Texts soaked with culture: The impact of cultural differences on the thematic structure of British and Polish national dailies
Anna Zięba
(Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland)
ABSTRACT: This paper examines the thematic structure of written media texts published in two national Polish and British dailies, namely Gazeta Wyborcza and The Guardian. The investigation, based on traditional content analysis methods, includes over a thousand articles published between January 14, 2010 and February 10, 2010. The analysis of data includes a study of frequency of occurrence of individual topics. Results are interpreted with reference to Hofstede’s 5D model and Hall’s division of societies into high-context and low-context cultures. The investigation reveals significant correlation between the frequency of occurrence of individual topics and cultural patterns characteristic to na- tional culture, especially in the dimensions of uncertainty avoidance and individualism vs. collectivism. It is argued that the results of the study support a belief that culture wields an influence on language. The author concludes that the impact that culture has on language in press starts at the level of news values the criteria of prominence of media texts.