Broadcasting and Television Language

Author: Li Zuofeng
Editor-in-Chief: Li Ying
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-10-01
Features: This book provides a general introduction to the characteristics of radio and television language and elaborates on the use of radio and television language from aspects such as word selection, sentence construction, and content planning. The book includes both positive arguments and explanations of common issues. It is suitable for radio and television professionals with a foundation in modern Chinese.
Excerpt:
Basic Knowledge
The development and application of electronic science have greatly changed human life and the way information is disseminated. As a form of language, radio and television language naturally shares many commonalities with general language; at the same time, as a special form of language, radio and television language has also gradually formed its own characteristics. To understand the characteristics of radio and television language, let's first explore the general features of language and then recognize the specific features of radio and television language. Among the general characteristics of language, we will focus on four aspects: semantics, language comprehension, conversational principles, and register.
1. Semantics
The basic unit of human language communication is the sentence, and each sentence contains a certain meaning. The meaning of a sentence is composed of three parts: lexical meaning, syntactic meaning, and pragmatic meaning. For example, consider the sentence: "" (The guest has come). Most people would understand that "" (guest) refers to "a person invited for hospitality" or "someone who visits for social purposes," in contrast to the host. Meanwhile, "" (come) indicates "moving from another place to the speaker's location." In this case, the meaning conveyed by "" and "" is their lexical meaning.
Beyond lexical meaning, in this sentence, people also understand that the action of "" is performed by the guest, meaning the guest is the agent of ""; additionally, they know that "" indicates the completion of the action. We recognize that "" is the agent because it is placed before "." With some grammatical knowledge, we would also know that "" is the subject here. The meaning of "" as a subject and the meaning conveyed by "" are referred to as "syntactic meaning."
To illustrate syntactic meaning, let's compare the following two sentences:
- 。 (The guest has come.)
- 。 (Someone has come.)
From a lexical perspective, these two sentences are identical, as they both contain three words: (guest), (come), and (has). However, the meanings they convey are not entirely the same. In the first sentence, the "" is a specific guest known to both speakers. For example, a child might tell their off-duty mother, "Mom, the guest has come." This could be because the mother told the child earlier that someone would be visiting that day. In the second sentence, the "" is usually not a specific guest known to both speakers. Even if the mother is just off duty, when the child says, "Mom, someone has come," the guest is typically not someone the mother was anticipating.
From these examples, we can see that in a sentence, in addition to lexical meaning, there is also syntactic meaning expressed by the order of words. For Chinese, word order is an important syntactic means. Besides word order, function words are also important syntactic means, such as the word "."
Do we fully understand the meaning of a sentence once we grasp its lexical and syntactic meanings? No. In a sentence, there is another type of meaning, which is perhaps even more important for understanding radio and television language. This is pragmatic meaning.
To illustrate pragmatic meaning, let's look at two examples.
Example 1:
"Is there anything bigger than this?" "Yes, but it's a bit more expensive."
In different linguistic contexts, the word "" (this) in the first sentence might carry different meanings. It could refer to watermelons in a fruit market, goldfish in a fish market, or tables in a furniture store, and so on. This shows that the same word can convey different meanings in different communicative contexts.
Example 2:
While walking on the street, a little girl says to her mother, "Mom, apples are delicious."