Sociolinguistics

Eva Nur Mazidah
120710209
Sociolinguistics

The Sociolinguistics of Communication Media

Media has apparently penetrated the way we see the world. They give information, interpretation, education, entertainment, etc. Media, in this case, become a bridge and mirror for us to see the reality out there. In this summary, I will give explanation about media discourse in the communication domain and what happens there.
Media are now seen as social institution or domains. They deal with content, recipient (process of communications) and how they are communicated each other. We will see that there is media discourse working in that process. It is believed that media are anyway controversial in term of reflecting ‘reality’ or just ‘co-orchestrate’ the reality. To this fact, some argues that somehow media discourse still give a degree of mediation in providing content. Towards the production of messages, they are also controlled by factors through a hierarchy of levels and responsibilities. In the other hand, recipients are dilemmatic with media restriction in access and participation has created much controversy whereas media has designed messages for audience. In conclusion, media can be regarded as a specific communicative structure providing content (public idiom) and media discourse proceeds content into media messages to whom the message is addressed.
The details of media discourse refer to forms, structures, language use and semiotic codes in media, and so on. Media discourse in certain ways needs differentiating from the messages they transfer e.g. programs. Therefore, there are three dimensions of messages and media discourse. First dimension is the production point of view, low level out-put to which recipients are exposed their reaction, for instance an interview with President Nelson Mandela (the interface of two dimension). Secondly, processing of content occurs at several layers of an institutional hierarchy. Low-level output is the form of the program format e.g. news, spots reports, etc. which can be grouped into categories in terms of orientation. The low-level of messages are shaped in spatiotemporal sequences. Third dimension shows how it is transmitted as media messages. At the end of the day, language which is the central carrier of low-level messages and of messages sequences plays an important role in shaping belief system to come to dominate.
The linguistic study which can be done trough media are, for example, discourse structure of interviews, model of macro-text for international press reports, content analysis, language policies and attitudes, syntactic features of style in live reports, and so forth.
When media select content from reported domains, they proceed the content again based on cognitive frameworks linguistic norms, professional practices, etc. toward the recipients, they are not bound as the messages dimensions bound the media. To make stable recipients, communication media should include recipients’ needs and expectations early in messages. It is to integrate diverging norms with reported domains.
Upon linguistics theories, there are also two terms called presentation (styles) and representation (content). Presentation deals with language standardization while representation sees how language influences cognition and interpretation of ‘reality’. They function as vehicle for how language and what is expressed.
Seeing media function in society, we find that media is as public forum and public use of media discourse. Media has to answer how well or poorly their media discourse works as it is expected to do, for instance the role of standards in the BBC is done in terms of sociopolitical demands as the impact of the language repertoire in society at large. In some cases, because of media language, dialects are jeopardized and media language influences shifts in multicultural societies. Thus, there is a premise that media language comes to being ‘real’.
To my conclusion, we can not deny that there are influences of media in our atmosphere. Whether they bring more harms than good or vice versa, we can not limit its development. To some stances, we still need them get education, information, entertainment, etc., other stances, some dialects are jeopardized. To media itself, it is not enough to see the world with their point of views, they need to see the recipients’ point of view so that it can be bridge to many sides, not creating more gap to different recipients, and towards sociolinguistics, phenomena emerging in media can be field of further research.