Stylistic Awareness to Analyze and Comprehend Authentic Discourse in Language Classrooms

摘要

Stylistic awareness of a text-the knowledge of syntactic, semantic, and/or pragmatic features—leads to an overall understanding of a discourse. The study will focus on the stylistics of news genre as authentic material in classrooms. The aim of this article is to draw a comparison between the language features used in online news and those used in the printed newspapers to underscore the linguistic characteristics of such media. The data to analyze will be collected from two European news media. The electronic tool will be the BBC online news http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/, while the printed one will be International Herald Tribune. The purpose of this study is to highlight the linguistic variations, if they exist, between the two media. The language will be studied in terms of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, showing how these linguistic subfields can affect the language and determine the level of complication in understanding meaning. For discourse analysis, the same theme and topic will be selected. Examples and samples from both media will be posted to display the differences of language use. The comparison will be organized and divided into three subtitles: Syntactic Differences, Pragmatic Differences, and Semantic Differences. The paper will also focus on the effect of hyperlinks on the language and how the unlimited amount of information compressed in the virtual media make the online news unique. In addition, the limitations and weaknesses of both media will be addressed to take the research a step forward in order to make teachers aware of the flaws while using these genuine objects in language classrooms.