Preformulating the News
An analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases
Preformulating the News is a study of press releases and of how they anticipate the requirements of journalistic writing. Drawing from a large corpus (Dutch and English), it is argued that the genre’s peculiar audience-directedness can be related to a number of metapragmatic textual features and that this sheds light on the asymmetries of what can be termed the ‘newsmaking’ and ‘news management’ processes.
In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.e. ‘projected’, discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a ‘preformulating’ role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake of the 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested that the study’s findings support a hegemonic view of the media.
In analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.
In the first chapter the study of press releases is put in the context of institutional discourse and the details of a linguistic pragmatic research method are proposed. Chapter 2 looks at the complex receiver roles in press releases, which are characterized as indirectly targeted, i.e. ‘projected’, discourse. In chapters 3 to 6 a data analysis of the metapragmatics of press releases is presented: in particular, it is shown that self-reference, pseudo-quotation and explicit semi-performative play a ‘preformulating’ role in press releases. Chapter 7 offers a case study of the press releases that the American multinational Exxon issued in the wake of the 1989 Alaska oil spill. In the eighth and final chapter it is suggested that the study’s findings support a hegemonic view of the media.
In analysing the much neglected genre of press releases, the book aims to contribute to the study of the language of the news. At the same time, it explores more general issues of participation and footing as well as reflexive language, including deixis, reported speech and performativity.
[Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, 60] 1999. xviii, 428 pp.
Publishing status: Available
© John Benjamins Publishing Company
Table of Contents
-
Preface | p. ix
-
A Pragmatic Perspective on Press Releases
-
Projected Discourse
-
Self-Reference in Press Releases
-
Self-Quotation in Press Releases
-
The Functions of self-Quotation in Press Releases
-
Explicit semi-Performatives in Press Releases
-
A Case Study of the Valdez Corpus
-
Conclusions and Perspective
-
Appendix | p. 315
-
Notes | p. 359
-
-
Author Index | p. 418
-
Subject Index | p. 424
Cited by (83)
Cited by 83 other publications
Nikitina, Jekaterina
2024. Chapter 4. Press releases of COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers. In Persuasion in Specialized Discourse [Argumentation in Context, 22], ► pp. 92 ff. 
Hansen, Lea Vindvad, Irene Pollach & Margit Malmmose
2023. Journalistic evaluation in financial news. Discourse & Communication 17:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
Saber, Anthony
2023. Style, ergostylèmes, style spécialisé. Etudes de stylistique anglaise :17
Salamon, Errol
2023. Media Unions’ Online Resistance Rhetoric: Reproducing Social Movement Genres of Organizational Communication. Management Communication Quarterly 37:2 ► pp. 368 ff.
Simon, Chedza, Sian Rees & Richard Thomas
2023. Behind the scenes: A critical discourse analysis of Botswana government power plays on Facebook during two post-millennial state-owned organizational crises. Public Relations Inquiry 12:3 ► pp. 321 ff.
Andone, Corina
Catenaccio, Paola
2022. Press releases as a hybrid genre. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 9 ff.
Jacobs, Geert, Henk Pander Maat & Tom Van Hout
2022. The discourse of news management. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 1 ff.
Jansen, Frank
2022. Conciseness, an outsider’s perspective and a smooth intonation contour. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 115 ff.
Lazzeretti, Cecilia & Marina Bondi
2022. ‘A hypnotic viewing experience’. promotional features in the language of exhibition press announcements. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 567 ff.
Ozgun, Burcu & Tom Broekel
2022. Assessing press releases as a data source for spatial research. REGION 9:2 ► pp. 25 ff.
Pander Maat, Henk
2022. Editing and genre conflict. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 87 ff.
Petrocelli, Emilia, Laura Di Ferrante & Elisa Ghia
2022. Multi-Word Combinations in Science Communication: A Corpus-Driven Study of University Press Releases. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies 12:4 ► pp. e202224 ff.
Van Hout, Tom & Geert Jacobs
2022. News production theory and practice. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 59 ff.
Walby, Kevin & Babatunde Alabi
2022. Examining Press Conference and Press Release Accounts of Canadian Police Shootings. Canadian Journal of Criminology and Criminal Justice 64:1 ► pp. 30 ff.
De Cock, Sylvie & Sylviane Granger
2021. Stance in press releases versus business news: a lexical bundle approach. Text & Talk 41:5-6 ► pp. 691 ff.
Jacobs, Geert & Astrid Vandendaele
2021. Leveraging Student-Led Interviews in the Multilingual Workplace. In Good Data in Business and Professional Discourse Research and Teaching, ► pp. 141 ff.
Jacobs, Thomas & Geert Jacobs
2021. Chapter 3. “It is, perhaps more than ever before, a matter of participation”. In Participation, Engagement and Collaboration in Newsmaking [Discourse Approaches to Politics, Society and Culture, 94], ► pp. 43 ff.
Ketelaars, Pauline & Julie Sevenans
2021. It’s a Matter of Timing. How the Timing of Politicians’ Information Subsidies Affects What Becomes News. Political Communication 38:3 ► pp. 260 ff.
Liu, Shuai & Jingyuan Zhang
2021. Using Metadiscourse to Enhance Persuasiveness in Corporate Press Releases: A Corpus-Based Study. Sage Open 11:3
Meyer, Philipp
2021. Promoted Media Coverage of Court Decisions: Media Gatekeeping of Court Press Releases and the Role of News Values. Journalism Studies 22:6 ► pp. 723 ff.
Verkest, Sofie
2021. Reflexivity and Negotiation in Collaborative Journalism on air Quality. Journalism Studies 22:11 ► pp. 1525 ff.
Verschueren, Jef
2021. Reflexivity and Meta-awareness. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 117 ff.
Verschueren, Jef
2022. Notes on the role of metapragmatic awareness in language use. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) ► pp. 439 ff.
Haapanen, Lauri
2020. Modelling Quoting in Newswriting: A Framework for Studies on the Production of News. Journalism Practice 14:3 ► pp. 374 ff.
Haapanen, Lauri & Daniel Perrin
Breeze, Ruth
2019. Positioning “the people” and Its Enemies: Populism and Nationalism in AfD and UKIP. Javnost - The Public 26:1 ► pp. 89 ff.
Boulanger, Pier-Pascale & Chantal Gagnon
2018. Financial Innovation and Institutional Voices in the Canadian Press: A Look at the Roaring 2000s. International Journal of Business Communication 55:3 ► pp. 383 ff.
Chyi, Hsiang Iris & Angela M. Lee
2018. Commercialization of Technology News. Journalism Practice 12:5 ► pp. 585 ff.
Huan, Changpeng
2018. News Values and Journalistic Stance. In Journalistic Stance in Chinese and Australian Hard News, ► pp. 155 ff.
RUIQI, ZHOU & ZHAO YONGCUI
2018. A STUDY OF GENERIC INTERTEXTUALITY IN CORPORATE PRESS RELEASES. i-manager’s Journal on Management 12:4 ► pp. 21 ff.
Boulanger, Pier-Pascale
2017. Quand les médias traduisent la crise : les métaphores utilisées par la presse généraliste pendant la crise des subprimes. Meta 61 ► pp. 144 ff.
Clapton, Gary & Viviene E Cree
2017. Communicating concern or making claims? The 2012 press releases of UK child welfare and protection agencies. Journal of Social Work 17:1 ► pp. 71 ff.
Davier, Lucile
2017. Bibliographie. In Les enjeux de la traduction dans les agences de presse, ► pp. 303 ff.
Davier, Lucile
2022. Translating News. In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ► pp. 401 ff.
Gravells, Jane
2017. Researching the Representation of a Crisis. In Semiotics and Verbal Texts, ► pp. 3 ff.
Gravells, Jane
2017. Semiotic Discourse Analysis. In Semiotics and Verbal Texts, ► pp. 27 ff.
Rocci, Andrea & Carlo Raimondo
2017. Conference Calls. In The Handbook of Financial Communication and Investor Relations, ► pp. 293 ff.
Tesseur, Wine
2017. Incorporating translation into sociolinguistic research: Translation policy in an international non‐governmental organisation. Journal of Sociolinguistics 21:5 ► pp. 629 ff.
Alessi, Glen Michael & Geert Jacobs
2016. Reflections on the Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research. In The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research, ► pp. 1 ff.
Andone, Corina & Andrea Rocci
2016. Argumentation in journalism: Professional practices and the public sphere. Journal of Argumentation in Context 5:1 ► pp. 1 ff.
Delaloye, Laura
2016. Approche ethnographique et linguistique de l’écriture d’un éditorial. In Informer avec Internet, ► pp. 41 ff.
Lazzeretti, Cecilia
2016. Methodology. In The Language of Museum Communication, ► pp. 73 ff.
Lazzeretti, Cecilia
2016. Newly Emerged Museum Genres. In The Language of Museum Communication, ► pp. 165 ff.
Lazzeretti, Cecilia
2016. Exhibition Press Announcements: An Evolving or Dissolving Genre?. In The Ins and Outs of Business and Professional Discourse Research, ► pp. 204 ff.
Lazzeretti, Cecilia
2016. Theoretical Background. In The Language of Museum Communication, ► pp. 23 ff.
Rocci, Andrea & Margherita Luciani
2016. Economic-financial journalists as argumentative intermediaries. Journal of Argumentation in Context 5:1 ► pp. 88 ff.
Rosenkranz, Julian & Irene Pollach
2016. The framing and reframing of corporate financial results. Corporate Communications: An International Journal 21:1 ► pp. 103 ff.
Skorczynska Sznajder, Hanna Teresa
2016. A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF KEYWORDS IN ENGLISH-LANGUAGE CORPORATE PRESS RELEASES FROM EUROPEAN COMPANIES: INSIGHTS INTO DISCURSIVE PRACTICES. Discourse and Interaction 9:1 ► pp. 49 ff.
Cotter, Colleen
2015. Discourse and Media. In The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, ► pp. 795 ff.
PETERSON, MARK ALLEN
2015. Speaking of news: Press, democracy, and metapragmatics in a changing India. American Ethnologist 42:4 ► pp. 673 ff.
Van Hout, Tom
2015. Between Text and Social Practice: Balancing Linguistics and Ethnography in Journalism Studies. In Linguistic Ethnography, ► pp. 71 ff.
Bremner, Stephen
2014. Genres and Processes in the PR Industry. International Journal of Business Communication 51:3 ► pp. 259 ff.
Gagnon, Chantal
2014. Traduction et politique canadienne : quel est le rôle des journalistes entre 1942 et 1995 ?. Meta 58:3 ► pp. 522 ff.
Lischinsky, Alon & Annika Egan Sjölander
2014. Talking Green in the Public Sphere: Press Releases, Corporate Voices and the Environment. Nordicom Review 35:s1 ► pp. 125 ff.
Mäntynen, Anne & Susanna Shore
2014. What is meant by hybridity? An investigation of hybridity and related terms in genre studies. Text & Talk 34:6
Schäffner, Christina, Luciana Sabina Tcaciuc & Wine Tesseur
2014. Translation practices in political institutions: a comparison of national, supranational, and non-governmental organisations. Perspectives 22:4 ► pp. 493 ff.
Wickman, Chad
2014. Rhetorical Framing in Corporate Press Releases: The Case of British Petroleum and the Gulf Oil Spill. Environmental Communication 8:1 ► pp. 3 ff.
Kampf, Zohar
Maat, Henk Pander & Caro de Jong
2013. How newspaper journalists reframe product press release information. Journalism 14:3 ► pp. 348 ff.
Sissons, Helen
2012. Journalism and public relations: A tale of two discourses. Discourse & Communication 6:3 ► pp. 273 ff.
CORONA, ISABEL
2011. Arbitration recontextualized. World Englishes 30:1 ► pp. 129 ff.
Corona, Isabel
2011. Confidentiality at risk: The interdiscursive construction of International Commercial Arbitration. Discourse & Communication 5:4 ► pp. 355 ff.
Frandsen, Finn & Winni Johansen
2010. Crisis Communication, Complexity, and the Cartoon Affair: A Case Study. In The Handbook of Crisis Communication, ► pp. 425 ff.
Kopytowska, Monika
2010. Unveiling the Other - the Pragmatics of Infosuasion. Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 6:2
Kopytowska, Monika
2015. LANGUAGE AND JOURNALISM. Critical Discourse Studies 12:3 ► pp. 370 ff.
Lindholm, Maria
2008. A community text pattern in the European commission press release? A generic and genetic view. Pragmatics. Quarterly Publication of the International Pragmatics Association (IPrA) 18:1 ► pp. 33 ff.
McLaren-Hankin, Yvonne
2008. `We expect to report on significant progress in our product pipeline in the coming year': hedging forward-looking statements in corporate press releases. Discourse Studies 10:5 ► pp. 635 ff.
Raudaskoski, Pirkko & Paul McIlvenny
2008. Identity Work and Transnational Adoption: Discursive Representations of the ‘Adoptive-Parent-To-Be’ in the Satellite Texts of a Danish TV Documentary Series. In Identity Trouble, ► pp. 58 ff.
Briggs, Charles L.
2007. Anthropology, Interviewing, and Communicability in Contemporary Society. Current Anthropology 48:4 ► pp. 551 ff.
Majstorović, Danijela
2007. Construction of Europeanization in the High Representative's discourse in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Discourse & Society 18:5 ► pp. 627 ff.
Majstorović, Danijela
2009. Generic characteristics of the Office of the High Representative's press releases. Critical Discourse Studies 6:3 ► pp. 199 ff.
Lassen, Inger
2006. Is the press release a genre? A study of form and content. Discourse Studies 8:4 ► pp. 503 ff.
Burger, Marcel
2005. Les enjeux des discours de débat dans les médias. Communication :Vol. 23/2 ► pp. 125 ff.
Burger, Marcel
2010. Le cadrage de la communication dans les médias. Communication :Vol. 27/2 ► pp. 18 ff.
Jacobs, Geert, Liesbeth Opdenacker & Luuk Van Waes
2005. A Multilanguage Online Writing Center for Professional Communication: Development and Testing. Business Communication Quarterly 68:1 ► pp. 8 ff.
Koller, Veronika
2005. Critical discourse analysis and social cognition: evidence from business media discourse. Discourse & Society 16:2 ► pp. 199 ff.
Koller, Veronika
2007. Die diskursanalytische Methode. In Qualitative Marktforschung, ► pp. 347 ff.
Koller, Veronika
2009. Die diskursanalytische Methode. In Qualitative Marktforschung, ► pp. 347 ff.
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
[no author supplied]
2021. Fundamentals of Sociopragmatics. In The Cambridge Handbook of Sociopragmatics, ► pp. 13 ff.
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 27 october 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.
Subjects
Main BIC Subject
CF: Linguistics
Main BISAC Subject
LAN009000: LANGUAGE ARTS & DISCIPLINES / Linguistics / General