What is ‘media’ and how does it relate to language?

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about (the) media and its relation to language, focusing in particular on: (i) what we mean when we talk about ‘media’, including the difference between ‘media’ and ‘the media’; (ii) the work of Marshall McLuhan (1911-80) and Raymond Williams (1921-88), and the question of what is more important: the medium or the message; (iii) the intersection between (the) media and language; (iv) the linguistic changes in television news between the 1950s and the present day, including the accents of newsreaders, their clothing and gestures, their sex, and their level of formality; (v) the trend in the 1990s of ‘convergence’, i.e. the merging of previously separate phenomena such as information and entertainment, e.g. Newsbeat; (vi) the trend in the 2000s of technological convergence, i.e. the fact that we now use the same device (a smart phone or tablet) to access all our media; (vii) the trend in the 2010s and 2020s of using computer algorithms to customise the kind of media that individuals are presented with; (viii) the different levels of language at which we can analyse (the) media; and (ix) the importance of thinking about both traditional forms of media (e.g. newspapers, television) and new forms of media (e.g. social media).

About the lecturer

Dr Johann Unger is Lecturer in Linguistics and English Language at Lancaster University. His research focuses on language and digitally mediated politics, and particularly political resistance, and language policy and the politics of language.