new book from Benjamins

[Mary Bucholtz]

John Benjamins Publishing would like to call your attention to the
following new title in the field of Discourse Linguistics:

PREFORMULATING THE NEWS.
An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases.
Geert JACOBS
1999 xviii, 428 pp. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 60
US/Canada: Cloth: 1 55619 823 X Price: USD 89.00
Rest of the World: Cloth: 90 272 5074 X Price: NLG 178.00

Preformulating the News is a study of press releases and of how they
anticipate the requirements of journalistic writing. Drawing from a large
corpus (Dutch and English), it is argued that the genre's peculiar
audience-directedness can be related to a number of metapragmatic textual
features and that this sheds light on the asymmetries of what can be termed
the 'newsmaking' and 'news management' processes.
In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of
institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research
method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press
releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.c. 'projected',
discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of
press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that
self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a
'preformulating' role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of
the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake
of 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested
that the study's findings support a hegemonic view of the media. In
analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to
contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it
explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as
reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.


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