Not everyone can understand the regular news reports that are broadcast on television. The Swedish public service television company (SVT) therefore produces the newscast News in easy Swedish (Nyheter på lätt svenska), where the language is simplified. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the comprehensibility of the audiovisual language in News in easy Swedish. Another purpose is to compare the level of comprehension in the audiovisual language in News in easy Swedish with that in SVT's regular newscast Aktuellt and Rapport. The foundation point is what content can be considered understandable for an audience who needs more time and more straightforward information than others in order to understand. The target audience could be, for example, people with cognitive disabilities. No individuals from the target group have been interviewed. Instead, knowledge of what is understandable to them has been obtained from projects where the target group is represented: Inclusion Europe (no date), Comprehensive text (Begriplig text) (2019) and EASIT (2021). A total of seven news units have been transcribed, analyzed and compared. Five of these come from News in easy Swedish, one from Rapport and one from Aktuellt. The analytical methods utilized have been both quantitative and qualitative. The verbal auditory language has been analyzed using traditional readability methods, such as LIX and nominal ratio. Speech rate has been considered, but not inflection. The exposure time of images has been estimated and the presence of environmental noise has been noted. Subsequently, a qualitative analysis was made of how different semiotic resources interact. Finally, the results from the different news items were compared with each other. The readability analysis illustrates that in the analyzed material there are no major differences in the level of verbal difficulty between News in easy Swedish, Rapport and Aktuellt. One of the news items on News in easy Swedish has the highest LIX and nominal ratio results, which indicates that it is the most difficult. At the same time, another news item from News in easy Swedish results in the lowest values, indicating that it is the easiest to comprehend. No example was found in the material regarding how the semiotic resources counteract each other and thus affect information to becoming more difficult to understand. On the other hand, there are examples of news items where an improved collaboration between the semiotic elements could enable enhanced comprehension, for example through a more concise description of what is seen and heard. News in easy Swedish does not have its own film team but reworks material produced for other news programs. The program News in easy Swedish is just under five minutes long and is broadcast five days a week. The lack of own material and the short duration of newscasts are two factors that limit the prospect of creating comprehensible news for an audience who requires more time to be able to understand.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:lnu-116314 |
| Date | January 2022 |
| Creators | Hedberg, Ester |
| Publisher | Linnéuniversitetet, Institutionen för svenska språket (SV) |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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