2. Characteristics of English newspaper style

Newspaper style was the last of all the styles of written literary English to be recognized as a specific form of writing standing apart from other forms. English newspaper writing dates back from the 17^th century. At the close of the 16^th century short news pamphlets began to appear. But not all the printed matter found in newspapers comes under newspaper style. The modern newspaper carries material of an extremely diverse character. On the pages of a newspaper one finds not only news and comment on it, press reports and articles, advertisements and announcements, but also short stories and poems, crossword puzzles, chess problems and the like.

Thus, English newspaper style may be defined as a system of interrelated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means, which is perceived as a separate linguistic unity that serves the purpose of informing and instructing the readers. [I.R.Galperin, p.297]

Newspaper is a printed periodical issue where people may read about the recent events: political, economical, cultural, etc.; it does not only give a full coverage of actual facts, problems and events, but also gives a critical appreciation of these all and has a great impact on a person's mind. [D.Malyavin, M.Latushkina, p.5]

There are two types of newspapers: a quality paper and a tabloid paper. A popular or tabloid newspaper focuses more on sensation than real news while a quality news paper professes to be more interested in real news than in sensation. A tabloid usually has a smaller format than a quality paper, it has large headlines and shorter stones about film stars, violent crimes and the royal family. [M.McCarthy, F.O'Dell, p. 106]

Newspaper articles convey a wild range of themes, it is, as a rule, a genre, which stylistically depends on the author, on the one hand, and on the reader, on the other hand. Articles which deal with political events are, more or less, similar. To be more precise, here comes a list of items which newspapers publish:

• Affairs: home, national, domestic, internal, foreign, international;

• Announcements;

• Articles: economical, political, editorials;

• Commentaries;

• Communiques;

• Events: the latest, the current, the events at home and abroad;

• Headlines;

• News: foreign, international, local, world;

• Reports;

• Reviews;

• Statements. [A.Potalueva, T.Seidova, p.5]

It is newspaper printed matter that performs the function of informing the reader and providing him with an evaluation of the information published that can be regarded as belonging to newspaper style.

Information and evaluation co-exist in the modern English newspaper, and it is only in terms of diachrony that the function of information can claim priority. In fact, all kinds of newspaper writing are to a greater or lesser degree both informative and evaluative. But, of course, it is obvious that in most of the basic newspaper "genres" one of the two functions prevails; thus, for example, news of all kinds is essentially informative, whereas the editorial is basically evaluative.

Information in the English newspaper is conveyed, in the first place, through the medium of:

1. brief news items,

2. press-reports,

3. articles purely informational in character,

4. advertisements and announcements. [I.R.Galperin, p.297]

The newspaper also seeks to influence public opinion on political and other matters. Elements of appraisal may be observed in the very selection and way of presentation of news, in the use of specific vocabulary, such as allege and claim, casting some doubt on the facts reported, and syntactic constructions indicating a lack of assurance on the part of the reporter as to the correctness of the facts reported or his desire to avoid responsibility. The headlines of news items, apart from giving information about the subject-matter, also carry a considerable amount of appraisal (the size and arrangement of the headline, the use of emotionally coloured words and elements of emotive syntax), thus indicating the interpretation of the facts in the news item that follows. But, of course, the principle vehicle of interpretation and appraisal is the newspaper article, and the editorial in particular. Editorials (leading articles or leaders) are characterized by a subjective handling of facts, political or otherwise. They have much in common with classical specimens of publicistic writing and are often looked upon as such. However, newspaper evaluative writing unmistakably bears the stamp of newspaper style. Thus, it seems natural to regard newspaper articles, editorials included, as coming within the system of English newspaper style. But it should be noted that while editorials and other articles in opinion columns are predominantly evaluative, newspaper feature articles, as a rule, carry a considerable amount of information, and the ratio of the informative and evaluative varies substantially from article to article. [I.R.Galperin, p.297]

According to D.Malyavin and M.Latushkina there are four main functions of newspapers: informational, educational, organizational and upbringing. [D.Malyavin, M.Latushkina, p.5]

Newspaper style has its own peculiarities, its own stylistic devices. To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyze some of them.

Metaphor - is based on the principle of identification of two objects. Metaphor means transference of some quality from one object to another. Let's look how it is used in newspapers' headlines: Moscow On Foot (The New York Times); A Date With Destiny (The Mirror); Election Fever (Kyiv Post).

Metonymy - is based on a different type of relation between the dictionary and contextual meaning, relation based not on identification, but on some kind of association connected with the two concepts which these meanings represent. For example, the word "crown" may stay for "king or queen", "cup" or "glass" for "the drink it contains".

Irony - is also based on simultaneous realization of two logical meanings: dictionary and contextual, but the two meanings stand in opposition to each other. The word containing irony is strongly marked by intonation, e.g. Election Favourites Losing Ground (The Mirror); Kuchma Peace Plan Spurned in Washington (Kyiv Post).

Interjections and exclamatory words - can be used when expressing feelings strongly. Interjections are used to create emotive meanings, e.g. He is double, oh no, licensed to short blanks. (The Times).

Stylistic inversion. There are some constructions, which are peculiar for English and American newspapers. One of them is stylistic inversion.

Stylistic inversion is very popular among journalists, it aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. Inversion as a stylistic device is always sense-motivated. There is a tendency to account for inversion in headlines, e.g. Real Luck Mr.Willow Had (The Times).

Rhetorical question - is a special syntactical stylistic device the essence of which consists in reshaping the grammatical meaning of the interrogative sentence. The question is no longer a question, but a statement expressed in the form of an interrogative sentence, e.g. Where is it? (The Mirror).

Special colloquial vocabulary. Here I should mention slang. Slang seems to mean everything that is below the standard of usage of present day English. To attract readers' attention reporters often use slang in their articles and, especially, in the headlines. Also colloquialisms, dialect words are often used in newspaper's articles, e.g. Hooked On A Better Way Of Life (The Times).

Terms - are mostly and predominantly used in special works dealing with the notion of some branch of science. Therefore it may be said, that they belong to the style of language of science. But their use is not confined to this style. They may as well appear in other styles: in newspaper style, in publicistic style and practically in all other existing styles of language. But they do not always fulfill their basic function, that of bearing exact reference to a given concept.

The function of terms is either to indicate the technical peculiarities of the subject dealt with, or to make some reference to the occupation of a character whose language would naturally contain special words and expressions,

e. g. It can not be denied nuclear weapons are stupid risk (The Guardian Weekly).

A lot of journalists can not avoid the usage of terms, jargons, they are convinced that these words give an additional flavour to an article. Some times it is impossible to find an adequate synonym for a certain term An author has to think about his readers while writing an article . He is supposed to provide the readers with necessary explanations of some terms.

Abbreviations are frequently used in newspapers style. Some abbreviations are read as individual letters: BBC - British Broadcasting Corporation, PM - Prime Minister, MP - Member of Parliament, UN -United Nations . Some abbreviations are read as word, we call them acronyms : NATO - North Atlantic Treaty Organization, AIDS - Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. Abbreviation are used in the organization of language: etc.- and so on, i.e.- that is to say.

Newspapers cliches, i. e. stereotyped expressions, commonplace phases familiar to the reader, e.g. vital issue, pressing problem, war hysteria, overwhelming majority. Cliches more than anything else reflect the traditional manner of statement in newspaper writing. They are commonly looked upon as a defect of style. Indeed , some cliches, especially those based on trite images(e.g. captains of industry, pillars of society, bulwark ) are hackneyed and pompous, such as affluent society, welfare state, are false and misleading. But nevertheless, cliches, are indispensable in newspapers style: they prompt the necessary associations and prevent ambiguity and misunderstanding.

Neologisms. These are very common in newspaper vocabulary. The newspaper is very quick to react to any new development in the life of society, in science and technology. Hence, neologisms make their way into the language of the newspaper very easily and often even spring up on newspaper pages, e.g. backlash or white backlash (a violent reaction of American racist to the Negroes' struggle for civil rights), frontlash (a vigorous antiracist movement), stop-go policies (contradictory, indecisive and inefficient policies). [I.R.Galperin, p. 299]

The inverted pyramid. Newspaper stories are usually written in an inverted pyramid style. This means that the basic facts, the conclusion, the lead (a short summary), etc., comes first. As the reader moves through the story, more and more detail and background is provided.

This is different than much writing where the reader builds to a conclusion, putting together details and background before explaining what the results are. This type of writing came about in newspapers for a variety of reasons. First, in the days of the telegraph, the whole story took long to transmit, and starting with the main information ("The battle was lost, 940 killed") was more important for getting on press immediately than the details ("Our soldiers crossed the bridge at dawn with fresh supplies..."). Secondly, it made it easier for the layout people to fit the story in the available space, since they could just cut off the end. Finally, it also made it much better for readers who had differing amounts of time to read and were awating the main information.

A similar style could be used for web pages, mainly for the last reason - knowing that not all readers will read the entire story. [http://www.gooddocuments.com/techniques/invertedpyrarnid_rn.htm]

The style of the news story. Most news stories have a very clear style. They give the main points at the top in the headline and the lead paragraph(s). The body of the story then adds details, statements and comments from people involved in the story, plus any background the writer feels is necessary. This means that the reader gets at least three chances to understand the main points of the story. We say "at least" because somestories have accompanying pictures and captions (textexplaining the pictures) as well.

Each of the three main parts of the news story (the headline, lead and body) has its own distinctive style and content.

The headline. There are two types of headlines. Most news stories use sentence headlines although they may be shortened by omitting certain words as you will see later. Many feature stories and some very short news stories use phrase headlines or titles which leave out the verb. Here are some examples of both:

Sentence headlines	Police rescue 12 divers as launch sinks off Phi Phi Pen manufacturers still see good future for luxury pens
Phrase headlines	Getting in touch with the spirits Heroism and cowardice at the "Top of the World" Reward for tracing suspect

Almost all sentence headlines use the present tense — despite the fact that they generally describe past events. The present tense gives the subject a sense of freshness and immediacy, making it more interesting to read.

Headlines pack a great deal of information into a limited space. One obvious example is to use abbreviations ("PM" for "Prime Minister", etc.). But they also use a special grammar, omitting articles ("a" and "the") and the verb "to be" wherever possible:

Cooperation agreement signed

(A cooperation agreement is signed)

Another way to conserve space in headlines is to use short words instead of long ones. In the example below notice the various ways the headline writer can shorten the headline "MP criticises dishonest election plan". Here is a list of the most common short words.

probe investigate, investigation

graft corruption

bid attempt, offer

row quarrel or disagreement

The news lead. The lead refers to the first (and occasionally the second) paragraph of a news story. The lead is usually one information-packed sentence, which expands on the story's main point as introduced in the headline. As we mentioned earlier, news stories are basically variations of "something happened". The lead will usually tell you what the "something happened" is. That information is generally found in the subject and the main verb of the lead sentence.

One of the reasons people sometimes misunderstand the lead is that they find the wrong subject or, more commonly, the wrong main verb. This is especially true when the subject and verb is separated by a phrase or clause.

The news body. The headline and the lead tell you the main ideas of the news story, but they do so in a very shortened form. They give you enough information, however, to allow you to make an important decision. They allow you to decide whether you want to read the story or to skip it and move on to another more interesting story.

The body of the story is where you find detailed information. Basically, the body will give you three kinds of information: details, comments from people involved in the story, and background information to help you understand the story more deeply. The following short story has all of these elements.

Headline Earthquake jolts Japan capital

Dateline Tokyo, Reuters

Slight earthquake jolted the Japanese capital last night but authorities said there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

Lead A spokesman for the Japan meteorological agency said:

Statement "An earth tremor was registered in Tokyo but there are nor reports of casualties or damage."

Details The earth tremor struck shortly after midnight Tokyo time— just after midnight Bangkok midnight Bangkok time.

Background Residents of central Tokyo said the tremor was the strongest for several months in the capital.

(The Bangkok Post).

The headline and lead usually raise more questions than they answer. The reader generally finds out what happened and one or two prominent details, but if he is interested in the subject he will want to know much more, questions such as: when? where? why? how? what effects? what significance? That is the function of the body of the story. [http://www.bangkokpost.net]

Thus, the newspaper is one of the text-types with its own peculiarities.

There should be special approaches and techniques of using newspapers at the English lesson.