The Language of the Film Criticism
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MASARYK UNIVERSITY FACULTY OF EDUCATION DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE Language of the press The Language of the Film criticism Diploma thesis Brno 2020 Supervisor: Author: Doc. Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrátilová Bc. Vendula Stará Declaration I hereby declare that I wrote this thesis myself and worked independently using only the sources stated in bibliography. Prohlášení Prohlašuji, že jsem závěrečnou diplomovou práci vypracovala samostatně, s využitím pouze citovaných zdrojů v souladu s Disciplinárním řádem pro studenty Pedagogické fakulty Masarykovy univerzity a se zákonem č. 121/2000 Sb., o právu autorském, o právech souvisejících s právem autorským a o změně některých zákonů (autorský zákon), ve znění pozdějších předpisů. V Brně dne 10. 8. 2020 ………………………... Vendula Stará 2 Acknowledgment I would like to express my sincere gratitude to my diploma thesis supervisor, doc. Mgr. Olga Dontcheva-Navrátilová, for her guidance through the process of writing this thesis. She kindly navigated and provided me with valuable advice and essential resources. 3 Anotace Tato diplomová práce se zabývá zkoumáním jazykových prostředků používaných v tisku, konkrétně pak jazykových prostředků, které jsou využívané ve filmových recenzích publikovaných v tisku. V první, teoretické, části práce, je představeno několik pohledů a poznatků z oblasti daného žánru, praktická část pak zkoumá specifický vzorek filmových recenzí za účelem potvrzení či doplnění zmíněných teoretických poznatků. Za účelem bližšího prozkoumání daného žánru byl vytvořen soubor filmových recenzí publikovaných ve dvou významných britských denících, The Guardian a The Independent. Pro detailnější analýzu je v práci využito i metod korpusové lingvistiky. Klíčová slova jazyk, film, recenze, noviny, analýza, korpusová lingvistika Abstract This diploma thesis deals with language of the press, specifically language of the film reviews published in newspapers. In the first, theoretical, part, several established views and notions connected to the given genre are introduced, the practical part examines a specific film review sample in order to confirm or expand on the previously discussed knowledge. For the purposes of closer examination of the genre, and analysis of its linguistic features, review sample is compiled of 40 film review articles from two major British newspapers, The Guardian and The Independent. Methods adopted from corpus linguistics are applied for more detailed analysis. Key words language, film, review, newspaper, genre, analysis, corpus linguistics 4 Table of contents Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 6 1 Theoretical part .................................................................................................................... 8 1.1 Journalism .................................................................................................................... 8 1.2 The business of publishing newspapers ....................................................................... 8 1.3 The role of journalism ................................................................................................ 10 2 Description of the research sample .................................................................................... 12 2.1 Film reviews ............................................................................................................... 12 2.1.1 The Guardian ...................................................................................................... 13 2.1.2 The Independent ................................................................................................. 16 3 Analysis ............................................................................................................................. 18 3.1 Format diversity of the film review genre .................................................................. 18 3.2 Subjectivity of the content ......................................................................................... 22 3.3 The use of informal language ..................................................................................... 26 3.3 Corpus-based analysis ................................................................................................ 30 3.3.1 Film review corpus ............................................................................................. 30 3.3.2 The use of adjectives in the review sample ........................................................ 33 3.3.3 Polarity of evaluation .......................................................................................... 35 4 Conclusions ....................................................................................................................... 49 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 50 Bibliography of the cited sources .......................................................................................... 50 Bibliography of the film review articles ............................................................................... 52 5 Introduction It is the twenty-first century and the whole world is immensely influenced by the media. Whether it comes in the form of newspapers, radio, television or the Internet, it is the main source of information for people from all over the globe. And even if the primary purpose may be merely to transfer information and enhance the knowledge of the recipients, the actual impact is much more significant. Apart from delivering a message, the media have the power to influence people’s opinions, beliefs, and the perception of the world in general, both positively and negatively. The growth of media has raised the platform for journalism which can, apart from delivering factual information, also affect opinions of many. As for the content, distinction can be made between hard and soft news. According to Busà (2014) the former category represents stories about current happenings in the world, for instance catastrophic events, crimes, changes in economy or public statements of influential political figures. Focusing on providing the readers with facts, circumstances, reasons and implications, it often fills the front pages of newspapers. The latter is more concerned with issues which are of interest to the readers and generally affect their everyday lives, including entertainment, art, sports or lifestyle. In other words, the hard news informs whereas the soft news primarily entertains. According to this classification, one can deduce that it is soft news which makes more considerable impact on readers’ views and opinions, it tends to be more personal and subjective. One of the genres of the soft news category is a review. According to the Oxford Learner’s Dictionary “review is a report in a newspaper or magazine, or on the Internet, television or radio, in which somebody gives their opinion of a book, play, film/movie, etc.” (Definition of Review in English, n.d..). Review is therefore genre which can be very subjective and tends to use a lot of evaluative and descriptive language. When talking specifically about film reviews, two groups can be distinguished. First is comprised of reviews written by professional journalists and critics, published in newspapers and magazines. Second, and much more numerous, group contains reviews written by ‘ordinary’ members of the audience, posted online. Because writing a review is mostly the matter of expressing one’s opinion, it gained in popularity, especially with the advent of Internet. There are websites specifically created as platforms for internet users to evaluate and recommend films, for instance csfd.cz in Czech Republic, or the world’s most popular 6 imdb.com. The users can write their review and post it online for anyone to read, or simply rate the film in percentage terms. And even though one might say that because they are only written by laymen, not much attention should be drawn to them, thanks to the sheer volume of the reviews, these websites have been established as great sources of relevant information about the film industry. Some even use the rankings as a guide for deciding which films to watch. This thesis, however, focuses on the reviews belonging to the first and smaller group, that is the ones published in the press. As for the language in which the newspapers are written, one description or characterisation simply cannot be produced. As Crystal & Davy (1969) point out, it is dangerous to make generalization about 'Journalese', as the use of language in the press is commonly labeled. There is no precise linguistic definition nor is it all homogeneous. The language is very eclectic and large number of styles and devices can be found in newspaper reporting. And numerous variables play the role there as well, from different formats of newspapers to the variety of audiences (Crystal & Davy, 1969). This thesis aims to explore the genre of film reviews published in newspapers, to search for common characteristic features that can be found in the articles, whether it is the format or the language of the review, features that could explicitly define the genre. To narrow and specify the aim, the practical part of the thesis focuses on the reviews published in two major British newspapers: The Guardian and The Independent. By selecting a sample of forty film reviews, specific corpus is created, in