A cross-cultural analysis of popularizations in English and Spanish newspaper discourse

Abstract

A cross-cultural analysis has been carried out for two news articles from the Guardia¡¡ and El País respectively, both reporting the same scientific finding. The aim was to study how the same event is (re)contextualised in two different languages and cultures through written media. After analyzing the contextual, structural, and inter-personal dimensions quantitatively and qualitatively, the results show that, even if the contextual dimension is similar, newsworthiness is achieved by means of different structural and interpersonal strategies (text organization and attribution) which could be linked to cultural differences in readers' expectations. The results also suggest that cross-cultural comparisons can account for features of popularizations which are not revealed when interpreting them as mere translations between scientific genres. It is therefore concluded that cross-cultural analyses of popularizations may help to avoid an oversimplification in the study of popularizations as an integral part of the process of scientific knowledge construction.