IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change of Television
News Broadcasting in Iran
Shahla Simin
Hosna Kasmaee
Atiye Ezzati
Freshteh Teimouri
Arineh Minasian
Department of English, University of Isfahan, Iran
Abstract
Sociolinguistics is descriptive study of the effect of any and all aspects of society
including: cultural norms, expectations and context on the way language is used and
the effects of language use on society. One of the aspects sociolinguistics focuses on
is the effect of the society on the language. Any change in the important aspects of
social structure and function - social organization - is likely to have a distinctive role
in language change. Languages change for a variety of reasons. Large-scale shifts
often occur in response to social, economic and political pressures. However, a
language can change dramatically if enough users alter the way they speak it and
Iranian speakers are not exception to this. Every generation brings about its specific
type of language, which has its own effect on a variety of social aspects, most
importantly on Mass Media and Electronic Media specifically on Television. The
process of change for Iranian media has been particularly explosive in the first three
decades of the twenty-first century. In this respect, the aim of the current study is to
investigate the reasons behind the language change of News Media in Iran and the
attitudes of the Iranian people towards these changes. The results obtained from both
the qualitative and quantitative data analysis of the questionnaires, distributed among
150 participants from different regions and generations, and interviews, taken of the
60 selected the participants, showed that 53% were for, 28% were opposed to and
10% were neutral toward the changes in the language of the News Media in Iran.
Keywords: mass media, electronic media, language change, sociolinguistics,
television
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
1. Introduction
The main traditions in the study of the Language of Media have plenty to say about
two sorts of changes (necessarily inter-related): social change(s) and language
change(s). In a society, different generations bring about their specific type of
language (due to the change(s) applied to the society in the era). Therefore, it could be
claimed that all the ideological loadings of linguistic varieties, at different levels of
language, change under the influence of social change(s). And this phenomenon has
its own effect on variety of social aspects, most importantly on mass media and
electronic media.
As Kamaruzaman Jusoff and Nurul N. Sahimi beautifully state: “Television is an
important tool for most people, young or old, as today most of the information is
delivered to the public via this technology. It can now be assessed easily via cables or
satellite, which could provide consumers with every type of information they need,
either for work, leisure, interest, and so on. With the emergence of this media, and the
production of various programs, television has caught the attention of most of the
people” (Kamaruzaman & Sahimi, 2009, pp.151-157).
With this background, the focus of this study is to find out the extent to which
television news programming is under the influence of audience speaking style, that
is, "how they use different linguistic styles to appeal to their respective audiences"
(Robertson, 2000, p. 3. As Bell (1991) pointed out that the audience is usually the
most important factor in choice of language style; “The essence of style is that
speakers are often primarily responding to their audience in the language they
produce…the audience are arguably the most important and certainly the most
researched component of mass communication…communicators do work with an
idea of the audience they are speaking to and what they want” (p.14). The results of
this study point out the centrality of the audience in the language of Television
programs (especially news programs). The results obtained from this study could be
supported by the manifestation of audience design in the ‘language’ and ‘style’ used
by the anchors.
2. Review of Literature
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
Since 1958 a lot of data has been gathered which points to the fact that the change of
the language of media is dependent on the language change of a society – i.e. the way
people speak – a fact which is overtly in relation with the circulation of different
generations of the society. The main reason behind this change is, as Giles and
Powesland put it, "The theory of accommodation". “The
accommodative
act
provides the sender (speaker) with rewards referred to in general terms as the
receiver’s (hearer’s) approval” (Giles and Powesland, 1975, pp. 232-233). In other
words, Accommodating is that the speaker can gain the ‘reward’ of the hearer’s
approval.
The original theory of accommodation relates to interpersonal encounters, but can
also be applied to the mass media (Bell, 1984). The theory of ‘audience design’ - a
sociolinguistic theory – was proposed by Bell (1984) which has grown up out of the
accommodation model mentioned earlier. Bell (1984) proposes that the kind of style
that a speaker uses is primarily dependent on the audience with whom they are
speaking to, as opposed to other factors such as amount of attention paid to speech.
Therefore, “Speakers design their style primarily for and in response to their
audience” (Bell, 1997, p. 14).
“Speakers respond primarily to their audience in designing their talk” (Bell, 1991, p.
15). “Mass communicators are under considerable pressure to win the approval of
their audience in order to maintain their audience size or market share” (Bell, 1991, p.
15). And the ‘reward’ of the broadcaster in this case – speakers respond primarily to
their audience in designing their talk – is that they gain an audience who watch their
program which ultimately leads to large viewing figures.
In other words, the broadcaster(s) needs the audience. In order to achieve this goal
they must ‘accommodate’ to their audience by becoming similar to them. The
audience design approach developed from one particular study that Bell (1991)
carried out on style. The study looked at the style of language used in radio news
broadcasts in New Zealand. “Because of the structure of the broadcasting system in
New Zealand, different radio stations broadcasted
their programs from the same
studio, and also used the same news-reader for the different programs” (Bell, 1991).
“In mass communication, a broadcaster’s individual style is routinely subordinated to
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
a shared station style whose character can only be explained in term of its target
audience” (Bell, 1991).
According to the data analysis of this study, the three news broadcasting programs the Morning News on IRIB1, The Evening News on IRIB1, and The 20:30 News on
IRIB2 – witnessed a change of style in their language in order to meet the needs of
their perceived audience.
3. Methodology
3.1 Participants
The participants were 150 in number – ranging from 20-40 years of age, both males
and females – who were provided with questionnaires. And a group of 60 participants
were randomly chosen among them to be interviewed. All the participants were the
Iranian who were following the news program broadcasting by National TV of Iran.
3.2 Data Collection Procedures
The data collected for the purpose of this study was recorded and analyzed from three
different news broadcasting programs; The Morning News, The Evening News, and
the 20:30 news. The Morning News contains short news bulletins, targeted at adults
and young-adults, running for about fifteen minutes on IRIB1. And the target viewers
of the Evening News on IRIB1 – a news program – are adults (mostly) and also
young-adults; and it runs for about forty-five minutes. The 20:30 – containing short
news bulletins alongside a 'magazine' program – runs on IRIB2 for about 60 minutes,
aimed at viewers belonging to different age groups (ranging from teenagers to adults).
An average of two Morning News bulletins per day, the whole program of 20:30
news, and some of the stories from each Evening News broadcast were recorded and
then were analyzed.
3.3 Results
The results obtained from the collected data, lead us to this conclusion that these
changes made in the news broadcasting programs have had a positive effect on the
viewers' ratings of these programs, since the style and language conveyed an everyday
like face-to-face interactions. And as for the statistics, about 85% of the participants
were for these changes and informalities contained in broadcasting of the news. Even
though these changes appealed to a significant number of the participants – 85% they also declared that these change of style and language of the news broadcasting
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
got influenced from the foreign news broadcasting styles. Foreign news broadcasting
channels such as: VOA, BBC and so on. And 15% of the participants – mostly elderly
people – believed that the language of the news must have a formal tone to it. This is
while, those 85% of the participants who were appealed by the changes, found those
changes appealing since they conveyed an everyday like sense of interaction.
Therefore, nowadays people mostly prefer to watch news programs which are easily
understood in daily talk format and only elderly people are not happy with such
changes.
4. Discussion and Conclusion
During the first two decades of the Islamic Republic of Iran, The language of news
program(s) was narrative, which includes ‘others’ (the third person, e.g.' they’). In this
type of tone, one does not expect the audience to be addressed or referred to as they
would be in face-to-face interactions. In this study, the three news programs were
analyzed to see how the language of the news has changed over time and whether this
standard news narrative is still being used consistently.
In accordance to our data analysis, three types of audience reference(s) were being
used in the style and language of the news program(s):
-
Direct reference to the audience only
-
References inclusive of the audience & the news reader
-
Talk(s) about the audience
Alongside these references made to the audience, there were two other unique
features developed in the 20:30 news program:
-
Commands, directions and instructions, which are directed to the audience, by
the use of statements as: "Check out our website", "Send us your thoughts
through …"
-
Role plays: (small sketches acted out by the presenters).
Other than these features, an interesting fact about the language of these programs is
the use of informal vocabulary (slang, vernacular language and informal standard
language). The use of this type of vocabulary – informal vocabulary – in the news
serves to conversationalise the news (Robertson, 2005).
Robertson states:
“Fairclough (1995) stated: “Conversationalisation is also realized in a variety of
linguistic features. Most obvious are items of colloquial vocabulary…” (p. 20 ). This
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
www.eltsjournal.org
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
type of vocabulary – informal vocabulary – makes the news more accessible to the
audience because it uses the type of language they use in their everyday lives, and
therefore it’s the vocabulary they can relate to personally.
According to the information obtained from the data analysis (observations,
recordings, then followed by questionnaires and interviews), all three news programs
contained the audience reference which seems to be quite appealing to their targeted
viewers. The audiences are encouraged to take active participation (as opposed to just
being passive viewers) and their interest plays a big part in conversationalising the
format of the news, as these features are used in (everyday) face-to-face
conversation(s). The ratings of the morning and the evening news (on IRIB1) have
increased quite significantly after taking up this feature. The informal vocabulary in
the news programs – which is used to informalise the news in order to appeal to the
audience – was only contained in the morning news (on IRIB1) and the 20:30 news
(on IRIB2). The informal vocabulary used in the language of these programs attracted
audience of all generations and of course helped the viewing rates. Role plays – are
used to inform and at the same time entertain the audience and add humor – was only
contained in the 20:30 news program. Unlike the unscripted sketches during chats in
the evening news (on IRIB1), role-plays are used in the actual news stories
themselves, which lead into interviews and – quite naturally – to audience reference.
These two features help creating a face-to-face interaction in the atmosphere of the
program. The 20:30 News, by containing these features is observed to be an
interesting and appealing program to its targeted audience. An interesting fact is that
according to statistics, 60% of the population of Iran watches this program.
The results obtained from this study make one fact apparent that the changes in the
society and generations, directly lead to the changes made in the language of media.
The language of the news programs. The theory of accommodation – the fact that the
speaker(s) can gain the audience's approval – seems to be the main reason behind
these changes (informalising and conversationlizing) made in the language of the
news programs. As Giles and Powseland say, “The accommodative act provides the
sender (speaker) with rewards referred to in general terms as the receiver’s (hearer’s)
approval” (MacMillan Press,1975, pp. 232-233).
International Refereed & Indexed Journal of English Language & Translation Studies
ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
www.eltsjournal.org
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IJ-ELTS: International Journal of English Language & Translation Studies Vol: 1, Issue: 2
A Socio-linguistic Perspective to the Language Change Simin, Shahla & others
About the Authors
Shahla Simin is a PHD candidate in TEFL. She has over 14 years of teaching
experience and has published various research papers in ISI journals such as
“Comparative literature and culture” and other language/linguistics related journals
and has also presented papers in many national and international conferences. Her
research interests lie in pragmatics, sociopragmatics, discourse analysis, semiotics,
and Language teaching issues.
Atiye Ezzati, Hosna Kasmaee, Fereshteh Teimouri and Arineh Minasian are
undergraduate students in English literature. They have published and presented
papers in national conferences. Their areas of major research interests are:
sociolinguistics, and Language teaching issues.
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ISSN: 2308-5460
July-September, 2013
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