M.A. (Afrikaans) / Newspaper style books prescribe language usage in newspapers across the Western world. Their influence is also apparent in the language usage of Afrikaans daily newspapers. In order to establish the distinguishing characteristics of newspaper Afrikaans the language prescribed by the style books of Die Burger, Die Volksblad, Beeld, Die Vader/and and Die Transvaler was investigated. The register newspaper Afrikaans, as determined by the newspaper style book, displays distinct characteristics usually associated with the standard variety of a language. The establishment of those Afrikaans newspapers investigated resulted from the nationality aspirations of those then regarded as Afrikaners. Those newspapers have been closely involved in the creation, introduction and standardization of Afrikaans. Language standardization, in tum, is often implemented in unifying a community. Grammarians and language autocrats officially involved in standardizing the eventual standard variety (L.W. Hiemstra as member of the Taalkommissie and J.J. Smith as first editor-in-chief of the Woordeboek van die Afrikaanse Taa/) also held senior positions in the newspaper hierarchy. Newspaper Afrikaans, like standard Afrikaans, aims through standardization to maximize the communication potential of the language and to minimize the threat of ambiguity. Language standardization also results in prescriptive ness and language purism. These elements are inherent characteristics of the register newspaper Afrikaans. The register manifests itself in the medium where a standard language usually enjoys its most successful manifestation: written language. Beyond these similarities between the register newspaper Afrikaans and the standard variety, the register displays several unique characteristics distinguishing it from other registers in the Afrikaans language. These characteristics can be classed in two main sections. Although the aims of newspaper Afrikaans are in many respects similar to those set by international newspaper practice, care should be taken not to disregard the inevitability of language change as it could prove to be detrimental to the very existence of Afrikaans.

This study is based on a corpus of 2400 clauses taken from British national newspapers in 1986 and stored in a computer database with each clause coded for a number of grammatical (and some semantic) features. These features relate to the verb phrase (e.g. finiteness), the clause (e.g. subordination) and the subject (e.g. form). In the first stage of the investigation the database is described in terms of the features coded therein. The scope of the description is on three levels. First, the data are described in total and are considered to constitute a representative sample of newspaper English. Secondly, the database is split into three pre-determined sub-databases according to their text-type. These are: news articles, editorials and readers' letters. A pattern is discovered of 'letters-as-norm' with the other texttypes on different sides of the average. Thirdly, the database is split on a different dimension according to the eight different newspapers included in the sampling. A pattern of three groups of newspapers; 'quality', 'central' and 'popular', is found for some features. The second section exploits the database primarily as an example of written English, rather than emphasising its newspaper origins. Here some problems of description, which have implications for the debate about the division between syntax and semantics, are explored. The first such 'problem' arises out of a study of the environment of copula 'BE' and concerns the borderline between the grammatical functions of subject and subject complement. Some well-known differences are confirmed and some new ones discovered. A small area of overlap, however, remains. The second problem is the familiar difficulty of deciding when an -en form is an adjective and when it remains a participle. It is argued that the contexts of -en forms are often influential in their interpretation as adjectival or verbal forms. The third problem concerns the sequential verbs (sometimes called 'catenative' verbs) which govern a following nonfinite verb phrase. These verbs, which defy attempts to classify them syntactically, are shown to be amenable to semantic classification. The question of restrictions on sequences of more than two verb phrases (i.e. two sequential verbs + one 'normal' verb) is explored and some tentative conclusions are reached.

M.A. / This study is based on the principles of the subjectivist approach of Cognitive Linguistics, as opposed to the more traditional objectivist view, specifically those principles applicable to the acquisition of mental contact between conceptualizers in a given communication situation. One of the most fundamental points of departure of Cognitive Linguistics is the opinion that abstractions (even linguistic abstractions) are modelled on man's bodily experience of his surrounding reality. These embodied experiences constitute a network of preconceptual and non-propositional image schemas, categorized as space schemas, force dynamic schemas, schemas based on sensation and basic-level objects. Several mapping processes, including metaphor and metonymy, transpose these image schemas from a preconceptual, prelinguistic level to a conceptual and linguistic niveau. A prerequisite for conceptualization through linguistic communication is to constitute mental contact between the speaker and hearer as the conceptualizers. Linguistic communication presupposes the transfer of meaning, which is based on certain cognitive variables determining mental spaces and conceptual blends. Against the preceding background, the newspaper headline, as cognitive entity, constitutes the research domain by means of which the nature of the potential mental contact between the headline writer (as speaker) and the headline reader (as hearer) in a specific communication situation is analysed and evaluated. A seemingly useful and potent cognitive measuring instrument regarding presupposed and actualised mental contact, by means of which any written or spoken communication can be analysed and evaluated, is the outcome of this study. A set of examples of headlines was collected from the Afrikaans daily newspaper, Beeld, and the Afrikaans Sunday paper, Rapport, from February 1996 until September 1998, serving as research material.

Typescript, etc.

The Marquis of Hastings’s decision in 1818 to repeal the censorship of Calcutta’s presses led many to believe the Governor General had inaugurated press freedom in Bengal, the political and intellectual centre of Britain’s Eastern Empire. With the steady inflow of non-Company merchants to India following the Charter Act of 1813, the East India Company was faced with the challenge of defending its remaining privileges, while simultaneously consolidating its newly acquired territories and developing enduring structures of governance. Building upon the work of Peter Marshall and Christopher Bayly, this thesis concentrates on the press debates of the early 1820s in order to highlight the Company’s role in preventing the emergence of an Anglo-Indian public sphere in Calcutta. Drawing on the experiences of Mirza Abu Taleb, James Silk Buckingham, and Rammohun Roy, this thesis also demonstrates the essentially transnational influences that informed these debates, while focusing on the interaction between Britons, Indians, and the Company’s military officers in Buckingham’s Calcutta Journal. It argues that despite the respective political ideologies of government officials, it was, in fact, primarily pragmatism that informed policy regarding free expression through print. In the wake of the Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars, administrators worked to isolate and silence dissenting voices to prevent the outbreak of rebellion or independence movements, and the increasing engagement between Indians, Britons, and members of the Army proved too great a threat to Company-rule.

The Press in Transition adopts a comparative approach to transitional print institutions worldwide. It is based on some 150 interviews and archival research on four continents, over a decade of unprecedented global transformation and upheaval. The dissertation seeks to fill a serious gap in the existing literature on democratization and political transition. Theoretical chapters advance a comparative model of press functioning (Chapter 1) and a more tentative model of transitional media, with a strong focus on the mainstream press (Chapter 6). The bulk of the work consists of four case-studies, each drawn from a different geographical region (indeed, continent) and a markedly different "type" of liberalization or transition process. The case of Nicaragua (Chapter 2) stands out somewhat. It concentrates almost exclusively on a single newspaper, Barricada, the former official organ of the Sandinista Front. The newspaper's transformations in the 1990s are, however, set against the backdrop of Barricades history since 1979, intra-Sandinista politics during and after the revolutionary era, and the more general interplay of media and politics in Nicaragua. The remaining three case-studies (South Africa, Jordan, and Russia: Chaps. 3-5) combine system-level analysis with micro-level portraits of transitional institutions and individuals. The core of the theoretical analysis lies in a delineation of "mobilizing" and "professional" imperatives. The former I attach mainly to sponsors and managers of media institutions; the latter mainly - not exclusively or universally — to the editorial side of the operation. The interplay of these variables I see as integral to an understanding of events at the case-study newspapers. The opening theoretical chapter situates mobilizing and professional imperatives as both dependent and independent variables. I argue that they reflect and respond to variables like underdevelopment, authoritarianism, and pre-existing media culture. But they also serve as founts of important and interesting initiatives, whether professional, political, or commercial. Significantly, too, they regularly conflict. The dissertation struggles to avoid heroicizing, but it also tries to show that tensions and upheavals — both small-scale and radically transformative - tend to derive from the clash of mobilizing and professional priorities. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

M.B.A. / Newspapers traditionally have had little trouble in producing profits. This is no longer the case and aspects such as the number of newspapers competing with each other for marketplace, have definitely brought in a sense of business to the world of communication. Coupled with ever increasing and very strong competition from both broadcast and new internet media for the same advertising slice, newspapers are slowly realizing that the media-marketplace is very different in the 21s t century. In a changing world, newspapers have to adapt or die. The challenge newspapers of 2002 and beyond face, is to appeal to even more readers and advertisers, to segment those readers better than ever before, to control costs while still investing in new technologies and to compete better with television yet retain the essential characteristics of newspapers. Change in the newspaper business is inevitable and in order to survive, newspapers will have to look more and more towards sound Media Management Principles, including Strategic Media Management, in order to turn newspapers into businesses and ensure survival

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Thesis (M.S.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2999-01-01