Курсовая работа: Idioms in newspaper style

2) The use of the first person singular, which justifies a personal approach to the problems treated:

3) A rather expended use of connectives, which facilitates the process of grasping the correlation of ideas;

4) The abundant use of emotive words

5) The use of idioms and metaphors as one of the media for the cognitive process

Newspapers are most often published on a daily or weekly basis, and they usually focus on one particular geographic area where most of their readers live. Despite recent setbacks in circulation and profits, newspapers are still the most iconic outlet for news and other types of written journalism. To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyze the following basic newspaper features

· brief news items

· advertisements and announcements

· the headline

· the editorial

The headline is a dependent form of newspaper writing. The main function of the headline is to inform the reader briefly what the text that follows is about. In other words headlines are almost a summary of the information contained in the news item or article.

The function of editorial is to influence the reader by giving an interpretation of certain facts. Editorials comment on the political and other events of the day. Editorials make an extensive use of emotionally colored vocabulary.

The main function of advertisements and announcements is to give information about a product or service used to attract potential consumers; advertising takes place in newspapers and magazines, on hoardings, on radio and television and on the Internet .

The principal function of a brief news item is to inform the reader. News items are essentially matter - of - fact and stereotyped forms of expression prevail.it goes without saying that the bulk of the vocabulary which is used in newspaper writing is natural and common literary. But newspaper style has also its specific vocabulary features and is characterized by an extensive use of:

a) special political and economic terms like constitution president, etc.

b) non – term political vocabulary such as public people unity etc.

c) newspaper clichés which are commonplace phrases familiar to the reader. Clichés occur in newspaper headlines more often to give special coloring and emotiveness. e.g pressing problem, speaking realization etc.

d) abbreviations _ names of organizations, public and state body, political associations, industrial and other companies etc – known by their initials are very common in newspapers. E.g UNO( united Nation Organization), FO ( foreign Office), etc.

e) neologism_ a new word or sense of a word and the coining or use of new words and senses. Neologisms make their way into the langiage of newspaper easily. E. g coffee (the person upon whom one cough), abdicate (to give up all hope of ever having a flat stomach) etc.

Most modern newspapers are in one of three sizes:

· Broadsheets: 600 mm by 380 mm (23½ by 15 inches), generally associated with more intellectual newspapers, although a trend towards «compact» newspapers is changing this.

· Tabloids: half the size of broadsheets at 380 mm by 300 mm (15 by 11¾ inches), and often perceived as sensationalist in contrast to broadsheets. Examples: The Sun, The National Enquirer, The National Ledger, The Star Magazine, New York Post, the Chicago Sun-Times, The Globe.

· Berliner or Midi: 470 mm by 315 mm (18½ by 12¼ inches) used by European papers such as Le Monde in France, La Stampa in Italy, El Pais in Spain and, since 12 September 2005, The Guardian in the United Kingdom.

While most newspapers are aimed at a broad spectrum of readers, usually geographically defined, some focus on groups of readers defined more by their interests than their location: for example, there are daily and weekly business newspapers and sports newspapers. More specialist still are some weekly newspapers, usually free and distributed within limited areas; these may serve communities as specific as certain immigrant populations, or the local gay community.

A daily newspaper is issued every day, sometimes with the exception of Sundays and some national holidays. Typically, the majority of these newspapers’ staff work Monday to Friday, so the Sunday and Monday editions largely depend on content done in advance or content that is syndicated. Most daily newspapers are published in the morning. Afternoon or evening papers are aimed more at commuters and office workers.

Weekly newspapers are common and tend to be smaller than daily papers. In some cases, there also are newspapers that are published twice or three times a week. In the United States, such newspapers are generally still classified as weeklies.

Most nations have at least one newspaper that circulates throughout the whole country: a national newspaper , as contrasted with a local newspaper serving a city or region. In the United Kingdom, there are numerous national newspapers, including The Independent, The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Observer, The Daily Mail, The Sun, The Daily Express and The Daily Mirror. In the United States and Canada, there are few, if any, national newspapers, and in almost every market one newspaper has an effective monopoly. Certain newspapers, notably The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today in the US and The Globe and Mail and The National Post in Canada are available at limited locations throughout the country. Large metropolitan newspapers with also have expanded distribution networks and, with effort, can be found outwith their normal area.

There is also a small group of newspapers which may be characterised as international newspapers. Some, such as Christian Science Monitor and The International Herald Tribune, have always had that focus, while others are repackaged national newspapers or «international editions» of national-scale or large metropolitan newspapers. Often these international editions are scaled down to remove articles that might not interest the wider range of readers.

But the principal vehicle of interpretation and appraisal is the newspaper article and the editorial in particular. Editorials (leading articles) are characterized by the subjective handling of facts, political or otherwise, and therefore have more in common with political essays or articles and should rather be classed as belonging to the publicistic style than to the newspaper. However, newspaper publicistic writing bears a stamp of its own style. Though it seems natural to consider newspaper articles, editorials included, as coming within the system of English newspaper style, it is necessary to note that such articles are an intermediate phenomenon characterized by a combination of styles – the newspaper style and the publicistic style. In other words, they may be considered hybrids.

English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means,which is perceived by the community as separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing, instructing the reader. In fact, all kinds of newspapers writing are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion or political and appraisal and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and the way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary. The vocabulary used in newspaper writing is natural and common literary. But apart from this, newspaper style has its one of the smartest ways to illustrate the topic and to direct it to the point is to use idioms in the article. Here are idioms found in popular newspapers.