Description

In linguistics, media studies and political science the analysis of communicative activity directed at a number of addressees is still widely undertaken on the basis of a simple dyadic model of communication. The study of texts deriving from the mass media or politics demonstrates that they resist the application of such a reductionist model. Multiple address is a constitutive feature of media text varieties such as political discussions on television or the species of public communication employed by politicians. It transpires that such multiple address forms must not be regarded in the first place as communication with others but as communication performed before others and for others. Such a new perspective makes it possible to describe addressee-specific polyvalences typical of this kind of communication via language. One and the same utterance can be ascribed different meanings depending on the addressee orientation(s) involved.