BBC´s Language

Television news programmes have to have a formal language , understandable, clear and attractive to their respective audiences. The most known programme of news is called BBC in Great Britain so I am going to talk about this programme and the sort of language that BBC employs:

• They employ a standard and formal language.
• The programme provides information and public discourse.
• The programme tries to entertain the audience in a serious and curious way.

BBC does not employ direct audience references because it would sound a little bit rude, so they employ some sentences like "You can see all the latest developments on BBC news 24" and they said "our" to their incorporation as a group because "me" sounds very bizarre.

The salutations in BBC are formal and educated as "Good Evening".

The reporters are not represented with titles and their names below, the presenters give their names and their location so it makes them more professionals and also we can see more than one reporter in a piece of news. For example " all the information will give us our correspondent Mark Simpson who is in Newry now, Mark". And when he finishes to talk about , the presenters always say "thank you very much"

The audience wants a very serious and informational programme so the informal language can not be used in BBC. It uses a serious linguistic style.

Others examples are: "no one was injured", "members of the presbyterian group" instead of "the people of the presbyterian group" "many business were forced to close" instead of "shops close"

A very used sentence is "thanks very much ,the time is coming up now too quarter past six" because they have a limit of time to say each section and it is a formal way to say that it is a little bit late. They do not use the contraction form as "isn´t " or " aren´t", they say "are not" or "is not" because it sounds better and formal. Another form that they do not use is the hesitation fillers as "you know" that is a daily form.

Also they always say things as "Discussing the elections.." or " Congress is still planning the electronic elections.." instead of "I think the Congress is still planning..", they do not use so much the personal pronouns.

When they are presenting some sections that they are going to talk about later they say "coming up..." because if they present every section of the programme it would give an "attractive view" so that people watching the news will wait to see them.

To the companies, business,etc. they called them , for example ,as "lucrative companies" because it sounds better. Also BBC employs neutral terms as "members" or "delegates".

To sum up, the language used in news are very formal, they employed neutral terms and general references. In this post you can see a few examples of this kind of language (BBC is only an example where you can see this language, you can see it in other news).

At last, I let you a video with this kind of language:

Geordie Shore´s Language

In this section I am going to analyse the language used in a TV programme called Geordie Shore. In this programme we can see a type of language quite different from the formal language used in TV.

This programme contains strong language and sexual references but it is perfect to make a distinction between formal language and urban language.

I start with some sentences employed in that programme:

 In a chapter someone said "If yee banged ..." , at first we do not usually say "yee" , we should say "you" but in the urban language people usually say words with that termination (same with "butta" instead of "butter"). Of course "banged" is another one that you say in a situation of angry , a common word in the street.

Another sentence is "I could not give a shit" which is an informal manner of saying "I don´t mind", they also say "fuck" instead of "shit".

We can also see the form of "you" as "Are ya sloshed"  or "to" in "ta be doing" because their british accent have a termination in the letter "schwa" , an unstressed syllable, and they make an assimilation when they are talking in a sentence. Another example is "D´ya know" instead of "do you..".

Now I am going to put some words with this british accent and how they say each word in a urban style:

 When they are talking fast they say "dinnae" (don´t) or "dee" (do) but only when they are talking to people who they know them before, not for the first impression. They also say "yersel" (yourself).

 An expression that I heard a lot in this programme is "arse" , for example, someone said " If i can be arsed", arse has a negative meaning as "ass" or "idiot", depending on what you are going to employ it. Another expression is "being a knob" which means "idiot" or "retard". Of course you are not going to employ those words in a formal language. Another expression I heard is " Gary may already home with a bird", in this sentence "bird" is not related to an animal, it is related to girls that he meets in a night and he carries them to his house.

 Another words are "Aye" which means "yes", a kind of way of saying yes in a situation where you are agree with someone that you know. Also they say "me" instead of "my" as "on me hand"

 "Yoos" is "your" in plural, but it is better to say "yoos" because it is less complex, faster. A curious word is "alreet" which is "alright" but they employ it in a way that when they meet each other they say it, it is like "hello". Some others words are "doon" (down), "lang" (long), the  word "dickhead" that is very informal( you can say better idiot, it sounds better) or the expression "Let iz naa" (let me know).

To see some examples I show all of you some videos of these expressions and words:

 "I pied her", "Fuck up", "haway" (come on), "pull" ( in the sense to have relations), "cock" (male reproductive organ), "ya told us" (you..)