Minority languages and media

Last week in class we talked about the minority languages in media. In the Basque Country the media in basque is limited because there aren’t so many speakers, tso for example on TV there are only two channels in basque and the programmation isn’t very wide. Most of the shows are sports and a few quizes. In my point of view, the problem is that the standarization of the language started only a couple of decads and people who speak basque commonly speak dialects so they don’t feel used to watch shows in standard basque. A good example for this is the success of huomour TV shows like Wazemank and Finlandia, which don’t use standard basque. In the writting press, there is only one newspaper in basque, Berria, the others have some articles or suplements in basque. Taking into account the number of basque speakers and the potential consumers of this media, the stadistis are favourable, but there is a long way to achieve a “normal” media.

In the case of calatan, the standarization started earlier, so the servide that media gives is better. The TV  programmation is wider and the written press variety is greater as the readers and TV consumers are more (catalan speakers are over 800.000 people). Besides, the offer they give in the internet is really good.

As the internet is the new media, this gives minority languages the possibility to take part in the communication world in an active way.

The influence of media in the language

   Well, my fisrt post for class is going to be about the influence of media in language. As language is closely related with communication, it's impossible to think that media doesn't change the language. We can easily see the differences between the way to speak or write in media and in our daily lifes. However, that's not all. In different kind of media, the language is different, so watching to that media changes our language too. The influence will be bigger when the media is well known, as well as BBC in England is reference of good English.
   As far as I am concerned, I agree with David Crystal as he says that the written language has gained more expressivity with the internet. Internet is nowadays the most important media because it is growing up every day. Everyone is able to whatch videos, to chat with friends and also to make a blog (like we have done). Internet gives us the oportunity to take part actively in media, so, we can consider that we also are who have changed the language used in the internet. For example, when we speak face to face, we don’t have problems to express our feelings because we use the corporal language too. However, when we are in front of our computer, we cannot see the other one we are talking to, so we need another kind of communication: we need another laguage. This is internet language, which lets us show other people our feelings even if we do it writting.

   This is only an example, but the language has not changed only in the internet. Media is a communication way, and the language is created by the communication, so when a way of communicating changes, it’s easy to see that language is going to change too. So, as a conclusion, in my view all the media changes more or less the language it was used before.

My first post!

Hi to everyone! This blog has been made for the class of Language Usages in Media, in order to post here all the exercises we will do during the course. It's a good way to show all our work, as well as quite funny. I hope you'll all like it. Best regards!