Speech Presentation and Summary in the BBC News Online Coverage of a Russian TV Interview with Vladimir Putin

Abstract

This article is interested in discourse presentation which, prototypically, refers to the presentation of speech, writing or thought from an anterior discourse in a posterior discourse. More specifically, the focus here is on the presentation of spoken discourse in a BBC website news story about the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, during an interview on Russian television in 2015. The main concern of the article is the way in which the BBC news website presents Vladimir Putin’s speech in the interview and whether it is faithful to the original. Our analysis shows that the discourse presentation includes/reflects the subjective view of the reporter which at times obscures the original discourse, and affects the way in which the Russian president is represented.