Lecture 6 Newspaper Article Interpretation

References:

Plan:

1. English newspaper style.
2. Vocabulary of English newspaper.
3. Basic newspaper features:

a) Brief news items;

b) Advertisements and announcements;

c) Editorial;

d) The headline.

1.English newspaper writing dates from the 17^th century. At the close of the 16^th century short news pamphlets began to appear. They appeared only from time to time and cannot be classed as newspapers. As far back as the middle of the 18^th century the British newspaper was very much like what it is today, carrying on its pages news, both foreign and domestic, advertisements, announcements and articles containing comments.

The rise of the American newspaper, which was brought onto American soil by British settlers, dates back to the late 17^th, early 18^th centuries.

It took the English newspaper more than a century to establish a style and a standard of its own. And it is only by the 19^th century that newspaper English may be said to have developed into a system of language media, forming a separate functional style.

Not all the printed matter found in newspaper comes under newspaper style.

Stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems and the like serve the purpose of entertaining the reader, but they cannot be considered specimens of newspaper style.

News and comment on it, press reports and articles, advertisements and announcements (newspaper printed matter) perform the function of informing the reader and providing him with the evaluation of the information published that can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style.

Thus, English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader (Galperin, p. 297).

Information and evaluation co-exist in the modern English newspaper. But in most of the basic newspaper 'genres' one of the two functions prevails (e.g. news is essentially informative; the editorial (leading article or leader) is basically evaluative).

Information in the English newspaper is conveyed, in the 1^st place, through the medium of:

1. brief news items, newspaper feature articles;

2. press reports (parliamentary, of court proceedings, etc.),

3. articles (purely informational in character),

4. advertisements and announcements.

The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed:

ü in the very selection and way of presentation of news;

ü in the use of specific vocabulary (e.g. allege, claim – cast doubt on the facts reported);

ü in syntactic constructions indicating a lack of assurance on the part of the reporter as to the correctness of the facts reported or his desire to avoid responsibility (e.g. 'Mr. X. was said to have opposed the proposal; Mr. X was quoted saying…');

ü the headlines carry a considerable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use of emotionally coloured words and elements of emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation of the facts in the news item that follows;

ü the editorial (characterized by a subjective handling of facts;

The ratio of the informative and the evaluative varies substantially from article to article.

The structure of a newspaper article is as follows:

1. the title;

2. the subtitle;

3. the beginning of an article;

4. the body of an article;

5. the ending.

The text that follows the headline is characterized by:

- a careful subdivision into paragraphs;

- every paragraph has a key sentence that expresses its main idea. The sentence keeps key words. Identifying and understanding these words is a way to understanding the article;

- a clearly defined position of the sections of an article: the most important information is given in the opening paragraph, often in the first sentence;

- quite often namely the first paragraph works as a summary of the whole article;

- to capture the attention of the reader and keep it through the whole article the latter should be distinctly logical, sequenced, and rather short. As a result paragraphs often consist of one sentence only (the so-called 'blow-by-blow' effect, when each paragraph provides short but exact information on the topic of the article). This helps to understand and remember the information;

- to make the article more comprehensible and readable, and to evoke some emotional response of the reader (shock, disappointment, anger, amusement, excitement) authors use different techniques: parallel constructions, enumeration, infinitives, participles, gerunds, words and their combinations given in inverted commas (to underline certain expressions), citations, synonyms, imperative sentences, interjections, metaphors, idioms, epithets, etc.

- the use of proper names, geographical names, names of enterprises, organizations, institutions, statistics, references to the latter serves as a means of making the article look true-to-life, the information in which is not distorted;

- the use of abbreviations and acronyms (mostly explained in the first paragraphs, and later occurring in the article without explanations);

- the use of clichés, such as introductory words which indicate the resource of information (it is reported, it is claimed, our correspondent reports from, according to well-known sources…) and set expressions with trite imagery (to set the tone, to throw light, to lay the corner-stone, to give the lie);

- the use of photos, cartoons that may indicate the subject-matter of an article.

2. The bulk of the vocabulary used in the newspaper writing is neutral and common literary. But apart from this, newspaper style has its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by:

a) Terminological variety (political, economic, scientific, sport, technical);

b) Newspaper clichés and set phrases, i.e. stereotyped expressions, commonplace phrases familiar to the reader (e.g. Vital issue, pressing problem, overwhelming majority, amid stormy applause). Clichés more than anything else reflect the traditional manner of expression in newspaper writing. They prompt the necessary associations and prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding.

c) Abbreviations and acronyms. Among them abbreviated terms – names of organizations, public and state bodies, political associations, industrial and other companies, various offices, etc. – known by their initials are very common, e.g. UNO (United Nations Organization), NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), EEC (European Economic Community), FO (Foreign Office), etc.

d) Neologisms. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and very often even spring up on newspaper pages.

e) Numerous proper names, toponyms, anthroponyms, names of enterprises;

f) International words;

g) Dates and figures;

h) Abstract notion words;

i) In headlines – frequent use of pun, violated phraseology, vivid stylistic devices.

The language of newspapers is alert to reflect changes and innovations taking place in lexis as a result of changes in the society.

3.The basic newspaper features are:

a. brief news items;

b. advertisements and announcements,

c. the editorial,

d. the headline.

A. The principal function of a brief news item is to inform the reader. It states facts without comments, the evaluation is unemotional as a rule.

The basic peculiarities of news items lie in their syntactical structure. The size of brief news items varies from one sentence to several (short) paragraphs. The shorter the news item – the more complex is its syntactical structure.

Grammatical peculiarities of brief news items:

a) Specific word-order. The word-order in one-sentence news paragraphs and in what are called 'leads' (the initial sentences in longer news items) is more or less fixed. Journalistic practice has developed what is called the 'five w and h pattern rule' (who, what, why, how, where, when) and for a long time strictly adhered to it. In terms of grammar this fixed sentence structure may be expressed in the following manner: Subject – Predicate – (+Object) – Adverbial modifier of reason (manner) – Adverbial modifier of place –Adverbial modifier of time,

e.g. 'A neighbour's peep through a letter box led to the finding of a woman dead from gas and two others semiconscious in a block of council flats in Eccles New Road, Salford, Lancs., yesterday'.

However, in a half of all cases the traditional word order is violated.

b) Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses:

e.g. 'Mr. Boyd-Carpenter, Chief secretary to the Treasury and Paymaster-General (Kingston-upon-Thames), said he had been asked what was meant by the statement in the Speech that the position of war pensioners and those receiving national insurance benefits would be kept under close review' .

c) Verbal constructions (infinitive, participial, gerundial) and verbal noun constructions,

e.g. 'Mr. Nabusuke Kishi, the former Prime Minister of Japan, has sought to set an example to the faction-ridden Governing Liberal Democratic Party by announcing the disbanding of his own faction numbering 47 of the total of 295 conservative members of the Lower House of the Diet'.

d) Attributive noun groups,

e.g. 'heart swap patient', the national income and expenditure figures'.

e) Syntactical complexes, especially the nominative with the infinitive (largely used to avoid mentioning the source of information or to shun responsibility for the facts reported),

e.g.: 'The condition of Lord Samuel, aged 92, was said last night to be a 'little better'.

Lexical peculiarities:

a) Stereotyped forms of expression prevail.

b) The language is stylistically neutral, devoid if emotional colouring. Some papers, however, especially those classed among 'mass' or 'popular' papers, tend to introduce emotionally coloured lexical units into essentially matter-of-fact news stories:

e.g. 'Health Minister Kenneth Robinson made this shock announcement yesterday in the Commons'; 'Defense Secretary Roy Mason yesterday gave a rather frosty reception in the commons to the latest proposal for a common defence policy for all EEC countries'.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1992