WS 2010/2011 exam translation (advanced) (Staatsexamen Frühjahr 2010) text #13
Matthew
Engel writes that American visitors to Britain are shocked by the riot of
competing libertine tabloids, but he could have added any number of other
nationalities as well as many of the indigenous population themselves. A major
part of the appeal of these newspapers is their national and linguistic
specificity. They belong to, and for better or for worse, represent contemporary
Britain to a carefully targeted popular audience. They have developed over time
the language they use to weave their version of the fabric of national life.
Much of the power of the tabloids* has been accrued by the evolution of this
language and its relationship to the broader patterns of popular print culture
which have developed over centuries. Tabloid newspapers are merely the latest
and most remarkable permutation of the language of the people in periodical
form.
The link between print media and the language of the ordinary people is
as old as print itself. Printers soon realized that there was money to be made
by distributing popular printed material which could reach the widest possible
readership in order to maximize profits. The best way to appeal to that audience
was to build upon accepted patterns of popular culture and to frame printed
material as much as possible in a language with which the audience would be
familiar.
Print
culture had widened the audience for a written vernacular which distinguished
each European nation from the Latin landscape of the mediaeval period. The
development of local languages enhanced the feeling that each linguistic
community had its own specific attributes and political interests, which were
directly linked to the communicative power of these languages to draw in a wider
community of speakers and listeners as active participants in the nation.
Benedict Anderson emphasizes the linguistic basis of the evolution of
nationalism and demonstrates how it was
given textual coherence by the emergence of novels
and most importantly, for our purposes, newspapers. The latter enabled an 'imagined
political community'** to be able to picture
itself as moving through history as one body with common interests and a common
language. Hannah Barker has pointed out how this community of readers began to
broaden out and perceive itself as a national public, articulating its own set
of identifiable opinions.
**
not to be translated
*
CARTOON: THE SUN, Britain's most notorious "tabloid"
CLICK HERE FOR LOTS AND LOTS OF "GOODIES"!
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