The continual growth in the significance of mass-mediated communication makes it essential that we are able to reflect upon and critically appreciate the semiotic processes that are involved in their impact upon social and cultural life. This edited collection showcases a range of diverse approaches to the analysis of various forms of mediated communications, including varying degrees of attention to their associated textual, discursive and social practices. Individual contributions are devoted to exploring, in analytical depth, multiple dimensions of each of the following media: newspaper articles, magazines (both historical advertising and contemporary editorial discourse), television (both situation comedy and "reality" TV programmes), books (covers and content in two genres), political leaflets, and a flight simulation computer game. The collection will be an important resource for scholars and students within disciplines including communication studies, sociology, media studies, cultural studies, discourse studies, and journalism studies. This book was published as a special issue of Social Semiotics.
Contents
1. Introduction: analysing media discourses John E. Richardson and Joseph D. Burridge
2. Space pilot: an introduction to amateur flight simulation Alex Wade
3. Dispreferred actions and other interactional breaches as devices for occasioning audience laughter in television ‘‘sitcoms’’ Elizabeth Stokoe
4. Apprentices to cool capitalism Jim McGuigan
5. ‘‘Our England’’: discourses of ‘‘race’’ and class in party election leaflets John E. Richardson
6. The ontology of a self-help book: a paradox of its own existence Scott Cherry
7. ‘‘A very glamorized picture, that’’: images of Scottish female herring workers on romance novel covers Jane Liffen
8. Sex in the sun: racial stereotypes and tabloid news Michael Pickering
9. ‘&lsroad to the lesbian nation is not an easy one’’: ‘‘us’’ and ‘‘them’’ in Diva magazine Georgina Turner
10. The dilemma of frugality and consumption in British women’s magazines 1940-1955 Joseph D. Burridge
Author Bio
Dr John E. Richardson is a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Newcastle University. His research interests include critical discourse studies, structured social inequalities, the histories of British fascism, racism in journalism, and argumentation.
Dr Joseph D. Burridge is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth. He has broad research interests within the social sciences, including social theory, culture, and rhetoric. Increasingly, his writing concentrates upon social science approaches to the study of food.
