Investigating language and the media

Drawing on a case study of newswriting, this article presents media linguistics as a subdiscipline of applied linguistics (AL), dealing with a distinctive field of language use. Language in the media is characterized by specific environments, functions, and structures. Medialinguistic research, however, tends to overcome disciplinary boundaries. In multidisciplinary collaboration, it accesses a wide range of knowledge generation and transformation methods. In interdisciplinary collaboration, it contributes precise analyses of situated linguistic activity to the development of empirically-grounded communication studies. In transdisciplinary collaboration, it tests these theories against reality and solves practical problems. The article first outlines such a practical problem (Section 1). After explaining key concepts of media lingustics (2), it focuses on the linguistics of newswriting (3) and four related research methods (4). Finally, it discusses how the value media linguistics can add to both theory and practice of language use and the media (5).