Order and Interpretation: A Narrative Perspective on Journalistic Discourse

In: European journal of communication, Band 9, Heft 3, S. 249-270

Abstract

I take as my starting point John Dewey's often quoted notion that society exists not only ` by communication' but also ` in transmission, in communication' (Dewey, 1916: 5). From this James Carey (1975) created a definition of communication as a form of society, `a process whereby reality is created, shared, modified and preserved'. Here we have a definition of communication that articulates and combines the historical experiences of rapidly developing western societies and their expansive means of communication. Journalism has for a long time enjoyed a special status in this continuous `recreation' of society. This article attempts to build a model to analyse the manner in which contemporary journalism `creates' society, how it `modifies' our perspective of the world in a manner that enables us to `share' some crucial meanings about reality. The model is based on the analysis of different sorts of narrative voices. It aims to capture some of the order of the contemporary discourse of journalism and to discuss both the synchronic and diachronic features of journalism.1