Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Digital Age - Sheena Gardner
11. Transitivity in Language Event Reports in an Online Corpus of Science Journalism
Systemic Functional Linguistics in the Digital Age - Sheena Gardner
Blanca Garcia-Riaza [+]
University of Salamanca
Description
Nowadays, newspapers can no longer be considered as a paper-based media, but as digital sources of information for a general readership that surfs the Net. Digital editions of newspapers have achieved a spreading level far beyond printed editions, expanding their specialized sections to include new areas of knowledge, such as the case of science popularization articles, that disseminate scientific findings (Giannoni 2008: 212) and make scientific discourse and newspaper discourse merge in a new type of text that represents linguistic experiences (Halliday and Mathiessen, 2004: 441). These linguistic experiences are shaped through language events’ reports (Thompson, 1996: 501), a resource for journalists to include different voices in the story (Martin and Rose, 2003: 23). Science popularizations have notably increased their presence in national daily newspapers across Europe in the last few years (Hyland 2010:118), such as ‘The Guardian’, ‘El País’, ‘La Repubblica’, and ‘Der Spiegel’.