Sean Zdenek
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226312644
- eISBN:
- 9780226312811
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226312811.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter sets out to provide an anatomy of a sound description by describing the common types of non-speech information (NSI) in closed captioning, accounting for the grammatical forms used in ...
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This chapter sets out to provide an anatomy of a sound description by describing the common types of non-speech information (NSI) in closed captioning, accounting for the grammatical forms used in captioning, and distinguishing between discrete and sustained sounds. Four sci-fi action movies serve as a case study to explore the prevalence of each type of NSI: District 9, Inception, Man of Steel, and Oblivion. Next, an analysis of major captioning style guides suggests how style guides focus on micro-level issues of text presentation and avoid higher level issues that seem crucial to a full account of how captions make meaning: how readers interpret the text, how context and purpose shape the production and reception of captions, and the differences between reading and listening. Finally, this chapter reports on data collected from two studies with the writers and readers of captions: Interviews with professional closed captioners and surveys with regular viewers of closed-captioned programming.Less
This chapter sets out to provide an anatomy of a sound description by describing the common types of non-speech information (NSI) in closed captioning, accounting for the grammatical forms used in captioning, and distinguishing between discrete and sustained sounds. Four sci-fi action movies serve as a case study to explore the prevalence of each type of NSI: District 9, Inception, Man of Steel, and Oblivion. Next, an analysis of major captioning style guides suggests how style guides focus on micro-level issues of text presentation and avoid higher level issues that seem crucial to a full account of how captions make meaning: how readers interpret the text, how context and purpose shape the production and reception of captions, and the differences between reading and listening. Finally, this chapter reports on data collected from two studies with the writers and readers of captions: Interviews with professional closed captioners and surveys with regular viewers of closed-captioned programming.
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198808206
- eISBN:
- 9780191845888
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808206.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language, Lexicography
Usage guides, or language advice manuals, are being published in large numbers, both in Britain and the US. The first titles that usually spring to mind are Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) or ...
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Usage guides, or language advice manuals, are being published in large numbers, both in Britain and the US. The first titles that usually spring to mind are Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) or Sir Ernest Gowers’s Complete Plain Words (1954). Yet as a phenomenon, they are much older than that: the first English usage guide was published in 1770, and the first American one in 1847. Today, new titles come out almost every year, while old works are revised and reissued. At the same time, usage advice can be readily found on the internet: Grammar Girl, for instance, is a good example of what is in effect an online usage guide, and there are many others about. Remarkably, however, the kind of usage problems that have been treated over the years are very much the same, and attitudes towards them, by usage guide writers and the general public alike, are slow to change. Remarkably also, usage guides continue to be published despite easy online access to usage advice: there is clearly a market for them, and especially the more controversial ones sell well. How are usage guides compiled and revised? Who writes them? How do they do they differ from, say, grammars and dictionaries? How do attitudes to usage problems change? Why does the BBC need its own style guide, and why are usage guides published to begin with? These are central topics in the book.Less
Usage guides, or language advice manuals, are being published in large numbers, both in Britain and the US. The first titles that usually spring to mind are Fowler’s Modern English Usage (1926) or Sir Ernest Gowers’s Complete Plain Words (1954). Yet as a phenomenon, they are much older than that: the first English usage guide was published in 1770, and the first American one in 1847. Today, new titles come out almost every year, while old works are revised and reissued. At the same time, usage advice can be readily found on the internet: Grammar Girl, for instance, is a good example of what is in effect an online usage guide, and there are many others about. Remarkably, however, the kind of usage problems that have been treated over the years are very much the same, and attitudes towards them, by usage guide writers and the general public alike, are slow to change. Remarkably also, usage guides continue to be published despite easy online access to usage advice: there is clearly a market for them, and especially the more controversial ones sell well. How are usage guides compiled and revised? Who writes them? How do they do they differ from, say, grammars and dictionaries? How do attitudes to usage problems change? Why does the BBC need its own style guide, and why are usage guides published to begin with? These are central topics in the book.
John Allen
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- December 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198808206
- eISBN:
- 9780191845888
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198808206.003.0008
- Subject:
- Linguistics, English Language, Lexicography
Britain has no formal arbiter of language. There is no British equivalent of the Académie Française. Almost by default, responsibility in this area has fallen to the BBC. All over the world, ...
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Britain has no formal arbiter of language. There is no British equivalent of the Académie Française. Almost by default, responsibility in this area has fallen to the BBC. All over the world, audiences look to the Corporation to maintain high standards, and are quick to complain if they perceive any failure to meet their expectations. It is a responsibility the organization has acknowledged since its inception. For a BBC journalist, good writing is not a luxury; it is an obligation. It is part of the BBC’s contract with the licence fee payer. The style guide was designed to remind journalists of their responsibilities and to offer advice and encouragement on how to address their audiences, whether it be on television, radio, or across an ever increasing range of digital outlets.Less
Britain has no formal arbiter of language. There is no British equivalent of the Académie Française. Almost by default, responsibility in this area has fallen to the BBC. All over the world, audiences look to the Corporation to maintain high standards, and are quick to complain if they perceive any failure to meet their expectations. It is a responsibility the organization has acknowledged since its inception. For a BBC journalist, good writing is not a luxury; it is an obligation. It is part of the BBC’s contract with the licence fee payer. The style guide was designed to remind journalists of their responsibilities and to offer advice and encouragement on how to address their audiences, whether it be on television, radio, or across an ever increasing range of digital outlets.
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780226469140
- eISBN:
- 9780226469287
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226469287.003.0016
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter chronicles the push and pull surrounding print's quantitative rise during the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, surveying the diverse responses to print's proliferation by common ...
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This chapter chronicles the push and pull surrounding print's quantitative rise during the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, surveying the diverse responses to print's proliferation by common readers and famous tastemakers alike. In particular, this chapter considers what might be called the “third rail” of print proliferation—namely, an emergent regulatory discourse less intent on limiting or promoting print than on controlling and managing it. What made this discourse so powerful was that, unlike the polemic or the diatribe, it could take a variety of forms. In terms of genre, efforts to regulate print took the form of style guides, reading primers, book reviews, conduct manuals, handbooks on good taste, and philosophical, novelistic, and evangelical treatises on the often dangerous power of readerly imagination. Beyond the printed page, this impetus to control and systematize published materials became manifest in the era's enthusiasm for private lending libraries, rigid cataloging schemes, selective reading clubs, standardized indexing norms, and clearly demarcated academic disciplines. In short, proliferation not only begat more language about print; it also generated an entire material and cultural infrastructure designed to make its diffusion more controlled and manageable. Information management, assuming a host of material, institutional, and discursive forms, therefore emerged as one of the great new industries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was in this that the real impact of proliferation was felt most deeply.Less
This chapter chronicles the push and pull surrounding print's quantitative rise during the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, surveying the diverse responses to print's proliferation by common readers and famous tastemakers alike. In particular, this chapter considers what might be called the “third rail” of print proliferation—namely, an emergent regulatory discourse less intent on limiting or promoting print than on controlling and managing it. What made this discourse so powerful was that, unlike the polemic or the diatribe, it could take a variety of forms. In terms of genre, efforts to regulate print took the form of style guides, reading primers, book reviews, conduct manuals, handbooks on good taste, and philosophical, novelistic, and evangelical treatises on the often dangerous power of readerly imagination. Beyond the printed page, this impetus to control and systematize published materials became manifest in the era's enthusiasm for private lending libraries, rigid cataloging schemes, selective reading clubs, standardized indexing norms, and clearly demarcated academic disciplines. In short, proliferation not only begat more language about print; it also generated an entire material and cultural infrastructure designed to make its diffusion more controlled and manageable. Information management, assuming a host of material, institutional, and discursive forms, therefore emerged as one of the great new industries of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It was in this that the real impact of proliferation was felt most deeply.
