This article analyzes the influence of newspaper headline on the reader's perception. Various stylistic devices were considered and more effective of them were presented. The use of them helps writers to make a headline intriguing, catching and attractive for reader's attention.
Keywords: stylistic value, perception, stylistic devices, headline, newspaper.
В данной статье анализируется влияние заголовка газеты на восприятие читателя. Были рассмотрены различные стилистические приемы и более эффективные из них были представлены. Использование их помогает писателям сделать заголовок интригующим, захватывающим и более привлекательным для внимания читателя.
Ключевые слова: стилистическая значимость, восприятие, стилистические приемы, заголовок, газета.
The stylistic value for the title plays a very important role, since stylistics in this aspect defines various expressive means that help writers to title more clearly their works. These expressive means are cognitive-significant stylistic devices that help to reveal the conceptual essence of the title and to understand more deeply the meaning of the work of art.
The title is regarded to be the name of the text, its main thesis. It performs various functions, such as nominative, communicative, advertising. Titles help people to orientate in the world of texts books, articles, messages. It is believed that the newspaper headline has only a couple of seconds to attract the attention of the audience. With the help of the title, a person quickly decides for himself whether the message he is looking at right now is useful for his needs. If it is correlated, then he will take up reading, if not, he will move his gaze further. The well-known publicist D. Ogilvy said: «The headline is the most important element of most advertisements. This is a telegram by which people judge, read the advertising text or not». [1]
Sometimes headlines contain elements of appraisal, they show the reporter’s attitude to the facts reported. English newspaper headlines are short and catching. They often contain emotionally coloured words and phrases. Furthermore, to attract the reader’s attention, headline writers often resort to a deliberate breaking-up set expression, in particular fused set expressions, and deformation of special terms. [2] However, most of newspaper headlines are expressed by lexical-stylistic, phonetic and syntactic devices, such as alliteration, enumeration, rhyme, rhythm, metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, antithesis, simile and epithet. Firstly, lets deal with alliteration, to more exactly show its role and importance for a headline.
The repetition of a certain sound prompts the feelings of anxiety, fear, horror, anguish or all these feelings simultaneously in the headlines. For instance, «It's true... sexy leaders last longer» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). In this example, not only the stylistic device of alliteration is used, but also the epithet «sexy», which makes the title more expressive. «Redesigning by residents» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). Here, the title is interesting because it uses a word-building repetition. «Magnolias are magic!» («Sunday Mirror», March 10, 1997); «Crackers Christmas» («Daily Mirror», May 6, 1997), " Passing, Punting, Pageantry» («New York Times» March 28, 1997). It is obvious that alliteration produces maximum effect when all the words in the headline begin with the same sound.
In contrast to alliteration, rhyme is accompanied by a certain rhythmic organization or includes the whole headline itself. «Projection, Inflection, Election» or parts of it «There's Moanin' in the Homin'; Scotch Whiskey's on the Rocks», «Oregon Ruins Bruins in Their Den». The specific feature of the rhyme in the newspaper headlines is that is about 80 % of cases rhyme covers two words that stand side by side. Usually, this rhymed pair of words makes the whole headline intriguing and catching.
Moreover, rhythm can also be observed in newspaper headlines. For example: «Everybody's happy on friendly Jersey!" («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997); «Billy boy's biggest joy» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). «Smile as you say «Hi!", «To a Thai» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997), «Lady Helen cuts a dashius with her Cassius» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). In these headlines, rhythm does a strong emotional impact on a reader and makes the headline be more expressive and helps to perform its function. [3]
Another phonetic device that writers usually use to access a reader’s auditory sense and create rich soundscapes is onomatopoeia. «Pick up a tax-free PEP to perk up your pocket» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997); "30 years of bum, boom and bust for the lingerie queen». In this headline, onomatopoeia shows all those ups and downs of the «queen of underwear», which were in her modeling career. From these examples, it is clear that onomatopoeia makes the utterance be reminiscent of the sound to which the word refers.
The stylistic device that gives readers a clear picture in their minds of what is going to be discussed in the text is metaphor. «Cannot talk now, it's a soap time» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997), «Stowing away on a ship of fools», «Time is money» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997).
The next stylistic device that is close to metaphor and often used by writers for strengthening headlines is simile. It directly compares two things. «From sick as a parrot to over the moon... a football crowd of one», «March will go out like a Welsh lion» («New Times», March 6, 1997).
When writers want to show their individual attitude towards objects mentioned in the headline, in this case they use a stylistic device which is called epithet. «Bulldog; Mike is man for the job». («Evening Standard», July 29, 1997); “The Not-so-Iron Lady” («Hindustan Times», March 27, 1997), «A plane crazy way to treat customers» («The Mail», October 12, 1997), «Smooth as velvet, the animal-loving mayor ditches his mink-lined robes» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). What is more, in all these examples epithet is used together with metaphor, as «Smooth as velvet», “Iron Lady”, “crazy way”.
Although, metonymy is used less than metaphor and epithet in the headlines, it can still be found in some of them. “Hands are wanted at the plant” («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). In this example, ahand is used for a worker. «You wept buckets... the BBC drank buckets» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). Here, there are two examples of metonymy. «Buckets» — in the first case it is a «bucket of tears», in the second case «buckets» is a sea of booze, well, and the BBC does not mean the television company itself, but its representatives.
Besides, the interaction of logical and emotional meanings in newspaper headlines can be achieved with the help of oxymoron. «Hell for the leather to heaven» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997), «Hard questions for those Soft lions» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). In fact, in both headlines, oxymoron presents a combination of two contrasting ideas.
The use of repetition enables writers to emphasize more deeply their own statements in the headlines. «Going round and roundin magic circles» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997) — in this example, the repetition of the word «round» reflects the manner of dancing in Tchaikovsky's «Swan Lake», which was staged in London. Odile dances in a circle, the swans are surrounded by Odette, i.e. all «Swan Lake» is spinning in «magic circles». «Rabbit, rabbit as Tony and Bill dine out». («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). In this example, repetition prompts readers to look through the article written about how Clinton and Blair dined at a London restaurant in which the word «rabbit «occurs only once. «Dirty Donna has a baby by her soldier, soldier Lover» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). This title is very emotional due to the use of epithet «dirty» and lexical repetition of soldier, soldier lover.
In most cases, writers use enumeration in order to create a chain of things, phenomena, actions that demonstrates the form of semantic homogeneity in the headline. «Film, camera, action for the Tony blockbuster» («Evening Standard», May 30, 1997). «We suggest meat and fruit pies, cold meat, tomatoes, fruit and green stuff» («Sunday Mirror», April 23, 1997) — here, all objects enumerated in the sentence belong to the group of notion defining food. Hence, it is clear that each word is closely associated semantically with the following and preceding words in the headline.
As for the semantic opposition of concepts in the first and second parts of the statement in newspaper headlines, it can be achieved by the use of antithesis. For instance, «Loved the bike, hated the rider» («The Mail», March 26, 1997), «New starts need to acknowledge some old memories» («Herald Tribune», May 12, 1995), «Spirit of the wild West Lives on in the shimmering East» («The Mail», August 23, 1997), «They speak like saint and act like devils» («Evening Standard», March 30, 1997). In all these examples, there is a logical and stylistic opposition. In its turn, logical opposition implies the use of dictionary antonyms.
Furthermore, the use of occasionalism is quite common for the newspaper headlines, the formation of which occurs at the expense of productive word-building models. For example, recently the word-forming element «Euro»- has become widespread in the headlines, because it provides a high degree of compression of information. Many of these words are already recorded in dictionaries (Euromissile, Euroatom). By analogy, the words Euromen (representatives of President Reagan in Europe), Eurodollar (the rate of the US dollar in Europe) and, finally, the completely original occasionalism of Euroflop in the title «Get out now, Storm Hits Euroflop Thatcher» («The Mail», March 26, 1997), is formed, in which this game is humorously played a word formation model. Euroflop is a semantic capacious occasionalism, since the second part of this occasionalism is an expressively colored colloquialism flop «noisy failure». [4]
By the way, there are many interesting cases, in which occasionalism is used by analogy. For example: «Allison in Blunderland» («Evening Standard», May 16, 1997). The title is built by analogy with the name of the famous fairy tale written by Lewis Carroll «Alice in Wonderland», and reflects the author's attitude to the fact that football player Ellison was fined and removed from the field, for quarreling with the player of the opposite team. «Slam — tastique» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). The title is based on the analogy with the French word «fantastique» fantastic, but replacing the fan with slam «clap», «slamming» changes the meaning of the word to a negative one and indeed the article is about the fact that the French won against the Scots with a score of 47:20 i.e. in other words, they pulled their noses.
Very often writers use semantic incompatibility to increase and highlight expressiveness in the headlines. For example, «Vegetable kingdom», «Firm grip of happiness», «Major takes a licking on lollies» («Sunday Mirror», March 16, 1997). From all these examples, it is clear that the words are so different in nature and incapable of coexisting, but this incompatibility gives expressiveness to the headlines. Another interesting example: “School heads call for blood” — here it's unclear why the heads of schools require blood. But after reading the article it becomes clear that the article deals with the resignation of the chief inspector of the school, Mr. Woodhead, on which all heads of schools insist. Thus, in order to understand semantic incompatibility, the whole article should be read firstly.
From the above mentioned, we come to conclusion that a title enables to have the impression of the title. Titles are extremely important. English newspaper headlines are usually expressed by stylistic, phonetic and syntactical devices. The use of them helps writers to attract readers’ attention, to create anticipation, expectation or disinterest. The headline of a newspaper article is more expressive than imaginative. The reason for this lies in the peculiarities of the functional style in which it is used.
References:
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- Манькова Л. А. Специфика заголовков. // Ученые записки ТНУ, 2002. Выпуск № 6 (45).
- Galperin I. R. Stylistics. — M.: Higher School, 1977. — 332 p.
- Шелепова А. С. Название как кодовая единица текста: Автореф. дисс. канд.. филол. наук. — М., 2003. — 24 с.
