Constructing Narrative Performance: With reference to "the case of Taiwan nuclear waste News"

• Main Authors: Seo Kyong-Kwan, 徐敬官
• Other Authors: Shieu-chi Weng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2000
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/79761619293455184742

碩士 === 國立政治大學 === 新聞學系 === 88 === Is the press news a mirror of reality or constructed reality? In this debating epistemological approaches, we are based on latter as well as on the perspectives of “narrative as ritual performance” ,which is in the contextual mood of textual-oriented critical discourse analysis. From the view of media function of ‘reality-definition’, and also with socio-cultural anthropological perspectives, we are assumes that news is not reality itself and not information transfer too, but socially constructed multiple realities through social interaction on a ‘stage’ by various social actors as performers, either they are on ‘frontstage’ or ‘backstage’. In other words, in this study we attempt to reintroduce performative model into the discourse-textual analysis in media studies, and therefore propose that news is a mediated collective ritual performance in which we are both a performer and a participant, who have function of the “double subjectivity” in the context of news making and its reading. This study essentially also have a basic concern with the cultivation of what Fairclough called ‘critical language awareness’, in other to reflectively reconsider the problems of ethnocentrism and the webs of power-knowledge which can be inscribed in the form and content of ritual performance. And now, what is “narrative performance”? Based on Victor Turner‘s notion of performance, i.e. the processual sense of ‘bringing to completion’ or ‘accomplishing’, this study further defines narrative performance as those two connotations: generally speaking, it means “ritual performance of telling-stories in everyday life” and then specifically speaking, it means “all written text or printed text displaying dramatic formats ” which not only represents our interpretation of what is social reality, but also continually performing and reconstructing our collective consensus and affective memories of the historical culture including the context of “here-and-now”. What we want to do in this paper is to articulate and demonstrate the correspondence between social space and textual space which is based upon the analogies of “life-as-theatre” and “symbolic interaction-as-drama performing”. News narrative result of journalist’s convention, their sociocultural context, and the routinalized reporting practice. Through this study, we believe, it would provide a sort of alternative perspective and a set of useful metaphor for searching out new methodological directions in the fields of communication and mass media studies. The main object of this case study is to analyze the narrative structure of the press news on “the issue of Taiwan nuclear waste”, in other to identify the function of reality construction of a ritualized press performance as well as to show the process of image construction which is represented in the textual context of time-space. More specifically four research questions are raised. First, How we should rethink and reevaluate the process and significance of news-making? Second, How does teller‘s position represent in the news narrative by the use of what sorts of language-uses and tactic device? It have three sub-questions as follows: a. How dose teller highlight “we-oriented” view points in the news reporting? b. How dose teller dissimulate “they-oriented” view points in the news reporting? c. How dose teller purposefully persuade the audience to be oriented and attached to the story-teller owns attitudinal position? Third, In relation to the given same social events, what is the distinctive differences of ideational pictures re-presented between Taiwan and Korean version of news story? Forth, In relation to a original newspaper article, how Taiwan and Korean press distinctively retelling or re-performing the story to be construct the thematic coherence of narrative flows ? In other to give answers to these practical questions, this study collected articles of Korean newspaper ‘Joongang Ilbo’ and Taiwan’s ‘United Daily’ and ‘China Times’, each dealing with the case of ‘nuclear waste’ which have drawn a firestorm from South Korea after Taiwan and North Korea had been made the deal of nuclear waste on Jan.12,1997. To analysis these news articles, this study systemically build a set of analysis methods and several types of research-tools focusing on three categories of meaning-field, that is, fields of interpersonal meaning, ideational meaning, and textual meaning. Interpersonal meaning field including two types of tool or cues, that is “modality” and “deixis” by which to explore the process of image constructing of teller-audience nexus on backstage；in the filed of ideational meaning, there are three tools, that is “registers of lexical categorization”, “social-action-verbs”, and “modes of narrative transposition ” by which to investigate the process of image construction of social actors staged-on；and the textual meaning field mainly based on “discourse marker” and “speech genre(as quotation)” by which to demonstrate the thematic coherence in the semantic and pragmatic levels embodied by the operations of symbolic selection and composition of narrative devices . To sum above methodological approaches, it can be illustrated as follows: Meaning-field Focus Relation-Web Image-Construction Language-use-Cues Interpersonal enonciative event enonciative context teller and listener modalities deixis Ideational episodic event representation of 'people-world’relations story actor’s social action lexical registers social-action-verbs modes of narrative transposition Textual symbolic textualizing thematic coherence selection and composition of narrative devices discourse markers speech genres Major conclusion of the study are as follows. For the research question 2, we found that teller’s view position itself demonstrated in those ‘deictic centers’ as like ‘WHO’, ‘WHEN-WHERE’, and ‘WHAT’ , which served as a sort of mechanism making a tragic spectacle, in other to set up the sympathetic involvement toward “Mr. Yan” as a hero as well as the resentment toward “Taiwan authority” as an antagonist, which is assume to be generated from the imagined domain of Korean audiences. More importantly, we further found that the three types of tactic devices of persuasiveness used by Korean teller which is this: a. to show concrete evidence including critical witness as a vivid symptoms on the could-be-impacts of pollution crisis；b. to evoke universal sense of moral justice；c. technique about punishment-supporting. For research question 3, we found that Korean and Taiwan news articles not only shown the differences of representational orders on the ideational picture of the case of Taiwan nuclear waste, but also it supported the fact that, as Mary Douglas argued, ‘ritual of social hygiene’ would be performed when a social communities faced the pollution problems to solves, in order to manages the crisis through mobilizing a sorts of symbolic capitals available to use. we show first that the dominant value of Korean domains on the news issues are standard aggressive patterns of “the program of the witch-hunting” which is based on the ethical politics of environmental protection and the justice of human rights；and second that, compared with the Korean domain’s, Taiwan news narrative demonstrated the distinctive representational order, i.e. “the program of consolation” which is based on lawful and economic ways of thinking. For research question 4, we found that Korean and Taiwan news reporting did not have a distinctive characteristics in the ways of using ‘discourse markers’ to construct local coherence of narrative flow, because both of they are follow basic conventional norms of news writing just as . But, in the other hand, from the aspects of ‘speech genre’, we found that there are differences in the ways of quotation, Korean teller is favor to use ‘free direct speech’ with a discriminating reporting verbs by which highlight the negative aspects of the deal, While on the contrary, Taiwan teller is favored to use ‘indirect speech’ and with a neutral reporting verbs by whichrean teller is favor to use ‘free direct speech’ with a discriminating reporting verbs by which highlight the negative aspects of the deal, while on the contrary, Taiwan teller is favored to use 'indirect speech' and with a neutral reporting verbs by which selecting the good ones and dismilating the negative aspects of the deal.