decision to shell the doctor's home was “reasonable”” and no further comments were made. This effort by the paper is what as Bignell (1997, p. 99) suggests that the caption underneath the picture allows the reader to “load down the image with particular cultural meanings and the photograph functions as the proof that the text’s message is true.” To show further support for the victim’s loss, a video titled Doctor’s loss caught on film was also provided. Here, the writer would like the reader to connote sympathy, tragedy and injustice for the victim in the event. The connotations of the victim that was seen crying in the video suggested that ‘I cannot accept the fact that my daughters have died.’ The photograph and video were to further create a distance between the readers and the Israeli army suggesting that the readers should involve no empathy with the army who brought loss to an innocent man.
Not much comment can be made for The Guardian as it did not present any photographs or videos to accompany their news text. Thus this could be due to the fact that web news texts get their daily articles quickly circulated on a daily basis, therefore any photographs or videos may be posted up in the next updated news.
political background than The Jerusalem Post and Aljazeera; therefore their approach of presenting the news texts was neutral. Aljazeera inclined more towards the victim’s side. Even though this media also presented the story of the military’s accident in killing the girls, the last paragraph, P8, had started with the word “Instead” to visualize the readers that the Israeli military appeared to be unconcern with the tragedy and the readers should deem the episode as not an accident. Clearly, these media use different representations and semiotics as means of signifying the news items and to get the audience to perceive and believe the news as they are told in each text.
Apparently, news media is required in the world nowadays. People get connected with each other all over the world by the news. People read, listen or watch the news to get information about the world today. Readers are becoming more aware of where to search for news, whether in hardcopy or digital form, for insightful analysis and comprehensive reporting on issues that are happening around them and even across the globe. For that reason the public ought to be conscious of the power of the language of the media and its effect in influencing and shaping perceptions and opinion especially when the new technological resources for communication today reaches out to a much wider public than ever (David, Burhanudeen, & Abdullah, 2006).
Every reader reads the news text with a set of his own codes to decode the text. These codes will possibly be at variance from every reader. Therefore interpretations of news texts vary base on the views and thoughts of the reader, and also the familiarity with the newspaper and the codes that it uses to present the news to the readers.
David, Burhanudeen and Abdullah (2006, p. vii) prompt that “linguistics analysis of news text media is not only limited to analyzing the different representations of each news text and conducting semiotics analysis, but it also includes visual analysis, rhetorical analysis, discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis.” The results provided in this study on the different representations and the semiotics analysis of the same news item by different types of news texts did propose several factors involved in their production and recognized the various signs in representing their stories. However, they cannot determine how an individual reader may interpret the representations of the news items in a real social context.
The amount of text used for data provided in this paper is partial and the conclusion was based on the semiotics discourse viewpoint. One story is not always enough to draw a conclusion as a 24-hour web news channel may have issued several stories on the same event on the same day compared to a newspaper with only one report of the event in a day. Fowler (1991) says for our analyses to be valid, we should not rely solely on textual material; we have to go beyond the text, the hands involved in it, the editing process, the
internal guidelines, political orientation, etc. Therefore, for these limitations, further analyses with larger data in wider contexts are suggested to be conducted in future related studies.
The Authors
Diana Fauzia Sari (Email: diana.fauzia [at] yahoo.com) is a lecturer at the Secretarial Education Program (Program Diploma Pendidikan Kesekretariatan or PDPK), Faculty of Economics, Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She was born on September 9, 1978 in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She holds a B.A. in English from Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and an M.A. in TEFL from the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom. Her main research interests are global English, teaching methodologies, business English and language in the media.
Yunisrina Qismullah Yusuf (Email: Yunisrina [at] gmail.com) is a lecturer at the English Department, Faculty of Teacher Training and Education, Syiah Kuala University, Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She was born on June 17, 1980 in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. She received her B.A. in English from Universitas Syiah Kuala, Banda Aceh, Indonesia, and M.A. in Linguistics in the University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her research interests are in the various fields of linguistic studies. She is currently a PhD student majoring in Phonetics and Phonology at the Faculty of Languages and Linguistics, University of Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
References
Agencies. (2009, February 5). Israel: Girls’ killing ‘reasonable’ [Electronic version]. Aljazeera. Retrieved from http://english.Aljazeera.net/news/
middleeast/2009/02/200924233155221384.html Bell, A. (1991). The language of news media. Oxford: Blackwell.
Bell, A. (1998). The discourse structure of news stories. In A. Bell, & P. Garrett (Eds), Approaches to Media Discourse (pp. 64-104). Oxford: Blackwell.
Bignell, J. (1997). Media semiotics: An introduction. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Bignell, J. (2002). Media semiotics: An introduction (2nd ed.). Manchester:
Manchester University Press.
Chandler, D. (1994). Semiotics for beginners [Electronic version]. Retrieved from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/S4B/
Chimombo, M., & Roseberry, R. (1998). The power of discourse: An introduction to discourse analysis. Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
Danesi, M. (2002). Understanding media semiotics. London: Arnold.
David, M. K., Burhanudeen, H., & Abdullah, A. N. (2006). The power of language and the media. Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH.
David, M. K., & Hei, K. C. (2006). Revisioning aging: A semiotic analysis of a new magazine. In M. K. David, H. Burhanudeen, & A. N. Abdullah (Eds), The power of language and the media (pp. 61-69). Frankfurt: Peter Lang GmbH.
Dik, S. C. (1997). The theory of functional grammar. New York: de Gruyter.
Fishman, M. (1980). Manufacturing the news. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fowler, R. (1991). Language in the news: Discourse and ideology in the press.
London: Routledge.
Gambles, H. (1998). A semiotic analysis of a newspaper story. Retrieved from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/hlg9501.html
Katz, Y. (2009, February 4). Tank shells killed doctor’s daughters [Electronic version]. The Jerusalem Post. Retrieved from http://www.jpost.com /servlet/Satellite?cid=1233304684758&pagename=JPost/JPNews text/ShowFull
Matheson, D. (2005). Media discourses: Analysing media texts. Maidenhead:
Open University Press.
McCarthy, R. (2009, February 5). Israeli army says shelling of house where girls died was ‘reasonable’ [Electronic version]. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/05/israel-military-civilian-deaths-gaza
Soanes, C. (2008). Compact Oxford English dictionary of Current English.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sturrock, J. (1986). Structuralism. London: Paladin Grafton Books.
Thwaites, T., & Davis, L. (2002). Introducing cultural and media studies. New York: Palgrave.
Tuchman, G. (1998). Making news. New York: Free Press.
van Dijk, A. T. (1985). Discourse analysis in (mass) communication research.
In A. T. van Dijk (Eds), Discourse and communication, new approaches to the analysis of mass media discourse and communication (pp.1-12).
Berlin: de Gruyter.
Yamaguchi, K. (1991). Event history analysis. Newbury Park: Sage Publication, Inc.
Yildiz, M. N. (2002). Semiotics of new media literacy. Retrieved from http://euphrates.wpunj.edu/faculty/yildizm/SP/
International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), Vol. 6(3), 2012 (pp. 37-56) 37 readability appraisal of text and graphics with the L-scale algorithm P. Lindhout, Ministry of Social affairs and Employment and TU Delft
TBM-Safety Science Group, The Netherlands
G.J. Teunissen, VU University EMGO+, Metamedica, The Netherlands M.P. Lindhout, Het Webambacht, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
Readability formulas were invented about a century ago. They are intended as a simple measurement tool for evaluation of the complexity of a written text. Linguistic scientists, mathematicians, editors and software engineers have since then created many different formulas.
They are either generally applicable to a specific language or to a business segment. For the readability of a document, its text part is crucial, though not all. The contribution of graphics to readability is relatively small, yet overestimated in many cases. This common misinterpretation results in ineffective investment in expensive ‘over the top’ graphics and even in safety hazards. Web pages and safety documentation are often presumed to be more readable with the simple addition of graphics rather than by writing better readable text.
This is a safety threat to workers and it limits the efficacy of, for example, medical information for citizens. Linguistic research indicates that there are nine key parameters that determine the readability of a document. These are used in the ‘L-scale’ algorithm. Incorporated in an automated software tool, on line or in a word processing package, this algorithm quantifies readability of both text and graphics components in digital documents and calculates an effective CEFR readability level.
Keywords: Readability; Language issues; Literacy; CEFR; Web page; Safety.
1. Introduction
Understanding printed and displayed information is essential for participation in today’s society. Apart from its legibility and from physical circumstances like illumination, the information must be presented in a clear way in order to be understood. This is usually referred to as “readability.”
Written text was the exclusive domain of those with a high education level up to the 19th century. The readability of e.g. Thomas Hobbes’ 1651 work
“Leviathan” is jeopardised by extremely long sentences of up to 50 words.
Two hundred years later Charles Darwin wrote his book “On the origin of species” on a slightly better -but still beyond nowadays academic- readability level with 35 words or so per sentence. (Darwin, 1859; Hobbes, 1651) Around the end of the nineteenth century, text readability was scientifically
researched for the first time. The 1920’s brought the development of several methods of readability measurement in the US. The intention was to predict reading ease by means of counting the elementary text properties and application of a mathematical formula or a graph for their interpretation. This concept proved to be valuable and reliable in practice. The complexity of words and sentences became key factors. Since the 1970’s further development concentrated solely on automated readability evaluation of text.
(Flesch,1948; Fry, 2006; Stephens, 2000)
Currently a large number of indicator formulas for calculation of text readability exist. These formulas either produce a reading ease level, a complexity level, a scale number, a scholar’s age or a school grade level.
In the European Community the complexity level of text in various languages is standardized and harmonized with the Common European Framework of Reference, CEFR (Driessen, Liemberg, Leenders, Exter & Kleunen, 2007). The ability to read and write is expressed as a language skill level in the CEFR. It is based on three skill levels of language users, each with a low and a high skill sub-level, leading to a scale with six levels as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. The six language skill levels in the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR)
None of the currently existing indicator formulas evaluate the CEFR level however. Their scales are not related to one another nor are they related to the CEFR level for each language. They are either generally applicable for a language or specific to a business segment (Fry, 2006). Where legibility became systematically managed over the last decades (ASTM, 2011), readability continued to be an uncontrolled problem in several areas. This is most noticeable to the general public with government documents (West,
LEVEL GROUP
A Basic User
B Independent User
C Proficient User A1
Breakthrough or Beginner
A2 Waystage or
Elementary
B1 Threshold or Intermediate
B2 Vantage or
Upper Intermediate
C1 Effective Operation Proficiency or Advanced
C2 Mastery or Proficiency
2008), every day reading required at work and at home (Grenier, Jones, Strucker, Murray, Gervais & Brink, 2008), instructions for use of medicines (Andriesen, 2006), financial information for consumers (Anton, Earp, Bolchini, He, Jensen & Stufflebeam, 2003) and, more recently, safety instructions at work in high-risk chemical industry. Some 50% of safety related documents were found to be insufficiently readable for workers.
(Lindhout & Ale, 2009). Also the existence of avoidable costs related to poor readability becomes more apparent (Kimble, 1997).
The ability to read and write, or the lack of it, is often concealed. Whereas immigrants clearly show their language difficulties and voluntarily discuss ways to improve their skills, indigenous illiteracy is a taboo and considered a risk for loosing ones job (Jongeneelen, Meziani, Audenaerde & Bersee, 2007).