The proximal narratives of online risk communication: fatal aircraft-accident synopses by the U.S. Transportation Agency Safety Board

6 pages•Published: January 6, 2018

Abstract

I explore the narrative strategies adopted by a specific type of institutional discourse grounded in the authority of expertise: risk communication, aimed at influencing our conceptions of hazard and danger to ultimately prevent unsafe behaviours. My focus is the unique discourse of the fatal aviation accident synopses issued yearly online by the National Transportation Safety Board of the United States of America (NTSB for short). Through a blended framework that merges Narratology, Critical Discourse Analysis and the Positioning and Proximisation Theories, I examine how the NTSB didactically brings risks and dangers close to its broad mixed virtual audience while undertaking fluid roles for branding purposes and disseminating the ideological principles of American democracy. In doing so, I especially attend to issues of narrative focalisation (i.e. recounting perspective) and speech representation.

Keyphrases: aircraft accident dockets, digital narratives, online synopses, proximisation, risk communication, u.s. national transportation agency

In: Alejandro Curado (editor). LSP in Multi-disciplinary contexts of Teaching and Research. Papers from the 16th International AELFE Conference, vol 3, pages 53-58.

Links:	https://easychair.org/publications/paper/XgVr
	https://doi.org/10.29007/tp1r

BibTeX entry

@inproceedings{AELFE2017:proximal_narratives_online_risk,
  author    = {Carmen Sancho Guinda},
  title     = {The proximal narratives of online risk communication: fatal aircraft-accident synopses by the U.S. Transportation Agency Safety Board},
  booktitle = {LSP in Multi-disciplinary contexts of Teaching and Research. Papers from the 16th International AELFE Conference},
  editor    = {Alejandro Curado},
  series    = {EPiC Series in Language and Linguistics},
  volume    = {3},
  publisher = {EasyChair},
  bibsource = {EasyChair, https://easychair.org},
  issn      = {2398-5283},
  url       = {/publications/paper/XgVr},
  doi       = {10.29007/tp1r},
  pages     = {53-58},
  year      = {2018}}

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