2.6. HAPPY CHAT

1. THE TIRANNY OF CHATTING AND COMMON SENSE

What is the political effect of this 'chatty discourse'?

I am expressing my righteous contempt for Commercialism.

The 'chatty communication' simulates a para-social interaction with the audience.

The chat, together with the narration, is the main instrument of the creation of 'self-evident interpretations'.

The newspresenters in the tele-tabloids do not chat as subjects, but rather as corporate symbols.

Both discourses - chatty mannerism and neutral documentary realism - coexist and mutually interchange.

The chatty spontaneity and informality is not left to chance; on the contrary, the conversation is fully institutionalised.

It was Mr Kramberger who suggested that such an event was better suited to a castle complex than to a ranch, and together with Mrs Berce proposed Castle Sne§nik as a suitable venue.

By adding his/her chatty mannerism the newspresenter counts on an 'ordinary person' for whom he/she interprets events within the framework of the common sense universe:

Where a conversational style of discourse is used in the news, the news can also be viewed and understood as humorous, ironic, or as chat.

Those invited included a number of experts on the Middle Ages, among them the architect Duçan Kramberger and the late Vesna Berce, then the manager and curator of Sne§nik Castle.

In the company of this drink, conversation, card games, philosophising and simple idling can go on forever, particularly when accompanied by copious portions of the rich house fare.

The most implicit, the least evident, as well as the most effective technique of creating the meaning by chatty mannerism, is the use of facial expression and voice.

The reciprocity of perspectives, assumed in the chat between the newspresenter and the implicit viewer, must always be imitated, for it is only possible in actual face-toface interaction.

Although the genre of news is a mixture of chat, information, commentary, melodrama, and visual spectacle, it still carries information, but people watch it as a popular genre.

Certainly, the manner of speaking (face-to-face interaction, chatty mannerism, storytelling, and dramatisation of utterance and face work) is closely related to the newspresenter's assumptions about the audience that he/she addresses.

The authors were Heckel (1850), Steindachner (1860), Kner (1863, 1867), Kornhuber (1893), Bassani (1879, 1880) and Gorjanovicy-Kramberger (1895) who determined 27 fish species from these beds.

On the other hand, however, the television news broadcast is becoming an increasingly chatty social genre, in which the main emphasis is placed on communication rather than information, while the audience consumes it ritually rather than instrumentally.

The common sense and popular voice are more important in tele-tabloids than expertise, the visual dramatisation more important than information, the art of chatting and the story, or editing, more important than argumentation.

This Directive shall not apply to the trade and distribution of medicinal products as defined by Directive No 65/65/EEC, or to the commercial activities of itinerant traders, hawkers or pedlars.

The style of fashion texts Fashion texts use the techniques of popular journalism in which information and facts are presented in such a way as to imitate a real-life conversation, implicit dialogues and pleasant chats.

In literature often appeared names as " Komen platy limestone ", " Komen shale ", and even " fish shale ", principally owing to finds of rich fish fauna in the surroundings of Komen (Gorjanovicy-Kramberger, 1895).

Of course, the process of the transformation of the journalistic public discourse into the 'discourse of chatty mannerism' at the crossroads of advertisement, information and fun, implies new and different forms of 'apolitical' political language.

The subjectivisation of news - primarily the verbal and visual construction of events into stories, 'happy chat', and the construction of the local celebrity out of television newspresenter - is the paramount change in the television news of the last decade.

The contrast between the engaged, chatting newspresenter, taken as our man/woman whom we can trust since he/she investigates and questions on our behalf, on the one hand, and the neutral super-professional on the other hand, is the main 'ideological effect' of the entertainment news.

a dramatic, or melodramatic use of voice, a narrative combination of separate news items (which gives a common meaning to separate events), chatty mannerism, and changes in the use of discourse while shifting from 'more important' to 'less important' spheres of reality.

The chatty style, the compassion, the friendly attitude, and dramatisation combine all the time with the impersonal linguistic code, omni-informed professionalism and visualisation connoting the immediacy, realism, and technological sophistication of the news:

Precisely the contrast between the engaged, chatty newspresenter - a typical man/woman who can be trusted, for he/she investigates on our behalf and endeavours to establish an intimate relationship with the audience - on the one hand, and the neutral super-professional on the other, is the source of the 'ideological effect' of the entertainment news.

Obviously news can no longer be viewed as a distinct genre that 'transmits information', since tele-tabloid journalism mixes politics with popular culture, information with 'entertainment', melodrama with information, information with moralising, investigation with chat.

At the same time, all three features - the visual manipulation of the news, which affirms the newspresenter's status; the meta-textual identity of the newspresenter as a national personality with his/her own secondary life in other popular media; and the conversational interaction between the newspresenter and the audience - contribute to the personification of the newspresenter.

The interaction of narratives; chat between either the newspresenters themselves, or between the newspresenters and imaginary audience; pictures from the 'scene of event'; graphic visualisation of the event; and graphic lettering - all these make the news function as if it were a non-mediated, immediate, transparent and objectified view of reality.

A critique of the discourse of 'happy talk' and an analysis of the aesthetic iconography of the television space (set design, image of the newspresenters, graphics) and melodramatic storytelling do not mean that we are pleading for a return to the objectivist conception of the news, to the neutral figure of the newsreader-mediator of the news, and to hard news journalism.

The rest of the story need not be shewn in action, and indeed, would hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the ready-mades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of "happy endings" to misfit all stories.

Similarly, a Jana journalist asks: 'Doesn't one of the partners take on the male role?' (29, 1989) and later admits that none of the stereotypes she had been aware of was confirmed in practice. 'When Anja and Irena came in ... the first stereotype proved false, the one that all lesbians are masculine in appearance and somewhat robust and that they strive to resemble men as closely as possible although they do not like them' (29, 1989).

This essay is a criticism of the chatty discourse in newsentertainment. This does not mean, however, that the conventions of standard informative political journalism, in which the bodiless spirit of the newsreader impersonally and impartially reads the news about famous personalities and major events in high-level politics, are less ideological, less excluding, and more emancipatory.

Production of the Komen and Tomaj limestones gave an important contribution to the geological science, since during excavation of these beds very abundant and diverse fossil fauna was collected among which primarily the fish and reptile skeletons prevailed (Gorjanovicy-Kramberger, 1895; Calligaris et al., 1994; Jurkovšek & Kolar-Jurkovšek, 1995; Summesberger et al., 1996a).

The newspresenter's chatty directness is formulaic and conventionally coded, as in melodrama - soap opera, for instance - In which no visual code is left to chance: the manner of how something is said enables the viewer immediately to understand what was said, what kind of person we are seeing, and what kind of development we can expect to evolve.

News about politics and famous personalities at important occasions are increasingly becoming stories about chaos in society, and from the communicative point of view they have been modified into an amalgam of common-sense chat, sociability, fatalistic melodrama, visual spectacle, simulation of technological sophistication, super-professionalism, rhetorical simulation of dramatic conflict, and... information.

In general we can say that Slovene television journalism (both on public service and commercial television channels) is closer to 'entertainment' than to information. It is a simulation of authenticity rather than a 'reflection of reality'; a melodramatic narration of events rather than a chronology of events and their interpretation based on arguments; communication and the informal chat of newspresenters marked by corporate symbols rather than information.

the narration of events as 'human interest stories', the use of individual experience as a referential framework for the understanding of structural phenomena, focusing on individual experiences and the emotional states of victims of or witnesses to an event, the similarity of television language to everyday language, chatty mannerism, simulation of the chatty, faceto- face communication between the newsreader and the audience, planned and systematic construction of the metatextual identity of newsreaders as celebrities, and so forth.

the ideological effect of the television tabloids is not to be sought primarily in the modified content of the news and the modified selection of events, but rather in the rhetoric and iconography of the television space: the colour of the newspresenter's jacket, which must connote neutral professionalism, the dramatisation of his voice, the banter and exchange of looks between the newspresenters and with the audience, the iconography of the title sequence - and in the meanings that these devices connote.

All three aspects of social news - the construction of the meta-textual identity of the newspresenter as a public personality with his/her secondary life in other media; the aesthetic manipulation of the news, employing visual means to construct the leading role of newspresenter in the 'televised space' and in the hierarchy of voices representing the institution; and the chatty mannerism of the newspresenter - contribute both to the personification and humanisation of the newspresenter and to an entertaining and pleasurable social event.

When the news represents an event in terms of a clearly polarised drama about the struggle between good and evil, when it offers a moral judgement on the world, when the aesthetic visualisation of the television news can create a sense of familiarity and trust between the newsreader and the audience in their living rooms, and when the news is read in an intimate and chatting manner by a man/woman who can be trusted, since he/she investigates, seeks out and exposes the truth on our behalf, the news plays the same role as other pseudo-therapeutic discourses within popular media culture.

Intimacy, compassion, the friendly informal chat of an ordinary person who is one of us, his/her facial expressions, and the dramatisation in his/her voice that immediately defines the situation as sociable, meet with an impersonal linguistic code, incredible pace of presentation and interviewing, the dress codes of newspresenters which imitate those of the business world, technically and aesthetically refined mise-en-scene, hierarchical relationships between the newspresenter, or newspresenters, and all the other voices in the news, which connote the totally competent professionalism, immediacy and neutrality of the news.

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Psittacula krameri echo

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