- University of the Philippines Open University, UPOU Faculty of Education, Department Memberadd
- Wilfred Gabriel A. Gapas (preferred pronouns: he/him or they/them) is an applied linguist – that is, a scholar who investigates language issues in everyday life. He is interested in research on historical disinformation, linguistic inequalities, multimodality, media and policy discourses, languag... moreWilfred Gabriel A. Gapas (preferred pronouns: he/him or they/them) is an applied linguist – that is, a scholar who investigates language issues in everyday life. He is interested in research on historical disinformation, linguistic inequalities, multimodality, media and policy discourses, language (teacher) education, and visual methodologies. He also has a decent experience of bringing linguistics (i.e., the scientific study of languages) to the public such as his participation in Dr. Ruanni Tupas' Istoryahanay Twitter Spaces in 2020 and his linguistics communication project, The Community Linguist, where he advocates for language and social justice.
He completed his bachelor and master’s degrees in English Language Studies in the University of Santo Tomas (UST). He is presently a student at the Teacher Certification Program at the University of the Philippines – Open University. Before he became a faculty member at the UST, he facilitated English language courses at the Far Eastern University, Manila and the Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Manila. In between these stints, he was a module writer at the Research Center for Teacher Quality at the Philippine Normal University.edit
Recent studies on text organization have focused mostly on business documents, academic texts, and certain newspaper articles such as editorials and news stories. However, the organization of opinion articles found in university-level... more
Recent studies on text organization have focused mostly on business documents, academic texts, and certain newspaper articles such as editorials and news stories. However, the organization of opinion articles found in university-level newspapers has not been formally investigated. Therefore, this study attempts to determine whether these articles are written in accordance to journalistic writing principles. A total of 45 opinion articles were taken and served as the study corpus. These articles were analyzed based on Ho’s (2001) framework, as supported by the principles of macrostructure and the features of editorials in journalistic writing. The findings indicate that the discourse structure of Philippine newspaper opinion articles
employs the two-move pattern in the orientation, exposition, and summation blocks, where two frequently used steps are found in each block. The findings suggest that university students adhere to a prescribed journalistic text organization, although there is also a tendency to deviate from it. Furthermore, it is possible that their judicious choices in using a particular step may have been
influenced by the writers' objective of effectively communicating their opinion to a wide variety of readers.
employs the two-move pattern in the orientation, exposition, and summation blocks, where two frequently used steps are found in each block. The findings suggest that university students adhere to a prescribed journalistic text organization, although there is also a tendency to deviate from it. Furthermore, it is possible that their judicious choices in using a particular step may have been
influenced by the writers' objective of effectively communicating their opinion to a wide variety of readers.
Research Interests:
The reporting of both terrorism and conflicts is extensively investigated in past media discourse studies across contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in various forms of news... more
The reporting of both terrorism and conflicts is extensively investigated in past media discourse studies across contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in various forms of news discourse. Based on this niche, this thesis sought to closely examine how the 2017 Marawi City siege is constructed in print news reports as newsworthy. Specifically, it was aimed at determining (a) the linguistic and visual resources used to construe newsworthiness, (b) the news values used to construe the event’s newsworthiness, and (c) the existing multimodal relationship between language and images. Sixty news reports from three Philippine broadsheets were analyzed using Bednarek and Caple’s (2017) discursive news values framework. This multimodal corpus was examined with multiple methods, namely: (a) collocation analysis of MARAWI and its top three first order collocates, (b) manual analysis of verbal and visual devices utilized for each news value, and (c) the verbal and visual relationship in terms of each discursive news value. A scrutiny of the corpus reveals how local broadsheet journalists constructed the crisis as newsworthy. Firstly, MARAWI is associated closely with collocates that establish Proximity, Negativity, Eliteness, Personalization, Timeliness, Positivity, and Consonance; through collocates city, said, and Maute, recurring second order collocates of Negativity and Eliteness were largely identified. Regarding the manual analysis of texts and images, a range of verbal and visual devices were identified to construct news values except for Aesthetic Appeal. Secondly, an intrasemiotic assessment of news value trends in both verbal and visual data reveal that while the former constructs a concrete set of news values (i.e., Proximity, Timeliness, Superlativeness, and Eliteness), images appear to lack this feature. Lastly, when assessed for their multimodal relationship, texts and images appear to exhibit harmony, where texts and images complement news values with each other. How the crisis’ newsworthiness is constructed in the corpus is believed to have implications on news reporting principles and the role of the media in shaping public awareness of events.
Research Interests:
The reporting of both terrorism and conflicts is extensively investigated in past media discourse studies across contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in various forms of news... more
The reporting of both terrorism and conflicts is extensively investigated in past media discourse studies across contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in various forms of news discourse. Based on this niche, this thesis sought to closely examine how the 2017 Marawi City siege is constructed in print news reports as newsworthy. Specifically, it was aimed at determining (a) the linguistic and visual resources used to construe newsworthiness, (b) the news values used to construe the event’s newsworthiness, and (c) the existing multimodal relationship between language and images. Sixty news reports from three Philippine broadsheets were analyzed using Bednarek and Caple’s (2017) discursive news values framework. This multimodal corpus was examined with multiple methods, namely: (a) collocation analysis of MARAWI and its top three first order collocates, (b) manual analysis of verbal and visual devices utilized for each news value, and (c) the verbal and visual relationship in terms of each discursive news value. A scrutiny of the corpus reveals how local broadsheet journalists constructed the crisis as newsworthy. Firstly, MARAWI is associated closely with collocates that establish Proximity, Negativity, Eliteness, Personalization, Timeliness, Positivity, and Consonance; through collocates city, said, and Maute, recurring second order collocates of Negativity and Eliteness were largely identified. Regarding the manual analysis of texts and images, a range of verbal and visual devices were identified to construct news values except for Aesthetic Appeal. Secondly, an intrasemiotic assessment of news value trends in both verbal and visual data reveal that while the former constructs a concrete set of news values (i.e., Proximity, Timeliness, Superlativeness, and Eliteness), images appear to lack this feature. Lastly, when assessed for their multimodal relationship, texts and images appear to exhibit harmony, where texts and images complement news values with each other. How the crisis’ newsworthiness is constructed in the corpus is believed to have implications on news reporting principles and the role of the media in shaping public awareness of events.
Research Interests:
The reporting of terrorism and armed conflicts has been extensively investigated in previous media discourse studies across various contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in... more
The reporting of terrorism and armed conflicts has been extensively investigated in previous media discourse studies across various contexts. However, a dearth in the literature exists regarding newsworthiness and its establishment in different forms of news discourse. Based on this niche, this paper seeks to present how an important local terrorist assault – the 2017 Marawi City siege –might be constructed in print news reports as newsworthy. Specifically, it aims to determine (a) the linguistic and visual resources that construe news values and (b) the news values employed to construct the event’s newsworthiness. In fulfilling these objectives, 60 news reports from leading Philippine broadsheets were analyzed using Bednarek and Caple’s (2017) discursive news values framework. For this presentation, this multimodal corpus was studied using two methods, namely, (a) collocation analysis of two high frequency and widely dispersed lexical words (i.e., MARAWI and MAUTE) and (b) a manual examination of news images in the corpus. Based on the results, common news values could be gleaned from both semiotic modes such as Negativity, Eliteness, Proximity, and Personalization. However, other news values such as Impact and Positivity seem to be highlighted more in the news images partly due to the limitations of corpus techniques such as collocation analysis. Nonetheless, it is hoped that this presentation will shed light on journalistic practices of Philippine print media in dealing with crisis situations, which may contribute not only to the discursive news values analyses, but also to corpus-assisted multimodal discourse analyses.
Research Interests:
The ability to successfully communicate in English is crucial in order to meet the demands of a competitive 21st century economy. Through this impetus, this study sought to investigate the spoken English communication difficulties and... more
The ability to successfully communicate in English is crucial in order to meet the demands of a competitive 21st century economy. Through this impetus, this study sought to investigate the spoken English communication difficulties and coping strategies employed by selected Filipino medical technology students at a private university in Manila. A mixed-methods research paradigm was employed, where Nakatani’s (2006) Oral Communication Strategy Inventory was administered to 79 respondents through convenience sampling; after which, 20 students were invited to participate in a focus group interview and a journal-writing activity. The results of the survey were obtained by identifying the modal score of each communication strategy category, while difficulties were identified using traditional content analysis in light of Dörnyei and Scott’s (1995; 1997) taxonomy. Specifically, results of the study yielded that the students’ communication difficulties are mostly rooted upon the distinctive features of the other speaker’s speech style, lack of sufficient knowledge on technical concepts, and affective factors that prevent them from relaying and understanding messages in the interaction. Meanwhile, preference to holistic coping strategies was identified based on survey findings, while form is also given importance. Both pedagogical and research recommendations are surmised in light of these findings.