One text, two readings: cases of reframing the Popes’ words in the Portuguese press

Description

To this date, the Popes have spoken in the United Nations General Assembly in five occasions. There, they manifested their concerns about issues which somehow were disturbing global peace: for instance, the nuclear arms race (a particular subject in Paul VI’s pontificate), violations of human rights and of the rights of nations (in John Paul II’s), the governmental incapacity to always and constantly protect citizens (in Benedict XVI’s) and the environmental crisis along with social exclusion (in Pope Francis’). Although all these topics have been generally broadcasted, since they were crucial in the international agenda at each time, it is curious to realize that two of the most influent newspapers in Portugal – Diário de Notícias (DN) and Jornal de Notícias (JN) – did not entirely coincide in the rewriting (Lefevere, 1992) of such papal speeches. Indeed, not only did they present a particular selection of the subjects mentioned by the pontiffs before the UN representatives, attributing more importance to some arguments than to others, but they also rearranged the selected contents in a particular order, therefore reflecting a specific (re)interpretation of the papal messages.
The aim of the paper was to identify differences and similarities, changes and regularities – both synchronically and diachronically - between both rewriting processes and give room for discussion about how the agenda-setting (McCombs and Shaw, 1972) and the frames (Lakoff and Wehling, 2012) defined in and repercuted by the newsrooms, besides reflecting an ideology (Lefevere, 1987, 1992) and an exercise of agency (Kinnunen and Koskinen, 2010), ultimately influence how the international events and the global protagonists are understood and regarded by the general public.

Period	30 Jun 2019
Event title	International Conference “Translation as reframing”
Event type	Conference
Location	Ponta Delgada, PortugalShow on map