THE LANGUAGE OF THE NEWS: A COMPARATIVE SEMANTIC ANALYSIS OF THE LANGUAGE OF NETWORK TELEVISION AND NEW YORK CITY NEWSPAPER NEWS REPORTS

This study is based upon the theory that communication media affect the messages which they mediate. In this case the "message" under scrutiny takes the form of language.;The standard measure for the difference between the two mediated forms of language is a semantic measure: the frequency of occurrence of Intensional Characteristics of language, especially as they have been formulated by the general semanticist, Alfred Korzybski.;The four Characteristics are: (1) Multiordinate Terms (expressions which are "full of conditionality"). (2) Excessive Pronominalization (for which the context provides no--or ambiguous--referents). (3) Passives (passive verb constructions which lack agents). (4) Reification (the use of "to be" verbs which sets up an equation of identity).;The study compares two sources from each medium: television newscasts of the two networks, ABC and CBS, and print reports from the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. One hundred thirty-six news reports, gathered from all four sources, were coded for Intensional Characteristics.;In general terms, this study attempts to track the differences in the language of television news reports and newspaper news reports on the same topics. It now seems clear that television vies with print journalism as a legitimate source of news for a growing proportion of people in this culture.;The results indicate some important differences in the language coming from these four sources. There is a clear dichotomy between television and print news reports with respect to the number of occurrences of two types of Intensional Characteristics--Pronominalizations and Reifications. In fact, there is an overall significant difference between the semantic categories of language measured from the two media.;If, by extension, the language of television news appears to be less exact, more susceptible of various interpretations, than the language of newspapers, then further investigation of "media language" seems warranted. And if the theory that language very subtly affects language-users and their cultures is accurate, then the information conveyed by the language on one medium as opposed to another may represent considerably divergent events. And then the implications for the impact of the language of these media upon their audiences must really be reckoned with.