Introduction

[Imelda Suhardja]

Hi all

This is just a quick introduction about myself. I am a PhD student at 
the University of Edinburgh. My current research is on the use of genre 
analysis to provide a linguistic account of alleged distortion of 
scientific information in the media. My study will argue that the 
alleged distortion occurs because scientific news and scientific 
research articles are of different genres. I will be looking at science 
journalism in general and medical journalism in particular. In terms of 
distortion, I found an abundance of articles stating that the 
distortion does occur. However, I have not been able to find many 
articles that provide an account of this distortion. As such, I might 
be revisiting this notion of distortion to assess what is distortion 
and how to account for the distortion that allegedly occurs in health 
and medical news. In terms of methodology, I have looked at Swales’ ESP 
approach to genre analysis of scientific discourse as well as van 
Dijk’s and Bell’s news discourse.

So, if there is anyone out there who is doing a similar study or can 
offer some advice, I would be very grateful.

Best regards
Imelda Suhardja
Department of Linguistics and English Language
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences
The University of Edinburgh