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This book offers an innovative approach to analysing written texts, grounded in principles of semiotics. Envisaging whole news media representations as 'signs', and using the real-world example of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis, the author demonstrates how business crises are constructed through language. Gravells identifies patterns of language which show a progression from one kind of 'current news' representation to a different kind of coverage. This coverage positions the crisis as having symbolic and conventional meaning within varied social contexts, including the arts, business and the environment. Using a wealth of examples from the BP story to illustrate her practical research approach, Gravells draws 'language maps' of different phases of the crisis representation, showing how an early 'iconic' phase of representation moves through an 'indexical' to a 'symbolic' phase, and projects a return to a 'naturalised icon'. This book will be of interest to researchers andstudents of semiotics, those exploring research methods and linguists with an interest in business and media communications.
List of contents
.- PART I: Written language and semiotics.- Chapter 1: Researching the representation of a crisis.- Chapter 2: Semiotic Discourse Analysis .- PART II: A Barthesian conceptualisation of written language.- Chapter 3: Theoretical foundations.- Chapter 4: Data collection and research principles.- Chapter 5: A Barthesian analysis of the BP data in four stages.- Chapter 6: Stage 1: Contextualisation of the BP texts.- Chapter 7: Stage 2: Preliminary analysis of the BP texts.- Chapter 8: Stage 3: A depth analysis at the level of the sign.- Chapter 9: Stage 3: A depth analysis at the level of the code.- Chapter 10: Stage 3: A depth analysis at the level of mythic meanings.- Chapter 11: Stage 3: A depth analysis at the level of ideology.- Chapter 12: Stage 4: A holistic analysis of a single text.- PART III: A Peircean conceptualisation of written language.- Chapter 13: Theoretical foundations.- Chapter 14: A Peircean interpretation of the BP data.- PART IV: Concluding thoughts.- Chapter 15: Other events, other contexts.
About the author
Jane Gravells is a lecturer in Linguistics at Aston University. Her research interests have been in those areas where language and business intersect. Her work in semiotics relates to the role of written language in multimodal texts. Jane has taught applied linguistics and business studies at several leading universities. Before this, she had a successful career in qualitative Marketing Research.
Summary
This book offers an innovative approach to analysing written texts, grounded in principles of semiotics. Envisaging whole news media representations as ‘signs’, and using the real-world example of the BP Deepwater Horizon crisis, the author demonstrates how business crises are constructed through language. Gravells identifies patterns of language which show a progression from one kind of ‘current news’ representation to a different kind of coverage. This coverage positions the crisis as having symbolic and conventional meaning within varied social contexts, including the arts, business and the environment. Using a wealth of examples from the BP story to illustrate her practical research approach, Gravells draws ‘language maps’ of different phases of the crisis representation, showing how an early ‘iconic’ phase of representation moves through an ‘indexical’ to a ‘symbolic’ phase, and projects a return to a ‘naturalised icon’. This book will be of interest to researchers andstudents of semiotics, those exploring research methods and linguists with an interest in business and media communications.
