Analysis of news reports about land conflict in Uganda
What is it about?
News reporting studies have largely been confined to the Western cultures and languages yet news reporting in other languages has proliferated throughout the world (Thomson et al, 2008; and Thomson & White, 2008). This article explores news reporting in Runyankore-Rukiga, an agglutinating Ugandan Bantu language, focusing on land conflict. Assuming the influential discourse-linguistic framework of Appraisal Theory and Genre theory (Thomson et al., 2008), the article investigates the linguistic expression of evaluative language in Runyankore-Rukiga across government-oriented and private newspapers. It also examines the properties that constitute Runyankore-Rukiga hard news reports. Although the genre analysis reveals that Runyankore-Rukiga hard news reports resemble the satellite structure of the English hard news reports as proposed by White (1997), some differences are identified. Not only does the news report unfold in a chronological order; it exhibits a distinct discursive feature that is characterised by anecdotes, metaphors, or proverbs in the lead. This value-laden opening does not necessarily capture the gist of the entire report but rather seeks out the reader’s attention. The article further explicates the nature of lexico-grammatical properties of evaluative language that news writers invoke to express attitudes in the news events. The appraisal exploration also examines instances of graduation in which metaphors and non-core lexis are invoked to amplify attitudinal values. The article thus, extends Appraisal theory analysis to one of only a few African languages examined within this framework, and contributes to the understanding of news reporting in these languages and cultures.
Why is it important?
The findings reveal that hard news reporting in Runyankore-Rukiga bears unique features which are different from the Anglo-American hard news reporting. The Runyankore-Rukiga news report unfold in a chronological order. They are also by characterised by anecdotes, metaphors, or proverbs in the lead. This value-laden opening does not necessarily capture the gist of the entire report but rather seeks out the reader’s attention. Thus, the study extends Appraisal theory analysis to one of only a few African languages examined within this framework, and contributes to the understanding of news reporting in these languages and cultures.