"The language of the media influences the vocabulary, not the bottom of the language," said Inés Olza, researcher of the project ‘Public Discourse' at the Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) of the University of Navarra. Inés Olza along with Carmela Pérez Salazar, professor at the Department of Philology of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, have edited a book, Del discurso de los medios de comunicación a la lingüística del discurso, that includes several studies in the fields of Philology and Communication on language in the media and its linguistic discursive orientation.

"There are many aspects of language such as the syntax, the morphology or the grammar that are difficult to change. The part that is affected is the lexicon," said the researcher and, she explained that despite the great expansion of the Spanish language in the world, there is a great unity in its base.

Inés Olza assured that we should not worry about the possibility that the media worsens citizens' speech: "Fundamentally there is a bustle of words that are striking, but the base of the language is not transformed."

Indeed, one of the articles in the book, La «indignación»  de los «indignados»: apuntes sobre el léxico, la semántica y la pragmática by Manuela Catalá Pérez (Universidad de San Jorge), exemplifies this phenomenon. "There is a change in the society," Inés pointed out, "some individuals are called 'outraged' (indignados) and that term appears in the media, which acts as a catalysts that transmits this term to the society. The next step could be, for example, the inclusion of this new meaning in the dictionaries."

Declarative responsibility of journalists

The book also includes an article by the ICS researcher entitled Compromiso epistémico e intensificación enunciativa: funciones pragmáticas de algunos fraseologismos somáticos del español. Inés analyses "a series of more or less fixed expressions in conversational Spanish very colloquial with which a person expresses a commitment to the truth of what he or she says," explained Inés Olza. These expressions intensify the speech and also affect what is called the "declarative responsibility", in other words, the speaker takes responsibility for what he or she said.

According to the expert, the use of these expressions in the media can be a double-edged sword, as the journalist takes responsibility or otherwise nuances that responsibility.  Some expressions of this type are 'apparently', 'so it seems', 'actually', 'from the perspective X', among others, and are directly related to the way the reporter constructs information security and how he or she indicates his or her sources.

"This is very interesting for the pragmatic and linguistic discourse because it has to do with how we use our language. These types of expressions are being analyzed in the media because they build the image of the speaker and modulate the declarative responsibility, the responsibility of the journalist," said Inés Olza.

The book, published by the prestigious academic publisher Frank & Timme, includes articles from more than 25 experts in Linguistics and Communication from nine universities in Spain and Italy. The publication is a tribute to Professor Maria Victoria Romero for her retirement and was presented at the XI International Congress of General Linguistics. Professor Romero was a pioneer in the discourse analysis and the discourse in the media.