Contextual frames and their argumentative implications
a case study in media argumentation
Informazioni aggiuntive
Autori
Tipo
Articolo pubblicato in rivista scientifica
Anno
2012
Lingua
Inglese
Sommario
On the basis of a case-study based on the argumentative analysis of news in the press, this paper introduces and discusses strategic manoeuvring with contextual frames. Drawing on the linguistic notion of frame, I introduce the concept of contextual frame to refer to the news context, i.e. the background against which a certain event is presented as a piece of news. I argue that newspapers and journalists make use of contextual frames in the apparently neutral genre of news reporting to propose specific interpretations of the facts at issue, which become the basis for explicit comments and editorials. To show how this works, I analyse a case of newspaper coverage of a complex episode using the pragma-dialectical notion of strategic manoeuvring and the Argumentum Model of Topics (AMT) to analyse argument schemes. I show that, in the use of contextual frames, there is a prominent relation between presentational devices (the lexical choices which build up the frame) and topical potential; contextual frames provide the implicit material premises (endoxa) which are at the basis of argumentations through which newspapers interpret and comment the news.
Parole chiave
Discourse, argumentation, news in the press, media, news and comments, Italian newspapers, frames, contextual frames, context, pragma-dialectics, strategic manoeuvring, topical potential, presentational devices, AMT model, Argumentum Model of Topics, argument schemes, loci, endoxa, implicit premises, lexical choices
Periodico
Discourse studies
Volume
14
Numero ( Mese )
2
Pagine (o numero dell’articolo)
197-216
Diffusione
Licenza
Licenza non definita
Visibilità
Pubblico
Status open access
Green
