CDA: Article for June

[杉森 典子]

Dear all:

Before writing about my response to this month’s article,
I like to express my thank you to members who recently
wrote about the perspectives of newspaper journalists. I
literally laughed at some humorous examples about the
journalists
’ preference of thin letters, such as ‘l’ and ‘t’ in
headlines.  It is true that journalists are working under
great time pressure, and I recently had a chance to talk
with an editor at a big Japanese national daily. He
mentioned that, even if there is a such thing as in-house
editorial policy, space and time pressures, in particular
in extras, make it challenging to follow.

This is my response to “Constructing press releases,
constructing quotations: A case study
” by Kim Sleurs, Geert Jacobs, and Luuk Van Waes (Journal
of Sociolinguistics 7/2, 2003: 192-212)

>From several analyses this paper explored how press
releases are being constructed:  interview with the writer
of press release, split-run (in this case, showing the
press release writer two versions of a single press
release and asking his feedback on them), direct
observations of the writer working on a press release, and
writing process analysis using an online camera. The
authors demonstrated in what ways quotes in press releases
serve a preformulating purpose (the writer looked for
quotes that would fit in his press release)

Overall this paper makes it clear that what I have
wondered true about press releases is true: The writer
modified quotes to make them serve for their purposes.

I think that this kind of practice is common. For example,
I have a friend whose letter to the editor (of a
newspaper) was printed, but her words had been modified by
the editors to be in line with the newspaper
’s political slant. In writing research papers, I myself
write the text and add some quote or a part of the quote
to fit my argument. Probably, what is important in the
current paper is that a language expert, who is not an
employee of the company, is creating a press release and
influences the media. The authors efforts to integrate
psycholinguistic research in discourse analysis is new. I
wonder if I am missing something important. Please let me
know your thoughts

Best wishes,

Noriko



Noriko Sugimori
20 Chestnut Street #204, Cambridge, MA 02139
tel & fax 617-494-6497
杉森典子
〒939-8051 富山市大泉中部１２３　秋本方
tel & fax 076-421-1337