Plain journalism: The maintenance of a “vocabulary of kinship” in an Amish newspaper

Abstract

Media may serve as avenues for the expression of common ideals and values that help individuals place themselves in a community of like-minded people. Using Benedict Anderson’s notion of a mediated “vocabulary of kinship” that binds individuals together, this study illustrates the ways the very structure of media content can encourage feelings of commonality. The vehicle for this inquiry is The Budget, a weekly newspaper produced by and for a North American audience of Amish and Mennonite readers. The research suggests that structural aspects of dispatches in The Budget, such as conversational and intentionally informal writing styles, the encouragement of dialog, and use of particular dialects and phrases, reinforce values of familiarity and intimacy that are central to Amish and Mennonite culture.

Keywords:

• Community
• Culture
• Identity
• Media
• Religion

Notes

[1] For a thorough examination of the intricacies of Anabaptist belief systems, see Hostetler (1980).

[2] This article was part of a broader study that also considered the ways content themes established and maintained a sense of imagined community among Budget readers. Those findings are described in Carey, 2016.

[3] The chronological formatting could be a function of the letter submission protocol. Scribes are given notebooks on which they may write and submit letters. Writers may simply make notes on the form on a given day and return to the same form later in the week to add new information.

[4] The Pennsylvania Dutch dialect, which is spoken in some Amish communities, is based on German and is sometimes called “Pennsylvania German.”