6 March 2024: Katharine Kavanagh

What’s So Special About the Circus – and Who Says So? A Corpus-Assisted Discourse Analysis of Value Difference and Mediation in Promotional Texts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 (week 6 of term): Katharine Kavanagh, Cardiff University

12:10pm in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building on Colum Drive

The research investigates the value that is attributed to the experience of attending UK circus performance through evaluative texts. Specifically, a comparison is made between the direct language of audience members, and the mediated language of reviews and publicity materials, from the period immediately pre-and post-pandemic. The research explores which elements of circus audience experience are under- or over-represented in these particular text types, and draws conclusions that highlight gaps in the communicative potential of promotional discourse in the UK circus field. A novel corpus linguistic methodology is applied to investigate the evaluative targets within the texts, triangulating results from a Key Semantic Domain analysis (Rayson et al. 2004) with complementary results from a tailored quali-quantative analysis framework derived from Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal system. Results show that the values expressed through audience interviews are least aligned with those promoted in publicity materials, while published reviews occupy a mid-point between the two, albeit more closely aligned with publicity materials than with direct interviews. Commonalities and distinctiveness between the three corpora are discussed—such as differing volumes of affect-based and cognitive-based reporting, the varying importance placed on qualities of novelty, familiarity, and social experience, and strategies of legitimisation—and attention is drawn to the lack of vocabulary or discursive confidence among audience members in direct interviews. Ultimately, recommendations are made for ways in which promoters of circus work can more effectively align their publicity materials with audience values. Moreover, a broader recommendation is made for the UK circus sector to develop strategies for better articulating the variety and diversity of 21^st Century circus, in order to foster more representative public perceptions and further align industry and audience values.

This mock viva will be held in Room 3.58 of the John Percival Building.