'How the hell did this get on tv?'

Professor Angela Smith has given a paper at the Ross Priory Broadcast Talk Seminar. The topic of her paper was nakedness in dating shows; in particular Channel 4’s Naked Attraction. This is a show that opens with the assertion that ‘Online dating has been a complete nightmare […] with the status symbols we wear getting in the way of finding our perfect mate.’  With full nudity, lingering close-ups and graphic descriptions, many viewers took to Twitter to express dismay that the show had made it to mainstream television, and led to the Guardian referring to it as symptomatic of the dystopian media landscape of 2016. Angela's paper will explore how the shock of graphic nudity is ameliorated by the linguistic strategies of positive politeness that all participants seem to collude with. Such amelioration would appear to be a defence against accusations of voyeuristic and pornographic content on mainstream television.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Blake, Albion and the French Revolution

Image
Blake's Albion An essay by Dr David Fallon has been published in Home and Nation in British Literature from the English to the French Revolutions , a Cambridge University Press collection edited by A.D. Cousins and Geoffrey Payne. In 'Homelands: Blake, Albion, and the French Revolution', David shows the significance in Blake's writing of the Enlightenment discourse of national manners and the emerging notions of nationalism and the militarised nation-state that arose during the British wars with revolutionary France. Blake's poetry reveals a complex relationship to nationalism as he attempts to articulate a form of distinctly British patriotism without endorsing the 'official' martial British nationalism of the time. He argues that Blake, like a number of radical contemporaries, regarded the violence of the French Revolution and the aggressive response of Britain arising from deeply engrained national cultures.
Read more

One big happy family?

Image
Kim Willis (TESOL) has co-written an article which appears in the English Language Research (ELR) Journal . Kim and her co-author Dr Ahmad Nazari (London Metropolitan University) explore perceptions of the development of group dynamics amongst a cohort of MA TESOL students. Ahmad Nazari and Kim Willis 2014. 'One Big Happy Family? An Investigation into Students' Perceptions of Group Dynamics on an MA TESOL Program' . ELR Journal . Issue 1: 105-128.
Read more

The New North East

Image
On Monday 13th July 2015 the Department of Culture will be hosting a one-day symposium focused on our region entitled ‘ The New North East ’. This interdisciplinary gathering - which takes place in the Prospect Building, St Peter's Campus - will bring together scholars and practitioners working in the field of ‘cultural studies’ (broadly understood to include history, literature, linguistics, visual arts and media studies). It is hoped that the forum will allow participants to share developments in their disciplines, especially those which have opened up new avenues of research and/or shed new light on more traditional objects of enquiry in the study of North East England and North East Englishness. We hope the exciting range of talks will attract interest from academics, students and members of the public from across the region. The confirmed speakers are: Professor John Tomaney (Bartlett School of Planning, University College London) Dr Adam Mearns (School of Englis...
Read more