Title: Parliamentary language
This paper takes a series of representations of the same event (an excerpt from the debate on Europe in the British House of Commons on 1st March 1995) and compares them with respect to treatment and the language used.
The materials consist in: (i) a video recording of the opening of the debate, (ii) a report of the debate (just as the vote was being taken) on the main national radio news (BBC 4, 10 o`clock news), (iii) the report and commentary in `The Times' newspaper the following day and, (iv) the relevant passages in the official written record, Hansard.
The focus of the investigation will be to attempt to throw some light on connections between the different contexts of production and reception and linguistic features in the four different types of texts.
References:
Duranti, A. & C. Goodwin (1992) RETHINKING CONTEXT. Cambridge: CUP
Gregory, M. (1967) `Aspects of varieties differentiation.' JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS 3,2. 177-98.
Halliday, M. (1989) SPOKEN AND WRITTEN LANGUAGE. Oxford: OUP. 2nd edn.
Fowler, R. LANGUAGE IN THE NEWS. London: Routledge.
Slembrouck, S. (1992) `The parliamentary "verbatim" report: the written construction of spoken discourse.' LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE 1,2. 101-19.