- •Contents
- •Preface
- •Part I. Print media Unit 1 mass media: general notion
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •It’s wrong to portray fathers as domestic incompetents – but women still
- •Unit 2 newspaper headlines and their linguistic peculiarities
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 3 lexical features of newspaper articles
- •Names of some organisations, establishments, parties
- •Abbreviations
- •Acronyms
- •Neologisms
- •Colloquial words
- •Shortened words
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Former Mandela Fund Official Says Model Gave Him Diamonds
- •The International Herald Tribune, August 6, 2010
- •A. Too many clichés, at the end of the day
- •B. Social class affects white pupils’ exam results more than those of ethnic minorities – study
- •C. Blair’s job was done by 1997: to numb Labour, and to enshrine Thatcherism
- •In Downing Street, Blair never fulfilled his early promise and let Brown in.
- •Question time in Oldham Data profiling is helping Oldham police analyse the work of its community support officers
- •Airport and station get walk-in nhs centres
- •People's peers take back seat in the Lords
- •Not off to uni? What an excellent idea...
- •VIII Welsh Assembly launches £44m learning grants
- •4. Three men jailed for rape in Oxford after victim sees film on mobile.
- •Unit 4 grammatical and syntactical properties of newspaper articles
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Cronyism alert on plan for more people’s peers
- •Revealed: Queen’s dismay at Blair legacy
- •Victim / radiation / in £50m drugs / cancer / is denied
- •Unit 5 feature articles: essence, structure, lexical means, stylictic properties
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks Task 1. Read Article a and comment on its genre. What sphere of public life does it reflect? a. After 40 years, the terrorists turn to politics
- •In the East Belfast Mission hall, the uvf, uda and Red Hand Commando announced they had put weapons “beyond use”
- •С. A slice of Middle England Ruaridh Nicoll journeys in search of the perfect pork pie and finds himself seduced by the olde worlde charms of... Leicestershire
- •D. Gordon Brown: There is life after No 10
- •In his first major interview since losing the election, the former Prime Minister tells Christina Patterson why he’s thriving as a constituency mp – and happily living without the trappings of power
- •Unit 6 analytical genres of print media: editorial, op-ed, column, lte
- •I. Editorial
- •III. Сolumn
- •IV. Letters to the editor
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •How Not to Fight Colds
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •Clean and Open American Elections
- •It’s our class, not our colour, that screws us up
- •Task 12. Read the two ltEs below. What motive was behind writing those letters?
- •I. Giving an Edge to Children of Alumni
- •The New York Times, October 4, 2010
- •II. Childhood misery
- •Task 13. Read the two letters again, and observe the difference between them. What arguments does the author of first letter put forward to drive his message across?
- •Unit 7 print media: revision
- •Task 3. Read the article below and define its genre. What are the constituent parts of the text? House prices: Heading south
- •I was a terrible teenage drinker – I couldn't get hold of alcohol How do young people drink so much today? And how do they get served, asks Michael Deacon
- •Task 7. Read the article below and say what genre it is. Translate the italicised words and word combinations, analyse them. Twitter: Bad sports
- •Test 1. Print media
- •Variants 1-16.
- •Part II. Broadcast media Unit 8 learning to understand broadcast media texts
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 9 learning to differentiate broadcast media news and analytical genres
- •The press conference and the statement are an integral part of the live reporting and are not accompanied by the news presenter’s comments.
- •Fragments of the press-conference, the statement, as well as the parliamentary debate could be quoted in the video brief news, the report and the commentary that are part of the news bulletin.
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Audio Track 6
- •Audio Track 7
- •Bonfire of the quangos? It’s more like a barbecue: Despite all the fanfare, just 29 will be completely abolished
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •A shot in the arm – поиск наркотика; стимул (перен.) a soft touch – обходительный человек; pie in the sky – журавль в небе, пустые посулы
- •He wants the Scottish government to give a shot in the arm to the tourist industry (Sky News)
- •A flop – unsuccessful film or play gazumping – cheating a potential buyer of a house
- •Nifty – very good or attractive (nifty fifties – «золотой возраст»)
- •Some examples of former slang words to booze – to drink alcohol
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 12 stylistic and syntactical peculiarities of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Hungarians battle to hold back toxic sludge spill from Danube
- •Vessel mishap
- •Test 2. Lexical and syntactical propertires of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •Unit 13 grammatical properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Uk’s official economic growth estimates revised down
- •Austerity won’t trigger double-dip recession, economists say
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsens
- •Ireland’s economic outlook worsened on Monday as the country’s central bank
- •Unit 14 learning to work with broadcast media texts
- •Sun turns its back on Labour after 12 years of support
- •General election 2010: did it really happen?
- •The coalition government: Sweetening the pill
- •Test 3. Morphological properties of broadcast media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •Unit 15 regional accents of british broadcast media (scottish, welsh, irish)
- •Control Questions
- •Practical Tasks
- •Unit 16 broadcast media: revision
- •Murder rate at lowest for 20 years
- •Rogue Trader at Société Générale Gets Jail Term
- •The Guardian, October 5, 2010 Task 9. Find special terms in the second half of the material (they are not marked). Read the piece again, find clichés and idioms in it.
- •Task 38. Read the article below and say what crime is reflected in it. What are its underlying reasons?
- •Sham marriages on “unprecedented scale”
- •Final test on mass media discourse
- •Variants 1-16.
- •In class:
- •In class:
- •References
- •Учимся понимать и интерпретировать медийные тексты на английском языке
Sun turns its back on Labour after 12 years of support
Stephen Brook and Patrick Wintour
The Sun has turned its back on New Labour after more than a decade of support and thrown its weight behind the Conservatives with a front page editorial today with the headline: “Labour’s Lost It.”
The switch to the Conservatives was timed to inflict maximum damage on Labour at its annual conference in Brighton and came hours after Gordon Brown told conference delegates to “never give up” and “fight to win”. The paper said: “After 12 long years in power, this government has lost its way. Now it’s lost “The Sun’s support too.”
As Britain’s top-selling daily newspaper, with a circulation of about 3m a day and a readership double that, the paper prides itself on being politically influential. Its famous 1992 headline: “It’s the Sun wot won it,” boasted that the surprise Conservative general election victory was down to its campaign against then Labour leader Neil Kinnock.
“We warned back in 2005 in that election that Labour was on its last chance,” The Sun’s political editor, George Pascoe-Watson, told Sky News last night. “We feel now after four further years that they have failed the country.”
Downing Street, reluctant to become involved in a slanging match, offered no response to the announcement last night. But Brown was understood to be meeting advisers last night to discuss how best to deal with the news. The move by The Sun will be seen as a blow, overshadowing Brown’s attempt to breathe fresh life into Labour’s flagging poll fortunes.
The endorsement The Sun gave Tony Blair was seen as a key moment in the 1997 general election. Whether The Sun was leading or following public opinion on the eve of a Labour landslide remains a moot point. Nonetheless in 1997 it illustrated starkly the change in Labour’s perceived electability, 15 years after the paper declared that if Neil Kinnock became prime minister, the last person to leave Britain should turn out the lights. The Labour party will wait to see if The Sun’s switch will be followed by other News International papers. The Times has always been a strong supporter of New Labour, while The Sunday Times has more frequently backed the Conservatives.
The Guardian, September 30, 2009
Task 22. Answer the following questions.
1. What is The Sun? What is its circulation?
What does the headline It’s the Sun wot won it mean?
Why did the paper turn on Labour?
What was Downing Street’s reaction to the news – official and behind the scenes?
What is the Sun’s history of supporting a would be winner of the coming general elections?
Task 23. Watch Video 42 and say how it correlates with the article above?
Task 24. Watch the report again and unravel its 5W and H pattern. Use the tips provided below.
WHAT is the idea of the report?
WHEN (it all happened)?
WHERE no one be found reading the unfortunate paper?
WHY? (Trevor Cavanagh’s opinion)
WHO? (G.Brown’s reaction → Tony Woodley’s behaviour → Peter Mandelson’s comment)
HOW (serious is the blow for Labour)?
Task 25. What piece is more informative – broadcast or print? Why?
Task 26. Play Video 42 again. Freeze the frame when it reflects The Sun front pages on the Polling Day of 1997, 2001 and 2005. Play the file backward, still the picture at the Sun’s front page on the eve of 2010 elections.
Put down all four captions you see in the video, analyse the headlines’ syntactical and lexical structure, translate them into Russian.
Task 27. Close the gaps in the script below. Make its linguistic (morphological) and stylistic analysis. Group the grammatical and lexical means employed into expressive and neutral ones, write them down.
1. …1-2… only one paper you won’t find anyone …3… at the Labour Party conference…
2. In fact, you couldn’t …1… the Sun …2… in Brighton today.
3. The decision of the …1-3… newspaper to …4… G.Brown a …5-6… after his big speech is a cruel blow there.
4. The PM …1-4… on it.
5. In …1… , it’s …2… suggested Peter Mandelson was …3… angry, he used a very …4-5… talking to …6-7…
6. …1… , …2… ? …3… , they don’t seem …4… bothered about …5… criticism.
7. …1… are 25 % in the …2… . They are …3… , they are …4… , they can’t …5… around their leader for more than 10 minutes.
8. The paper felt it …1-2… and celebrated by …3… it was the Sun …4-6…
9. The thing is this …1-3… from the paper comes several months before the …4… election day but does mean they’ll be able …5-7… the pro Tory message with what one imagines will be the usual Sun ... 8…
10. The …1… election campaign already looked like a bit of a …2… for this party and without the Sun to …3… the Labour …4… it will be …5… much …6…
Task 28. Read the article to dip into the atmosphere of the UK 2010 general election.