headlines

[Linnea Micciulla]

More thoughts on headlines...

The ideological nature of news discourse processes occurs not just at the
level of (headline) space, but also in terms of discourse "habits". Certain
perspectives are "marked" and would sound unnatural in headlines, because
they are so unusual and go against the larger underlying (default) ideology
that readers may be completely unaware of.  For example, it takes more space
to write:
"9 Protesters Killed"
than
"Police Kill 9"
However, the second seems odd, and much less likely to appear as a headline.
I would say that this does not necessarily reflect the journalist's
ideology, the sub's ideology or even the corporate ideology of the
newspaper.  The first version, with "police" as agent omitted, is the
unmarked form, and as such will probably be used whether the writer believes
the police are the more relevant participant or not.

If the writer uses the marked form, he takes an overt ideological position.
There are, of course, writers who do this, but it's risky, since the news is
supposed to appear ideologically neutral (ie. unmarked).

What is even more interesting for me than the intent of the writer is the
effect on the readers.  I've been reading "Critical Discourse Analysis and
Language Cognition" (by Kieran O'Halloran, 2003), which I would highly
recommend, although (or maybe because?) he is critical of some assuptions of
CDA.  He draws on psycholinguistic research to discuss what types of
inferences a naive reader is likely to generate, assuming the reader is
engaged in shallow processing of the text.  I think this is one good
approach for analyzing headlines, since many (most?) readers skim newspaper
headlines rather than reading all of the articles.

John, I would love to hear more about your current research.

Linnea


On Thu, 2 Jun 2005 09:27:37 +0000, John E Richardson
<johnerichardson at CDS-WEB.NET> wrote:

>Hi Deb,
>
>nice to hear the opinion of a journalist on this. Working in the dept
>that I do I've also heard similar tales about subs and their handiwork,
>and not just subs of course. So we have to be careful when ascribing
>agency for newspaper discourse, even before we get to intent.
>
>The issue of headlines & space is an argument I have thrown at me many
>times by the journos I work with - and much more forcefully than Deb
>did! I realise that this isn't the usual focus of discussion on this
>list, but please indulge me. An example from the recent past is
>interesting here I think - The Sun printed a front page article
>headlined 'Bonkers Bruno locked up' about the British boxer Frank Bruno
>who had some kind of nervous breakdown. They caught a lot of flak for
>the headline & the report, from both commentators & their readers and
>rightly so. So much so in fact, that by the later editions of this
>newspaper, the headline was changed to read 'Sad Bruno in Mental Home'.
>Following the incident the BBC wrote:
>
>"The next day, SANE received a telephone call from The Sun. The paper
>wanted to launch an appeal in Bruno's name to raise funds for the mental
>health charity, and offered SANE five hundred words on the problems of
>mental illness. The Sun gave more coverage to the issues under a more
>acceptable headline: "Time and space to heal". A Fund for Frank was
>launched, and a few days later Marjorie Wallace agreed to meet Rebekah
>Wade, the paper's editor, for lunch to discuss what language was
>acceptable if "bonkers" wasn't.
>
>"Rebekah Wade asked me to lunch and she said, 'Why can't I use bonkers,
>and what else would do?' What I said there was really quite simple. I
>remember having the conversation with her predecessor, David Yelland. He
>said, 'What's a three letter word I can put in a headline rather than
>nut or mad?' I said, 'What about ill? Because that's what it is - ill.
>Someone's ill and they go to hospital.' [Rebekah] sort of said. 'Well
>yeah, maybe'."
>http://www.bbc.co.uk/ouch/news/btn/bruno_sun.shtml
>
>There are many things going on in this example and in this quote. Of
>course there are ideological differences between riot and demonstration
>or between mad and ill and should ask why mad is always preferred over
>ill in tabloid reports. It is because the discourse processes used to
>put the news together are ideological *in themselves*. We should perhaps
>ask why is 'space' the deciding factor in writing a headline? Of course
>it's common-sense to say that headlines are big, huge in the case of
>British tabloids, and this is why, but why not just drop the font in
>order that a word with a 'w' can be included? Because the discourse
>process is rationalised and hence underpined by a specific ideology of
>news production: the image of the reader, the brand of the paper and the
>relationship between the paper and the readers. The progression over the
>last 100 years or so towards larger and larger font sizes in headlines
>(in broadsheets too) obviously results in progressively simpler clauses
>(shorter words, deleted determiners, simplified processes) eventually
>requiring certain newspapers to use noun phrases in headlines to
>describe the reported action/event, or to delete the agent/object rather
>than using full verb phrases.
>Thanks for reading this far!
>
>all the best
>John
>
>> Hi fellow CDA-ers, the discussion about headlines is interesting in
>terms of analysis. I don't know anything about your various backgrounds,
>so excuse me if this is telling you what you already know, but as a
>journalist it often infuriated me to find that the headline that
>appeared on my story sometimes not only trivialised the substance, but
>was diametrically opposed to the content of the piece! The headlines are
>written by the subs and the journalist doesn't see them until they are
>printed. The subs work under huge pressure of time and space and I don't
>envy them, moreover I think sometimes it is the issue of space, rather
>than ideological inclination, that makes them choose one word over
>another, so that for example, words with "i"s or "t"s or "l"s will be
>more popular than those with "w"s in a headline. In the body of a story,
>the journalist has more leeway to describe an event as a protest rather
>than a riot, and their choice of word may have ideological
>underpinnings, but a subeditor trying to headline the same story, may
>go with "riot" because it is the only word they can think of that will
>fit. Of course in terms of public perception of events constructed in
>the news, the ideological work is still being done by the headline,
>regardless of the subeditor's intent. Hope this is not off topic
>> cheers
>> deb
>>
>> ________________________________
>>
>> From: CDA-DISCUSS Discussion List on behalf of John E Richardson
>> Sent: Wed 1/06/2005 8:47 PM
>> To: CDA-DISCUSS at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
>> Subject: Re: Halmari and Ostman (2001)
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Linnea (and everyone else),
>>
>> thanks for these thoughts. Unfortunately I couldn't get round to reading
>> the articles this month (so many things to do...) so I have nothing
>> useful to add. Sorry
>> I was very interested in your point about headlines though - and the
>> suggested article from the J of Pragmatics that I'll definitely look up.
>> I say this because I am currently completing a mini-project looking at
>> transitivity in newspaper headlines reporting the invasion of Iraq.
>> Specifically the 6 weeks of UK coverage (eight national newspapers)
>> until Bush declared 'mission accomplished'. While this is not what I
>> would call a large corpora (2100-ish articles) I certainly agree that
>> headline analysis is a interesting approach to newspaper analysis. In
>> this case, I think that it is a useful starting point to studying the
>> ways that the sampled newspapers re/presented the war, and I think that
>> it has produced some interesting findings. For instance (relating to
>> your points about social/economic influence on discourse) the ratio of
>> NP to VP headlines correlates with the social class of the target
>> audience; 'red top' tabloids use NP headlines the most, broadsheets the
>> least, with the mid-market tabloids in the middle. There are also
>> differences between transitive, intransitive, relational verbs, etc. I
>> could send my findings/arguments out to those interested, once this is
>> written up.
>>
>> These are some of my thoughts relating to your questions about future
>> readings. I think that, as you suggest, for the next few months we could
>> read the articles that have been suggested. Following this, list members
>> can suggest other articles to read and lead discussion (which, to be
>> honest, I thought already occurred!). These articles may be published
>> stuff or work in progress from list members. Speaking personally, I
>> found it very helpful when members read & commented on my chapter on CDA
>> & 'Islamophobic' discourse. If Linnea gets too many suggestions from the
>> expanding membership, then perhaps in the future we could think about a
>> voting system. But, as I understand it, there isn't a pressing need for
>> this at the moment (please, correct me if I'm wrong).
>>
>> Many thanks to Linnea & Noriko for their continuing work for the list.
>>
>> all the best
>> John
>>
>>
>
>
>John E Richardson
>Dept of Journalism Studies
>Sheffield University