UNIVERSITY OF BERN ENGLISH DEPARTMENT MODERN ENGLISH LINGUISTICS MA THESIS SUPERVISED BY DR.

KELLIE GONCALVES SUBMITTED 20 JUNE 2013

BREAKING NEWS!!!
A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of Evaluation in Breaking and Edited Television News of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan on March 11, 2011

ALENA DZIAMYANAVA AVENUE DE LA GARE 24 1950 SION ALENA.DZIAMYANAVA@STUDENTS.UNIBE.CH 11-110-368

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iii Abstract News discourse is all around us, being an inseparable part of the modern life. There has been a lot of research concerning printed news discourse, a little less in radio and television discourse, and almost none in the breaking news discourse. The researchers are more interested in studying the psychological implications of the news labeled as breaking. However, many of them overlook the fact that apart from the visual effects of breaking news it is also the language that impacts the audience. Since the evaluation of the news presenters is the very first evaluation made about the reported event, the audience is more susceptible to the opinions of the announcers and is more likely to accept their stance. Moreover, the reports of the later edited news are already the outcomes of a long chain of television workers. It is evident that the evaluations there as well as the effects on the audience are different. The initial idea of this research was to compare the evaluations made in breaking news and later edited news. However, during the data collection and analysis it became evident that the differences between the two types of news reports are wider than that. And that a close analysis of both the news types in similar subject-matters might lead to the simplification of the news workers routines.

iv Table of Contents 1. 2. Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 Theoretical Issues ................................................................................................. 5 2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 2.4. 3. News discourse .............................................................................................. 5 News Discourse and Broadcast News ............................................................. 7 Characteristics of Breaking News and Prepared News .................................. 11 Approaches to the Definition of Evaluation .................................................. 14

Parameter-based Approach to Evaluation ........................................................... 18 3.1. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. 3.7. 3.8. 3.9. 3.10. The Parameter of In/comprehensibility......................................................... 18 The Parameter of Emotivity ......................................................................... 19 The Parameter of Un/expectedness............................................................... 20 The Parameter of Un/importance.................................................................. 21 The Parameter of Im/possibility or In/ability ................................................ 22 The Parameter of Un/necessity ..................................................................... 22 The Parameter of Reliability ........................................................................ 22 The Parameter of Evidentiality ..................................................................... 23 The Parameter of Mental State ..................................................................... 25 The Parameter of Style ............................................................................. 26

4.

Methodology ...................................................................................................... 28 4.1. 4.2. 4.3. 4.4. Data Collection ............................................................................................ 28 Structure of the news reports in the corpus ................................................... 32 Hypothesis and Research Questions ............................................................. 33 Research Design .......................................................................................... 33

5.

Results and Analysis .......................................................................................... 40 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. The Evaluations of Evidentiality .................................................................. 41 The Evaluations of Importance..................................................................... 55 The Evaluations of Reliability ...................................................................... 56

v 5.4. 5.5. 5.6. 5.7. 5.8. 5.9. 5.10. 6. The Evaluations of Emotivity ...................................................................... 58 The Evaluations of Unexpectedness ............................................................. 61 The Evaluations of Mental State .................................................................. 63 The Evaluations of Un/possibility or Un/ability ........................................... 69 The Evaluations of Style .............................................................................. 71 The evaluations of In/comprehensibility ...................................................... 73 The Evaluations of Un/necessity .............................................................. 76

Discussion and Conclusions ............................................................................... 79 6.1. 6.2. 6.3. Differences between breaking news and edited news ................................... 79 A Possible Application of the Results .......................................................... 83 Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research ..................... 85

References ................................................................................................................. 89 Appendix 1 ................................................................................................................ 93 Appendix 2 ................................................................................................................ 94 Declaration ................................................................................................................ 98

vi List of tables Table 1. The corpus .................................................................................................... 31 Table 2. The list of evaluative parameters, their categories, and individual evaluators 37 Table 3. Total Results for the Corpus ......................................................................... 40 Table 4. Frequency of sub-values of evidentiality and reliability ................................ 41 Table 5. Typical examples of the use of evaluator see in the corpus............................ 47 Table 6. Frequent lexical items for evidentiality/hearsay, style/neutral evaluations ..... 52 Table 7. Distribution of mental state/emotions in the corpus ....................................... 65 Table 8. Subsidiary Instruction for Newsreaders and Reporters .................................. 84 Table 9. The final list of discovered evaluators ........................................................... 94

vii List of figures Figure 1. Distribution of unspecified source/high reliability evaluators in the corpus . 42 Figure 2. Most Frequent Evaluators of Sensory Perception/High Reliability in the Corpus ....................................................................................................................... 46 Figure 3. The frequency of evidentiality/style evaluations .......................................... 51 Figure 4. Distribution of Reliability along the HIGH/MEDIAN/LOW Cline .............. 57 Figure 5. Distribution of Emotivity in the Corpus....................................................... 59 Figure 6. Distribution of Unexpectedness Guises ....................................................... 61 Figure 7. Distribution of Mental State Evaluations in the Corpus ............................... 64 Figure 8. Distribution of (Im)possibility and (In)ability Evaluations in the Corpus ..... 69 Figure 9. The most Frequent Evaluators of Hedging in the Corpus ............................. 72 Figure 10. Distribution of (in)comprehensibility evaluations in the corpus ................. 73 Figure 11. Distribution of Necessity and Unnecessity Evaluations in the Corpus ........ 77

1. Introduction
As an adult interested in international affairs, a keen member of television news audience, and a linguistics student, I have always been interested in news production and presenting. What is more, the breaking news outlets, which often interrupted the routine of a television channel, have always appeared to be especially fascinating in terms of the newsreaders hard work and the spontaneity of their live commentary talk. According to a journalistic dictionary, the genre of news outlets called breaking news is used for referring to events that are currently developing, or breaking. Breaking news usually refers to events that are unexpected, such as a plane crash or building fire. Breaking news can also refer to news that occurs late in the day or close to a news outlet's usual deadline (http://journalism.about.com/). The breaking news discourse is rather elusive. The excerpts of such outlets are never repeated and one can barely find them on the Internet. Furthermore, this news format is rather rare and is employed randomly. One cannot guess when a major event requiring immediate covering might occur and be broadcast. This constitutes the major difficulty in recording and studying breaking news discourse. The concept of breaking news might sometimes appear ambiguous. As stated in the terms definition, television channels often use the breaking news format for attracting more potential viewers, since it has been proved that any piece of news labeled as breaking causes more interest (Watson 2005). In this research I want to accept the original view on the breaking news when this format constitutes a major and unexpected event, an event that can impact large territories or a large amount of peoples lives. In this thesis only unexpected events with large-scale consequences will be referred to as breaking news. Reports on the events close to the end of news day or a broadcast deadline are of no significance for the current study. The breaking news outlets that are researched in this thesis are grouped under the same topic. The news programs studied refer to the topic of natural disasters. To be more precise, the event the news of which is studied is the earthquake and the consequent tsunami on March 11, 2011 off the coast of Japan. Despite the obvious interest concerning the topic of breaking news, it has not been researched extensively. Even though the language of breaking news is clearly

2 different from that of prepared news, there have been no described systems of its use. Researchers are more interested in the psychological undercurrents involved in the perception of breaking news. The genre of live text commentary, which is perhaps the closest one to the notion of breaking news, has only recently evoked the interest of linguists (Chovanec 2009). But in this field the major problem is the same. So far, live text commentary has not been subject to much systematic attention in terms of linguistic analysis. However, the few authors who have dealt with this specific kind of computer-mediated communication (CMC) do note its hybrid character and point out its reliance on the various spoken models of communication, most notably live spoken reporting, though they also mention the affinity of the genre with other kinds of CMC (Chovanec 2009: 115). Perhaps the most studied genre of live commentary is the one of the sports events. So far, I have not encountered any significant and lengthy linguistic research regarding breaking news. There are only a few shorter papers regarding recent breaking news events (Jaworski et al. 2008). Moreover, the lack of research on television discourse is observed in general (Lorenzo-Dus 2009). The prevailing influence of the social sciences in the study of mass communication has led to a nearly exclusive focus on the economic, political, social, or psychological aspects of news processing (van Dijk 1988b: 1). The research of the language of the news is not indicated here. However, its importance is underestimated. It is already acknowledged that [n]ews [] serves an agenda. It can use its own framing and storytelling techniques to highlight issues, to campaign, to criticize, to celebrate, to promote forthcoming events, or to attract attention to or distract attention from other events (Durant and Lambrou 2009: 86). Furthermore, it is considered that [n]atural and man-made disasters are ideal subjects and settings for television which continually seeks the dramatic, emotionally-charged, even the catastrophic to capture audience attention (Fry: 1). Fry also insists that [a] national newscast crosses boundaries and shares disaster stories with a nationwide audience, evoking empathy, community, solidarity and sometimes national action (1). Durant and Lambrou insist that news as a genre can be shown to have persuasive undercurrent (2009: 84). Taking into consideration the fact that people are attracted to the news outlets of natural disasters, that they are attracted to the breaking news as a genre, and news discourse in itself possesses a power of persuasion over the audience, it can be concluded that its research and analysis is highly demanded.

3 I came to the conclusion that the spoken nature of any kind of broadcast news is probably the main reason for the scarcity of its research in terms of discourse analysis. The required effort that should be spent on the transcription of the data is a price too high to pay. It is obvious that both newsreaders and reporters experience difficulties commenting live and without preparation. Moreover, anyone who has ever watched and listened to live news coverage must have noticed that during live reporting on the events journalists are more stressful than in usual air time. My research in this thesis will also focus on the attempt to trace some specific features of the live coverage of natural disasters which are absent from the breaking news format but present in the edited news. The newsreaders stress during live commentary is explained by the need to fill in the air time. It is widely known that broadcast time is rather expensive in mass media. It especially refers to major and influential channels. Moreover, the absence of commentary is likely to prompt the viewers to change the channel and find a more talkative source. That is why reporting live on developing events is a difficult thing to do. Professional newsreaders must undergo some special training in order to prepare themselves for such unexpected situation. It must be an existing practice, as there are many places where news announcers are trained. However, any member of the audience can easily draw a distinction line between the breaking and prepared news outlet. The study of these two types of news, their comparison, and the contrasting of the language employed might shed some light on the characteristic linguistic features and vocabulary, what, in turn, might help simplify the work of a newsreader. The approach employed in this research is the framework of evaluative parameters which was developed by Bednarek (2006). She writes the following in justification of the method: One of the reasons why it is worthwhile to focus on evaluation when analyzing news discourse from a linguistic perspective is its multifunctionality (Thompson and Hunston 2000: 6). For instance, evaluations in the news can expressthe evaluative stance, ideological or political position of the principal []; they can construe news values [], they can establish relationships readers/audiences; and they can be used to structure or organize news stories (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 138-139)

4 Therefore, the object of the research is the application of the framework of evaluative parameters and their possible systematization. The subject of the research is the distribution of evaluation in these two types of news outlets. The relevance of this study is determined by the growing influence and dominance of mass media, their increasing impact on human lives, and the necessity to finally turn to the study of this type of news discourse. The scientific novelty consists in the application of a parameter-based evaluative framework to spoken news outlets, and specifically the breaking news discourse. As it was mentioned above, the data for research consists of the excerpts of breaking and scripted news programs under the topic of the Japanese earthquake and tsunami in the March of 2011 (see Appendix 1). The aim of this research is the comparison of the two types of news discourses, revealing the differences in evaluative influences of the genres. Moreover, the stylistics means used in breaking and edited news will be compared and contrasted. I thus hope to find the difference between the language of breaking and edited news. Finally, I plan to discuss the results of the thesis in order to see if the detected differences might be of any help to the newsreaders during live coverage of the topic of natural disasters. The thesis is structured as follows. Section 2 discusses the theoretical background of the research, gives insights into the television news discourse and broadcast news, the differences between the breaking news format and prepared news. It also provides the information on the notion of evaluation in linguistics, gives a modern framework of evaluation study which is employed in the thesis. In section 3 I present the peculiarities of the data collection, discuss the collected data, state research questions and put forward my hypotheses. In section 4 there are the results of the research presented. Moreover, the discourse functions of the evaluators are discussed, and the stylistic variety of these two types of news is presented. In the last section I provide a conclusion for my research, discuss the differences of evaluations in the printed news and spoken television news. What is more, I present a mini-glossary of evaluations, which can be used by journalists during live unprepared commentary (see Table 8) and add some more evaluators to the parameter-based evaluative framework of Monika Bednarek (2006) (see Appendix 2).

2. Theoretical Issues
At the beginning of this section I will speak about the news discourse and recount the necessity of studying the language of the news. Then I will specify the differences between printed and television news media, give the characteristics of television broadcast news. After that the differences between scripted and breaking news will be given. In the second part of the section different approaches to the phenomenon evaluation in linguistics will be discussed. And finally, the definition of evaluation as understood in this thesis will be presented. 2.1. News discourse The first serious systematic research in the sphere of news discourse and the use of the language in news is rather young. It started on the border of the 80s and 90s in the previous century (van Dijk 1988a, van Dijk 1988b, Bell 1991). Before van Dijk the study of news and its characteristics had an anecdotical nature (1988a: 6), when retired journalists described or criticized their former experiences of reporting. News as Discourse was the first attempt aimed at the analysis of news as a separate type of discourse. Van Dijk noticed that the structures used in news discourse are specific and there are characteristic features at various language levels and dimensions that make news discourse different from other discourses (1988a). Specifically, van Dijk was the first researcher who described a typical structure of news texts, outlined the style and rhetoric of news and described news production and reception as a cognitive process. His main achievement was the development and elaboration of the first framework for analyzing news, called a social-cognitive model. Allan Bell (1991) went further in his research of the news language. Among his main contributions to the study of news language was the development of the audience design framework which started with analysis of radio broadcasts and proved that the news reporters accommodate their speech and style to their alleged audience. Therefore, the language of the newsreader is not determined solely by him/her, but also by the general image of the listeners who they think they address to. Moreover, Bell traced and described specific news values inherent in the choice and production of news reports. What is more, Bell specified a typical structure of a news story and specified the process of its creation.

6 However, more than two decades have already passed since the van Dijks break-through research and Bells systematization of this field. The world and the mass media themselves have changed greatly. News kinds of mass information and mass communication have appeared. The scope of informing and the means for transmitting and getting new information has risen drastically. The modern life is unthinkable without a great variety of postmodern gadgets. All this enabled a modern-day individual to receive information in almost any geographical spot of the world, at any time of day, with just a few clicks. Without doubt, the mass media and their production have also changed in order to conform to the current lifestyle. When van Dijk pioneered in the study of this field, he outlined the scope of news discourse. Particularly, he asserted how news should be researched: Media discourses should be analyzed in terms of their structures at various levels of description. Such a structural analysis is not limited to the grammatical description of phonological, morphological, syntactic, or semantic structures of isolated words, word groups, or sentences as it is customary in structural or generative linguistics. Discourses also have more complex, higher-level properties, such as coherence relations between sentences, overall topics, and schematic forms, as well as stylistic and rhetorical dimensions. (1988b: 2) This is still true today. However, nowadays the researchers of news discourse treat this definition not only through common discourse features (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 2), but they judge from outside as well. That means they approach this type of discourse concentrating not only on the language used, but also through the visual representation of all kinds of media. There are a number of reasons for studying the language of the news. A lot of researches (Bell 1991, Bednarek and Caple 2012, Montgomery 2007) agree that it is the availability of data that makes news research attractive. Then, this is the abundance of it and easy accessibility. Moreover, the absence of the famous Labovs Observers paradox is typical of television and radio news discourse. Bell (1991) argues that every radio and television newsreader is constantly aware of being recorded and does not try to change or gear his/her speech towards the recording device. Bell also points out that the language of the media tends to affect the language of the society and that the study of news language can reveal the hidden agendas of news media. Moreover, it is pointed out in every work on news discourse that the present-day mass media exerts

7 a great influence on the audience. That is why its research is not only desirable, but very much needed. 2.2. News Discourse and Broadcast News As the printed media is the most effortlessly accessible type of media data, it is far more often and willingly researched and, therefore, it is much better studied. When it comes to television discourse, there appears to be an obstacle. Even though a researcher can easily record the required broadcast, it is always difficult and time-consuming to transcribe it. So, it is evident that television discourse is more often avoided in favor of the printed one. What is more, some researchers agree that despite the television being the main mass medium now, the scientific world still experiences a lack of research on it (Lorenzo-Dus 2009). Anyway, the first systematic information about television discourse, and specifically news television discourse, started to appear only at the end of the 20th century and in the beginning of this century (Fairclough 1995, Montgomery 2007, Lorenzo-Dus 2009). Fairclough (1995) adopted various news research

frameworks based on printed media and applied them to the television news discourse. The reason why the study of television news discourse is such a young field is very well explained by Montgomery. He proves that systematic and comprehensive accounts of broadcast news as discourse are few and far between, existing for the most part as occasional articles or chapters except for news interviews (2007: 2). LorenzoDus (2009) points out that the main difficulty in researching the television discourse is its changing nature. Modern-day television develops and changes at a very fast speed. So, whenever some research results appear, they are often not relevant anymore, because the television in that form does not exist anymore. What is more, the results based on older data might spoil and distort the understanding of the newly evolved type of television discourse. The main difference of broadcasting from printed media is that it allows for simultaneity in transmission and reception so that audiences experience it often as live communication alongside an implied, if invisible, community of others. In this respect, broadcasting is much closer to the real-time co-presence of speech than other forms of mass communication (Montgomery 2007: 3). What is more, Montgomery says that unlike in printed media the audience cannot skip a piece of news, scan it quickly, or return to this information again. Thus, television discourse has more authority over its

8 viewer, as it dictates the order of perceiving information, while the reader of printed media can take an individual decision what and when to read. To top it all, Durant and Lambrou (2009) divide narrative television into diegetic and non-diegetic speech. Clips of news are most often given in the form of a voice-over, when the audience see the images from the place of an event and hear the comments of the newsreader. On the other hand, printed media in that respect is fixed and the sensory (visual) perception of the news article layout is stable. In many respects, television discourse is largely scripted (Montgomery 2007). There are a lot of reasons for it. First of all, it is the time limit that is imposed on news bulletins. News writers and editors need to make sure that all the news information is conveyed to the audience during a short time slot, there should be no gaps. Moreover, prepared speech sounds more professional, and that already concerns the business image of the channel. Then, it is the legal reason. When a news presenter follows a prewritten script, there is much less chance that he/she will start speculating about something or, even worse, someone. It obviously reduces the risk of distorting facts and compromising the news actor. Therefore, the news reader has to know specifically what to say, how to say it, and how much time he/she has to present it. Nevertheless, not all the television discourse is scripted. Montgomery (2007) sets news interviews and verbal exchanges between newsreaders in the studio as being obviously less scripted. He also brings another more saliently vivid example the live television commentary, or covering an event in real time. The salient case is that of the breaking news when the planned television program is interrupted and an important event (usually negative) is recounted. Even though there is a short urgently prepared script present, it includes only some basic facts and set phrases. This certainly allows and enables the newsreaders and reporters to come up with much more improvisation. Since news discourse itself is not a young phenomenon, there exist specific rules for defining news and choosing it for print or broadcast. The first classification of reasons for news being news was done by Galtung and Ruge (1965). Allan Bell (1991) traced more specific values that are inherent in the production of news. This news values classification is important in the sense that it can be applied to any type of news, printed, television, or online news. They determine the choice of information to be presented to the audience and help to increase the newsworthiness of an event. Since

9 mass media is a serious business and a lot depends on the size of the audience, news channels engage in a constant competition with their rival channels for the viewers. First of all, the faster they air a piece of news, the better it is and the more audience will be attracted. What is more, an immediate reaction to an event in the news testifies to the professionalism and high competence of the newsmaker, therefore increasing and ensuring the trust and faith of the viewer. I will discuss these news values in regard to the event at hand the earthquake and the tsunami of March 11, 2011 in Japan. The values of news need the following features to be inherent in the news they want to present: Negativity concerns the bad aspects of news, which usually involves destruction, injuries casualties, or desolation. Recency (or timeliness). The more recent an event is, the more newsworthy it is, the more important it is considered to be by the viewer or reader. In this respect breaking news outlets transmit the event and comment on it in real time. Proximity concerns how close to the audience an event takes place. In the case with the Japanese large-scale earthquake and tsunami the geographical zone of impact included the whole of the Pacific. Moreover, there were concerns and incomprehensibility of what to expect next and which area of the Earth could suffer from this disaster. Consonance deals with specific stereotypes of the audience and concerns the nature of the event. It is most often politically colored; for instance, the way news from Middle East is perceived by the rest of the world. However, it does not relate to natural disasters. Unambiguity is important for news makers. The clearer the event is, the easier it is to bring to the audience and be perceived. The facts are explained clearly, the sources are known. The less interpretation can be given to an event, the more newsworthy it appears. Unexpectedness (deviance, unusuality) means that a rare and unpredictable happening is favored by the audience. It is more likely to attract the attention of a viewer and surprise him/her, which is exactly the case with such natural disasters like developing earthquakes and possible tsunamis. Superlativeness refers to the maximized or intensified aspects of an event (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 44). The bigger and the more prominent an event is,

10 the more newsworthy it is for the newsmakers. The audience likes to hear the possible consequences of an event, the number of people involved, and the intensity of the event. In the news about the earthquake and tsunami there is a lot speculation about the tremendous extent of the damage, possible casualties, extent of destruction, and financial losses. Relevance (impact) relates to the effect on the audiences own lives and closeness to their experience (Bell 1991: 157). So, this value provides many difficulties for the newsmakers. They have to explain to the audience why this or that event is important for them and in what way it could impact their lives. Basically they have to answer the So what? question. In the case with the event at hand it was not difficult to make at all as the tsunami spread across the whole Pacific region, which is almost half of the world, and even led to one death in California. Personalization refers to the personal or human interest aspects of an event (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 44). The more personal stories or accounts are involved in the news, the more newsworthy it seems to the audience. Eliteness (or prominence) concerns the importance and authority of news actors. That is the reason why the mention of prominent politicians, businessmen in the news usually attracts the attention of the audience. As far as the corpus at hand goes, the actions and announcements of the Japanese Prime Minister were commented on immediately during live coverage. The edited news already included more than that: the reactions of the most known world leaders were covered. Attribution relates to the sources of information. It is obvious that authoritative sources are valued and doubtlessly trusted, while unknown sources information is not trusted and therefore not used by newsmakers at all. The news involved in this research employ known news agencies and authorized meteorological specialists as news sources. Facticity is also important in news making. The more concrete figures, geographical location are mentioned in the news, the more newsworthy it sounds. The breaking news can obviously lack precise information. However, in the corpus involved there is a lot of speculation about the fact of the event and the use of language involved in this speculation is interesting to research.

11 Intensity (or discontinuity) refers to sharper and more temporally bounded events (Montgomery 2007: 6). Long-lasting events are less attractive for news producers, because it is difficult to impress the audience with it or explain its impact on the people. In this respect, the tsunami and earthquake of that scale had a great intensity and undoubtedly grasped the air time.

2.3. Characteristics of Breaking News and Prepared News As it was defined in the introduction, originally breaking news format refers to the events, most often with a negative nature, that are currently developing, or breaking out. The more unexpected and large-scale an event is, the more likely it is to be included into the breaking news format. Due to the conditions of constant competition in the world of mass and because of the fact that breaking news is more likely to trigger the attention of a wider audience, a lot of broadcasting channels make excessive use of this genre (Watson 2005). The definition of breaking news in this thesis does not take into consideration this use of its format for such commercial use. The major characteristics of breaking news are easy to trace and define. First of all, this is the visual representation and an indefinite airtime. Each breaking news outlet is accompanied by a corresponding caption on the screen and the colors of the visual representation are bright and catchy, which is aimed at catching the audiences attention. Pre-planned television programs are usually interrupted for transmitting a piece of important and unexpected news. The length of time designated for a breaking news outlet is very rarely fixed and it is proportional to the extent of the reported event (Tuggle and Huffman 2001). Furthermore, the information in the breaking news is generally presented with a voice on a little higher pitch than usual. Furthermore, this intonation and the language used for conveying information are called to emphasize the importance and the urgency of the event (Watson 2005). Watson also points out that all this happens with live footage from the place of the event, or the newsreader, or more commonly both, in the background. What is more, a lot of channels add dramatic music to dramatize the situation and, thus, to increase its news value. Newsreaders tend to stress that the situation is ongoing; the details of the event due to the logical lack of information are

12 many times repeated. The news sources and the details of the news chain (from the source to the audience) are also pointed out. The point is that the news anchors frequently remark that they have just received an update, or how they try to get more information and data, where they send reporters for obtaining more insights in the situation (Halberstam 2007). Carr (1999) points out that the very fact of breaking news being the primary story of a news outlet, even when the usual programs are not interrupted, is a distinct signal to the viewers that the event reported is of great importance and relevance. On the whole, it was proved that the viewers see breaking news format stories being much more important than other reported stories of that news outlet or even of the news day. (Iyengar and Kinder 1987). That is the reason why story placement can take on added significance if breaking news appears near the top of a broadcast (Watson 2005: 1). Watson claims that reporters are often live at the scene of breaking stories, and anchors abandon scripts in favor of ad-lib commentary (2005: 1), which is unprepared commentary. This must be done intentionally in the cases when the breaking news that is used as a marketing tool for selling the product and increasing the audience. Many channels nowadays understand the attraction of breaking reports for the audience. That is why they use the breaking news format for reporting insignificant events with the purpose of attracting wider audience (Tuggle and Huffman 2001). When the events are more serious and they require immediate publicity, the case is operated differently. He asserts that [i]n the extreme case of some kinds of breaking news there may be insufcient time to prepare anything but a sketchy and limited script and broadcasters must resort to extempore and improvised speech Montgomery 2007: 31). Improvisation is increasingly salient and distinct from the usual flow of well-scripted and edited news. Since the air time of breaking news is generally not limited, the only constraint involved in the ad-lib commentary is that of legal issues. This still remains a problem for mass media producers (Montgomery 2007). When it comes to routine every day news outlets, there is a long chain involved in the process of news making. The short one-minute result we hear and see on the

13 screen involves the efforts of a long chain of journalists. The production of a text is a collective process, involving journalists, producers, and various categories of editorial staff, as well as technical stuff (Fairclough 1995: 48). Bell (1991) asserts that in an average newsroom the number of news writers and editors can reach eight people. However, it is also important to remember that [m]ost news outlets carry far more news originated by other organizations than by their own journalists (Bell 1991: 16). The international news that the members of the audiences see every day on their screens come only from four major news agencies. These are Reuters, Associated Press, United Press International, and Agence France Press. But domestic news is derived from smaller news agencies, which are situated directly in the country of origin. The material which comes in from news agencies is mainly rewritten by the news writers and edited news editors. After that the audience is presented a slightly changed piece of text. These rewritings and editions needs to be done for the news texts to differ from channel to channel (Montgomery 2007). It goes without saying, that when an important event needs to be urgently aired, there is not enough time for the news editors team to work on the script. What concerns the prepared and edited news, Fairclough remarks that[t]he fundamental point is that the time and place of production of a communicative text is different from the time and place of consumption, when an audience views or hears or reads it (1995: 36). Considering the process of common news making, this is rather true. The news communicative text is usually produced in the news room and later conveyed by the newsreader at a fixed time. Obviously, this is different when it comes to breaking news. As long as there is no script, the newsreader still has to speak in order to avoid silence. The difference between breaking and edited news is that at this moment the production of a communicative text and its consumption are two simultaneous processes. The real time of talk comes into play here (Hoskins and OLoughlin 2007). Unfortunately, the nature of breaking news and the difficulties concerning its collection called forth the neglect of linguistic research of this news genre. There is almost no research conducted on the language of the breaking news. Only in the recent years there started to appear studies of live text commentary (Chovanec 2009, Jucker 2006), which is closer to the characteristics of breaking news than to those of edited news. Chovanec (2009) detected some general linguistic features typical of live text

14 commentary. These are the use of colloquial and slang vocabulary, shortening of lexical items and phrases, expletives, vulgarities, abundance of interjections, allusions, metaphorical language, code-mixing, and a great amount of repetitions. Some of these features are likely to be used in the live coverage of breaking news too. 2.4. Approaches to the Definition of Evaluation Evaluation in linguistics is a very equivocal term. Different scientists and schools of linguistics tackle this term differently; that is the reason why there exist slightly different or even opposite definitions of evaluation. Nevertheless, the concept of evaluation for the purpose of the current research needs to be clarified. For this, let us turn to the most frequent understandings of its meaning. Bednarek (2006) asserts that the study of evaluation is very important in this modern day and age. It is a significant element of our lives: as a device for interpreting the world and offering this evaluation to others, it pervades human behavior: when we interact with the world around us, we perceive, categorize and evaluate what we encounter (4). In her opinion, as humans perceive the world, they make their first temporary evaluation, which with time tend to grow into the long-term ones. And that, in its turn, determines the personality of each individual. Furthermore, Bednarek states that the discourse by its nature presupposes the use of evaluations. No individual can speak completely objectively. Moreover, Thompson and Hunston (2000) argue that evidentiality serves as an important cohesive device, as a means for organizing the discourse. The very first and one of the most recognized and researched definitions of evaluation in linguistics belongs to William Labov (1972). In his understanding of evaluation, the sociolinguist relies on the elements of textual patterns. In his view, evaluation is a structural part of a wholly developed narrative, which should have the following elements in the given order: abstract, orientation, complicating action, evaluation, result or resolution, and coda. Labov considers evaluation to be one of the most important basic parts. According to him, the aim of the abstract is to give the summary of a story. The orientation provides information about the actors and the setting of the story. The action informs about what happened in the story. The result essentially says how the situation was resolved. The coda is not always present in the narrative, but its purpose is to connect the story from the past with the present moment

15 of narration. Finally, by evaluation, Labov understands the means used by the narrator to indicate the point of the narrative (Labov 1972: 366), to exemplify the ideas that were expressed in the abstract, to answer the so what? question, and justify the narration of the story. Evaluative devices help the speakers to express their opinions about an event, to round up the story, to say exactly why they told the story. We can express evaluation directly through a set of evaluative vocabulary, but most often we use secondary structures throughout the narrative. They include responses to the action presented as part of the story, intensifying devices of sound and word choice, repetition, negatives, future forms, modals, questions, commands, comparatives, and others. Generally speaking, a comparator moves away from the line of narrative events to consider unrealized possibilities and compare them with events that did occur (Labov 1972: 387). This definition of evaluation is the most recognized one in linguistics and specifically in discourse analysis. However, Bednarek (2006, Bednarek and Caple 2012) does not accept evaluation in this understanding in her parameterbased framework. A closer approach to Bednareks understanding of evaluation is that of Thompson and Hunston (2000). Their approach is rather broad. In Thompson and Hunstons (2000: 13) words, evaluation consists of anything which is compared to or contrasts with the norm. For instance, when there is a negation in an utterance, it might compare [] what is not with what might be (13). They understand evaluation as the broad cover term for the expression of a speakers or a writers attitude and stance towards, viewpoint on, or feelings about the entities and propositions that he or she is talking about. That attitude may relate to certainty or obligation or desirability or any of a number of other sets of values (5). What is more, Thompson and Hunston (2000) distinguish between the ways in which an evaluation is expressed. Structurally an evaluation can be expresses in an entity, which is expressed by nominal groups, or by a proposition, which is expressed by clauses (Thompson and Hunston 2000: 3). However, they still admit that this term is very elusive and frequently misinterpreted due to the well-known and recognized definition of evaluation by Labov (1972) in terms of discourse analysis. Thompson and Hunston (2000) also argue that there are three main functions in evaluation. The first one refers to expressing the opinion of the individual. Moreover, by doing so, each person unintentionally expresses the opinion of the community he or she belongs to. Then, evaluation helps to construct and maintain

16 relations (6) between the speakers and listeners. And finally, evaluation is an important tool for organizing the discourse. Thompson and Hunston (2000) were the pioneers to come up with the first evaluative parameters. They were the prerequisites for Bednareks creation of the evaluative parameter-based framework (2006, Bednarek and Caple 2012). Thompson and Hunston (2000) accuse the existence of various evaluative parameters in the ambiguity of the term evaluation. In their research they identified only four evaluative parameters: the evaluation along the good and bad qualities (the basic parameter, in their opinion), the evaluation of an individuals certainty, that of expectedness, and the parameter of importance (or relevance). In her trial to define evaluation, Bednarek (2006) writes that some researchers connect this notion with that of the affect. However, she sees evaluation wider, since affect in her evaluative framework is strongly connected with emotivity, which assesses all the events as having positive or negative nature only. Therefore, affect is a very narrow definition of the evaluation for the given framework. But still, its study gives the insight into the parameter of emotivity. Subjectivity has also been understood as evaluation. However, the notion of subjectivity and evaluation overlap each other. But still, there are differences. Bednarek (2006) asserts that subjectivity is limited by its concentration solely on the discourse involving personal pronoun I, disregarding all other persons. Therefore, Bednarek explains that subjectivity is more speaker-centered than evaluation and has in general been very broadly, or extensively defined (2006: 20). Nevertheless, being a broader term than evaluation, it could shed more light and contribute to the study of evaluation. Bednarekss understanding of evaluation is very closely connected with Biber and al.s (1999) and Conrad and Bibers (2000) understanding of stance. So, the notion of stance is defined by these researchers as follows: [A] cover term for the expression of personal feelings and assessments in three major domains: (1) epistemic stance, commenting on the certainty (or doubt), reliability, or limitations of a proposition, including comments on the source of information; (2) attitudinal stance, conveying the speakers attitudes, feelings, or value judgments; (3) style stance, describing the manner in which the information is being presented (Conrad and Biber 2000: 57)

17 Bednareks parameter-based evaluation framework (see Section 3) is pretty much derived from this definition. Moreover, Bednarek agrees that stance is in fact a competing term for evaluation (2006: 26). The only reason why the term evaluation is employed is its great syntactic and morphological flexibility, which allows the analyst to talk about the values ascribed to entities and about evaluated propositions (2006: 26). Furthermore, appraisal theory and systemic functional linguistics (based on Halliday 1994, Martin www.grammatics.com/appraisal/index.html) have some features in common with the notion of evaluation adopted in this thesis. Appraisal itself is regionalised as three interacting domains attitude, engagement and graduation. Attitude is concerned with our feelings, including emotional reactions, judgements of behaviour and evaluation of things. Engagement deals with sourcing attitudes and the play of voices around opinions in discourse. Graduation attends to grading phenomena whereby feelings are amplified and categories blurred (Martin and White 2005: 35). The notion within appraisal is very close to evaluation as understood by Bednarek. It reveals the significance of context and the interpersonal character of evaluation as well as the communicative importance of evaluation itself (Bednarek 2006: 31). Moreover, just like evaluation appraisal also studies such phenomena as expressing an ideological position, covert and overt values patterns, and combination of evaluative parameters.

18

3. Parameter-based Approach to Evaluation

The parameters of evaluation (they are also called evaluative parameters) refer to the standards, norms and values according to which we evaluate something through language (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 139). Bednarek (2006, Bednarek and Caple, 2012) singles out 10 evaluative parameters, seven of which are called core evaluative parameter and three are peripheral. Core evaluative parameters serve for evaluating entities, situations and propositions. The intensity of this evaluation can be positioned on a cline from low/negative to high/positive. However, there still exists no precise methodology for grading the intensity of evaluation. That is the reason why this framework allows to approximately position the evaluators only on the positive, negative, or medium parts of the cline. Certainly, the presence of intensifiers can help to locate the approximate place of the evaluation on the cline, but analyzing and researching each intensifier might distract the researcher from the evaluation itself. Core evaluative parameters include comprehensibility, emotivity, expectedness, importance, possibility, necessity, and reliability. Each of these parameters has a negative counterpart; for instance, events can be evaluated as either comprehensible or incomprehensible. Peripheral evaluative parameters do not evaluate events as positive or negative, but they deal with evaluation in a different way. These parameters are evidentiality, mental state, and style. They are discussed in the following sub-sections. 3.1. The Parameter of In/comprehensibility Evaluation of in/comprehensibility in news discourse have to do with the degree to which journalists, news actors or sources evaluate entities, situations, states-of-affaires, or statements in stories as being within or outside the grasp of their understanding (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 141-142). Bednarek includes the concepts of vagueness and explicitness, mental clarity, inexplicability, and mystery into this parameter. The vaguer something is or seems to us, the more incomprehensible it is. The matter of ease or difficulty in understanding also refers to this parameter. In order to assess the presence of this evaluative parameter in an utterance it is helpful to ask the question how easy/clear/comprehensible or how difficult/vague/incomprehensible does this seem to be? Examples from the breaking news corpus are as follows: Well, its difficult to know [incomprehensible] how anybody could cope with this wall of water that continues to pour over the fields (BBC World News)

19 When you see pictures like that you realize that clearly [comprehensible] the death toll in Japan is likely to rise (BBC World News) 3.2. The Parameter of Emotivity The evaluation of emotivity in news discourse concerns the negative and positive aspects of a reported event. It is helpful to ask How good or bad does this event appear? in order to detect this parameter. Nevertheless, Bednarek (2006) finds this parameter to be the most problematic because [e]motive meaning is not easily objectively verifiable or recognizable (Bednarek 2006: 46). First of all, emotivity can be expressed along different clines. The meaning can be expressed emotively or nonemotively. And even in this case there is a big problem with subjectivity. For instance, the corpus of news about the natural disaster in Japan in 2011 is full of such lexical items as casualties, injured, damage, etc. (e.g. casualty is a person who is injured or killed in a war or an accident, COBUILD). Common sense tells the reader or listener that this lexical item is used for conveying some negative news. However, at the same moment the audience cannot distinguish if the newsreader or reporter using this word disapproves of or expresses regret about the event. It is logical to assume that he or she would have negative attitude to what is reported and that the emotions evoked in the audience would also be negative, but only the studies of the audience could give an answer. Then, there comes one more cline between the evoked or implicit and inscribed or explicit evaluation. And the level of emotivity encoded by each single member of the audience is therefore different. Furthermore, there is a cline with a rich range of evaluators from low intensity to high intensity emotivity. There is still no method of detecting the position of each evaluation on this cline. Thompson and Hunston (2000) mention that some of these evaluations may not even be accessible to intuition (18). There is also a cline involving different amounts of ideational and interpersonal meaning. Bednarek (2006) gives an example of purely interpersonal evaluators beautiful, wrong, ugly and a combination of ideational and interpersonal terrorist, guerilla, freedom fighters. The last three expressions combine both symbolic and indexical meaning (Bednarek 2006: 47). The next problem concerning the evaluation of emotivity concerns the speaker involvement. News presenters may and often do evaluate events and situations being negative and unpleasant for someone, but not for themselves. Again we can rely only

20 on our intuition when we try to analyze whether the newsreader has any emotions or opinions over the news presented, but we cannot be certain about it. Finally, Bednarek argues that the evaluative force of some lexical items may not be accessible to the intuition of native speakers, the evaluation of a lexical item can be stated indirectly and therefore may easily be overlooked by the researcher. Thompson and Hunston (2000: 17) give an example of the possible expressions of the absence of the action: abstain, forbear, refrain, flinch, retreat, and shirk. While the last three words express a negative attitude to the absence of an action, the first three lexical items might express a positive outlook on the action or not evaluate it at all. Bednarek and Caple (2012) point out that emotivity can be connected with the policy of a particular news organization. Channels could employ the concept of Bells audience design (1991) in order to live up to the expectation of their audiences. 3.3. The Parameter of Un/expectedness This parameter evaluates the events as expected or unexpected. The general news value of unexpectedness (see Section 1) demonstrates that only an unexpected event is newsworthy. That is why the occurrences of unexpectedness are not typical of news discourse. Bednarek (2006: 48) distinguishes several guises of evaluating events as expected or unexpected and gives examples from her research: (Counter)expectation (astonishing, stunning, unprecedented) Usuality (unusually, routine) Familiarity (familiar) Strangeness (bizarrely, curious) Contrastive/unexpected emphasis (fully, no fewer than) Actuality (as it is, in the event) Contrast (but, although) Contrast/comparison (negation)

Bednarek insists that contrast and contrast/comparison evaluate events as expected. However, she also admits that both negation and but, although contribute to the evaluation of unexpectedness. Nevertheless, she does not justify her choice and evaluates the cases of contrast and contrast/comparison as expected. Moreover, Biber et al. (1999: 1047) insist that there is an interactive explanation for the high frequency in

21 conversation of negation and of the adversative conjunction but. These are both devices to deny or counteract the expectations of those involved in dialogue: negation and contradiction imply interaction between opposing points of view. Here is an example from the breaking news corpus: you can see the ships and the boats that are already in the harbor there but [contrast] all of the cars are being drawn into that (CNN) Just following the common sense, the fact that cars are in the water constitutes an abnormality and a breach of a usual course of events. Therefore, while the presence of ships in the water does not cause a misunderstanding, the presence of cars in the water is contrasted to 3.4. The Parameter of Un/importance Evaluations along the parameter of un/importance evaluate the world and discourse about it according to a subjective evaluation of its status in terms of importance, relevance, significance and related notions (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 140). The cline along this parameter ranges from unimportant events to important ones. Here the negative end of the cline contradicts the very notion of newsworthiness. The actions of news agencies and channels would seem illogical and could risk losing their audience if they referred to events in news outlets as being unimportant. That is why the news discourse is very poor in the evaluators of unimportance. The following examples come from the breaking news corpus: For those of you who have just.. tuned in to NHK World a major [important] earthquake hitting Japan (NHK World) the largest to hit Japan in living memory [important] (BBC World News) Bednarek (2006) includes several notions into this parameter. They are stardom/famousness (celeb, famous, superstar), influence/authority (leading, top, senior), significance (significant), importance (crucial, crunch, decisive, historic), and related notions (climactic, exclusive, hot, showdown, emergency). Referring to or quoting a famous person, a politician, a business executive, or an expert increases the news value and attracts the audiences attention. Bednarek and Caple call the quoting of prominent people the backbone of the modern news discourse (2012).

22 3.5. The Parameter of Im/possibility or In/ability According to Bednarek (2006), the parameter of im/possibility or in/ability is closely connected with the deontic and dynamic modality. Deontic modality concerns what is possible, necessary, permissible, or obligatory, given a body of law or a set of moral principles or the like. [] Circumstantial modality, sometimes dynamic modality, concerns what is possible or necessary, given a particular set of circumstances (von Fintel 2006: 2). The helpful question to ask for detecting this evaluation is How possible or impossible does this seem to be? 3.6. The Parameter of Un/necessity Similarly like the previous parameter, un/necessity is connected with the deontic and dynamic modality. In news discourse it is most frequently represented by modal verbs, nouns, adjectives, and adverbs. How necessary or how unnecessary does this appear? (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 143) so this is something that needs to [necessary] be adhered to you need to [necessary] pay attention to this (Weather Channel) I dont have to [unnecessary] tell you can kill hundreds of thousands of people because of the eh proximity (CNN) Bednarek and Caple (2012) conclude that journalists often evaluate possible decisions of news actors in terms of necessity. In the first example it is used for warning people of possible dangers. 3.7. The Parameter of Reliability Conversely to the parameters of in/ability and un/necessity, reliability has a connection with epistemic modality, which concerns what is possible or necessary given what is known and what the available evidence is (Fintel 2006: 2). To put it differently, it reflects the speakers confidence in the accuracy of the proposition. There are five subvalues along the parameter of reliability: fake, genuine, low, median, and high. Only entities can be evaluated most often as fake (artificial, choreographed) or genuine, while the reliability of propositions may be evaluated as high, median or low. The last classification was adopted by Bednarek from Halliday (1994).

23 ah whe- where we saw the damage of course [high reliability] that this initial tsunami caused in Japan (Weather Channel) stringent building codes are likely [median reliability] the best in the world (Weather Channel) what Ivan is telling us because it was offshore its it seems very unlikely [low reliability] that therell be any significant damage (CNN) As with other cases of the degree of evaluation positioned on a cline, there is no definite methodology to place the evaluator on a precise place. That is why low reliability actually means lowest, median means more or less median, high means highest (Bednarek 2006: 52). Referring to Halliday (1994), Bednarek (2006) writes that propositions with evaluations of reliability express lower reliability than unmodalized propositions. High reliability is most often expressed by such lexical items as certain, must, median reliability often employs words like probable, will, and low uses possible, may. Making predictions about the consequences of reported events with the use of reliability is a characteristic feature of news discourse. Bednarek and Caple (2012) point out that reporters on live television often use will for speculating about the future developments of the events. 3.8. The Parameter of Evidentiality This parameter is connected with sourcing in journalism (Bednarek and Caple 2012). Therefore, evidentiality deals with the source of the information that journalists receive. To find the evaluations of evidentiality one should ask the question How do we know? What is the basis of journalists and others knowledge? What kind of evidence do we have for this? (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 148-149). Bednarek singles out seven different bases for information: speech, thought or feeling, expectation, emotion, perception, proof, general knowledge, and there is always place for unspecified bases in news discourse. The category of speech provides the evidence of what somebody expressed orally. This basis of information is always connected with the parameter of style, which deals with how it was said depending on what reporting verb was used. The most frequent lexical item used under this basis is the neutral say. The corpus of breaking news abounds in such examples:

24 the fire department says fires have been reported in several places (NHK World) The category of thought or feeling concerns the sources thoughts, feelings and experience. It most often precedes a quote because journalists cannot make conclusions about the inner states of their news sources. News writers also frequently paraphrase the thoughts of feelings expressed by news actors. For instance, I believe is turned into He/she believes. The category of expectation accentuates what news sources expect to happen. This basis for information is closely connected with the parameter of reliability as news discourse employs this function for predicting possible consequences too. The category of emotion reveals the positive or negative attitude of the source to the information conveyed. the the bigger worry perhaps ahm for the tsunami itself smaller nations around it western Pacific some of them may not be as well prepared as Japan (Al Jazeera) This example demonstrates not only the negativity concerning the risks for the region of the tsunami, but it also expresses a certain degree of reliability. The category of perception encompasses two types of perception mental (seem, appear) and sensory (look, see, show). It is correspondently demonstrated in the following examples: which really show you the full force of this wave of water which seems to be swamping the area (BBC World News) and you can see the power that looks to be quite ast- a big ship theres a lorry (BBC World News) This kind of evaluation is abundant in television news. Moreover, live television coverage is even richer in sensory, especially visual, evidentiality. It can be explained by the conditions under which the newsreaders and reporters have to work. When a newscast is not prepared and an event is reported in real time, live footage is often the only evidence that journalists have.

25 Proof as a sub-value concerns some documental confirmation of facts and events and relies on polls, surveys, tests, and similar sources. It is obvious that breaking news is very rarely able to include this parameter for the reason of real time. weve said eh observations already measured on the Japanese east coast of about 7 point 3 meters above normal (BBC World News) When it comes to the category of general knowledge (e.g. it is well-known), news reporters rely on the shared knowledge of some facts between them and the audience. Journalists often employ this category in order to express a subjective evaluation (Bednarek and Caple 2012: 152) and avoid the responsibility of their individual conclusions. The category of unspecified basis (e.g. emerge, mean that) involves the instances when the basis for information remains unknown. However, it can become clear from the context. Accordingly, in her earlier research of quality and popular press Bednarek (2006) singled out six sub-values of evidentiality: hearsay, mindsay, perception, general knowledge, proof, and unspecified. Here the categories of hearsay and mindsay correspond to the bases of speech and thought/feeling respectively. Bednarek also connects the hearsay and mindsay to sayer and senser, and both of these doers do not require a conscious participant (Halliday 1994: 140). The sayer and senser can be anything that gives evidence. In this classification Bednarek widens the value of perception. Except mental and sensory perception she added showing (e.g. reveal, show, betray). 3.9. The Parameter of Mental State For detecting this parameter we have to question how people feel about the events reported. It gives the evaluation of news actors mental states. Therefore, it is most often subjective, as Bednarek and Caple (2012) argue that the reporters cannot experience other news actors mental states. She singles out the following sub-values: beliefs, emotions, expectations, knowledge, volition (wishes and intentions), and some others.

26 I dont think thats very much to be too concerned [emotion] about thats not gonna hit Hawaii until about 3 am here local time (Weather Channel) after that there will be nothing of that size unless theres a bigger quake and I cant imagine [belief] that there would be (Weather Channel) we would now necessarily expect [expectation] any aftershocks to be after this (Al Jazeera) and we wonder [volition] whether that is going to be taken away (BBC World News) so you have an idea [knowledge] of the sheer size and scope of these waves (CNN) Bednarek and Caple find that mental state evaluation contribute to the news values of personalization, unexpectedness, and negativity. It must also be noted that Bednarek regards these sub-values not as distinct categories but as a continuum of related meanings, with a core semantic difference (2006: 56). 3.10. The Parameter of Style The parameter of style deals with the language used in news discourse. Bednarek draws a distinction line between style: self and style: other. The self one relates to the discourse of the speaker, while the other one relates to the discourse of other news actors. The sub-values of this parameter derived from Caldas-Coulthard (1994) are as follow: Neutral. The lexical items involved do not give any information about the purpose of the speaker. They only transmit the meaning of the speech. The most common example is say. Illocutionary. These words convey the presence of the author in the text, and are highly interpretative. They name a supposed speech situation, they clarify and make explicit the illocutionary force of the quote they refer to (CaldasCoulthard 1994: 305 in Bednarek 2006: 57). The typical examples are blame, persuade, urge, etc. Declarative. It is specific only of institutionalized discourse and suitable under specific circumstances. Examples are: rule, award, diagnose, sentence, etc.

27 Discourse signaling. These expressions mark the relationship of the quote to other parts of the discourse or mark the development of the discourse (Caldas-Coulthard 1994:306 in Bednarek 2006:58). Reply and add are possible examples. Paralinguistic evaluators give an indication of the prosodic and phonetic features of an utterance. Words like whisper and scream are vivid examples. So far, 9 evaluative parameters were discussed. It is important to note that one lexical item or expression can combine two or even more evaluations in itself.

28

4. Methodology
In what follows, methodological reflections for the thesis will be presented. First of all, the nature of the data, the collection of the corpus for analysis, and the limitation of the selected material will be discussed. Next, a typical structure of the selected news broadcasts will be explained. Thirdly, the hypothesis and research questions will be formulated. Finally, the last part of the chapter will be devoted to the description of the data analysis procedure and the research design. 4.1. Data Collection The nature of breaking news constitutes a major difficulty when it comes to data collection. US mass media tend to treat almost every interesting piece of news as a breaking one, while British mass media label reports as breaking only on the most influential or disastrous events (e.g., earthquakes, wars, plane crashes, terrorist acts). This means that there must be considerable differences in the evaluation of the events. Therefore, it was decided to look at the evaluation patterns in the news reports of one particular event: the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami in Japan in March of 2011. The initial idea of recording breaking news over a particular period of time might result in complex and confusing results. The time and page limit of this thesis would not reflect the depth of various subject-matters of the collected news. The news selection of a particular event will give a more consistent view on the topic and will help to avoid the difference between the US and British breaking news. According to Allan Bell (1991: 12), there are three main categories to be considered before building a corpus of media language. These are the genres of media, media outlets, and specific outputs. The corpus researched in this thesis is television news. The news reports on target are what Bell specifically calls spot news (1991: 14), an unscheduled event, more often a disaster, which took place already after the previous news program. What concerns the outlets, the news for the corpus was chosen from various English-speaking channels and was not limited by a geographical area, audience type or size, and the time of the day, as it is suggested by Bell (1991: 18). Breaking news of an event of this importance triggers more or less equal responses independent of the geographical area of the broadcaster or its audience. Moreover, it is natural that the time of day at the moment of the disaster differed from country to country. Finally, there were two types of outputs to be chosen for the corpus: breaking

29 news or live coverage of the event and consequent edited news reports on the same topic. The earthquake and the subsequent tsunami caused an explosion at one of the Japanese nuclear power stations. It is logical that the breaking news did not cover this event, because it had not happened yet. Conversely, there was a lot of coverage of this event in the prepared edited news. It is considered that in a good research the findings are not limited to the corpus at hand and [] we can draw valid general conclusions about news discourse (Bednarek 2012 14). Therefore, it was decided to avoid the edited news which reported on the catastrophe of technological nature. It is possible that the evaluation of a technological origin might interfere with the outcome of the research. This decision was taken for the possibility of the results of this research to be applied to similar news of natural disasters. However, it was not easy to make this division because almost all edited news which aired later than 24 hours after the tsunami devoted much time to the situation at the nuclear power station. That is why in some news programs the reports about Fukushima were extracted. In a few other news bulletins the disaster at Fukushima is either mentioned or just recapped. The collection of news bulletins and especially breaking news proved to be a complicated phase. It was initially deduced to contact major channels, explain the basics of this research, and ask them if the recordings of suitable news were available for this purpose. However, the contacted channels either did not respond or sent me to their archives. The archives possessed the required news bulletins, but their only interest was to sell the video footage. Thus, it was decided to collect the data online, precisely on video-sharing websites youtube.com and dailymotion.com. The latter choice allowed to collect news reports of various length. These video hosting sites permit all www-users to upload various videos. It resulted in the collection of both good-quality channel-owned videos and badly-recorded news. The low-quality recording means that not a full news bulletin was recorded or the sound was not good enough. Due to the limitations of sources for building my corpus it was decided to include all good-quality news bulletins and lower quality reports of one and a half minutes or longer. A corpus is defined as a collection of pieces of language text in electronic form, selected according to external criteria to represent, as far as possible, a language

30 or language variety as a source of data for linguistic research (Wynne 2005: 22). The external criterion was obvious: breaking and edited news with the topic of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on March 11th, 2011. After the identification of suitable news reports on youtube.com and dailymotion.com the videos were downloaded in an mp4 format (see Appendix 1) and transcribed1. The transcription of the breaking news proved to be more complex than the transcription of the edited news for obvious reasons. Live coverage is very close to the natural speech, while reading out a prepared text makes the reporters speech sound as if one reads out a text. In fact, the edited news reports were mostly transcribed in sentences. In some cases it was possible to single out paragraphs; specific subject-matters and pauses indicated this division.

The videos and transcripts are recorded on a CD (see Appendix 2). They are listed according to the channels. Table 1 represents the overall number of words for each channel and does not reflect the number of news reports taken from each channel.

31 Table 1. The corpus Breaking News Edited News BBC CNN Al Jazeera Euronews BBC World News ITV NHK CBS CBC SKY News Sunrise (Australia) ABC Associated Press MSNBC Weather Channel TOTAL 11320 2445 3426 3528 890 889 7992 30490 1145 2231 503 209 9229 215 1382 4726 1173 791 268 1303 574 23749 54239

Table 1 lists the word count of the corpus for the channels (based on the automatic function of count with Word 2010 for Windows). As shown in this table, the majority of the data is derived from major US and British channels: CNN and BBC. The live coverage of the event in actual fact tended to be longer than the later edited ones. The reason for that was the cancellation of usual programs at the time and updating the audience with the latest developments. Conversely, the edited reports on the event were significantly shorter, because reporters only recapped the events that had happened earlier without the need of live commentary. Moreover, those reports were limited by a definite broadcast period of time. For this reason, there are fewer breaking reports than edited ones in the corpus. The breaking reports are longer than the prepared news. That might not be considered a representative corpus, but the nature of the data obliged to do so. Moreover, Wynne insists that the size of corpus constituents cannot falsify the results:

32 There is no virtue from a linguistic point of view in selecting samples all of the same size. [] Samples of language for a corpus should wherever possible consist of entire documents or transcriptions of complete speech events, or should get as close to this target as possible. This means that samples will differ substantially in size. (2005: 9) When building a corpus, the researcher must remember that the texts should be typical (Bednarek 2012). The corpus at hand includes only two types of news texts on the same topic. A corpus is considered to be representative when the findings based on its concepts can be generalized to a larger hypothetical corpus (Leech 1991: 27 in Tognini-Bonelli 2001: 57). Therefore it must be remembered that the results concerning the topic of natural disasters might not yield similar conclusions for the news on terrorism, for instance. A corpus built by the news collected over a definite period of time would result in very general conclusions. And then the linguists would need more insights in the subject-matters of the texts. The main limitations of this corpus are caused by two cases. The issue is of Fukushima reports being deleted from edited news. The second concern is caused by the fact that some reports were cut or not fully uploaded by the owners. However, representativeness is still called a thorny issue in corpus linguistics in any case (Bednarek 2006: 9). The minimum length of a news report is one minute and a half while the maximum length is 47 minutes for Weather Channel. The word count includes all discourse markers, repetitions, pauses, and false starts. Their amount in breaking news was definitely higher because the reporters talk had not been prepared. Taking into consideration this fact, the difference between the breaking and edited parts of the corpus can therefore be considered balanced. 4.2. Structure of the news reports in the corpus The news outputs in the corpus consist of five major parts: newsreaders talk in the studio, specialists comments, witnesses accounts, journalists reporting from the actual place of the event, and politics performances. The speeches of politicians are represented only by Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan and United States President Barack Obama. The overall word count for it is only 300 words. As for the rest of the speakers, the division of the talking time is very different. Considering the nature of the data, it is impossible to collect news outlets with approximately the same talking time

33 of all the participants. Such news simply does not exist. The quantity of political leaders and witnesses talk has an insignificant presence in the corpus. Therefore it will be analyzed only in the general results and not as a separate category. The distribution of evaluations for each of the five categories will not be illustrated individually either. The scope of the thesis does not allow to concentrate on this division. 4.3. Hypothesis and Research Questions Based on the theoretical discussion in sections 2 and 3, the following research questions were formulated in order to research and compare the use of evaluations in the reports of breaking and edited news: RQ 1: How are the events evaluated in the live breaking news reports in comparison with edited news reports? RQ 2: What type of news is more stylistically varied? It can be generally hypothesized that there will be more instances of evaluations in the breaking news rather than in the prepared ones. However, the evaluative lexical items in breaking news will be highly repetitive, but in the edited news they will be much more stylistically diverse. 4.4. Research Design Following the parameter-based research in Bednarek (2006, 2012), the study of evaluation in this thesis will combine both corpus analysis and manual text analysis. First, the distribution of evaluations will be presented quantitatively. Then, their discourse functions will be presented and described qualitatively. The manual analysis is caused by the nature of evaluation distribution. Evaluation is a complex phenomenon and can only be understood in context (Bednarek 2006: 8). Hunston and Sinclair emphasize that the means for evaluation do not constitute a closed class, however, it is not possible to program a computer with a list of them (2000: 83). That means that the number of lexico-grammatical resources for evaluating is likely to be very high. Furthermore, there is no existing corpus that distinguishes between live coverage reports and edited news reports.

34 The following steps will be undertaken in order to identify the evaluative force of linguistic items: Native speakers will be asked to what extent the lexical items are evaluative (in case of indefinite answers or doubts these instances will be excluded from the analisys) A COBUILD Dictionary of Advanced English will be used for identifying the evaluative force of linguistic items Corpus of Contemporary American English (corpus.byu.edu/coca) and Collins WordBanks Online corpus (wordbanks.harpercollins.co.uk) will be used for corpus research with the purpose of detecting the evaluative potential of the linguistic items in different contexts. All in all, in this thesis 2908 evaluators will be analyzed along the parameter-based framework (Bednarek 2006, Bednarek and Caple 2012). The following parameters and their sub-categories will be analyzed in this research: The evaluators of comprehensibility will be situated on a cline ranging from the most incomprehensible to the clearest ones. The emotivity of live and edited news will be tested along the clines positivity and negativity. The parameter of unexpectedness will be tested in its guises of counterexpectation and contrast. Since the news that is expected contradicts the very news value of unexpectedness and is no longer newsworthy (Bell 1991), the number of cases of expectedness in any news corpus is minimal. In case with breaking news, this part of the cline is irrelevant. Mental State will include the subcategories of emotions, volition, beliefs, expectations, and knowledge. The parameter of evidentiality will deal with the categories of hearsay, sensory evidence, general knowledge, proof, unspecified source. The parameter of un/necessity in the news will be tested on the negative/positive cline. The parameter of im/possibility in the news will be tested on the negative/positive cline.

35 The parameter of style will be viewed through its neutral, illocutionary, declarative, discourse-signaling, and paralinguistic values. The parameter of reliability will be researched within the fake, genuine, low, median, and high values. The parameter of un/importance will be viewed in terms of importance too. Since unimportant news also contradicts the basic news values outlines in Section 1 and their presence is minimal in the news, this part of the cline will not be researched. The details for each of the evaluative parameter and their sub-categories are discussed in section 3 in more detail. A few more detailed methodological decisions for the analysis of evaluation will be given in the following chapter for each parameter specifically. It is important to note that the evaluative resources in questions, conditional clauses, and imperative sentences will not be analyzed and included in the final results (see Table 3). These instances do not carry new information for the audience and therefore the evaluation there does not carry the same intensity as in the other cases. Furthermore, if a semantic expression is interrupted or not finished, which is often the case in the breaking news corpus, it is omitted from the analysis as well. The reason for that is the meaning of the utterance is lost, and the evaluation is not relevant anymore. What is more, such discourse marker as you know and I mean will also not be counted as evaluations. Due to the absence of a script and a higher interactional nature of the breaking news their presence in the live coverage extremely high and does not have an evaluative force. The stylistic variety is calculated according to the following formula:

1000

The number of different evaluators is the number of different lexico-grammatical items used for evaluation. The difference in size between the two parts of the corpus will be taken into consideration in this calculation. (Bednarek 2006: 67) Table 2 sums up the parameters used in this research and lists possible evaluative items. This list is definitely not exhaustive and may be continued endlessly. It was based on the researches of Bednarek (2006), Bednarek and Caple (2012),

36 Rooryck (2005), Nichols and Chafe (1986). After the breaking vs. edited news research is conducted, this list will be prolonged for future research (see Appendix 2).

37 Table 2. The list of evaluative parameters, their categories, and individual evaluators Parameters and their categories Evaluators Hearsay To be told, hear, say, claim, advise, scream, sob, shout, whisper, mutter, threat, warn, promise, vow, pledge, accuse, blame, praise, approve, make clear, hint, boast, admit, predict, voice Sensory evidence Evidentiality Hear, feel, perceive, sense, see, think, experience, visibly, audibly, reveal, show, betray, seem, appear, look, reveal, expect, fear, show, look, sound, display, sign General Knowledge Well-known, famously, infamously, allege, believe, notoriously Proof Evidently, evidence/proof that, confirm, apparently, tests found/confirmed Unspecified Source Hedge Emerge, turn out, mean Sort of, kind of, about Easy, difficult, mystery, cant understand, clearly, no explanation for/why, am uncertain how to, be beyond In/comprehensibility human comprehension, there are simply no words to describe how, ambiguous, complex, less than definite, in plain language, vague, clarify, uncanny, unclear, begs the question why, raise questions about/why, clear, confused Senior, top, leading, influential, prominent, supreme, star, crucial, vital, Un/importance landmark, empire, made legal history, historic, key, momentous, of the century, high-rolling, celeb, famous, significant, urgent, emergency, keynote, major,

38 minor, modest, substantial Peaceful, beauty, welcome, aggressive, Emotivity plain, sexual predator, wannabe, fiasco, racist, clanger, cash in on, worse, inappropriate, irresponsible Counterexpectation Unexpectedness Contrast Astonishing, unprecedented, amazing, extraordinary, unexpected But, although

Contrast/comparison Negation Un/possibility or in/ability (im)possible, can (not), could (not), able to Un/necessity Need to, have to, it takes, to be, no choice but, should Fake Genuine Reliability Low Fake, artificial, choreographed Genuine, real Could, possible, may, unlikely, put in doubt Median Likely to, probable, will, potential, perhaps, will, going to High Certainly, must, undoubtedly, doomed to, sure Emotions Appalled, fear, yearn, love, hope, anxiety, concern for, furious, troubled, cheered, happy, pleasure, enraged, panic, Mental State Volition frustration Deliberately, end up, assume, accept, refuse to, want, would like, willing to, intend to Beliefs Expectation Knowledge Neutral Illocutionary Suspect, believe, think High expectations, expect Know Say, tell, speak of, talk Demand, promise, accuse, advice, beg,

39 blame, challenge, complain, declare, defend, insist, offer, order, persuade, pledge, question, request, rumor, stress, Style Declarative suggest, threaten, urge, vow, warn Acquit, plead guilty, adjourn, rule, return a verdict, award, charge, clear, convict, diagnose, fine, find guilty, hear, sentence Discourse Signaling Paralinguistic Add, conclude, go on, reply Whisper, scream, mutter, sob, shouts of

40

5. Results and Analysis

In this section the results for each evaluative parameter will be presented in the descending order (from the highest percentages of occurrences to the lowest). Then for every parameter the distribution of evaluators in breaking and edited news presented and commented on (frequency analysis). Next, the discourse functions of the most frequent evaluations are going to be discussed. Finally, the stylistic variety for each parameter will be calculated. Table 3. Total Results for the Corpus Breaking news Parameters and their combinations Evidentiality/Reliability Evidentiality/Style Evidentiality/Style/Comprehens ibility (In)comprehensibility Comprehensibility/Reliability Reliability Emotivity Emotivity/Importance Necessity Mental State Style (hedging) (Un)possibility Possibility/Reliability Importance Unexpectedness Total 50 20 275 267 38 49 233 118 125 115 279 193 2908 29 5 203 74 18 30 137 62 77 69 201 100 1700 58 25 74 28 47 61 59 52.5 61.5 60 72 52 58.4 21 15 72 193 20 19 96 56 48 46 78 93 1208 42 75 26 72 53 39 41 47.5 38.5 40 28 48 41.6 529 604 13 All
Number of occurrences Percentage

Edited news
Number of occurrences Percentage

375 311 9

71 51.5 69

154 293 4

29 48.5 31

41 5.1. The Evaluations of Evidentiality Bednarek (2006) found out that the parameter of evidentiality is practically always linked with other evaluative parameters. In news discourse it seems impossible to transmit our knowledge about the source of information without simultaneous mentioning the way it was done, the feelings of the source, or the degree of the sources reliability. Evidentiality is the most frequent evaluator out of all other ones on the corpus. The combinations of this parameter make up 39.4 percent of the all the others, including various combinations. The combination of evidentiality and reliability This combination is the most frequent among all the combinations in the corpus. Almost each sub-value of evidentiality can be combined with low, median, or high reliability. Table 4 clearly shows that the breaking news corpus is almost 2.5 time more abundant in this combination that the edited news. Table 4. Frequency of sub-values of evidentiality and reliability Value All Breaking news Edited news occurrences percentage occurrences percentage Unspecified source/high reliability Proof/high reliability Sensory perception/high reliability Sensory perception/median reliability General knowledge/high reliability Total 529 375 71 154 29 3 3 100 0 0 37 15 40 22 60 11 462 2 349 18 75.5 9 114 82 24.5 16 6 37,5 10 62,5

42 Unspecified source/high reliability Evidentiality/unspecified source and high reliability are represented by the following lexical items: emerge and mean. This combination is used to express the unknown origin of the information and at the same time a high possibility of this information to be trustworthy (Bednarek 2006).

mean

3 Breaking news Edited news

emerge

10

Figure 1. Distribution of unspecified source/high reliability evaluators in the corpus

The prevalence of high reliability and unknown sourcing in the edited news corpus is evident, but not striking. There are only 37,5 percent of this combination in the breaking news in comparison with 62,5 percent in the prepared news. This comes into conflict with the news value of attribution. It would be more logical to include the unknown sources information in the breaking news and to maximally extract it from the prepared news, therefore, making it more trusted. But there are specific differences when it comes to the type of news. were keeping a very close eye on that now what that means at this point is that the tsunami could be heading (CNN) and Hawaii is now under a tsunami watch as well that means that again we know that a tsunami was generated we know that it looks like it was a major tsunami (CNN) the very important information you brought to us was that depth and what that means to us Ivan of course how wide spread is that this is (CNN) the structures being so much better so much more solid in Japan means that they would be at least (CNN) it does that means that a lot of people are out and about (Weather Channel)

43 that its shallow a little bit more 15 miles eh deep eh means a lot of the energy goes up into the water (Weather Channel) this [] means that the areas and the coast along the stretch of coast will be rereally badly affected BBC the tsunami rolled west towards Japan its also likely to move north, and that means the south-eastern tip of Russia, near Vladivostok (Al Jazeera) here we are on a tsunami advisory which means they are not expecting strong flooding (BBC World News) What concerns the function of mean, in all the examples it is used for introducing an attributed proposition, which contain the speakers conclusion based on the averral contained in the previous utterance. The last three examples come from the edited news and they do not differentiate from the breaking news ones. However, the case with emerge is different. These instances are present only in the edited news and they refer to the visual nature of the source. The function becomes clear if we look at some of the examples: Today more and more amateur video has begun to emerge showing the terrifying power of the water (BBC World News) These pictures have just emerged and show the moment it struck (SKY News) a clear picture emerged of just how much damage was done by the magnitude 8 point 9 earthquake (Associated Press) Graphic images of the tsunami continue to emerge including this one showing the force of the massive wave (CBS) Surprisingly, here the source of the information becomes partially clear. The conclusions are based on the visual evidence recorded by the witnesses of the event. Nevertheless, the source of the evidence still stays unclear. Mostly it is shaded by the very word emerge, meaning to come out from an enclosed or dark space such as a room or a vehicle, or from a position where you could not be seen (COBUILD 2012: 505). Moreover, the videos shown during this commentary were taken from the Internet by the channels. Obviously, this lexical item is used to generalize and make the exact origin of the information inexplicit.

44 General Knowledge/High This combination is represented by only one evaluator: as we know. There are only three instances of it in the corpus. Moreover, this evaluative combination is found only in the breaking news: Harry as we know this earthquake the epicenter was about a hundred and twenty 5 kilometers off the Japanese coast (Al Jazeera) they are sort of sitting initially because as we know Japan and the people in Japan are used to earthquakes (CNN) a threat for Japan is not over as we know the initial tsunami wave is now the only one that hit (CNN) Collins WordBanks Online corpus was checked for detecting more discourse functions of the expression. The research showed that like in these three instances it is used for bridging the distance between the audience and news presenter and including the listener into the same epistemic community (Haas 1992: 2). Proof/high reliability This is a permanent combination. Any evidentiality of something proved as the basis for information automatically makes this proposition of a high degree of reliability. The two instances of proof/high reliability in the breaking news involve a certain degree of hedging or variation (underlined): so far no radioactive material radiation has been confirmed to have been leaked to the outside (Weather Channel) weve said eh observations already measured on the Japanese east coast of about 7 point 3 meters above normal normal sea level (BBC World News) Despite a high degree of certainty expressed by these lexical item the speakers also express a possibility that these data might change. For comparison we should look at some instances of this evaluative combination in the edited news: In other parts of Miyagi prefecture one hundred and 49 people have been confirmed dead. (NHK)

45 In Miyagi prefecture 87 thousand households have been confirmed out of water. (NHK) Prefecture police say at least 44 people have been confirmed dead so far as we have reported. (Al Jazeera) The biggest waves of more than six seven feet were recorded near California's Crescent City (BBC) It is clear that the edited news still leaves some space for the change of the reported data, but not in all the cases. Logically, the edited news uses 82 percent of all the proof and high reliability evaluators in the corpus. The reason for that must be the fact that the news editors have more information available from the news agencies. During live coverage in real time it is impossible to acquire the proof concerning the reported events. There are two evaluators in the breaking news (observations measures, confirmed) in the breaking news with the ratio of 0.036 compared to three evaluators (be recorded, confirmed, estimated) in the edited news, ratio of 0.055. Sensory perception/high This combination designates the evidentiality markers which are sensorily perceived (visually and aurally) and at the same time constitute a high degree of reliability. Bednarek (2006) refers to Bagnalls (1993) assertion that in news discourse sensory evidence is by itself highly reliable and the very fact of sensing, hearing, or seeing something implies trustworthiness. Rooryck also writes that [t]he evidence type refers to the ways in which information is measured (2001: 126). And according to her, the information can be measured through reliability based on personal observation. By all means, this is the most frequent combination in the whole corpus. There are 462 instances of sensory perception and high reliability in the corpus. This combination is used predominantly in the breaking news part: 75.5 percent of sensory perception/high reliability in the breaking news compared to only 24.5 percent in the edited part. This is expected since real time commentary without preparation presupposes the use of high quantity of sensory evidentiality markers (for the absence of any other ones) for conveying the information. And if we look at the frequency of various evaluators in the corpus, we will understand the difference (see Figure 2).

46
160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 0 see watch feel obviously show 44 26 4 20 24 13 3 11 14 Breaking news Edited news 149

Figure 2. Most Frequent Evaluators of Sensory Perception/High Reliability in the Corpus

As figure 2 clearly shows, see is the prevailing sensory perception/high reliability evaluator in my corpus. Moreover, its presence in the breaking news part is rather significant. The following the examples (see Table 5. Typical examples of the use of evaluator see in the corpus) and the analysis of hearsay evidentiality markers make it clear why the edited news requires less sensory evaluations. Leaping ahead of the analysis, there are a slightly more hearsay evidentiality evaluators in the edited news corpus than in the breaking news part. Since, the number of verbal sources in the breaking news during live coverage is quite limited, a small difference still seems rather surprising. Obviously, the information in the edited news comes from various sources, such as news agencies, witness accounts, reports issued by specialists, authorities, or police, while in the breaking news the journalists can rely on only one main source. Obviously, in breaking news journalists make more comments on the visual representation of the event, as this is only one of the few sources they have at their disposal. While the edited news gives more freedom and more sources, a higher degree of hearsay and a lower extent of sensory evaluators are logical. That source is the live footage of the event, and that is not different from the one broadcast for the audience. Since the speaker and the listener share the source of information, it is logical to use see as a sensory evaluator for live commentary.

47 Table 5. Typical examples of the use of evaluator see in the corpus Breaking News Edited News were seeing on the screen now the force of the water (BBC World News) youre obviously seeing some tsunamis hitting the coastal areas of Miyagi (NHK) tsunami has already struck aand you can see some of the damages so far (NHK) were seeing some quite phenomenal pictures on the screens at the moment (BBC World News) Weve seen a number of devastating earthquakes over the past few weeks (BBC World News) of course were seeing a lot of smoke (CNN) from that helicopter aerials what youve seen here is the coast (MSNBC) Ive seen one model that shows about a meter and a half in Honolulu harbor (Weather Channel) large amounts of smoke which can be seen for miles around Ah in other areas you really dont see that much movement under mandatory evacuation (BBC) Ah, were seeing on tv just scenes of outer tragedy eh houses with their roofs ripped off (CBS) we began eh to see more complete picture eh of whats has happened along the eh Pacific coast (BBC World news) you can actually see where in Japan these things are happening (BBC World News) so you can see in these pictures: there is a hint of the aftermath of a tsunami (BBC) were seeing boats tossed around the harbor there (BBC)

It is obvious that these lexical items can evaluate both propositions and entities. As it is clear from the table, both in the breaking and edited news the evaluation of entities prevail. Moreover, the function of these evaluators is to ascertain the fact of evidentiality, and to aver that both the speaker and the listener/viewer have the same

48 image, the same evidence available, and therefore again they create this virtual bonding between each other. Furthermore, in most of the instances the newsreader or reporter use the personal pronoun we, thereby bridging the gap between him/her and the audience. The personal pronoun I in the last example in the breaking news part was not used by a journalist. It was uttered by a seismologist who was interviewed by a newsreader. So, the use of the singular pronoun was stipulated for the fact that the interviewee was the only person to witness that evidence. Obviously is a very equivocal word in television news discourse. Normally in printed media it would relate to only high reliability. However, in the spoken news discourse accompanied by a voice-over comment in the ongoing visual development of a disaster it acquires a different meaning. News readers and reporters often employ it for transmitting the confirmation of the visual evidence which both the audience and they see on the screen. So, instead of the frequent you see or you can see news presenters use this lexical item: Obviously devastating when you are able to see the video (MSNBC) obviously the tsunami already landing several sets landing (NHK) obviously the situation is extremely fluid things changing on a minute by minute basis (NHK) tsunami hassss obviously swept right in to the airport (NHK) look at the control tower of the Sendai airport people obviously evacuated to higher ground Sendai area where obviously a tsunami has engulfed a laarge and swept away a laarge part of the city (NHK) these these are people who obviously taken . shelter (CNN) we could see looking at over to Odaiba ahh some huuuge smoke obviously huge fire on Odaiba (BBC World News) So, with the support of the live filmed images an adverb acquires the function which was originally carried by the verbs of perception. The exemplified instances of sensory perception/high reliability are largely predominant in the breaking news. They constitute the visual deduction (Rooryck 2001: 126) just like the sensory verbs see and look do. There are 24 of obviously employed contrasted to only three in the edited

49 part. The discourse function of obviously explains the frequent use of the word during live coverage the absence of any other source of information except for the footage. Biber et al. (1999) single out a class of sensory copular verbs, which are used for associating the attribute. While this class of verbs favored in fiction because of its topical concern with the feelings and appearances of characters in the narrative (438), all other discourses are supposed to disfavor their use. However, we can see a contrary situation in the breaking news discourse. As already discussed, the description of the recorded images is the only type of reporting the announcers have to resort to. It is done due to the absence of any other information and the necessity to fill in the air time, which is long and more or less indefinite as the breaking news outlets occupy other programs time and can report on the developing events for as long as needed. Therefore, the speakers also play the emphasis on the shared sensory perception of the visuals between him/her and the viewer/listener. Breaking news employs 17 different evaluators for expressing the sensory perception and high reliability (see, look, feel, hear, obviously, show, watch, monitor, indicate, witness, observe, get word, get information, feeling, notice, sign, take a look) making up the ratio of 0.31. The edited news part makes use of 16 different lexical items (see, look, feel, hear, show, watch, monitor, obviously, indicate, witness, illustrate, sound, sign, show, get a look, footage) with the ratio of 0.29. This is one of the rare cases when the breaking news is more stylistically varied than the edited corpus. But this is expected since there are three times less sensory evaluators/high reliability evaluations in the edited news. The weaker need for this kind of evaluation leads to the use of fewer stylistic means. Sensory perception/median reliability This combination refers to the evaluations of sensory evidentiality being of median reliability. Just like in Bednareks research (2006) these evidentials evaluate the concomitant modified proposition being of median reliability. The following examples clearly demonstrate it: between 50 centimeters and a meter so would would appear that that Taiwan has perhaps dodged a bullet CNN

50 it would just it would appear that that Taiwan has has got a wave this time from from what we know at this very minute CNN it it it doesnt appear to be as powerful as the one we experienced eh minutes ago but yeah the signs are definitely shaking we are definitely going through another ahhh it appears to be an aftershock from what we experienced CNN the live picture of what appears to be a major tsunami arriving along the Japanese coast CNN it appears to be fairly slow when youre looking airily CNN tsunami that could head this one was 19 feet and apparently there are more that could hit (ABC) In minutes it seems hundreds of lives have been taken (SKY News)

And again like in the previous combination the whole evaluation is based on the footage being the only source of information. Considering that this combination of evaluations also resorts predominantly to the visual source of information, it is interesting to look at the stylistic variety involved. There are not many evaluators employed for transmitting the median reliability of sensory evidence. The breaking news makes use of only three ones (appear, seem, apparently) with the ratio of 0.055, while the edited news has five lexical items (appear, seem, seemingly, hint, suggest) making the ratio 0.092. There are 15 combinations of sensory/high reliability in the breaking news compared to 25 in the edited corpus. Obviously, despite the presence of more than one visual source of information, the journalists evaluate sensorily with median reliability more often in the edited news. Biber et al. (1999) mention the verb appear among one of the verbs to be used in academic writing. According to them, this genre usually reports relations among entities both concrete and abstract using simple statements of existence/relationship or occurrence (372). Therefore, the discourse function of the higher use of sensory perception/median reliability is the trial to detect the reasons of the consequences, speculate on the further development and the outcomes of the event. Evidentiality/Style The frequency of this evaluative combination appears to be high in news discourse. The reason for that is when an attributing expression is used, it is often expressed through evidentiality/hearsay. And whenever a speaker comments on what the source informed

51 him/her about, he/she inevitably comments on the style, on the way it was uttered (Bednarek 2006). Therefore, these two evaluations are essentially inseparable. As described in section 3, there are five categories regarding

evidentiality/hearsay: the evaluation can be neutral, illocutionary, declarative, discourse signaling and paralinguistic. The television news discourse appears not to employ the paralinguistic sub-value of style. No instances of it were detected in my corpus. Moreover, this category would appear inappropriate in the serious talk of the genre and might decrease the news value of eliteness.
200 180 160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20 20 1 0 neutral illocutionary declarative discourse signalling paralinguistic 4 7 0 0 113 116 Breaking news Edited news 177 166

Figure 3. The frequency of evidentiality/style evaluations

The use of the neutral style helps avoid making the comment on the way information was conveyed. This is by far the most frequent combination in the corpus. Since the language has a finite number of lexical items for denoting the neutral attitude to the attribution, the stylistic variety is not rich. There are five words for expressing this combination in the breaking news (say, tell, talk, speak, word, according to) and seven ones in the edited news (say, tell, talk, speak, word, voice, according to). The ratios are respectively 0.092 vs. 0.13. The amount of the evidentiality and neutral style evaluations is equal between the two types of news texts: 167 instances in the breaking news and 166 ones in the edited part. However, the use of the lexical means is different (see Table 6).

52 Table 6. Frequent lexical items for evidentiality/hearsay, style/neutral evaluations

Lexical item say tell talk speak Breaking news 73 33 44 13 Edited news 132 15 2 7

Looking at the frequency of the specific evaluators, it becomes evident that despite the equal distribution between the two parts of the news, there are differences in the use of separate markers. The use of say in the edited news is predominant. To understand the journalists inclination to this evaluator in prepared texts it is necessary to turn to the most prevalent examples from the corpus: the Japans meteorological agency saying the quake measured magnitude 8 point 4 one of the largest ever hit Japan (NHK) So far authorities say several hundred bodies have been found along the coastline. (SKY News) The first example comes from the breaking news. There are seven repetitions of this evidence in the corpus, and that is only the same wording, without changing the reporting verb or leaving out the word meteorological. That is why the newsreaders have to repeat the little they know. The second example comes from the edited news. And there are only two instances of authorities say in the corpus. Other detected sources in the edited news were the armed forces, police, the UN, officials, scientists, president, and many others. Obviously, during real time reporting the number of sources for information is very limited. That presupposes the repetitions of the known information, and it is evident that speaking live they tend to repeat what has already been said in exactly the same words. The difference in the use of talk (see Table 6) can also seem striking at first sight. The breaking news make use it 34 times, while the edited news does it only twice. Biber at al. (1999) found out that talk is a verb that is often used in a progressive aspect, for denoting a process, obviously. A look at some instances from the breaking news corpus can help clarify that: we are talking about of magnitude 8 point 9 (BBC World News)

53 were talking about an event that is going to be ongoing (BBC World News) we are talking about a great earthquake here (CNN) all of a sudden were talking about an earthquake ah that generated a tsunami (CNN) you are talking about earthquakes and the epicenter that is extremely shallow (CNN) Moreover, out of 44 instances of talk evaluations in the breaking news 27 are used in Present Progressive. It by itself underlines the processual nature of the event. The other sub-values of style comprise the illocutionary, declarative, discourse signaling, and paralinguistic functions. Their distribution is shown in figure 3. However, it is not their frequency of use, but their stylistic variety that is interesting to look at. The breaking news part makes use of 38 lexical items (issue a warning, warn, report, warning, comment, mention, put, remark, bring, call, recap, message update, issue alert, post a warning, forecast, add, remind, assume, suggest, ask, bring details, repeat, interrupt, take through, paint, describe, cover, walk through, point out, go ahead, bring up, give an address, apologize, sum up, speculate, speculation, declare) with the ratio of 0.7, while the edited news corpus uses only 28 evaluators (issue a warning, warn, describe, report, extend sympathy, update, brief, send a text message, email, eyewitness account, tweet, conclude, send a warning, communicate, be advised, declare, order, urge, offer, pledge, note, in response, ask, appeal, predict, announce, insist, promise) (ratio of 0.5). The corpus on both the parts is abundant in various declarative lexical items. They are not as frequently repeated as in other sub-values. However, there is something that unites them. In the breaking news part they use more lexical items which are synonymous to the most obvious journalistic report or say. At the same time the use of report in the edited part is significantly higher than during live coverage. The synonyms used in the breaking news include comment, put, bring, call, update, bring details, take through, paint, cover, and walk through. While the edited news makes use of only update, communicate. These reporting declarative synonyms are mainly used solitarily in both the parts of the corpus. What makes the breaking news in regard to the evaluation evidentiality/hearsay and style/declarative more stylistically diverse?

54 Bednarek in her study of printed media discovers and confirms previous research on the stylistic diversity in the news. She says that the aim of the news is to inform with less objectivity and less non-ideational and interpersonal meanings. This is how she explains low stylistic variation in the news discourse. She assets that [n]ews tends to be seen as very much a conceptual and ideational business, a matter of statements, claims, beliefs, and positions rather than feelings, circumstances, qualities of social and interpersonal relationships, and so forth (Fairclough 1988: 130 in Bednarek 2006: 141). To be able to explain the inconsistency in the breaking news, we need to turn to the nature of live coverage and the discourse functions of these stylistically rich evaluators. The combination of evidentiality, style, and comprehensibility This combination refers to certain attributed propositions which are able to shed light on the degree of comprehensibility of the situation and on the manner of how it was conveyed. The list of such evaluators is limited. The actual corpus makes use of the following ones: explain, give a perspective, give the idea, and tell. The breaking news employs almost two times more of them: 9 evaluators compared to only four in the edited news. The stylistic variety ratio for the breaking news is 0.055 and for the other part it is 0.073. so Kamela explaining to us the situation that youre in there now (CNN) what we do of course is we explain all these things to you (CNN) I explain this in simple terms (CNN) giving us that perspective on whats unfolding in Japan with the m- major earthquake (CNN) give you a perspective of how powerful this earthquake was (MSNBC)

The attributed proposition does not necessarily follow the evidential. However, the listener clearly understands that the information from this clause has already been told or is going to follow soon. This is a rather peculiar phenomenon. The speakers of these utterances refer to what they or their colleague said before them. That is the major difference of television news discourse from the printed media.

55 5.2. The Evaluations of Importance This parameter evaluates the events as being important or unimportant. This study does not look at the evaluators of unimportance as their presence is always insignificant in the news. I included the epithets used for the description of the earthquake and tsunami under the sub-value of related notions. It is interesting to look at them in terms of stylistics. Importance evaluations significantly prevail in the breaking news corpus. There are 201 evaluators of importance in the breaking news compared to only 78 ones in the edited news. Before looking at individual examples of importance evaluation it is possible to conclude that the reporters and newsreaders need to stress the importance of the event in order to explain the urgency and justify their breaking news output. This is one more evaluative parameter which aim in the breaking news is to contribute to the news value of superlativeness and relevance, making the event look more significant and meaningful for the audience. a major earthquake has hit Japan on Friday afternoon (NHK) quake measured eight point nine one of the largest ever hit Japan (NHK) we are looking at pictures Katherine of a huuuuuge wave of mud and debris and water (BBC) March the eleventh two thousand and eleven will go in history in this country. (Al Jazeera) and it is quite astonishing right in that water. theres that fire. burning (BBC World News) The evaluator major is rather peculiar. According to the official classification of earthquakes (http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/magnitude.html), a 7.0 7.9 magnitude earthquake is called major, while an earthquake of any higher magnitude is classified as a great one. Newsreaders and reporters adopted these modifiers and used it more often as any other importance evaluator. All in all, they used major 65 times and great 54 times. Regarding the stylistic variety of the importance evaluations, the breaking news has 37 different evaluators (powerful, massive, major, largest ever, hardest, largest, extremely big, great, highest, extreme huge, phenomenal latest, substantial,

56 unbelievable, remarkable, enormous, important, giving this so much attention, pay attention, eminent, significant, incredible, thousand times stronger, hundred times bigger, hundred times stronger, the main thing, fifth strongest, biggest, largest ever, longest, big, big deal, greatest, notable, intense, key, potent, sizable) making up the ratio of 0.62. And as hypothesized, the edited news employ more lexical items for conveying importance, 43, (impossible, powerful, leaders, enormous, fifth largest, colossal, most powerful in history, first ever, biggest recorded, hundred times bigger, 700 times stronger, 2000 times stronger, in the last 100 years, biggest, strongest, most powerful ever recorded, 8000 times more powerful, biggest in history, incredible, extensive, biggest since records began, toughest since WWII largest on record, biggest ever, seventh most powerful, strongest in history, largest recorded, massive great, hundred times more powerful, biggest ever recorded, immense, largest in living memory, strongest, epic, phenomenal, unbelievable, remarkable, significant, largest in the last 140 years, record, super, mega, tremendous, keep attention) with the ratio of 0.79. 5.3. The Evaluations of Reliability The parameter of reliability is employed to evaluate entities as fake or genuine and propositions being of high, median, or low reliability. The actual corpus of breaking and edited news does not contain any evaluations of fake and genuineness reliability. This can be explained by the situation being ongoing. Furthermore, the main peculiarity of the television news discourse if the presence of constant video support to the commentary of the announcers. Newsreaders and reporters do not have the need to inform the audience about the nature of the events details. The audience can evaluate these themselves by looking at the screen. Moreover, the footage does not differ from the one that the newsreaders see. So again, there is no need to assess the genuineness of the event.

57
140 120 100 79 80 61 60 40 20 0 High Median Low 9 7 2 Breaking news Edited news 117

Figure 4. Distribution of Reliability along the HIGH/MEDIAN/LOW Cline

The evaluations of high, median, and low reliability make up 9.4 percent of the corpus. As it is evident from the figure 4, the relations between the presences of reliability evaluations in the breaking and edited news remain more or less equal for all the degrees of reliability. A higher degree of reliability evaluations in the breaking news is not surprising. First of all, the event is developing and its causes and consequences are almost unknown. Then, the breaking news outlets from the corpus were generally longer than the edited news. It means that the newsreaders had more time on their hands to report on the event. It leads to the explanation: journalists again had to fill in the air time. And since the available information and data were still unknown, the newsreaders had to speculate on the possible causes, consequences, and future developments of the catastrophe. That also explains the general preference of the reporters for median reliability. Due to the unexpectedness of the event they avoid making single meaning assumptions, but rather speculate on the possible developments. It makes it the main function of this evaluation: youre saying the worst of it is likely to be over (Weather Channel) some buildings are clearly on fire definitely gonna have damage (CNN) what Ivan is telling us because it was offshore its it seems very unlikely that therell be any significant damage (CNN) The breaking news evaluations of reliability employ 22 various lexical items (definitely, of course, obviously, sure, no doubt(ing), exactly, certainly, surely, will, not absolutely sure, not quite sure, not sure exactly, presumably, gonna, going to, presume, likely,

58 barely, not sure, unlikely, not certain, tend to) with the ratio of 0.4. Unexpectedly, the edited news uses twice fewer words for conveying the evaluation. There are only 11 words (of course, certainly, sure, likely to, will, likelihood, gonna, going to, possibility, get slimmer, ruin any chance) with the ratio of 0.2. 5.4. The Evaluations of Emotivity As mentioned before, this parameter deals with the evaluations of the events as positive or negative. It is important not to confuse emotivity with the parameter of mental state (emotion), which indicates the feelings of people that can also be positive and negative. My research will include the emotivity of both the news actors and news presenters without distinguishing between them. While Bednarek (2006) did not include epithets into the evaluation analysis, it had been argued that the most straightforward case of evaluation [is] where the entity is attributed with evaluative qualities, through the use of an adjective (Hunston and Sinclair 2000: 83). Moreover, Hunston and Sinclair add that high intensity adjectives are taken by most people to indicate evaluation, simply because it is clear that their meaning is both subjective and value-laden (2000: 83). However, my analysis will overlook such lexical items as kill, damage, or casualties. The point is that the corpus is abundant in them. They are frequently repeated and overused in the speculation of the possible consequences. Speaking about natural disasters, it is impossible to avoid them. If we compare damage and devastate, kill and murder, we will see that the latter word carries more negative meaning than the former lexical item: To damage an object means to break it, spoil it physically, or stop it from working properly (COBUILD 2012: 384) vs. If you devastate an area or a place, it damages it very badly or destroys totally (COBUILD 2012: 421)

The examples make it obvious that the second lexical item is able to give more negativity to a situation than the first one. In fact, the word damage can be used with a positive connotation. For instance, we can damage a wall for saving an animal that got stuck. But we cannot devastate it because devastation is usually done mindlessly and causes a more extensive loss than damage. Bednarek also excludes negative

59 expressions like KILL, DAMAGE, BOMB unless they are markedly emotive (2006: 74). As expected, the ratio of negativity is significantly higher than the ratio of positivity (see Figure 5). When it comes to natural disasters, positive emotivity is inappropriate. Nevertheless, there are only six instances of positive emotivity in the breaking news corpus. When it comes to this scale of the damage and casualties, the positive feelings in the news about such an event sound strange and can be interpreted as offensive. But if we have a look at these three examples, the explanation can be easily found: it was a beautiful it was a beautiful spring day it was sunny outside (CNN) but thankfully eh one good thing here is that eh it was generated under water (CNN) and luckily Japan has a really sophisticated tsunami warning system (Al Jazeera) It becomes obvious that the newsreaders evaluate positively the circumstances which helped minimize the consequences of the disaster or something that helped avoid more serious damage. The corpus of edited news has only one instance of positive emotivity. Similarly to the above-stated examples, it stresses the absence of bigger destructions and casualties. It is evident that the positive emotivity here is connected only with the circumstances which helped to minimize the consequences of the disaster and the first example describes the state of affairs before any negativity of that day broke out.
250 200 150 Breaking news 100 50 6 0 Positivity Negativity 1 68 Edited news 192

Figure 5. Distribution of Emotivity in the Corpus

60 The breaking news part of the corpus makes use of 41 words for expressing emotivity (devastating, infernal, traumatic, blow the mind, staggering, shocking, rip, take the breath away, scary, heart-wrenching, beautiful, unfortunately, alarmingly, alarming, traumatic, shock, worse, thankfully, heart-breaking, amazing, devastation, terrific, terrible, destruction, death, dramatic, ablaze, horrific, worrying, violent, disaster, rock, batter, destructive, destruction, not good, fury, catastrophic, animal, monster) with the ratio of 0.75. At the same time the edited news employs 56 words (desperate, terrifying, horrifying, relentless, fear, unfortunately, grim, lucky, disturbing, catastrophe, raging, fearsome, tragedy, desolation, frightening, horrible, scary, tear the mind, ferocity, appalling, horrific, shocking, frantic, bear down, horror, worse, terrible, onslaught, desperation, alarm, rip, grinding, violently, overwhelming, menacing, devastation, heart-breaking, dramatic, deadly, amazing, catastrophic, ablaze, worst, disastrous, disaster, crisis, furious, roaring, apocalyptic, violent, blaze, hardships, devastating, ferocious, devastate) making up the ratio of 1. The range of various evaluators is widest in the corpus. Their main discourse function is to contribute to the news value of negativity for increasing the newsworthiness of the event. Being the voice of a mass medium, each journalist has to conform to the norms and opinions of the society. It is obvious that negative emotivity is used to express the disapproval and regret about the situation. Combinations of Emotivity and Importance The combination of importance and emotivity serves to express either positive or negative attitude to the reported situation. As in my thesis the unimportance evaluations were not studied, I can only draw conclusions about the combinations of emotivity and importance. In this study of breaking and edited news important evaluators are combined only with negative emotivity: there a big concern ah in this area for severe aftershocks (Weather Channel) certainly the north part of of the country its its extremely serious (CNN) this is a shallow event and a shallow event in the water which is the most dangerous (Weather Channel)

61 Just like Bednareks findings (2006), the discourse functions of this combination are to contribute to the news value of negativity and relevance. Moreover, they help to dramatize the events to some extent. Since broadcasters need to justify the breaking news outlets, this combination is ideal for emphasizing urgency and the interpretation of the event as being more important than others. On the whole, there are 38 occurrences of negative emotivity and importance in my corpus. They are almost evenly distributed between the breaking news and edited news: 18 and 20 instances respectively. Stylistically this combination is represented by only 3 lexico-grammatical expressions: serious(ly), severe(ly), danger(ous) (in both the types of the news) (ratio of 0.055 for both of them). 5.5. The Evaluations of Unexpectedness As it was stated above, the parameter of (un)expectedness determines how expected or unexpected an event is evaluated by the speaker. My research focuses only on the evaluations of unexpectedness in the guises of counter-expectation and contrast. It goes without saying that the main function of this evaluative parameter is to the contribution to the news value of unexpectedness. As shown in Figure 6, the corpus includes 193 evaluations of unexpectedness which 6.6 percent of all evaluations.

90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

82

78

Breaking news Edited news 18 15

Counter-expectation

Contrast

Figure 6. Distribution of Unexpectedness Guises

62 Counter-expectation The task of the journalists in the breaking news is not only to inform the audience about an event, but also to justify the form of the news outlet. Therefore, the newsreaders emphasis on the unexpectedness of the event is supposed to be significantly higher than in a normal news broadcast. However, the corpus at hand does not confirm this hypothesis. The difference is only slightly higher. As known, unexpectedness may trigger positive and negative attitude to the news. Supposedly, the earthquake and tsunami of this extent causes only negative attitude. And this is not exactly the case in the analyzed news: like with the evaluations of emotivity, there is a certain degree of positivity involved in the reports about lucky survivals or avoidance of incidents. casualties I think will be quite limited which I think is amazing in itself (Weather Channel) In the corpus there are 3 instances like this. It means that too much negativity as a news value is not good too. When such large-scale disasters occupy all the air time on all the channels, positivity comes into play as a new news value. Contrast Since contrast signifies unexpectedness in a more inexplicit way (Bednarek 2006: 85), it is argued that hidden evaluations can influence the audience more than when it is explicit (Thompson and Hunston 2000). The scope of this thesis does not allow to present the complete list of unexpectedness/contrast evaluations. These are the typical instances detected: it is the largest scale since the Great Hanshin earthquake back in 1995 but the magnitude 8 point 4 is much bigger (NHK) the epicenter is miles away to the north and east of you but you still felt the effects in the capital (BBC World News) Although other pictures suggested most buildings had stood up to the earthquake as they are designed to, others have collapsed (Al Jazeera) Even though Bednarek (2006) points out that in printed media there is an abundance of unexpectedness/contrast functions. The discourse functions of this parameter in breaking news are limited. The most frequent functions are the

63 comparison of the usual representation of the Japanese geographical areas and life to how drastically it changed after the event, to contrast this event with the previous experiences of earthquakes and tsunamis, to emphasize the strength and scale of the disaster. Breaking news represents unexpectedness with the help of 21 evaluators (but, nonetheless, not but, although, not just, not just but, not only but, (even) though, in fact, amazing, extraordinary, extraordinarily, actually, unusual, absolutely unlike, completely unprepared, all of a sudden, bam!, my goodness, suddenly, strike) with the ratio of 0.38, while edited news employs only 14 (but, despite, although, amazing, striking, strike, beyond peoples experience, jolt, extraordinary, larger than expected, sudden, suddenly, without warning, boom!) making the ratio of 0.25. 5.6. The Evaluations of Mental State This parameter evaluates how individuals feel about the events. Unlike Bednareks research (2006) I am not going to divide the mental state evaluations into the combination of evidentiality/mental state for attributing expressions and into simply mental state evaluation referring to an entity. First of all, the amount of mental state in the corpus is not that large. Then, the combination of evidentiality/mental state is not significant at all in my corpus. Moreover, like in the previous combination of evidentiality, comprehensibility, and style the attributed proposition tends to be absent. So, figure 7 demonstrates the distribution of all the five sub-values of mental state: emotion, volition, belief, expectation, and knowledge.

64
60 52 50 42 40 34 30 23 20 14 10 10 6 8 16 28 Breaking news Edited news

0 emotion volition belief expectation knowledge

Figure 7. Distribution of Mental State Evaluations in the Corpus

Emotion When it comes to the emotional state of a person, the most basic division is negative emotions and positive emotions. Taking into consideration the nature of the event and the extent of the disaster, it is practically impossible to have a positive attitude to the disaster unfolding in front of the journalists eyes. In support of this, there were only two positive evaluators detected in the edited news: There are 56 countries around the world which are sending aid and support and we the Japanese are very grateful (BBC) We are happy to report tonight that he has sent her a text message saying Im ok mom (CBS) The first example comes from an interview with a witness a few days after the event. Clearly, the positivity in this sample is caused by the relief efforts and help provided from abroad. The second case of positive emotion is connected with a successful outcome of a problem cause by the disaster. This finding clearly supports the discourse function that emotions contribute to the news value of negativity, thus making the event more newsworthy for the news makers and the audience.

65 Johnson-Laird and Oatley (1989) classified emotional words according to the emotions which they denote. They singled out five basic emotions or categories: happiness, sadness, fear, anger, and disgust (1989: 98). The analysis of the mental state/emotion evaluators in my corpus demonstrated that the predominant emotion according to this classification is the fear (see Table 7). Just like in the printed media, it can be argued that emotionally colored, attitudinal facts and situations are more likely to be memorized by the audience (Bednarek 2006). It is exactly fear that is largely used by the journalists for attributing additional information. There are eight instances of exactly this evaluator in the edited news, being absolutely absent from the breaking news. Therefore, this is a frequent device used by news editors for introducing a feeling of undesirability. Table 7. Distribution of mental state/emotions in the corpus Happiness Sadness Fear Anger Breaking news sadly Concern(ed), alarmed, worried, scared, panic, shock, surprised Edited news Happy, grateful Painfully, heart-broken, frustration, nervous Concern, worried, scared, panic(ked), horrified, stunned, fear, on edge,

Disgust Fed up

It is rather interesting to see whose emotions are evaluated in the news the ones of the newsreaders and reporters or those of the news actors. However, it was found that journalists in most of the cases generalize the emotions. Japanese people obviously have become sadly rather used to this kind of seismic activity (BBC World News) Since the newsreaders are the voice of these feelings, it is logical to assume that they experience them. Both the types of the researched news are abundant in similar instances. And only the edited news part contains five evaluations of the news actors feelings. So it is clear now that the newsreaders and reporters do not express their

66 emotions to the audience but rather emphasize the accepted general attitude of the society to the situation. Breaking news makes use of 11 different evaluators (sadly, concern, alarmed, worried, worry, concerned, scared, fed up, panic, shock, surprised) making up the ratio of 0.2. The edited news employs 23 lexical items (concern, painfully, heart-broken, happy, emotional, worried, scared, panicked, panic, grateful, worryingly, calm, orderly, horrified, stunned, helplessly, feared, on edge, nervous, heart-breaking, fearful, fear, frustration) (ratio of 0.42). Volition The stylistic means of expressing volition or non-volition are rather poor in the researched corpus. Want, wonder, wanna in the breaking news are juxtaposed to want, wander, and reluctant (the ratio of 0.055 for both the news types). All in all, there are 34 evaluations of mental state/volition in the corpus, with the majority of them being in the breaking news (28) and only 6 in the edited part. well we now want to show you some of the scenes in the city of . Sendai (CNN) Ivan I want you to stand by (CNN) I want you to look at these pictures UNbelievable (CNN) we wanna bring you pictures I should say of Sendai (CNN) I do wanna mention that Japan is not the only eh- a a place that is being affected here (CNN) I do wanna go back to Kamela whos in Tokyo (CNN) information we wanna know first of is about the tsunami (CNN)

In the corpus there are 23 evaluations concerning the volition of the speaker, the journalist. The other five evaluations refer to the volition of the audience, when newsreaders comment on what the viewers might want to know or see. All these 23 evaluations come from the main news reader giving live commentary and managing the turn-taking between her and the specialist to be interviewed. They do not come from reporters or specialists, even though the newsreader from time to time uses the inclusive personal pronoun we, thus including the whole news studio in the reporting. Considering this fact, also the fact that the announcer comments without preparation,

67 and moreover there is no exact plan of the broadcast, the work of the television director during this time is very stressful and unpredictable. Therefore, the function of this volition evaluation might be the sign of the speaker to the news room for the directors of the broadcast. It goes without saying, that the newsreader has a headphone in the ear for getting information from the newsroom. The emphasis of the newsreader of what they want to do during the broadcast is very likely to signify the order to the television director of what to transmit to the screen. Belief The breaking news uses this evaluation more than twice as much as the edited news. Despite the predominance in the use of belief markers in the live commentary they are slightly less stylistically diverse there (think, suppose, imagine, believe), making up the ratio of 0.073, in comparison with the edited news and their ratio of 0.092 (imagine, think, believe, consider, see). The most frequent evaluator in both the types of the news is think (22 instances in the breaking news compared to 7 in the edited part). Obviously, the main function of mental state/belief evaluation is to express an opinion about possible consequences or developments of the event. Interestingly, all these evaluations are expressed with the personal pronoun I, thus signifying that the opinions conveyed are personal. Expectation This sub-value is expressed by only one lexical item expect. The ratio for both types of the news is 0.018. Its use is slightly higher in the breaking news than in the edited part (11 and 8 evaluations respectively). we are expecting aftershocks to take place for quite some time (Weather Channel) we have heard of structural damage and that is to be expected (Weather Channel) the tsunami is expected around 5 36 pm local time (CNN) with waves waves expected to be around 50 centimeters to 1 meter (CNN) people might expect to be seeing some impact (BBC World News)

68 It is evident from the examples that the discourse function of expectation markers, both positive and negative, is to speak about the future developments of the events and to warn the audience about the dangers in their geographical zone. Both the types of the news employ expect to fulfill this function. And since during the edited news some hours later there were fewer possible developments, the edited news made use of a little less mental state/expectation evidentials. Knowledge The use of this sub-value in the breaking news is almost three times as high as in the edited news. The two types of news employ a little different stylistic means for conveying the evaluation. The breaking news uses four evaluators: know, have an idea, have information, aware; and edited news employs only three: know, unaware, unknown) with the ratios 0.073 and 0.055 respectively. Obviously, this sub-value can evaluate the mental state of individuals as having knowledge or lacking knowledge. The degree of negation in both the types of the news differs. Logically, the breaking news nature presupposes a lesser degree of knowledge. In both the types of the news the presence of knowledge prevails. However, in both the breaking news and in the edited news there are 57 percent of knowledge and 43 percent of lack of knowledge. Considering the fact that during the breaking news outlets there is the lack of information about the event, newsreaders and reporters still demonstrate the same knowledge like after getting more data about the situation. The following examples might help shed light on the situation: we know that over the next what some 15 20 minutes that it will continue to hit other parts of of the country .. (CNN) we dont really know what will happen later (CNN) we know this point that the tsunami warning has been issued covering (CNN) Kamela I know you were being evacuated there from the train station (CNN) we dont know at this point what sort of damage what sort of casualties being involved (CNN) what we know at this point and this is a major earthquake in Japan is classified as a great earthquake (CNN)

69 we do know that is the final rating on the scale (Weather Channel)

A higher amount of knowledge evaluations (72.5 percent in the breaking news) could be explained by the discourse functions of this parameter. As the examples show, apart from stating what is unknown at the moment of reporting journalists often employ the evaluation of mental state/knowledge for recapping and repeating the known information. The repetition also explains the higher frequency of (lack of) knowledge in the breaking news. Moreover, by using the personal pronoun we for recapping, they include the audience in the same epistemic community. In the edited news this is slightly different: The actual quake I know occurred several hours north of Tokyo by car (CBS) I know this myself because I have a son there who goes to school (CBS) No one knows how many homes have been damaged or destroyed (BBC World News) In these examples from the edited news it is evident that the mental state/knowledge evaluations are used for strengthening the credibility of the conveyed information. 5.7. The Evaluations of Un/possibility or Un/ability This parameter deals with the evaluation of what is possible or impossible. On the whole, (im)possibility/(in)ability evaluations make up 4.2 percent among the others. The breaking news employs this evaluative parameter more often than the edited part.
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 possibility/ability impossibility/inability 27 19 21 Breaking news Edited news 58

Figure 8. Distribution of (Im)possibility and (In)ability Evaluations in the Corpus

you can see people evacuated on top of the buildings (NHK)

70 we can talk some more about that (CNN) you ah can see that just the enormous enormous devastation (CNN) Sorry sorry Katherine to interrupt you but we can go live now to a press conference (BBS World News) A large amount of such evaluations are present in the breaking news part. It is clear from these examples that in the breaking news the newsreaders employ this evaluation primarily for attracting the audiences attention to the images, for managing the communication between the specialists, just for stating the facts, for describing the ongoing events through the use of modality. This designation of (in)ability emphasis is much less present in the edited news. Actually, there are 41 instances of similar evaluation in the breaking in contrast with only 12 in the edited news. This specificity of live commentary explains the predominance of ability markers in the breaking news. Other instances of (im)possibility/(in)ability evaluations (mainly in the edited news) fulfill the functions of expressing an opinion of the events developments and speculating about possible outcomes and preconditions of the event: But authorities said they were not able to reach the area (Associated Press) The sheer weight of water made it impossible at time to work out what was land (Al Jazeera) All the planning in the world couldnt have foreseen (Al Jazeera)

Regarding the stylistic variety of this evaluative parameter, the breaking news makes use of 11 evaluative means (can, could, impossible, cant, may, perhaps, no way, capable, couldnt, inability, cannot) making up the ratio of 0.2, while the edited news uses only 8 lexical items (impossible, can able to, could, may, cannot, couldnt, not able, cant) with the ratio of 0.14. The Combination of Reliability and Possibility The corpus is abundant in the combinations of possibility and reliability since it is especially frequent for a developing event or an event rich in consequences. Therefore, the main function of this combination is to express a possible development (median reliability in all the instances) through stating that this situation is able to occur:

71 what that means at this point is that the tsunami could be heading in the next couple of hours (CNN) the scenes youre watching in Japan could be repeated along your coast (CNN) so we can see Haiti strength earthquakes for a few day maybe even longer (Weather Channel) What concerns the distribution of reliability/possibility in the corpus, there are 115 evaluators of this combination, which makes up 3.9 percent of all the evaluations. The breaking news part comprises 69 instances of this combination, while the edited news employs 46 evaluators. In the breaking news all the reliability/possibility evaluations are of medium reliability, and all except two express a positive possibility. Stylistically, they are equal 8 various evaluators for both the types of the news (ratio of 0.14). 5.8. The Evaluations of Style Similarly to the parameter of mental state, the parameter of style is generally encountered in combinations with other parameters, mostly evidentiality. However, the sub-value of hedging is a peculiar feature to look at separately. This paper employs a wide approach to hedging in discourse. Firstly, the term hedging was coined by Lakoff. He defined the term as follows: Words whose job is make things fuzzy or less fuzzy (1972: 195). There is no big difference between the use of hedges in the breaking and edited news. There are 62 hedges in the breaking news compared to 56 in the edited news. The edited news part contains more hedges than it was expected. The very fact that later news outlets are supposed to have more information available and more data confirmed is surpring. The most frequent evaluators are presented in Figure 8.

72
25 20 20

15

14 12 10 11 8 4 1 0 nearly 11 Breaking news Edited news

10

0 about sort of around kind of

Figure 9. The most Frequent Evaluators of Hedging in the Corpus

Bednarek made a conclusion that hedging is simply not regarded as part of the genre of the news story by journalists (2006: 181). Unlike the print media, television news genre employs hedging much more often. And breaking news must be the genre that makes use of hedging most of all. In my corpus the journalists make use of this evaluative parameter for approximating the data, the extent of yet unknown damage, the consequences of the event, moderating the certainty of knowledge claims (Thompson and Hunston 2000: 10). The evaluation in the breaking news are conveyed with the help of 12 lexical items (about, around, kind of, sort of, some, between, like, in a way, roughly,

something like, more or less, almost) with the ratio of 0.22. The edited news employs 13 various words for the same purpose (about, around, kind of, sort of, nearly, in some respect, in a way, roughly, in a sense, estimate, nearly, or so, almost) (ratio of 0.2). Generalized content words, such as hedges (kind of, sort of) or general nouns (e.g. thing), also reflect the difficulty of more precise lexical expression under real-time production circumstances (although they can also be used deliberately to be vague or imprecise). Conversely, writers who have the time to revise and polish their output can use a wider range of words and more complex grammatical structures (such as heavy embedding in noun phrases []). Other processing considerations, such as the preference for placing longer constituents at the end of the clause (end weight []), apply to both spoken and written registers (Biber et al. 1999: 43)

73

Since news discourse tends to be precise and objective, it follows from this quote that live television commentary cannot avoid hedging. Therefore, its amount in the breaking news is higher than in the edited. 5.9. The evaluations of In/comprehensibility As stated above, the parameter of in/comprehensibility evaluates the events, entities, situations in terms of the degree which determines how they are understood or not understood by the speaker. Figure 10 demonstrates the distribution of

in/comprehensibility in the corpus.

18 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 2 0 Comprehensibility Incomprehensibility 5 Breaking News Edited News 14 15

16

Figure 10. Distribution of (in)comprehensibility evaluations in the corpus

It is surprising that in the breaking news there is almost the same amount of incomprehensibility evaluators (only one more in the breaking news) and comprehensibility ones. Yet more striking is the finding that in the edited news the amount of incomprehensible evaluations is more than three times higher than the comprehensibility ones. The comprehensibility of the breaking news is nearly three times higher than that of the edited news. It means that during the live commentary the newsreaders and reporters understand and can explain the events better than after analyzing them and getting more information. That is highly unlikely in mass media. However, this situation can become clearer if we look at the following examples: we understand the French press agency saying that a number of people were injured after a roof caved in (BBC World News)

74 well, its difficult to know how anybody could cope with this wall of water that continues to pour over the fields (BBC World News) put things in a perspective for us and we understand Dale in on the phone right now (Weather Channel) here now the big question is whats next what other areas in the Pacific are gonna be affected (Weather Channel) yeah you know when he comp- eh we understand the Japanese prime minister is speaking (Weather Channel) eh we understand it was about ah a hundred and 20 kilometers off the coast (Al Jazeera) warning has to be formulated in the studio so ahh which is very very difficult to give useful warnings to anybody (BBC World News) casualties that are going to be occurring along Japan again simple because of the eh speed at which it travels (CNN) In these examples the incomprehensibility is employed in order to express the inability to assess and perceive the scope of the event, inability to predict the consequences. This is also a means of expressing negative emotivity, when the reporters emphasize that they cannot comprehend the extent of the disaster and possibilities for a survival. On the other hand, the comprehensibility evaluators function as a means for repeating the information that is already known, thus involving the evaluation of mental state (knowledge). Repetitions are quite common in breaking news. Moreover, comprehensibility markers are also used for the connection with the news room and letting the news outlet directors know that their message is transmitted to the audience (as in the third example from Weather Channel). On the whole, evaluations of comprehensibility represent only 1.7 percent of all evaluations in the corpus. Breaking news make use of 15 different words (understand, difficult, cant tell from, big question, unclear, make perfect sense, strange, get an idea, get a better reading, get a clear picture, in a daze, hard, cant speak for, easiest, get sense) with the ratio of 0.27, while the edited news encompass 16 lexical items (incomprehension, raise questions, come to life, hard, difficult, understand, dazed, uncertainty, see more complete picture, get a better idea, difficulty, hard to absorb, question, mystery, puzzled, chaos) making the ratio of 0.29.

75 Combinations of comprehensibility and reliability Altogether, the evaluations of comprehensibility and reliability take up 3 percent of the corpus. This combination is represented only by the following lexical items: clear, clearly, no question. The amount of evaluators in the edited news corpus noticeably predominates: 15 instances compared to only 5 ones in the breaking news. The stylistic variety has the ratios of 0.27 and 0.092 for the breaking and edited news respectively. The high reliability is logically always combined with comprehensibility and low reliability with incomprehensibility. There is only one instance of low

reliability/incomprehensibility in the edited news, the rest of the evaluations are of high reliability/comprehensibility. These images clearly capture the power of the tsunami but from above (SKY News) Clearly, many people are now trapped in their homes (SKY News) We are getting a clear picture today of the destruction from Fridays earthquake (CBS) And clearly the epicenter is in Japan (BBC World News) the devastation from Fridays earthquake and tsunami is now starting to become clear (BBC World News) The ground started shaking, buildings were swaying, clearly keeping people here on edge (CBS) Bednarek argues in her study (2006) that the evaluative force of clearly and clear is relatively fixed, independently of the domain it is used in. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that these evaluators are used in my corpus in order to support the reliability of subjective interpretations, rather than stating of facts (73). Furthermore, the evaluative combinations of comprehensibility and reliability are obviously used for attracting the audiences attention to the screen by emphasizing the legibility of the image transmitted. It might also be aimed at raising the authority of the news channel and the quality of their news making in the eyes of the audience.

76 5.10. The Evaluations of Un/necessity The total score of necessity/unnecessity evaluations in the corpus is modest. There are only 30 instances of it in the breaking news and 19 instances in the edited news. Necessity/unnecessity takes only 1.7 percent of all the evaluations. Figure 11 clearly shows that the majority of evaluations refer to the positive part of the cline and events are evaluated as necessary. It is important to note that newsreaders give much more evaluations of necessity in the breaking news rather than in the edited (6 instances compared to only 1). However, in the breaking news newsreaders do not evaluate along the necessity-unnecessity cline referring to the events presented and discussed. Let us look at the following examples: none- needless to say the Pacific tsunami warning center has extended the caution across a vaaaast area (BBC World News) the coastal town of Sendai and causing yet more destruction and you have to say seeing the pictures that we are seeing death (BBC World News) indeed and of course you know Ivan I think we need to point out to our audience (CNN) I have to say watching this Chris doesnt this reminds you a little bit of what you saw Katrina (Weather Channel) In the presented examples the function of the necessity/unnecessity evaluations is to manage the discourse of the journalists themselves. Moreover, the necessity or unnecessity of mentioning something makes emphasis on the importance of the information that follows. The necessity/unnecessity evaluations in the edited news partially differ from those of the breaking: The evaluation of the quake is needed (NHK) Its in a sense almost their duty to get back to work (BBC) Even so it will need help (BBC World News) So we will have to leave this area (BBC World News)

So, in the edited news there is a tendency to use necessity/unnecessity evaluations to refer to the immediate actions that need to be undertaken.

77
30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Necessity Unnecessity 6 1 24 18 Breaking News Edited News

Figure 11. Distribution of Necessity and Unnecessity Evaluations in the Corpus

As figure 11 clearly shows, the necessity prevails over the unnecessity evaluations. The reason for that could be explained by the news agents position of authority, especially in the breaking news when the simultaneous development and narration cannot provide alternative points of view. What is more, they are the narrators of the events, and at that point the viewer relies only on their knowledge. Therefore, presenters feel obliged to emphasize the necessity of importance of some things and irrelevance of others; therefore, they might provide an opinion about the developments of the event. As expected, the stylistic variety of edited news is richer than that of the breaking news. With the overall quantity of 30 evaluations there are only 5 lexical items employed for its expression (have to, needless, need to, need, not necessarily) making the ratio of 0.092, while the edited news makes use of 8 words (be needed, have to, duty, desperate for, need necessary, need to, get to) with 11 fewer evaluations and the ratio of 0.14. Absence of must is peculiar. It is a frequent modal verb for denoting necessity or obligation (Biber et al. 1999). However, the television news outlets of a natural disaster do not contain it. Biber et al. point out that in academic discourse, in contrast to conversation, it is somewhat more common marking personal obligation than logical necessity (494). Like in academic discourse, the journalists are not supposed to express personal obligation when reporting on something. All in all, I have discussed all the evaluations and their combinations represented in the corpus of breaking and edited news. The most frequent evaluations are those of evidentiality and its combinations. The least popular evaluations in the

78 corpus are the parameters of (in)comprehensibility and (un)necessity, taking up only 1.7 percent each. The parameter which combines the biggest amount of evaluative is also that of evidentiality. The parameters of (in)comprehensibility and (un)necessity are the poorest in the corpus concerning their representation.

79

6. Discussion and Conclusions

The present study has explored the distributions of evaluations in two types of the news: breaking news and edited news. All 10 evaluative parameters from Bednareks framework (2006, Bednarek and Caple 2012) were detected in these news genres. Moreover, some of the evaluative parameters were found to be combined together in one lexical item. The most frequent evaluation was that of the evidentiality (including its combinations with other parameters). The overall percentage of this parameter makes up 39.4 percent of all the evaluations in the corpus. The second most representative parameter was that of importance with 9.5 percent. The parameter of reliability with 9.4 percent is situated close to the parameter of importance. The next salient evaluation in the corpus is the parameter of emotivity with 9.1 percent. Mental state also takes a salient place encompassing 8 percent of all the evaluations. The rest of the parameters and combinations enjoy a lower significance in the discourse of television news under the topic of natural disasters. The parameter of unexpectedness follows next having 6.6 percent of evaluations in the corpus. Then goes the parameter (un)possibility with 4.2 percent, style (hedging) with 4 percent, and the combination of possibility and reliability with 3.9 percent. The smallest representation of evaluations is connected with the parameters of (in)comprehensibility (1.7 percent), necessity (1.6 percent), the combination of emotivity and importance (1.3 percent), and finally the combination of comprehensibility and reliability (with only 0.6 percent of evaluators in the corpus). 6.1. Differences between breaking news and edited news Before the beginning of the research and analysis several research questions were formulated: RQ 1: How are the events evaluated in the live breaking news reports in comparison with edited news reports? RQ 2: What type of news is more stylistically varied? The main hypothesis that was set up concerned the amount of evaluations in both the parts of the corpus. Following the rules of common logic it was hypothesized that there would be more instances of evaluations in the breaking news rather than in the prepared ones. It was explained by the personal deduction that due to the absence of

80 a prepared script and the lack of information and data about the disaster because of its recency, there should be a great deal of speculation in the breaking news. The speculation of possible damage and consequences and putting forward various suppositions could have required more linguistic evaluative devices. The second hypothesis concerned the stylistic diversity of these types of news. In contrast, it was hypothesized that the evaluative lexical items (the stylistic variety of the news language) in breaking news would be highly repetitive, but in the edited news they would be much more stylistically diverse. This assumption was caused by the fact that during the live coverage reporters tend to overuse repetitions and poorer variety of lexical items because of the absence of preparation for a live commentary and the general stress of the situation. What concerns the first research question, the general result indicates that in the breaking news reporters tend to evaluate the events and entities more often than in the edited news. So, during live coverage, the newsreaders, reporters, and their interviewees employ various parameters of evaluation more frequently (58.4 percent out of the whole corpus). Consequently, the journalists in the prepared news employ only 41.6 of all evaluation in the corpus. However, this is pretty much generalized and each evaluative parameter has its own peculiarities in the television news discourse. What concerns the parameter of (un)necessity, the reporters in breaking news indeed use the evaluative language more than in the edited. The evaluation of necessity significantly prevails over the unnecessity. There is nothing striking about this finding. The same is true about the evaluations of (un)possibility and (in)ability. The breaking news format employs more evaluations of this type. Peculiar is the result that the positive part of this parameters cline strongly predominates in the breaking news. It is explained by the newsreaders constant emphasis on the audiences ability to observe the footage of the disaster. It turns out the frequent repeating of you can see is a distinct feature of live coverage. The use of the evaluations of (in)comprehensibility is also more frequent in the breaking news. Surprising is the finding that in the breaking news there is almost the same amount of incomprehensibility evaluators (only one more in the breaking news) and comprehensibility ones. Yet more striking is the finding that in the edited news the

81 amount of incomprehensible evaluations is more than three times higher than the comprehensibility ones. It is impossible to believe that during the live commentary the newsreaders and reporters understand and can explain the events better than after analyzing them and getting more information. The explanation lies in the fact that the reporters in breaking news frequently employ comprehensibility evaluators for recounting and repeating the facts and data they already know about the reported event. As expected, the positive evaluations in the parameter of emotivity are almost non-existent in comparison with the negativity. The tragic nature of the event accounts for that. Positivity is used only in relation to the lucky escapes from the disaster. What is peculiar about this parameter is that the breaking news makes much less use of emotivity than the edited news. This is explained by the fact that the editors in the description of the earthquake and tsunami used many more entities with descriptive modifiers, which obviously had a negative meaning. As for the parameter of importance, its evaluators significantly prevail in the corpus of the breaking news. As for the unexpectedness, its use is also more salient in the breaking news. Concerning these two parameters, the predominance of the evaluations in the breaking news is explained by the need of the journalists to attract the attention of the audience and to justify the choice of the breaking news format. It is not surprising that the evaluations of reliability also predominate in the live coverage of natural disasters. Due to the absence of confirmed facts and data the reporters have to speculate on the possible damages and consequences. Therefore, the assessment of the events future development and its impact are highly speculative. What concerns the parameter of evidentiality, just like in Bednareks study of printed media (2006) the parameter of evidentiality is not represented individually but it is combined with other evaluative parameters. On the whole, its predominance in the breaking news is twice as much as its presence in the edited news. The same is true for the parameter of mental state and hedging. Since the results of evaluation in breaking and edited news were bases on the news outlet on one particular topic, the generalizations may be true mainly for the news of natural disasters.

82 Let us turn now to the second research question. It concerns the stylistics variety of the evaluators used in the corpus. Like in the first research question, the hypothesis was confirmed. It can be concluded that despite a lower percentage of evaluation in the corpus, the edited news employs a wider variety of words and expression for evaluating. However, the stylistics gap between the two types of news discourse is not that large. The average ration for the breaking news part is 0.258, while for the edited news it is 0.269. The stylistic variety of some evaluative parameters is higher for the breaking news format than for the edited one. This is true for only for those parameters and their combination which rate is higher in the breaking news. All in all, the research questions were answered and the hypotheses which were put forward in the beginning of the research turned out to be confirmed. The evaluations used in the television discourse under the topic of natural disasters and the printed news from Monika Bednareks study (2006) have a lot of similarities. First of all, the most salient evaluation in both the printed and spoken news discourse is relatively the same. In the printed news evidentiality and all its combinations also occupy the top place in the hierarchy of evaluations. However, the parameter of (un)expectedness in the printed news has a much higher significance than that in the television news (9.5 percent in comparison with 6.6 percent). Considering the fact that the breaking news is supposed to emphasize the unexpectedness of the news story, this is surprising. However, the parameter of importance is different in this respect. It is more logical to have 9.4 percent of importance in the breaking news and only 2.4 in the printed media. The parameter of comprehensibility is almost equally the same in both the types of news (0.58 in the printed news and 0.6 in the spoken news). The evaluations of emotivity are surprisingly abundant in the printed news media, even though the subject-matters of the studied news stories were less dramatic than the ones from the current research. A higher stylistic diversity of the evaluators in the printed media is also effortlessly explained. The laws of the newspaper news story genre allow the journalist more time and order to produce the text of the article. When the news writers and news editors who work on television channels produce a news text, they are constantly pressed for time when it comes to producing a piece of news. What is more, the television channels most frequently (and this is the case with the current research) have

83 to report on the news of the day. The next day their news is likely to be completely different. However, the news stories analyzed by Bednarek (2006) have a more important relevance and linger in the news discourse for longer times. On the whole, the edited news appears to be more formal. These two pairs of synonyms (fed up on edge and wanna want to) are used in the parameter of mental state/volition evaluation. Fed up and wanna come from the breaking news, while on edge and want to are from the edited news. Informality in the breaking news corpus must be caused by the unpreparedness to speak. Chovanec (2009) also found informality as a distinct feature of live text commentary. Montgomery (2007) asserts that over the years the speech of journalists has become more informal. However, there is a claim requires a much more detailed research. Moreover, there is a claim that: In previous eras of broadcasting, presenters in many radio and TV formats would have adopted what amounts to a mediator or diplomat persona, bridging between different kinds of conversation or explaining points made in one conversation to participants in another. Presenters in equivalent roles now, by contrast, frequently position themselves as a sort of peoples representative, asking questions that an audience might want asked and saying out loud what the audience privately thinks. The contemporary interviewing agenda is often one of puncturing pomposity, simplifying technicality, and trying to cut to the chase through circumlocution and deception (Durant and Lambrou 2009: 113) Since there is a tendency on modern channels to employ the breaking news approach even to not very important events, it can be concluded that the news discourse is becoming more informal in general. This informality might also be a trial of the mass media to bridge the gap between them and the audiences. More than two decades ago it was already pointed out that [j]ournalists routinely take into account what they assume the average reader will understand, and this assumption influences their style (van Dijk 1988a: 76). Undoubtedly, the tendency of the television towards informality news discourse cannot be denied. 6.2. A Possible Application of the Results It is obvious that covering live events without preparation is a complicated task for any journalist. Furthermore, covering such events like the tsunami on March 11th 2011 in Japan requires a certain preparation and knowledge of specific vocabulary. Undoubtedly, news presenters are taught and certainly undergo some preparation for

84 working live and commenting on unexpected developments. But still, the stress of a live broadcast and the unforeseen changes in the reported events might bewilder the most consummate professional, even though they are most likely trained to present in the most bewildering situations. I believe that the findings of this thesis could also be used by journalists, reporters, and announcers. The outcome of this thesis is a concise memo-instruction, a mini-glossary for news readers and reporters who work live. This is not a universal memorial. It concerns only a certain topic. This research allowed me to take a close look at the vocabulary of the breaking and edited news on the topic of natural disasters. Therefore, the memo based on this topic (see Table 8) was built in the form of a mini-instruction. Table 8. Subsidiary Instruction for Newsreaders and Reporters Evaluative Situation Expressions and Lexical Items for Live Coverage Comprehension the situation of Questions should be raised, it is difficult to comprehend, the population is in a daze, see a complete picture, chaos, hard to absorb, uncertainty, make perfect sense Negativity of the devastating, infernal, traumatic, it blows the mind, staggering, situation shocking, rip, take the breath away, scary, heart-wrenching, beautiful, unfortunately, alarming, traumatic, heart-breaking, amazing, terrific, terrible, destructive, death, dramatic, ablaze, horrific, worrying, violent, disaster, rock, batter, catastrophic, monster, relentless, grim, disturbing, raging, fearsome, tragedy, desolation, scary, it tears the mind, ferocity, appalling, horrific, shocking, frantic, bear down, horror, onslaught, desperation, grinding, violent, overwhelming, menacing, dramatic, deadly, crisis, roaring, apocalyptic, ferocious Description of the powerful, massive, major, largest ever, hardest, extremely, great, situations importance extreme huge, phenomenal, substantial, eminent, unbelievable, significant,

remarkable,

enormous,

important,

incredible, thousand times stronger, notable, intense, key, potent, sizable, impossible, powerful, fifth largest, colossal, most powerful in history, first ever, biggest recorded, incredible, extensive, biggest since records began, toughest since WWII, largest on record, massive, great, immense, largest in living

85 memory, epic, phenomenal, record, super, mega, tremendous, striking, absolutely unlike anything, beyond experience Evaluating reliability the definitely, of course, obviously, sure, no doubt, exactly, not absolutely sure, presumably, likely, barely, unlikely, ruin any chance Indicating source the observations measures, confirmed, be recorded, confirmed, estimated, monitor, indicate, witness, observe, get word, get information, notice, sign, obviously, illustrate, demonstrate, footage The expression of sadly, concern, alarmed, worried, worry, scared, fed up, panic, the and newsreaders shock, surprised, dazed, painful, emotional, panicked, panic, news actors calm, orderly, horrified, stunned, helpless, on edge, nervous, heart-broken, fearful, frustration

feelings

These expressions and lexical items could be used for the reporters training of live coverage. Moreover, they could be put on the prompter in front of the newsreaders eyes during the live coverage. That would be wise for a news outlet director and editor to assess and identify the most suitable evaluators and to draw the newsreaders attention to them. However, this instruction can be used mainly for reporting on one particular topic, that of the natural disasters. Anyway, such mini-instructions could also be created for each particular topic, which is highly likely to trigger the format of breaking news. 6.3. Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research On the whole, starting the research of breaking news discourse with the evaluations employed by news presenters might have been too specific. Especially if we consider the fact that there is basically no previous research on this genre. It would have been more logical and more rational to only analyze the common features of the language of breaking news and to postpone the comparison of breaking news with edited news. Anyway, after the transcription of all the news and the study of evaluation I may make a few general conclusions about the lexical and syntactic levels of breaking news. Just like in the live text commentary studied by Chovanec (2009), breaking news tends to employ and overuse colloquial vocabulary, shortening of lexical items and phrases

86 (wanna, gonna), expletives (my goodness!), interjections (bam!, boom!), stylistics personalization (calling the tsunami wave a monster), and a great amount of

repetitions. Without detailed study and analysis it was evident that the edited and prepared news did not make use of this language at all. Though these are just generalizations, I could not rely on them in my analysis. Still, a more detailed and systematic analysis of this genre of news is required. I must admit, that this type of research lacked when I was analyzing the evaluation used in the corpus. What concerns other limitation of this study, the current research does not take into consideration the use of lexical means for emphasis and intensity. The scope of this thesis does not allow to analyze the devices for intensifying the meaning of words. While conducting the analysis of evaluations it was obvious that intensifiers impact the position of the evaluator on the cline. Moreover, the use of intensifiers in the breaking news part differed from that in the edited news. The combinations of date might be very different. It is worth to look at one channel over a period of time. And this could yield slightly different results. As in the given corpus there are variations not only between individual channels. It is impossible not to take into consideration the individual features of the journalists. What is more, this study did not take into consideration the numbers and estimations concerning the event. The number of casualties, the magnitude of the earthquake, the height of the tsunami waves are in itself evaluative, and can also influence the audience or evoke emotive reactions. The intonations used in the news, the lengthening of words, pauses transmit the emotional state of the news presenters too. Obviously, these instances can impact the audience. From the first sight, there are many more of these devices in the breaking news corpus. And it is evident that they play a special part in the evaluation too. This could be a suggestion for further research too. But then the audience studies would need to be conducted. One more limitation of the conducted research is the impossibility to avoid the evaluations about the nuclear disaster in the edited news corpus. As discourse is an inseparable phenomenon (Norris and Rodney 2005) we cannot extract a certain piece without the loss of meaning and a possible risk of falsifying the results. On the other

87 hand, the evaluation of an event of another nature could also falsify the results concerning the evaluation of natural disasters in news discourse. But anyway, even in the studies breaking news there were very short updates on the situation of the nuclear power station in Japan and the situation at them in the first hours after the disaster. Still, the studies edited news included more information on this technological catastrophe. Even if comparison of breaking and edited news is a rather narrow topic for news discourse, researching and analyzing all the evaluations for an almost 60 thousand words corpus is still a broad topic. The scope of this thesis did not allow to analyze and discuss each evaluative parameter in detail. Moreover, far not all the sub-values of the evaluative parameter were given sufficient attention: the research of some of them was not conducted. For instance, the scope of this thesis did not allow to look in more detail at the reasons of the use of various sub-values of evidentiality. Prosody of breaking news can be evaluative in itself. For instance, the pace of speech in the breaking news emphasized the unexpectedness and importance of what was reported. Moreover, the competence of the newsreaders during live coverage can be investigated as well. But what was most striking was the use of pauses during the reading the script in the prepared news outlets. Almost in each prepared news report and after each meaningful utterance the newsreaders made quite a significant pause. This pause was accompanied by the footage of the earthquake and the tsunami. It was designated for the audiences assessment of the extent of the event. Surprisingly, these pauses attached a much greater importance to the narrated events. It goes without saying that Bednareks parameter-based evaluative framework did not allow these importance evaluations to be taken into consideration and to be included in the final results. This realm of news discourse and especially the discourse of breaking news still stays rather under researched. I suppose that the best suggestion for a further research is to investigate breaking news in more detail and, first of all, to make the classification of the various language levels used in it. Another suggestion for a further research concerns the evaluation of emotivity. Not only importance can be expressed through the intonation. It also concerns the parameter of emotivity. Raising the intonation to the highest levels of the pitch and especially uncommon words emphasis and some words lengthening (e.g.

88 huuuuuuuuuuugely, maaaajor, hoooorible) contribute to the evaluation of the events. From the first sight there are many more of these devices in the breaking news than in the edited news. They obviously also play in important role in the evaluation.

89

References
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92 Watson, William Joe. 2005. Cognitive effects of breaking news: establishing a media frame to test audience primes (Doctoral dissertation). Kent, Ohio: Kent State University. Wynne, Martin. (Ed.). 2005. Developing Linguistic Corpora: A Guide to Good Practice. Oxford: Oxbow Books/Arts and Humanities Data Service. Online Sources: Martin, James R. The Language of Attitude, Arguability and Interpersonal Positioning. <www.grammatics/appraisal/index.html> von Fintel, Kai. 2006. Modality and Language. In Encyclopedia of Philosophy Second Edition. in Donald M. Borchert. Detroit: MacMillan Reference USA. <http://mit.edu/fintel/www/modality.pdf http://web.mit.edu/fintel/www/modality.pdf> Fry, Kathryn. Disasters and Television. The museum of broadcast communications. <http://www.donpugh.com/TV/The%20Media%20Event/disasters%20and%20t v.htm> An educational site for seismologists.

<http://www.geo.mtu.edu/UPSeis/magnitude.html>

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Appendix 1
The video extracts and the transcripts used during the research in this thesis are recorded on the attached DVD:

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Appendix 2
Table 9 sums up the evaluative devices used by Bednarek (2006), Bednarek and Caple (2012), Rooryck (2005), Nichols and Chafe (1986). The research conducted in this thesis allowed me to add some distinct evaluators to the table. They are in bold. Table 9. The final list of discovered evaluators Parameters and their categories Evaluators Hearsay To be told, hear, say, claim, advise, scream, sob, shout, whisper, mutter, threat, warn, promise, vow, pledge, accuse, blame, praise, approve, make clear, hint, boast, admit, predict, voice, update, report Sensory evidence Hear, feel, perceive, sense, see, think, experience, visibly, audibly, reveal, Evidentiality show, betray, seem, appear, look, reveal, expect, fear, show, look, sound, display, sign General Knowledge Well-known, famously, infamously, allege, believe, notoriously, as we know Proof Evidently, evidence/proof that, confirm, apparently, tests found/confirmed Unspecified Source Hedge Emerge, turn out, mean Sort of, kind of, about Easy, difficult, mystery, cant understand, clearly, no explanation for/why, am uncertain how to, be beyond human comprehension, there

95 are simply no words to describe how, In/comprehensibility ambiguous, complex, less than definite, in plain language, vague, clarify, uncanny, unclear, begs the question why, raise questions about/why, clear, confused, make perfect sense, strange, get an idea, in a daze, puzzled, chaos Senior, top, leading, influential, prominent, supreme, star, crucial, vital, landmark, empire, made legal history, Un/importance historic, key, momentous, of the century, high-rolling, celeb, famous, significant, urgent, emergency, keynote, major, minor, modest, substantial, ever recorded, phenomenal, massive Peaceful, beauty, welcome, aggressive, Emotivity plain, sexual predator, wannabe, fiasco, racist, clanger, cash in on, worse, inappropriate, irresponsible, devastating, alarming, heartwrenching, violent, rip, menacing, apocalyptic, catastrophic, blaze Counterexpectation Unexpectedness Astonishing, unprecedented, amazing, extraordinary, unexpected, completely unprepared, without warning, sudden Contrast Contrast/comparison But, although, despite Negation

96 Un/possibility or in/ability (im)possible, can (not), could (not), able to, perhaps Un/necessity Need to, have to, it takes, to be, no choice but, should, needless, duty, get to, desperate for Fake Genuine Reliability Low Fake, artificial, choreographed Genuine, Could, possible, may, unlikely, put in doubt, hardly, barely, ruin any chance Median Likely to, probable, will, potential, perhaps, will, going to High Certainly, must, undoubtedly, doomed to, definitely Emotions Appalled, fear, yearn, love, hope, anxiety, concern for, furious, troubled, cheered, happy, pleasure, enraged, panic, frustration, stunned, horrified, Mental State Volition nervous Deliberately, end up, assume, accept, refuse to, want, would like, willing to, intend to Beliefs Suspect, believe, think, suppose, consider Expectation Knowledge Neutral High expectations, expect, Know, unaware, have information Say, tell, speak of, talk

97 Illocutionary Demand, promise, accuse, advice, beg, blame, challenge, complain, declare, defend, insist, offer, order, persuade, pledge, question, request, rumor, stress, suggest, threaten, urge, vow, warn Style Declarative Acquit, plead guilty, adjourn, rule, return a verdict, award, charge, clear, convict, diagnose, fine, find guilty, hear, sentence, Discourse Signaling Paralinguistic Add, conclude, go on, reply Whisper, scream, mutter, sob, shouts of

98

Declaration
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