THE LANGUAGE OF NEWS MEDIA: PROFESSIONAL OR SLANG
Article sidebar
Main article
Abstract
The study of media language has much to offer to the different disciplines on whose territory it touches: linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, semiotics, communication studies, sociology and social psychology. The basic issues of communications research were encapsulated by Harold Lasswell in 1948: Who says what in which channel to whom with what effect? This is compared with a prescription for the sociolinguistic enterprise: Who speaks what language to whom and when? (J. Fishman, 1965). This paper discusses the analysis of common professional language words and slangs used in the writing of the articles (hard news specifically) in the two chosen newspapers in Malaysia. The existence of the concepts of media writing and language use are explored. With the criteria of professional language and slangs taken from the past studies done by Rampton (1998), Davies (2008), Jackson (2010), Johnson and Fox (2011), this text analysis qualitative research analysed 12 articles from the two well-established newspapers; The Star and the New Straits Times (NST) to identify some language features on professional language and slangs used in the writing of the articles. Throughout the whole process of the analysis, The NST is found to use more professional language in their hard news compared to The Star. Hence, both The Star and the NST use limited slangs in writing the hard news articles. This study holds the interest in what media language reveals as a mirror of the wider society and culture.
