Analysis of the Structure of Scientific News Headlines in Online Newspapers

mjl@ kly@ ltrby@ llbnt Pub Date : 2019-12-14 DOI:10.36231/coedw/vol30no3

Lina Laith Younus

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引用次数: 1

Abstract

Newspaper headlines are described as compressed and ambiguous pieces of discourse that represent the bodies of the articles. Their main function is to provide the readers with an informative message they would have no prior idea about. Ifantidou (2009) claims that the function of a headline is to get the readers’ attention rather than providing information because it does not have to represent the whole of the article it refers to. This paper aims at examining this hypothesis in relation to scientific news headlines reported by a number of news agencies. The paper follows Halliday (1967) information structure theory by applying it on ten selected headlines; each two headlines represent one scientific discovery reported by different news agencies. One of them is presented by the most popular news agency on science; National Geographic then it is compared to one of the well-known news agencies like BBC, Reuters or Yahoo. The results showed that scientific news headlines are more informative than being just catchy headlines. It is also found that National Geographic news agency is more informative than any other agency because it is specialized in science. It is concluded that the more new information units a headline includes the less ambiguous it is for the readers.

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网络报纸科技新闻标题结构分析

报纸标题被描述为压缩和模糊的话语片段，代表文章的主体。它们的主要功能是为读者提供他们以前不知道的信息。Ifandou（2009）声称，标题的作用是吸引读者的注意力，而不是提供信息，因为它不必代表它所引用的文章的全部。本文旨在将这一假设与多家新闻机构报道的科学新闻标题联系起来进行检验。本文遵循韩礼德（1967）的信息结构理论，将其应用于十个精选标题；每两个标题代表不同新闻机构报道的一项科学发现。其中一个是由最受欢迎的科学新闻机构介绍的；《国家地理》则被比作英国广播公司、路透社或雅虎等知名新闻机构。研究结果表明，科学新闻标题比仅仅是朗朗上口的标题更有信息性。研究还发现，国家地理通讯社比任何其他通讯社都更具信息量，因为它专门从事科学研究。结论是，一个标题包含的新信息单元越多，对读者来说就越不含糊。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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24 weeks