Podcasting

Geert Jacobs
Ghent University
Table of contents

Of the wide range of digital communication media that have emerged over the past two decades, podcasting is witnessing one of the fastest and steadiest rises. With over 60% of America’s adult population now listening to podcasts (Edison Research 2023), it is hard to imagine that the first podcasts were only launched in the early 2000s (Hammersley 2004). Equally surprisingly, the first blockbuster podcast dates from as recent as 2014, viz. the investigative ‘true crime’ podcast series called Serial hosted by US public radio personality Sarah Koenig, while 2017 saw the start of the widely acclaimed Daily news podcast produced by The New York Times. In stark contrast with its rapid growth as a hugely popular instance of language in use, it is remarkable that there is virtually no work on podcasts in the wide domain of linguistic pragmatics. There does exist a body of interesting research that has looked at podcasts within communication sciences and media studies, and so one purpose of this chapter is to put podcasts on the map as a genre worth engaging with in the field of linguistic pragmatics.

Full-text access is restricted to subscribers. Log in to obtain additional credentials. For subscription information see Subscription & Price.

References

Baham III, Nicholas L., and Nolan Higdon
2022 Podcaster’s Dilemma: Decolonizing Podcasters in the Era of Surveillance Capitalism. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Berry, Richard
2016 “Podcasting: Considering the Evolution of the Medium and its Association with the Word Radio .” The Radio Journal–International Studies in Broadcast & Audio Media 14 (1): 7–22. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blommaert, Jan and Dong Jie
2020 Ethnographic Fieldwork: A Beginner’s Guide. Bristol: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brazil, David
1997 The Communicative Value of Intonation in English. Edited by Gillian Brown. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooren, François
2010 Action and Agency in Dialogue: Passion, Incarnation, and Ventriloquism. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2012 “Communication Theory at the Center: Ventriloquism and the Communicative Constitution of Reality.” Journal of Communication 62: 1–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2015 “Studying agency from a ventriloqual perspective.” Management Communication Quarterly 29 (3): 475–480. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooren, François and Fréderik Matte
2010 “For a Constitutive Pragmatics: Obama, Médecins Sans Frontières and the Measuring Stick.” Pragmatics and Society 1 (1): 9–31. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cooren, François & Sergeiy Sandler
2014 “Polyphony, Ventriloquism, and Constitution: In Dialogue with Bakhtin.” Communication Theory 24 (3): 225–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Declercq, Jana, Geert Jacobs, Felicitas Macgilchrist and Astrid Vandendaele
(eds) 2021 Participation, Engagement and Collaboration in Newsmaking. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dörnyei, Zoltán
2007 Research Methods in Applied Linguistics: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed and Methodologies. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
García-Estévez, Noelia and Manuel J. Cartes-Barroso
2022 “The Branded Podcast as a New Brand Content Strategy: Analysis, Trends and Classification proposal.” Profesional de la Información 31 (5). Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goffman, Erving
1979 “Footing.” Semiotica 25 (1–2): 1–29. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1981 Forms of Talk. University of Pennsylvania.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greene, Jacob
2018 “Advanced Exposition: Writing through Podcasts.” Composition Studies 46 (2): 137–162.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hammersley, Ben
2004 “Audible Revolution.” The Guardian, February 12. http://​www​.theguardian​.com​/media​/2004​/feb​/12​/broadcasting​.digitalmedia
Heller, Monica
2008 “Doing Ethnography.” In The Blackwell Guide to Research Methods in Bilingualism and Multilingualism. Edited by Li Wei and Margaret Moyer, 249–262. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hyland, Ken
2002 “What Do They Mean? Questions in Academic Writing.” Text & Talk 22 (4): 529–557. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobs, Geert
2023 “Entrepreneurial Podcasting: a Linguistic Ethnographic Perspective.” International Journal of Business Communication.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jacobs, Geert and Julia Valeiras
2024 “Whose Questions? Ventriloquation in Entrepreneurial Podcasts.” Discourse Studies 26 (6): 756–777. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jarrett, Kylie
2009 “Private Talk in the Public sphere: Podcasting as Broadcast Talk.” Communication, Politics & Culture, 42 (2), 116–135.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kress, Gunther
2010 Multimodality: A Social Semiotic Approach to Contemporary Communication. London: Taylor and Francis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Learmonth, Mark and Kevin Morrell
2019 Critical Perspectives on Leadership: The Language of Corporate Power. London and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lemerond, Saul and Leigh Rourks
2022 “The Virtues of Podcasting and Multimodal Literacies in the Creative Writing Classroom: Diversity, Voice, and the New Digital Environment.” Journal of Creative Writing Studies 7 (1): 1–20.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Llinares, Dario, Neil Fox and Richard Berry
(eds) 2018 Podcasting: New Aural Cultures and Digital Media. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McHugh, Siobhan
2022 The Power of Podcasting: Telling Stories Through Sound. New York City, NY: Columbia University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Meerman, David
2022 New Rules of Marketing and PR. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nee, Rebecca C. and Arthur D. Santana
2022 “Podcasting the Pandemic: Exploring Storytelling Formats and Shifting Journalistic Norms in News Podcasts Related to the Coronavirus.” Journalism Practice, 16 (8): 1559–1577. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
News, Talk & Text (Catenaccio, Paola, Colleen Cotter, Mark De Smedt, Giuliana Garzone, Geert Jacobs, Felicitas Macgilchrist, Lutgard Lams, Daniel Perrin, John E. Richardson, Tom Van Hout and Ellen Van Praet
) 2011 “Towards a Linguistics of News Production.” Journal of pragmatics 43 (7): 1843–1852. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Perdomo, Gabriela and Phillipe Rodrigues-Rouleau
2022 “Transparency as Metajournalistic Performance: The New York Times’ Caliphate Podcast and New Ways to Claim Journalistic Authority.” Journalism 23 (11): 2311–2327. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Poncini, Gina
2007 “Corporate Podcasts and Blogs: Exploring the Voices of Emerging Genres.” In Multimodality in Corporate Communication: Web Genres and Discursive Identity, ed. by Guliana Garzone, Gina Poncini and Paola Catenaccio, 147–166. Milan: Franco Angeli.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rampton, Ben
2007 “Neo-hymesian Linguistic Ethnography in the United Kingdom.” Journal of Sociolinguistics 11 (5): 584–607. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Schreyer, Stephan
2019 Podcasts in der Unternehmenskommunikation: Wie Sie mit Audioformaten ihre Zielgruppen erreichen. Wiesbaden: Springer Gabler. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Spinelli, Martin and Lance Dann
2019 Podcasting: The Audio Media Revolution. London: Bloomsbury PublishingGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stoltenkamp, Juliet, Jephias Mapuva, Yoliswa Khumalo and Carolyne Kies
2011 “Rolling out Podcasting to Enhance Teaching and Learning: A Case of the University of the Western Cape.” Instructional Technology 11.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin
(ed) 2019 The Business of Words. London and New York: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tulley, Christine
2011 “IText reconfigured: The rise of the podcast.” Journal of Business and Technical Communication 25 (3): 256–275.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vernuccio, Maria
2014 “Communicating Corporate Brands Through Social Media: An Exploratory Study.” International Journal of Business Communication 51 (3): 211–233. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
 
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue