The study of media language is increasingly important both for media studies and for discourse analysis and sociolinguistics. Drawing on examples from TV, radio and the press, the author focuses on changing practices of media discourse in relation to wider processes of social and cultural change.

Approaches to media discourse; communication in the mass media; critical analysis of media discourse; intertextuality and the news; representations in documentary and news; identity and social relations in media texts; Crimewatch UK; political discourse in the media; critical media literacy.

'...offers a new contemporary approach to media language which connects both with the key issues in modern social theory and with poststructuralist interest in intertextuality and genre mixing. It will be highly useful for media studies courses and adds a dimension to existing issues and theories in textual analysis.' Theo van Leeuwen, School of Media, London College 'This book offers insights into media, media discourse and their interface with wider social processes that you will not find in other writers...Fairclough produces a unique range of insights into media discourse. The field would be much the poorer without his work.' Journal of Sociolinguistics