Reporting statements from news sources is an essential part of news reports. Such statements are often transformed into narrative reports and indirect quotes, but they can also take the form of direct speech quotes. Direct quotes have always been used in news writing with a variety of different functions, such as providing colour to a news report and distancing the journalist from what is said. However, in recent data from online news sites these functions show some differences compared to earlier data from print newspapers. The aim of this study is to investigate these shifts and to explore the extent to which they depend on the new technological setting online. Looking at data from the Times Online from 2010 and comparing it to data from the printed Times from 1985 and 2010, I identify two main shifts in the function of quotes. On the one hand, the integration of source material from which the quotes are taken reinforces one of the functions, namely presenting reportable facts. On the other hand, the function of expressing personal experiences and emotions is much more prominent than in the print data from 1985. I argue that the first of these shifts is directly related to the different settings of print and online news, whereas the second shift has to be seen in the context of a more general trend towards more personalised news reporting.
In this study we analyse diachronic developments in some of the details of the turn-taking system (turn length, question intonation, hesitation markers) and the role they play in the narrative structures of conversations. Our investigation is based on audio recordings of a popular BBC Radio 4 talk show programme “Desert Island Discs”. These recordings have recently become available as a collection of podcasts reaching back to the 1950s. The early recordings are styled as interviews in a question – answer format. In morerecent years, however, the presenter and the celebrity are more likely to cooperate in theirdifferent roles to jointly produce a narrative. The presenter brings in a larger amount of background knowledge on the details of the celebrity’s life, which the audience may or may not share, and encourages the celebrity to pick up the narrative and continue the story. This overall change from an interview format to the format of a shared narrative is reflected in the minute details of the turn-taking system with differences in turn length and the use of question intonation and hesitation markers.
The persuasive power of narratives, which has been demonstrated in a host of psychological experiments, offers a rewarding field of research for literary studies in general and ethical criticism in particular. If fictional as well as factual narratives can change the beliefs of readers, then they are ethically meaningful to disseminate values, emotional dispositions, and cognitive practices. Building on recent research in psychology and literary studies, this article explores in three steps the ethical value of fictional narratives. First, the persuasive power of narratives is discussed from a cognitive perspective, which includes consideration of the ethical consequences of taking the perspectives of others. Second, these insights are connected to a delineation of narrative conventions, which can foster the kind of deeper understanding associated with altruistic behavior. In the third part, pertinent narrative strategies are discussed from an ethical perspective. A brief conclusion summarizes the most important results and sketches some fields that merit exploration in future studies of ethical criticism.
Contact advertisements as a text type have a history of more than 300 years. Despite their age, they are still important and made use of today. This is especially valid for India where marriages are often arranged to the very day. This condensed text type gives information about the cultural understanding of marriages. The present study, based on two corpora consisting of 750 advertisements in total, aims at a sociolinguistic analysis of matrimonial advertisements from India and Britain and an interpretation of its result in terms of cognitive linguistics by making inferences to a possible cultural model prevalent in the respective culture and triggering the language use. The theoretical basis is Quinn (1987)’s model of marriage.