A pragma-stylistic analysis of bbc news channel reports of Iraqi demonstrations

Abstract EN

A TV report is one of the finest forms of television news work which requires a high level of professionalism and a balance between the correspondent‟s subjectivity and the standards of „rational journalism‟ such as accuracy, objectivity, transparency, and impartiality.

Modes of speech and thought presentation are among the powerful tools of building the TV news reports.

When using these modes, the correspondents inevitably implicate additional meanings and emphasise some aspects that serve the main idea and the topic sentence of the report.

These additional meanings are often inserted indirectly by means of what is called in pragmastylistics evaluations.

The present study tries to apply a pragmastylistic model of analysis to highlight the available modes of speech and thought presentation and the associated evaluative strategies with these modes in TV news reports in general and preferable ones in the targeted report of the BBC News Channel concerning one of the contemporary public demonstrations in Iraq.

The study has reached some findings and conclusions, among which is that the free direct and indirect speeches as well as the internal narrations of thoughts are the most preferable modes of speech and thought presentation in the targeted TV news report, and that intertextuality and the reporters‟ explicit comments are the most frequently used external evaluations which are occasionally supported by some devices of internal evaluations like adopting evaluative verbs of speaking and evaluative adjectives of internal feelings of the reported protesters.