Some pages of this thesis may have been removed for copyright restrictions. If you have discovered material in Aston Research Explorer which is unlawful e.g. breaches copyright, (either yours or that of a third party) or any other law, including but not limited to those relating to patent, trademark, confidentiality, data protection, obscenity, defamation, libel, then please read our Takedown policy and contact the service immediately ([email protected]) From Icon to Naturalised Icon: a linguistic analysis of media representations of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis Jane Schroder Gravells Degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2014 Aston University © Jane Schroder Gravells, 2014 Jane Schroder Gravells asserts her moral right to be identified as the author of this thesis This copy of the thesis has been supplied on condition that anyone who consults it is understood to recognise that its copyright rests with its author and that no quotation from the thesis and no information derived from it may be published without appropriate permission or acknowledgement. 1 Thesis summary Institution: Aston University Title: 'From icon to naturalised icon: a linguistic analysis of media representations of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis' Name: Jane Schroder Gravells Degree: Doctor of Philosophy Year of submission: 2014 Synopsis: This research explores how news media reports construct representations of a business crisis through language. In an innovative approach to dealing with the vast pool of potentially relevant texts, media texts concerning the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill are gathered from three different time points: immediately after the explosion in 2010, one year later in 2011 and again in 2012. The three sets of 'BP texts' are investigated using discourse analysis and semi-quantitative methods within a semiotic framework that gives an account of language at the semiotic levels of sign, code, mythical meaning and ideology. The research finds in the texts three discourses of representation concerning the crisis that show a movement from the ostensibly representational to the symbolic and conventional: a discourse of 'objective factuality', a discourse of 'positioning' and a discourse of 'redeployment'. This progression can be shown to have useful parallels with Peirce's sign classes of Icon, Index and Symbol, with their implied movement from a clear motivation by the Object (in this case the disaster events), to an arbitrary, socially-agreed connection. However, the naturalisation of signs, whereby ideologies are encoded in ways of speaking and writing that present them as 'taken for granted' is at its most complete when it is least discernible. The findings suggest that media coverage is likely to move on from symbolic representation to a new kind of iconicity, through a fourth discourse of 'naturalisation'. Here the representation turns back towards ostensible factuality or iconicity, to become the 'naturalised icon'. This work adds to the study of media representation a heuristic for understanding how the meaning-making of a news story progresses. It offers a detailed account of what the stages of this progression 'look like' linguistically, and suggests scope for future research into both language characteristics of phases and different news-reported phenomena. Key words: Discourse analysis, crisis communication, semiotics, news media 2 Acknowledgements I extend my grateful thanks to my research supervisor Judith Baxter, who has been a dedicated and inspiring research and teaching mentor over the last three years. Amongst many other things, Judith has encouraged me to embrace what 'doesn't fit' as an opportunity to learn, and has shown endless patience in advising me on my writing style. She has combined intellectual rigour with allowing me significant independence of thought, and I enjoyed every supervision session. Thanks also to Urszula Clark for being my Associate Supervisor – Urszula's early advice about the need for stamina has been much in my mind over the past few months of writing! When I began this thesis in 2011, our eldest daughter Hannah had finished her degree the year before and was still training, and Alice and Alex were both still at university. They have been wonderfully supportive and interested in my work, and I hope to make them as proud of me as I am of them. This timing meant that it fell to my husband Jonathan to support four of us financially, and (as the children had the good manners to study hundreds of miles away) one of us emotionally. He has never questioned either my desire or my ability to complete this PhD thesis, and I thank him for making 1) cups of tea 2) a happy working environment 3) the whole thing possible. I started my thinking about the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis by carrying out a series of interviews. The names of my interviewees remain confidential, but I am warmly grateful to them for their time and their expert insights. Two, whom I interviewed in London, were closely involved with the BP events from the perspectives of PR and crisis communications. In the US, I interviewed an environmental scientist at the respected University of New Orleans, and a journalist in my hotel room in the Garden District of New Orleans (this last adding a dash of undercover glamour sorely missing from my subsequent close examination of texts). Finally I would like to thank all my friends at Aston at and home, and the rest of my family (especially Susan, Gill and Steve) for their interest and their support, and above all for knowing when a glass of Sauvignon Blanc is in order. 3 List of contents 1 Introduction .................................................................................... 10 1.1 Why this topic at this time? ........................................................................................ 10 1.1.1 What is a business crisis? .....................................................................................12 1.1.2 The BP Deepwater Horizon crisis .........................................................................14 1.2 The argument of this thesis ........................................................................................ 17 1.2.1 My research journey ............................................................................................17 1.2.2 The structure of this thesis ..................................................................................18 2 Literature Review ............................................................................ 20 2.1 The representation of social phenomena ................................................................... 20 2.1.1 The construction of social phenomena through language ..................................20 2.1.2 The construction of social phenomena by the media ..........................................23 2.2 A semiotic approach .................................................................................................... 30 2.2.1 The study of semiotics .........................................................................................30 2.2.2 Semiology – de Saussure, Barthes, Baudrillard ....................................................31 2.2.3 Semiotics – Peirce ................................................................................................34 2.2.4 Four levels of semiotic interpretation ..................................................................37 2.3 The level of the sign .................................................................................................... 38 2.3.1 Language as sign...................................................................................................38 2.3.2 Language and Peircean sign forms .......................................................................39 2.3.3 Language features at the level of the sign ...........................................................42 2.3.3.1 Naming practices (events) and naming practices (participants) ..................... 42 2.3.3.2 Categorisation ................................................................................................. 43 2.4 The level of the code ................................................................................................... 44 2.4.1 Semiotic codes .....................................................................................................44 2.4.2 Language features at the level of the code ..........................................................45 2.4.2.1 Genre ............................................................................................................... 45 2.4.2.2 Intertextuality ................................................................................................. 54 2.4.2.3 Modality .......................................................................................................... 58 2.5 The level of mythic meanings ..................................................................................... 60 2.5.1 Connotation .........................................................................................................61 2.5.2 Language features at the level of mythic meanings ............................................62 2.5.2.1 Metonym and synecdoche .............................................................................. 62 2.5.2.2 Metaphor ........................................................................................................ 64 4 2.6 The level of ideology ..................................................................................................