Discourse In and Through the Media. Recontextualizing and Reconceptualizing Expert Discourse

This book stems from the 2013 CLAVIER Conference held in Modena in November 2013 and includes a selection of the papers presented on that occasion. As the title suggests, the aim of the conference was to stimulate the debate on a variety of aspects related to the representation of specialized discourse in and through the media, e.g. voice and point of view, argumentative practices, knowledge construction, multimodality, re-contextualization and re-conceptualization of knowledge, and peer-to-peer communication within genres aimed at knowledge dissemination and popularization. The conference was therefore intended to encourage cross-generic and cross-disciplinary investigations, in an attempt to advocate integrated approaches to the study of media discourse with a view to both theoretical background and practical applications. Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert discourse has become increasingly important in modern society. Yet although Knowledge Dissemination (KD) is now receiving increasing attention, the discursive strategies and the pragmatics of KD in and through the media have yet to receive serious consideration. Knowledge dissemination can be seen as a form of ‘asymmetric’ communication between experts and lay-people, or ‘mediation’ of knowledge and intercultural and ‘inter-discourse communication’ (Scollon & Scollon 1995) between members of different cultures, discourse communities and communities of practice. This amounts to re-contextualization (Calsamiglia & Van Dijk 2004) and inclusion of types of ‘intralinguistic’ translations, whereby simplification, explicitation, reformulation (Mauranen 2006), reconceptualization of terms in the subject field ‘translate’ exclusive expertise into ‘comprehensible’ knowledge, suitable to the background of the addressee. In this connection, knowledge dissemination (Engberg 2014: knowledge mediation) is seen as a three-fold intra-linguistic and cross-cultural process that combines representation, construction and communication of knowledge intended for specific addressees (Kastberg 2010; Ditlevsen 2011). The volume is intended to encourage cross-generic and cross-disciplinary investigations, in an attempt to advocate integrated approaches to the study of media discourse with a view to both theoretical background and practical applications. Secondly, it aims to foster debate on a variety of aspects related to the representation of specialized discourse in and through the media, e.g. voice and point of view, argumentative practices, knowledge construction, multimodality, re-contextualization and re-conceptualization of knowledge (hence, knowledge transmission), opinion formation and peer-to-peer communication within web genres aimed at knowledge dissemination and popularization in and through traditional, digital and social media. Taken together, the contributions to the volume provide extensive exemplification of the type of research that is currently conducted on these issues. The variety of the questions posed and the wide array of methods used in the chapters are therefore intended to make a substantial contribution to sharpen existing knowledge and further the ongoing debate among scholars in the field. TABLE OF CONTENTS Marina Bondi: Preface Marina Bondi, Silvia Cacchiani & Davide Mazzi: Discourse in and through the media. Recontextualizing and reconceptualizing expert knowledge I – NEW MEDIA AND NEW MULTIMODAL ENVIRONMENTS FOR KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION 1. Cornelius Puschmann: A digital mob in the ivory tower? Context collapse in scholarly communication online 2. Jan Engberg & Carmen Daniela Maier: Exploring the hypermodal communication of academic knowledge beyond generic structure II – DISSEMINATING SCHOLARLY KNOWLEDGE