called Indonesian English. Even though more and more Indonesian teachers start to realize that the goal of English language teaching is no longer to imitate native speakers’ variety, there is still little research done on the topic of Indonesian English. For that reason, by collecting online data from an English language newspaper published in the country, this research identified the lexical characteristics of English variety used by educated Indonesians. It is basically a corpus-based lexical study that employed Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA) to describe contextualized data gathered from the online newspaper. The focuses of this study were contextual information about loanwords, word meanings, word forms, and collocations, which are pertinent to the Indonesian variety of English. The findings indicated that the lexical characteristics of Indonesian English could be categorized into roughly four groups, namely: Indonesian-origin loanwords, Indonesian English lexicon resulting from semantic shifts and those from morphological shifts, as well as Indonesian English collocations. By doing so, it is expected that this research can provide a theoretical basis for English teachers in Indonesia to embrace an English-as-a-lingua-franca approach in their instructions and anticipate a new variety that might exist in the future: Indonesian English.

Morphological Integration of Urdu Loan Words in Pakistani English

Pakistani English is a variety of English language concerning Sentence structure, Morphology, Phonology, Spelling, and Vocabulary. The one semantic element, which makes the investigation of Pakistani English additionally fascinating is the Vocabulary. Pakistani English uses many loan words from Urdu language and other local dialects, which have become an integral part of Pakistani English, and the speakers don't feel odd while using these words. Numerous studies are conducted on Pakistani English Vocabulary, yet a couple manage to deal with morphology. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to explore the morphological integration of Urdu loan words in Pakistani English. Another purpose of the study is to investigate the main reasons of this morphological integration process. The Qualitative research method is used in this study. Researcher prepares a sample list of 50 loan words for the analysis. These words are randomly chosen from the newspaper “The Dawn” since it is the most dispersed English language newspaper in Pakistan. Some words are selected from the Books and Novellas of Pakistani English fiction authors, and concise Oxford English Dictionary, 11th edition. The results show that, when the Urdu language loan words are morphologically integrated in Pakistan English, they do not change their grammatical category. Moreover, four distinguished morphological process are identified in integration of these loan words. The results also reveal that deficit hypothesis is the main reason of this lexical borrowin.

“Their Voice Should Be Allowed to Be Heard:” The Rhetorical Power of the University of New Mexico’s Bilingual Student Newspaper

In 1902, the congressional sub-committee on territories visited New Mexico to assess its fitness for statehood. Their subsequent report recommended against statehood, in part because too much Spanish was spoken throughout the territory. This historical moment provided a rhetorical exigency for the students at the University of New Mexico to use their student newspaper as a site for negotiating citizenship in a border space. By incorporating Spanish into their English-language newspaper, these students challenged monolingual notions of literacy and advocated for a multilingual understanding of American citizenship.