- Synthetic personalisation
Synthetic personalisation is the process by which
writing s treat their mass audiences as if they were individuals. It developed fromcritical discourse analysis (CDA), a branch ofsociolinguistics concentrating upon how power is articulated.Norman Fairclough , credited with developing the concept, calls it "a compensatory tendency to give the impression of treating each of the people 'handled' "en masse" as an individual. Examples would be air travel ("have a nice day"), [and] restaurants ("welcome to Wimpy!")" (2001: 52).The use of second person
pronoun s contribute significantly to the process of synthetic personalisation within themass media . It is extremely common to encounter constructions such as "See you after the break" on television shows prior to commercial breaks. (This example is also common inPaddy Scannell 's concept ofBroadcast Sociability .)Mary Talbot ( [1995] /2003) used the concept in her work on a "synthetic sisterhood" in teenage girls'magazines , analysing the linguistic devices ("pronouns ,presupposition s") constructing a simulated friendship between reader and producer. Using a variety of sociolinguistic concepts, includingpositive politeness , she comments upon the ideological implications, such aspatriarchy .References
*Fairclough, N. (2001) "Language and Power". 2nd ed. Essex: Longman.
*Talbot, M. (1995) "A synthetic sisterhood: false friends in a teenage magazine" In: K. Hall and M. Bucholtz (eds) "Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self." New York: Routledge. pp. 143-65.
*Talbot, M., K. Atkinson & D. Atkinson (2003) "Language and Power in the Modern World". Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1538-5
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