Reporting expressionsan english-spanish contrastive study of quality press

Résumé

The language embedded in quotations in newspaper reports is a powerful tool that can influence readers’ thought, in particular their position towards the state of affairs and/or the participants included in the quote (Fowler 1994). This thesis, entitled ‘Reporting expressions: an English-Spanish contrastive study of quality press’, investigates the subtle ways by which the media restructures the world in the discourse, which jeopardises its efforts to configure itself as an objective and unbiased information medium. Thus, this study aims at answering a broad research question: is news industry impartial or evaluative? To this end, I will analyse the linguistic features embedded in reporting expressions that may lead to ideological variations, thus provoking distortions of meaning of what was originally uttered by the information sources.The parameters that will be studied in this investigation are the following: reporting style; reporting verb, which comprises tense, aspect, voice and writer’s commitment; the source of information, considering the specificity and gender factors; reportative evidentiality; news values; and, finally, the prominence parameter, which addresses the study of headlines...