Stage 3: A Depth Analysis at the Level of the Code

Abstract

These four interconnected chapters cover the third depth analysis stage of Gravells’ proposed four-stage analysis process for analysing news texts. Having established nine discursive features for study, spread over the semiotic levels of sign, code, mythic meaning and ideology, she offers in this chapter a depth analysis of each of these features as they appear in the BP Deepwater Horizon news texts. She finds that for each of the three time points studied, the analysis of the nine language features taken together describe a particular kind of representation. Moreover, she finds movement in each of the features over time, such that the total picture at each time point is distinctive, and different from the others.