The alliterative chain in the title sums up the symbiotic relationship between the UK tabloids and celebrities: the tabloids pry into celebrities’ personal affairs because their readers have a prurient interest in such things, and both the newspapers and the celebrities profit from this arrangement. A fourth pr- word, privacy, has been omitted since most celebrities renounce any claim to privacy because it is in their interests to wash their dirty linen in public. This work focuses on the “red-top tabloids” (so named because all have their names in red print at the top of page one), specifically the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star and the News of the World. The emergence of “infotainment” has led to an obsession with celebrities, often to the detriment of worthier but less newsworthy individuals. Starting from the view that a celebrity “is a person known for his [or her] well-knownness” (Boorstin 1961, 57, cited by Allen 2004, 204), this work presents a study of three people of limited talent who dominated the red-tops’ front pages during the period investigated (August 2009) while events of far greater global significance were neglected. The repertoire of tools of enquiry includes critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2001), the investigation of presupposition (Grundy 2000) and analysis of the construction of a “textual community” (Conboy 2006).
Prying, Prurience and Profit: Celebrities and the Tabloid Press
BUCKLEDEE, STEPHEN JOHN
2011-01-01
Abstract
The alliterative chain in the title sums up the symbiotic relationship between the UK tabloids and celebrities: the tabloids pry into celebrities’ personal affairs because their readers have a prurient interest in such things, and both the newspapers and the celebrities profit from this arrangement. A fourth pr- word, privacy, has been omitted since most celebrities renounce any claim to privacy because it is in their interests to wash their dirty linen in public. This work focuses on the “red-top tabloids” (so named because all have their names in red print at the top of page one), specifically the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Star and the News of the World. The emergence of “infotainment” has led to an obsession with celebrities, often to the detriment of worthier but less newsworthy individuals. Starting from the view that a celebrity “is a person known for his [or her] well-knownness” (Boorstin 1961, 57, cited by Allen 2004, 204), this work presents a study of three people of limited talent who dominated the red-tops’ front pages during the period investigated (August 2009) while events of far greater global significance were neglected. The repertoire of tools of enquiry includes critical discourse analysis (Fairclough 2001), the investigation of presupposition (Grundy 2000) and analysis of the construction of a “textual community” (Conboy 2006).
I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
