Evaluation and Stance in War News: A Linguistic Analysis of American, British and Italian television news reporting of the 2003 Iraqi war

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In a world in which advanced communication technologies have made the reporting of disasters and conflicts (also in the form of breaking news) a familiar and normalised' activity, the information we present here about television news reporting of the 2003 war in Iraq has implications that go beyond this particular conflict. Evaluation and Stance in War News functions as a tool kit for the critical evaluation of language in the news, both as raw data in need of interpretation and as carefully packaged products of information management' in need of unpacking'. The chapters offer an array of theoretical and empirical instruments for revealing, identifying, sifting, weighing and connecting patterns of language use that construct messages. These messages carry with them world views and value systems that can either create an ever wider divide or serve to build bridges between peoples and countries.

Reviews

"For all those interested in media coverage of the Iraq war this is a most important book - one that casts new light on how we understand and study bias in the news. For the first time we have a close, rigorous, systematic and comparative account of British, U.S and Italian television news of the war through the prism of a corpus linguistic approach to its discourse. Rich in evidence, analysis and careful argument, it opens up new and better ways of studying the perennial questions of neutrality, bias, and editorialising in television news." - Dr Martin Montgomery, University of Strathclyde, UK

Author Bio

Louann Haarman is Professor of English Language and Linguisticsat the Faculty of Political Science, University of Bologna, Italy. Linda Lombardo is Professor of English Language and Linguisticsat the Faculty of Political Science, Luiss Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy.