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УДК 070.1:004.738.5 DOI 10.17150/2308-6203.2020.9(1).136-148
Красина Елена Александровна
Доктор филологических науку, профессор
Кафедра общего и русского языкознания, филологический факультет, Российский университет дружбы народов, 117198, Российская Федерация, г. Москва, ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 6, e-mail: [email protected]
Elena A. Krasina
Doct. habil. of Philology, Full Professor
Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Philological Faculty, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 6 Miklukho-Maklay Str., Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation, e-mail: [email protected]
Мунья Саудкия
Аспирант
Кафедра общего и русского языкознания, филологический факультет, Российский университет дружбы народов, 117198, Российская Федерация, г. Москва, ул. Миклухо-Маклая, 6, e-mail: [email protected]
Mounya Souadkia
PhD Student
Department of General and Russian Linguistics, Philological Faculty, Peoples' Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University), 6 Miklukho-Maklay Str., Moscow, 117198, Russian Federation, e-mail: [email protected]
АНГЛОЯЗЫЧНЫЕ ГАЗЕТНЫЕ ЗАГОЛОВКИ ОНЛАЙН КАК ЯВЛЕНИЕ МЕДИАЛИНГВИСТИКИ (ОПЫТ ЛИНГВИСТИЧЕСКОГО ОПИСАНИЯ)
Аннотация. Широкое распространение и стремительное развитие информационных технологий дало возможность таким современным средствам массовой коммуникации, как онлайн публикации и каналы аудио- и видеовещания, выполнять функции наиболее важных инструментов, осуществляющих и стимулирующих передачу разнообразной информации, трансляцию новостей и освещение событий, делая их доступными здесь и сейчас для любого адресата и гарантируя быстрый доступ к информации, независимо от времени и места действия. С лингвистической точки зрения, средства массовой информации играют существенную роль в исследовании языка, поскольку, с одной стороны, они являются источником языкового материала, языковых данных, а с другой, - язык масс-медиа явно отличается от современного нормированного литературного языка. В исследованиях в области прикладной лингвистики, социолингвистики и журналистики многие специалисты проявляют серьезный интерес к языку медиа в широком понимании, так
как в первую очередь, средства массовой информации рассматриваются как доступный источник языкового материала с целью исследования и объяснения различных лингвистических феноменов, что способствует разработке адекватных методов обучения языку. Именно поэтому изучение языка средств массовой информации делает очевидным тот факт, что лингвистические нормы более не объективируются в сфере литературного, книжного текста, а скорее формируются в языке медиа.
Как полагают, заголовок газетной статьи является её наиболее важным компонентом, и он должен быть сформулирован таким образом, чтобы привлечь адресата-читателя, заинтересовать его и побудить прочитать всю статью до конца.
Настоящая статья позволяет выявить специфику использования языка онлайн газеты, фокусируя внимание на онлайн газетных заголовках, их языковых и структурных особенностях, в частности, фонетической аллитерации, трансформации лексических значений, эллиптических синтаксических конструкциях, особенностях грамматических средств и организации порядка слов, включая и стилистические приемы, что способствует повышению эмоционально-экспрессивного воздействия на адресата-читателя. Изучение лингвистических характеристик заголовков на материале ряда онлайн источников позволяет заключить, что используются более подвижные, гибкие языковые структуры и разрушаются известные лингвистические нормы и правила порядка слов.
Это наиболее существенные факторы, которые фокусируют внимание современных лингвистов на языке медиа и быстро развивающихся, изменяющих свою природу средств массовой информации при переходе к новым информационным технологиям Интернета.
Ключевые слова. Язык масс-медиа, онлайн газетные заголовки, стилистические приемы, грамматические средства, аранжировка порядка слов, заголовок именной структуры, заголовок глагольной структуры.
Финансирование. Публикация подготовлена при поддержке Программы РУДН «5 - 100».
Информация о статье. Дата поступления 26 декабря 2019 г.; дата принятия к печати 24 февраля 2020 г.; дата онлайн-размещения 23 марта 2020 г.
ONLINE ENGLISH NEWSPAPER HEADLINES AS MEDIA LINGUISTICS PHENOMENON (AN ATTEMPT OF LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION)
Abstract. From the point of view of linguistics, mass media play an important role in studies of the language, since, on the one hand, they are a rich source of language material and data, and on the other hand, the language used by mass media does not comply with the current norms of the literary language. Studying and explaining various linguistic phenomena adds to development of efficient language teaching methods. All this determines the topicality of the research.
The newspaper article headline is considered its most significant element, and thus, its wording is to be aimed at attracting the target reader's attention, making them interested, and encouraging them to read the whole article. Therefore, the authors choose to focus this study on online newspaper headlines, their linguistic and structural features, particularly, phonetic alliteration, transformation of lexical units, elliptical structures, grammatical means and
word order, as well as stylistic devices, which help to strengthen emotional impact on the reader. The outcome of the study shows that newspaper headlines feature more mobile and flexible language structures than the standard language, and do not comply with the linguistic norms and rules of word order.
Keywords. Language of mass media, online newspaper headlines, stylistic devices, grammatical means, word ordering, nominal headline, verbal headline.
Funding. The work on the article was financed within the frame of RUDN University Program «5 - 100».
Article info. Received December 26, 2019; accepted February 24, 2020; available online March 23, 2020.
Introduction
For the past three decades, the world has witnessed an emergence of new communication technologies serving to an outstanding advancement in mass media. These significant changes have had a massive influence on language use and its functions. The development of traditional media such as press, radio and television, and the widespread, actually worldwide development of the Internet and social media networks lead to major changes in modern language. Nowadays, a large proportion of everyday language - both text and speech, is happening in the media: 24 hours news channels, various TV channels and online broadcasting, verbal interaction in social media networks, online newspapers, and all these new changes have paved the way for linguists, sociologists and journalists to analyze and study language development and change. Therefore, during the second half of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries, an increase in the IT field developments has resulted in academic research focusing on various features of language used in the media, e.g., unique characteristics of the news and newspaper texts, the language used in Internet blogs and social media networks. Furthermore, the freshly discovered area of language study grabbed the atten-
tion of many scholars specialized in different branches of linguistics: so-ciolinguistics, psycholinguistics, cognitive sciences, discourse analysis and so on, nevertheless, only around the year of 2000 a new branch of linguistics emerged and is known as media linguistics for the purpose of studying and analyzing the language of the media [1]. Additionally, in his definition of media linguistics, Ulrich Schmitz says: "Media linguistics studies how language is used in the media" [2, p. 9]. As to this quotation, one might say that the scope of media linguistics is primarily the study of how language is used in real communicative live situations.
In course of precisely applied linguistics, sociolinguistics and journalism, in those fields of study many experts have been interested in studying the language, commonly known as media language, due to the fact that, firstly, the media is considered as a simply reachable source of linguistic materials beneficial for investigating and explaining various linguistic phenomena that can also help in developing proper teaching methods. Secondly, it is important to point out that the product of media reflects the language that we perceive and recognize on a daily basis. Moreover, in any speech community, the media reveals the language used by people, which could be
helpful for foreign or second language learners where the media language is seen as the primary and perhaps the only source of exposure to native language. Thirdly, the media use language in ways that are believed to be remarkable from a linguistic standpoint, i.e. this includes the use of a variety of dialects and language variations found especially in advertising, or tabloid newspapers reflecting speech habits of readers, as well as language specifics of radio broadcast to create their own "visual" representations for anonymous audiences. Fourthly, the media are considered to be significant social organizations as they used to represent current tends of culture, politics, and social life, forming and revealing how these are shaped and conveyed [3, p. 23]. So, the study of media language makes transparent the idea that linguistic norms no longer belong to the literary written text sphere, but rather are formed within media language.
Every day a large number of people all over the world read newspapers in an attempt to receive fresh updates on events that are happening in society in different parts of the world. As is known, every newspaper headline of an article is the main title used to grab the attention of readers and capture their interest whether to read further the article or not; it is usually the first thing a reader notices before turning to the details of the newspaper story [4, p. 9]. Thus, the current study aims at investigating the influence of linguistic means and resources upon online newspaper headlines, as well as analyzing the key linguistic features of these headlines, their syntactic organization in terms of the word-order structures, and the basic structure of the study is a simple affirmative English sentence. A variety of examples are selected from
different online newspapers, especially the well-known British broadsheets such as The Independent, The Guardian, and The Telegraph in order to illustrate linguistic impact on headline structures.
Headline linguistic features
In "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language" [5], David Crystal argues that the language used in our present-day newspapers and magazines differs greatly from the language analyzed in other fields of language study, in the sense that due the nature of the reporting style found in newspapers or magazines, certain important keys must be taken into consideration; those mainly concern pressures of time and space. On the one hand, information or stories must be compressed into a confined space, often in columns. In newspapers, the attention of readers must be grabbed and maintained by using large type, dramatic headlines, short paragraphs, and laconic sentences, i.e. grammar and vocabulary have to be chosen carefully in the formation of paragraphs, news reports and most significantly headlines due to the fact that headlines are considered the most important elements in a newspaper. Headlines can be defined as "the titles of a newspaper article printed in large letters" [6, p. 83]. D. Crystal believes that the majority of headlines is not similar to everyday language through the omission of words that are less important in a sentence in order to create so called "telegrammatic structure", as well as a limited number of sentence structures are useful [7].
As is widely known, the key objective of a headline is to capture and maintain the readers' interest therefore a variety of stylistic tools must be applied to ensure the effectiveness of such headlines. For that reason, today's newspa-
pers tend to create headlines that transmit what must be said through the use of as few words as possible. It is apparent that headlines are often perceived as a summary of a newspaper article, but nevertheless, from a linguistic point of view this function seems rather narrow and needs a more accurate discrimination: linguists think that a headline does not only summarize, but also on some occasions, emphasizes or quotes an article. To highlight the main functions of the headline, J. Morley points out the following five key functions of headlines:
- to grab and maintain the attention of the readers;
- to sum up the subject matter of the article;
- to show the writer's attitude towards the story;
- to point out the article's register;
- to present the focus of the article [8, p. 31]:
From these five functions of newspaper headlines mentioned above, it is necessary to indicate that they focus not only on summarizing the content of the article, but also put more emphasis on attracting the attention and maintaining the interest of readers, i.e. the correct use of these functions allows readers to have a quick view of the news and events and that helps them save time through checking such eye-catching through informative headlines. Yet, sometimes readers find difficulties in understanding newspaper headlines because they can't easily decipher abbreviations, accept non-observance of grammatical rules and structures, and understanding the ambiguity of elliptical, incomplete sentences which are typical characteristics of newspaper headlines. The following examples illustrate some types of these headlines:
Burglars broke into MP's home as she slept then drove off in her car (Metro, November 11, 2019).1
The headline above contains 'MP abbreviation for Member of Parliament, and it could be confusing for readers who are not familiar with it, or deciphering MP as "Municipal Police//Military Police(man)" which causes misunderstanding and the following lack of interest or motivation to get the story in full.
Love Island's Jourdan Riane and Danny Williams reunite after split as they party in LA (Metro, November 11, 2019).2
The Indefinite form reunite instead of the Perfect one - have reunited is one of the examples of non-observance of grammatical norms in headline formation which could imply negative impact as to reading the article further.
As to the particular features of newspaper headline vocabulary, they used to be divided into three main types: unusual, sensational and short. On the one hand, in order to capture readers' attention, unusual and sensational words are more widely spread, while, on the other hand, short words are not just the tools of capturing readers' attention, but they also function as a technique to save place, which is why they are favored in headlines [9, p. 14]. Thus, in headlines some of the most commonly used short words and their meaning are presented in a different way, e.g., allege meaning "make an accusation"; bar meaning "refuse"; call for meaning "demand; appeal for"; deal meaning "agreement"; key meaning "important"; go for meaning "be sold
1 URL:https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/11/ burglars-bro ke-mps-home-slept-drove-off-car-11078014/.
2 URL: https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/11/ love-islands-jourdan-riane-danny-wiNiams-re-unite-split-party-la-11078179/.
for" exclusive meaning "reported first" and so on [10].
The following samples highlight the commonly used short words taken from newspaper headlines:
Brexit: real deal or dead rat? (France24, October 18, 2019).3
Gove triggers Yellowhammer no-deal contingency plan for worst-case scenario (The Independent, October 20, 2019).4
Abuse victim calls for law on throttling (The Times, October 21, 2019).5
Exclusive: Aboard a US aircraft carrier combating Beijing's growing aggression in the South China Sea (The Telegraph, October 21, 2019).6 — NB: exclusive here bears the meaning of "reported first" and introduces a standing head or let-in-heading of a newspaper body.
In addition, headlines also have their own individual register since vocabulary words or certain sentence structures used for politics differ from those used for business or sports, life style or entertainment. Consider the following examples:
Japan vs South Africa — Rugby World Cup 2019 quarter-final: Maka-zole Mapimpi double ends hosts' dreams in Tokyo (The Independent, October 20, 2019).7
3 URL: https://www.france24.com/en/media-watch/20191018-brexit-real-deal-or-dead-rat-1.
4 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ uk/politics/no-deal-brexit-boris-johnson-operation-yellowhammer-eu-extension-a9163636.html.
5 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ uk/politics/no-deal-brexit-boris-johnson-operation-yellowhammer-eu-extension-a9163636.html.
6 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ uk/politics/no-deal-brexit-boris-johnson-operation-yellowhammer-eu-extension-a9163636.html.
7 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/
rugby/rugby-union/international/japan-vs-south-
africa-score-result-rugby-world-cup-2019-quar-
terfinal-springboks-wales-a9163701.html.
Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul reveals the one thing he wanted for Jesse Pinkman in El Camino (The Independent, October 18, 2019).8
Another vivid feature to point out in composing and presenting headlines refers to formal or informal, technical or non-technical, emotional or neutral language style application. Normally, the technical register combines with formal register, while emotional expression is connected with the informal register. Moreover, a headline should be constructed in a colorful, intriguing and catching way so that it can be eye-catching and attention grabbing; this might be successfully achieved by means of some stylistic techniques which make it possible, rather often through some phonetic tools such as well-known alliteration and rhythm. The purpose of using such stylistic means in forming newspaper headlines is to draw more attention and create an impact on readers. When the headline sounds poetic and seems colorful, it becomes more eye-catching, more funny or amusing and interesting to read. For example:
Alliteration: Witty comedy 'The Merry Wives of Windsor' charms Berlin (Euronews, October 18, 2019).9
[W]-sound contracts the attention of readers. See the title of A. Griboye-dov's comedy "Wit Works Vow".
8 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts -entertainment/tv/news/breaking-bad-aaron-paul-el-camino-drew-sharp-letter-brock-netf-lix-a9160296.html#:~:targetText=Aaron%20 Paul%20has%20revealed%20the,to%20 have%20been%20properly%20addressed.
9 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/ 17/witty-comedy-the-merry-wives-of-windsor-charms-berlin.
Rhyme: To be desirable, fashion must be durable (France24, October 18, 2019).10
Rhythm: Thatcher Can't Catch; Spycatcher-Wright [9, p. 16].By all means, it's catch(er) to organize the whole phrase and make its rhythm.
Due to the existing variety of cultures and languages around the world the question of whether similar linguistic aspects can be found in their media is dramatic. Yet, there have not been any thorough cross-linguistic studies concerning headlines examined from a wide range of languages and countries in order to find the answer to the question raised. C. Develotte and E. Rech-niewski mention that H. Kniffka, for instance, believed that the structure of headlines is considered standard across languages known; however, Kniffka's analysis was based only on using texts from German and American English sources [11, p. 6]. The British English newspaper headlines are believed to be one dialect of British English; they show some specific syntactic characteristics that are not usually familiar in oral or written communication of the everyday life of English speakers. According to El-Bakri, it is Heinrich Straumann, who was the first to study newspaper headlines, who as early as in 1935 used the term Block Language to refer to the type of linguistic expression typical for telegrams, book titles, diaries, advertisements, recipes, dictionaries, catalogues, posters and labels and headlines, and later on, J.R. Firth assembled all these linguistic phenomena which characterize newspaper headlines under the term Block Language, and referred to head-linese as an "elliptical language" [12, p.
10 URL: https://www.france24.com/en/culture/ 20191018-to-be-desirable-fashion-must-be-du-rable.
7]. According to the Online Cambridge Dictionary, the grammar of headlines is considered non-standard and difficult to read [13]. Some key grammatical aspects of headlines comprise the use of a series of content words (nouns, main verbs, adjectives), special syntax [14] , short forms and abbreviation and acronyms, and the use of ellipsis — i.e., the omission of words that are not necessary or do not transmit the basic meaning such as articles a/an, the; some verbs and auxiliaries: is, are, were, was, has; relative pronouns: which, who, whom, that; determiners: this, some, etc.; titles of Mr., Mrs., Sir, Lord and the like.
Similarly, I. Mardh characterizes these linguistic aspects to be specific for headlines in English newspapers: the omission of verbs and of auxiliaries (e.g., "to be"), the omission of articles (a/ an, the); nominalizations; the frequent use of complex noun phrases positions (theme "main" position); adverbial headlines, with the omission of both verb and subject; the use of short words (e.g. "bid" instead of "attempt"); the widespread use of puns, word play and alliteration; independent wh-structures not connected to a main clause; the use of acronyms and/ or abbreviation; and the significance of word order, with the most important items placed first, even in some cases, a verb (which is not the norm) [15, p. 183], e.g.:
The omission of verbs and auxiliaries:
Nursery [is] banned from letting more than five children play outside at once (Metro, November 11, 2019).11
11 URL: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ tafida-raqueeb-mother-seeks-ital-ian-citizenship-for-daughter-in-coma-6cr8m0vb6#:~:targetText = Tafida%20 h a s % 2 0 b e e n % 2 0 i n % 2 0 a , a % 2 0 % E 2 % 8 0 % 9 C q u a l i t y % 2 0 o f % 2 0 -life%E2%80%9D.
The omission of articles and pronouns:
Tafida Raqueeb: Mother seeks Italian citizenship for daughter in coma (The Times, October 16, 2019).12 — Compare to a full form: A mother seeks the Italian citizenship for her daughter who is in a coma.
The use of word play: Meat the Family: New reality TV show challenges carnivores to eat their "pets" (The Guardian, October 16, 2019). — Compare: Meat//Meet the Family: New reality TV show challenges carnivores to eat their "pets", while meat and meet are homonyms.13 The use of alliteration: In photos: Finding food on the front line of climate change (The Independent, October 20, 2019).14 — Compare the tongue twister: Swan swam in the sea: swim, swan, swim!
The use of acronyms and/or abbreviation:
Brexit exposes EU power struggle as Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel pull in opposite directions (The Telegraph, October 21, 2019).15 — Compare the full form: Brexit exposes European Union power struggle as Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel pull in opposite directions.
12 URL: https://www.theguardian.com/media/ 2019/oct/16/meat-the-family-new-reali-ty-tv-show-challenges-carnivores-to-eat-their-pets#:~:targetText=Meat%20the%20 FamNy%3A%20new%20reaMty%20TV%20 show,camivores%20to%20eat%20their%20 'pets'&targetText=Not%20only%20will%20 a%20famNy,to%20cook%20and%20eat%20it.
13 Ibid.
14 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/envi-ronment/finding-food-niger-climate-change-rising-temperatures-a9158051.html.
15 URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/
2019/10/21/brexit-exposes-eu-power-struggle-
emmanuel-macron-angela-merkel/.
VAR has overturned one subjective decision in 89 Premier League games — can that really be justified? (The Telegraph, October 21, 2019).16 — Compare the full form: Video Assistant Referees have overturned one subjective decision in 89 Premier League games — can that really be justified? — Please, mind the necessary grammatical change has ^ have!
Furthermore, the use of the Present Simple (Indefinite) even if the news report refers to a past event in order to make the story more dramatic and seem to be happening immediately, or simultaneously, as well as the use of the to-infinitive form to refer to future actions, is also a feature of newspaper headlines:
Here's the first 80's song to hit (variation: hits) 1bn YouTube views (BBC News, October 16, 2019).17
UK population to reach (variation: reaches) nearly 70,000,000 in the next 10 years, ONS says (Metro, October 21, 2019).18
Word-order in headlines
The English language is well known to be characterized as the fixed-word-order, or FWO language, and the subject-predicate, or SVO sentence structure be the norm reflecting this type of word-order [16, p. 353-356]. Noun, or nominal phrases are the basic structures found in many text types [17].
16 URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/ 2019/10/21/brexit-exposes-eu-power-struggle-emmanuel-macron-angela-merkel/.
17 URL: https://abc7news.org/entertainment/ guns-roses-sweet-child-hits-1bn-youtube-views-44464608.
18 URL: https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/21/uk-population-reach-nearly-70000000-next-10-years-ons-says-10954705/.
Due to the fact that newspapers have become one of the most useful resources of linguistic research, it is proper analyzing newspapers headlines in terms of their syntactic structures and word-order arrangements discriminating nominal and verbal headline structures.
Nominal headlines
Newspapers are considered to be one of the key linguistic sources that widely use noun, or nominal phrases in their text formations as well as their headlines. According to M. Clarck [18, p. 47], headlines make insightful, effectual and efficient texts through the use of noun phrases, in which modifiers include more information to the noun that adds a descriptive feature. Additionally, noun phrases are believed to be one of the key features of newspaper headlines: through the help of a noun phrase a journalist is able to create all the information necessary with only a few words used, which is particularly helpful because of the word and space limitation characterizing the formation of media texts. Furthermore, noun phrases are known to include determiners that are placed first in a phrase; they indicate the reference type of the noun phrase. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (2019)19, the reference can be definite (the), indefinite (a/an), or demonstrative (this, that, these, those), possessive (your, our, their, my...etc.), and involving determiners that show number or quantity
19 Cambridge Dictionary. Newspaper Headlines (2019). — URL: athttps://diction-ary.cambridge.org/grammar/british-grammar/ newspaper-headlines#targetText=A%20 newspaper %20headline%20is% 20 a , c a n % 2 0 b e % 2 0 d i ff i c u 11 % 2 0 to % 2 0 read.&targetText=Headlines%20often%20 use%20the%20present,refers%20to%20a%20 past%20event. (Accessed 06.10.2019).
(e.g., five, some, any, many, a lot, no, all...etc.).
Consider the following examples: Four charged over murder which forced Slovakian PM's resignation (The Independent, October 21, 2019).20
A family's experience of war inspires Kosovo's entry for the Oscars (Euronews, September 27, 2019).21
"My husband was dying of cancer — and I had to turn friends away at the door" (The Telegraph, October 20, 2019). This badly behaved Parliament has just done the PM a huge favour (The Telegraph, October 19, 2019).22
More than 50 elephants starve to death amid severe drought in Zimbabwe (The Independent, October 22, 2019).23 The examples above illustrate how the determiners are used preceeding nouns to show each particular type of reference. In addition to determiners, modifiers can be found to describe a noun in phrases that contains a small number of words. According to the Cambridge Dictionary (2019), a noun phrase can also consist of premodifiers that are made up of single adjectives, adjective phrases, single nouns, and noun phrases that are found before the head in a noun phrase. As an example, adjective premodifiers are used to describe the qualities and features of a noun. Adjective premodifiers can be qualitative, such as good, small, new,
20 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/europe/jan-kuciak-murder-charge-suspects-slovakia-journalist-fico-corruption-a9164996.html.
21 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/ 27/a-family-s-experience-of-war-inspires-koso-vo-s-entry-for-the-oscars.
22 URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/mind/husband-dying-cancer-had-turn-friends-away-door/.
23 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/
news/world/africa/elephants-dead-zimbabwe-
drought-starve-water-number-a9165681.html.
modern...etc., or classifying, e.g., economic, political ...etc. The following examples illustrate the adjective premodi-fiers in the nominal headlines:
Best mattress 2019: What to consider when buying memory foam, pocket-sprung or hybrid mattresses (The Independent, October 3, 2019).
Modern Tokyo art bows to tradition for inspiration (Euronews, October 22, 2019)24.
Healthy oceans can provide solutions to climate change (Euronews, September 25, 2019).25
Brexit economic woes and the rebirth of British Airways (Euronews, September 26, 2019).26
British companies buckle up as Brexit deadline nears (Euronews, October 22, 2019).27
Additionally, nouns and noun phrases can also work as premodifiers in nominal headlines since they identify specific characteristics of a noun: type, material, category, nature and so on. Modifiers are nouns that signify materials and types, e.g., those like plastic, Japan, Hollywood...etc. Consider the following examples:
Japan grants half a million pardons to mark enthronement of emperor Naruhito (The Guardian, October 22, 2019).28
24 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/ 22/modern-tokyo-art-bows-to-tradition-for-inspira-tion.
25 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/africa/elephants-dead-zimbabwe-drought-starve-water-number-a9165681.html.
26 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/09/ 25/brexit-economic-woes-and-the-rebirth-of-brit-ish-airways.
27 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/ 22/british-companies-buckle-up-as-brexit-deadline-nears.
28 URL: https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2019/oct/22/japan-emperor-naruhito-half-a-mil-lion-pardons.
Hollywood visual effects firm DNEG confirms London IPO plans (Euronews, October 22, 2019).29
Plastic pollution: Why we're failing to cut down (The Independent, October 21, 2019).30
Air pollution is now a 'health emergency', head of NHS England warns (The Independent, October 21, 2019).31
In addition to that, the use of proper nouns is commonly found in newspaper headlines, these include names of particular places, movie titles, objects, names of people which are usually followed by a quote, e.g.:
Francis Ford Coppola lights up Lyon's Lumiere Film Festival (Euronews, October 21, 2019).32
Paul Smith: 'Luckily I've still got the legs of a teenager (The Guardian, October 19, 2019).33
David Baddiel on God, gags and being trolled — "It hurts and then I think: material!" (The Guardian, October 22, 2019).34
Michael Rosen: It's time we all relearnt the art of play, whatever our
29 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/ 22/hollywood-visual-effects-firm-dneg-confirms-london-ipo-plans.
30 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/in-dependentpremium/politics-explained/plastic-pollution-environment-climate-change-single-use-bottles-recycling-a9164036.html.
31 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/en-vironment/air-pollution-health-stroke-asthma-lung-cancer-cardiac-arrest-a9162281.html.
32 URL: https://www.euronews.com/2019/10/ 20/francis-ford-coppola-lights-up-lyon-s-lumiere-film-festival.
33 URL: https://www.theguardian.com/life-andstyle/2019/oct/19/paul-smith-luckily-i-have-still-got-the-legs-of-a-teenager.
34 URL: https://www.theguardian.com/stage/
2019/oct/22/david-baddiel-comedy-physics-inter-
view-gods-dice.
age — and here's how (The Telegraph, October 21, 2019).35 Verbal Headlines In word-order arrangements of English sentences, the nominal sentence is the central element of a sentence structure, since English is considered to be typologically an SVO language [19]. Newspaper headlines are one of language resources showing this norm of word-order representations. However, in some cases the norm is violated mostly when verbal headlines are found in newspapers. Verbal headlines are the type of headlines that consist of a verb form functioning as the main component because it decides the other components in a clause.
There are five main divisions in verbal headlines: finite headlines, non-finite headlines, headlines where the auxiliaries are omitted, subject complement and subject adverbial headlines [20, p. 205].
More specifically, a finite verbal headline contains a verb phrase where the verb is finite that agrees with the subject and marked for tense and usually simple tenses are used rather than progressive or perfect tenses:
Audience flees after Russian circus bear mauls trainer in the ring (The Times, October 24, 2019).36
A non-finite verbal headline contains a verb phrase where the verb is non-finite that does not agree with the subject and not marked for tense, the forms of "to" infinitive, and the "-ing" or "-ed" participle:
35 URL: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/family/ life/michael-rosen-time-relearnt-art-play-what-ever-age/.
36 URL: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/ audience-flees-after-russian-circus-bear-mauls-trainer-in-the-ring-prvgbfvqz.
Deconstructing the aura of the All Blacks: Why Eddie Jones' mind games could come back to haunt England (The Independent, October 24, 2019).37 Due to the fact that, auxiliaries are often omitted in headlines, it is also possible for verbal headlines to exclude the auxiliaries from the structure given that their omission does not change the meaning of the headlines, e.g.:
UK lorry deaths: 39 victims found in lorry container were Chinese nationals, Essex Police confirm (Euronews, October 24, 2019).38 — Formal verb "to be" omitted.
Europe floods: Houses washed away as deadly storms hit France, Spain and Italy (The Independent, October 24, 2019).39 — Formal verb "to be" omitted.
Furthermore, similar to a subject complement: a subject complement headline is the one that contains a word or phrase that follows a linking verb (or copular) and describes the subject. A subject complement is usually a noun, a pronoun, or an adjective. Yet, in this kind of headlines, the linking verb is omitted in most of the times, e.g.:
Five hitmen jailed after each hired the other to carry out murder that was never committed (The Independent, October 24, 2019).40
Last but not least, a subject adverbial headline usually consists of
37 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/ rugby/rugby-union/international/rugby-world-cup-2019-england-vs-new-zealand-all-blacks-jonathan-liew-a9168736.html.
38 URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= Vgw-0yCfR2E.
39 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/europe/europe-floods-death-dead-missing-france-spain-italy-rain-a9169211.html.
40 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/ world/asia/hitmen-jailed-guangxi-china-assassin-murder-a9169596.html.
subject-verb (copular) — adverb form; the adverbial follows the linking verb. In this type, the linking verb can also be omitted, e.g.:
Rock band Feet star in penultimate Music Box episode of season 5 (The Independent, April 30, 2019).41
Narcos: Mexico season 2 release date seemingly revealed by cast member (The Independent, October 24, 2019).42
Word order arrangements in headlines, both nominal and verbal ones, are to some extent similar to those found in nominal and verbal phrases. However, there represent some key differences in the formation of nominal and verbal headlines: on the one hand, nominal headlines focus mainly on the use of noun, or nominal phrases where the noun is the most important sentence element and the verb is usually neglected. On the other hand, verbal headlines usually focus on the use of verbal phrases, emphasizing the verb role and neglecting the place of a noun in the sentence.
41 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/feet-band-english-weather-album-music-box-session-a8893056. html.
42 URL: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/narcos-mexico-season-2-netflix-release-date-trailer-instagram-michael-pena-diego-luna-a9169071.html.
Conclusion
Modern linguist, psychologists, sociologies and journalists study, examine and draw conclusions on different linguistic phenomena related to the language used in various modern mass media, more specifically that of online newspapers. Hence, online newspaper headlines work as an effective tool in language inquiry that helps researchers in the field of linguistics, and especially in the scope of applied linguistics and sociolinguistics. Newspaper headlines are characterized by some linguistic features which are considered different from the language found in other language styles and sources, such as literary texts. This difference is the factor which makes newspaper headlines attract the attention of linguists and bring it into focus in modern linguistic research within the media language and media sources which are rapidly changing their nature - from printed matter and radio and TV broadcast to IT-technologies of the Internet. After examining and studying some linguistic features of headlines taken from a variety of online newspapers, one has to conclude that the newspaper headlines language reveals more flexible structures and violates established grammatical norms and word order arrangements.
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ДЛЯ ЦИТИРОВАНИЯ
Красина Е.А. Англоязычные газетные заголовки онлайн как явление медиа-лингвистики (опыт лингвистического описания) / Е.А. Красина, Мунья Саудкия. — DOI: 10.17150/2308-6203.2020.9(1).136-148 // Вопросы теории и практики журналистики. — 2020. — Т. 9, № 1. — С. 136-148.
FOR CITATION
Krasina E.A., Mounya Souadkia. Online English Newspaper Headlines as Media Linguistics Phenomenon (an Attempt of Linguistic Description). Voprosy teorii i praktiki zhur-nalistiki = Theoretical and Practical Issues of Journalism, 2020, vol. 9, no. 1, pp. 136-148. DOI: 10.17150/2308-6203.2020.9(1).136-148. (In Russian).
