INGLÉS I - TRABAJO PRÁCTICO Nº 5 – COMUNICACIÓN SOCIAL TEXTO: BELL, ALLAN (1996). Chapter 5: The Audience for Media Language in: The Language of News Media. Blackwell. Oxford UK & Cambridge MA., pp. 84-85. 1-Lea los datos bibliográficos, el título y la primera oración de cada uno de los párrafos. Reflexione sobre el posible contenido del texto. 2-A medida que lea el texto observe el uso de los verbos BE, HAVE y DO. Determine si son verbos auxiliares o verbos principales. 3-Observe lo expresado en negrita y cursiva. Reflexione sobre su posible traducción teniendo siempre en cuenta el contexto. 4-El autor afirma que la audiencia es probablemente el componente más investigado en la comunicación masiva. Desarrolle el planteo. 5-Explique cuáles han sido los diversos enfoques de investigación. 6-Mencione las siete características de comunicación masiva presentadas por McQuail y los diversos factores que influyen en la configuración del lenguaje mediático. The Audience for Media Language The audience are arguably the most important and certainly the most researched component of mass communication. The overwhelming bulk of ‘research’ on audiences is carried out for media organizations themselves. Most industry-funded surveys are concerned simply to count heads and describe them on a few demographic parameters, principally age, gender and occupation. Media live by the size and composition of their audiences, and information on these vital statistics is of consuming interest to owners and managers. Advertising rates are controlled by the number or kind of people who will be exposed to an advertisement. The very nature of broadcasting is such that research is required to find out whether there is an audience at all, since at the time communication the animator cannot know if anyone is actually listening. Many disciplines have approached audiences from their own perspectives. Sociological research has gathered information on the size of audiences and their structure. Social psychology has examined how audiences are affected by media content, or how they use that content. Cultural studies have considered how different kinds of people get different meanings from media content. Much early media concerned itself with the effects of mass communication on the audience – what do media do to people? After decades of contradictory and inconclusive studies (cf. Howitt 1982), the question was turned around – what do people do with media? This ‘uses and gratifications’ approach (for instance, Klapper 1960) waned in its turn, and interest in the power of mass communication has reasserted itself (McQuail 1987). Research into media effects is of little interest to us here. But another strand of audience-oriented research focuses on how audiences comprehend media content, and we shall examine this in chapter 11. The audience dimension provides the main defining features of mass communication. In one formulation, six out of seven characteristics of mass communication focus on the audience (McQuail 1969 a: 7): • • • • • • large audience relative to other communication situations public accessibility of mass media content heterogeneity of the audience simultaneous contact with widely separated individuals one-directional flow and impersonality of mass communication the mass audience as a creation of modern society The seventh characteristic McQuail singles out is the complex nature of media organizations, which we covered in chapter 3. The audience-related characteristics of mass media and their difference from face-to-face communication are the focus in this chapter. We shall look at several factors which influence the shape of media language: feedback and the lack of it, communicators’ stereotyping of the audience, the segmenting and layering of the audience, and those occasions when communicators and audience exchange roles.