Mass Media, Language Families, and Grammar Principles

Mass Media and Communication Channels

The press, radio, and television are instruments technically prepared to deliver information to a wider, diverse, and anonymous audience. They serve three primary functions: to inform, educate, and entertain.

Newspapers and Magazines

The newspaper is a publication which appears every day and contains information of today. Usually published daily, these may include general information or specialized information.

Magazines are also publications that can be published weekly, quarterly, or at other intervals. They can focus on general information or specialized information.

Journalistic Genres: Information and Opinion

The information genres are divided into reporting and opinion genres.

• Information genres: In these, the predominant objective is information. They include news, chronicles, stories, and interviews.
• Opinion genres: These consist of opinion articles and analysis. They include the in-depth article, critical articles, the editorial, and letters to the editor.

Linguistics and Language Families

Classification of languages: The mother tongue evolves over time. Language families with a common core are divided into different branches or groups.

Major Language Families

The major language families include: Indo-European, Uralic, Altaic, Sino-Tibetan, Afro-Asiatic, Niger-Congo, and various Native American language families.

Romance Languages

The Romance languages include: Spanish, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese, French, Provençal, Italian, Sardinian, Rhaeto-Romance, and Romanian.

Radio and Television Media

Radio is a medium which transmits sound at a distance.

• Language of radio: Voice, music, sound effects, and silence.
• Types of radio: News, variety shows, music, sports, participation, and cultural programming.

Television is a medium that transmits sounds and moving images at a distance.

• Types of television programming: News, fiction, entertainment, sports, cultural, and children's shows.
• Types of advertising: Commercial or institutional.

Grammar and Semantic Structures

Phrases are groups of words arranged around a nucleus that play a specific role in the sentence.

Nouns and Word Relationships

The noun (name) is a word used to name reality: people, animals, things, and abstract realities.

• Monosemic words: Have only one meaning in any context or situation.
• Polysemous words: Have multiple meanings, depending on the context or situation.
• Synonymous words: Have meanings that are very similar or equivalent depending on the context, although usually not identical.
• Antonyms: Words that express an opposite or contrary meaning.
• Homonymous words: Pronounced and spelled the same (or similarly) but with different meanings; these include homophones and homographs.

Determinants and Figurative Language

The determinants are words that accompany the noun and serve to determine its meaning.

• Denotative meaning: The literal or objective meaning of a word.
• Connotative meaning: The figurative or subjective meaning added to a word.

In a metaphor, the signifier of a word (the real word) is replaced by the signifier of another word (the figurative term) because there is a similarity between the two meanings.

In metonymy, the signifier of a word (the real word) is replaced by the signifier of another word (the figurative term) because the meanings of both have a close relationship.