Learner resource 8.3 – Mapping AOs to resource 8.2

The Sun front page represents its ideological viewpoint that migrants have a negative impact on the country and their attack of Lineker presupposes that their audience1, predominantly white working-class males on the right wing of British politics2, agree with this stand-point. This allows them to represent Lineker in a negative3 light throughout and consistently reinforces their influential power4.
The use of epithets is a common feature of news5 and several are used to negatively represent6 Lineker. The stand first of the article is the noun phrase “MOTD host fury”. This represents Lineker as a football programme’s presenter and positions the audience7 to view his views on migration as insignificant or ill-formed. This also serves to imply that views of the paper are the binary opposite8 as they are able to comment on Lineker. Moreover, “fury” semantically implies extreme anger and could be seen as coming from the lexical field of the Bible, suggesting a righteousness to the anger being expressed and representing the paper as correct9. As fury is the headword of the NP, Lineker’s role as an attributive pre-modifier seems to suggest ownership of the fury making it inseparable from the host himself. In the first section of the article, Lineker is again referred to by his job title and is then named as “millionaire Lineker” which allows the paper to ‘other’10Lineker and create a distance between the audience, who would traditionally view the former football star as a hero, and Lineker11. This positions the audience as ‘normal’ working class people and this representation of the implied audience is likely to accepted unquestioningly by the real audience12.
A further pattern can be seen in the tone of the piece13 which becomes noticeably more extreme in the main body of the article. The bias represented in the standfirst and strapline are both on the level of code rather than message14, however, the open hostility of referring to Lineker as “jug-eared” is reserved for the main text. This may be due to a subtle shift in audience15. Those who see the headline and other larger fonts on the cover would be of a broader range, including people ideologically predisposed to disagree with the paper’s representations, but those reading the actual text are more likely to be readers of the paper and thus already ideologically aligned with the paper’s viewpoint. / 1 AO2 Ideology and presupposition.
2 AO3: Detailed identification of real audience.
3 AO2: Reps
4 AO2 Type of power.
5 AO3: Language feature linked to inherent genre features.
6 AO2: Patterns of language linked to concepts.
7 Analysis of language through concepts.
8 AO2: Assured knowledge but underdeveloped.
9 AO2/3: Language precisely analysed and linked to reps and CofP
10 AO2: Othering linked to pattern and example
11 AO3: CofR
12 AO2/3: Synthesises discussion of real and implied audience
13AO2: Pattern rooted in language.
14 AO2: Assured conceptual knowledge.
15 AO3: Perceptive and developed understanding of CofR develops over the rest of the paragraph.

Version 11© OCR 2017

Language in the media

Naming systems are also used in the othering16 of ‘migrants’ when we are told Lineker’s comments relate to “an Afghan”. The indefinite article implies that this is one of many and presupposes that the audience already view migration as problematic. Additionally, the use of the noun “Afghan” works to both dehumanise the person referred to and positions the predominantly British audience as being in opposition to this person or group of people17. We also see the NP “The child migrant storm” which encodes the negative view of migration which forms part of the paper’s ideology18. The metaphorical use of storm, a common feature of journalese19 which seeks to dramatise the news, implies a potentially catastrophic and wide-spread threat to the implied reader’s world and the hyperbolic nature of the metaphor overrides any positive connotations that may be possible from the noun “child”.20
Grammatically, the paper uses both elliptical grammar and agentless passives to hide the source of the so-called “fury” aimed at Lineker21. In the strapline “Calls for BBC to fire…” the ellipsis, which is a generic convention22, allows the paper to create a grammatical ambiguity. If “Calls” is seen as the plural head of a NP then it vaguely encodes the notion of multiple demands for Lineker’s firing; however, if we view “Calls” as the main verb in an elliptical sentence, then it is the subject which has been deleted thus backgrounding23 who is doing the calling.
In the same way, the first sentence of the main body of the text is
a lengthy, complex sentence in the passive voice. Again the source of the anger is hidden because the sentence is agentless but the grammatical complexity obscures this fact and foregrounds the notion that the BBC should fire Lineker.24 / 16 AO2: Patterns and concepts.
17 AO2/3: Links implied audience to real audience based on language analysis.
18 AO3: CofP
19 AO3: CofP
20 AO2/3: Developed analytical point focused on context of reception and concepts.
21 AO2: Pattern linked to bias (could be implied producer (AO2) or CofP (AO3)).
22 AO3: CofP
23 AO2: Representations. Underdeveloped point.
24 AO2: Precise analysis linked to bias of producer; although lacking in detailed explanation.

Version 11© OCR 2017

Language in the media