PhD defense by David Mathieu
Invitation to PhD defense
Monday March 4, 2013 at 13.00 – 16.00 in room 42-2.37
David Mathieu
defends his thesis:
A Contextual Approach to the Reception of News Discourse
A Cross-Cultural Study of News Comprehension Situated in Language, Culture and Cognition
Abstract
Taking its point of departure in a critique of reception research and psychological approaches to the comprehension of news, this project seeks to explore the role of the contextual contribution of recipients to the comprehension of mediated discourse such as news, within a view of reception as meaning convergence between the text and the audience. The thesis offers a theoretical and an empirical contribution to both the study of context and news comprehension. Based on an integration of reception analysis and experimental cognition, the methodology of research consists in a cross-cultural comparison of the comprehension processes of Danes and French Canadians over a set of news texts from both countries. The data consist in reading protocols obtained through a cognitive interview conceived as the adaptation of the qualitative in-depth interview to the method of think-aloud in cognitive psychology. With the help of theories within the field of pragmatics, the contextual contribution of recipients is understood as a process of problematisation and news comprehension theorised as a communicative phenomenon at the intersection of language, culture and cognition. It is argued that news comprehension reflects an implicit cultural relationship between a text and its intended audience.
Assessment Committee
Thomas Tufte, Professor, CBIT , Roskilde University (chairman)
Hanne Bruun, Associated professor, Department of Aesthetics and Communication, Media Studies, AU.
Olle Ragnar Findahl, Professor, World Internet Institute, Gävle, Sverige
Head of defense
Keld Bødker, Head of Doctoral School, CBIT, Roskilde University, DK
Supervisor
Kim Schrøder, Professor, CBIT, Roskilde University, DK
Thesis is available for examination here.
After the defense CBIT will host a reception.