Control Questions

1. What are grammatical properties of newspaper articles?

2. What are syntactical peculiarities of newspaper articles?

3. What word order is typical of newspaper articles?

Practical Tasks

Task 1. Read the article below, analyse its grammatical and syntactical features.

Cronyism alert on plan for more people’s peers

Sarah Hall

Tony Blair is expected to prompt renewed charges of cronyism in the new year by appointing his first batch of “people’s peers” since the general election. Five of the non-party political peers will be announced in the Queen’s new year honours list, with a further five appointed in March or April and an additional five in July or August, according to a source close to the House of Lords Appointments Commission.

The staggered effect should ensure the prime minister avoids the embarrassment of the entire list reading like a roll call of establishment figures – at a time when elements of the House of Lords will already be furious over legislation designed to abolish the remaining 92 hereditary peers. In addition, the next batch of working peers will be announced by early December. A total of 20 Labour peers, six Conservatives and four or five Liberal Democrats will be on the list.

Ministers, all too aware that the forthcoming bill to abolish the remaining hereditary peers will be angrily received, will hope the introduction of new Labour peers should help to redress the balance. But it is with the resurrection of the people’s peers scheme that the prime minister risks brooking the most controversy.

The government suffered severe embarrassment when the first, and so far only, set of peers, announced in April 2001, consisted exclusively of establishment figures.

The bemusement directed at the government led to the scheme being apparently put on hold. But on the last day of the recent parliamentary session, Mr Blair announced that the seven-strong Appointments Commission would again be charged with “finding people of distinction who would bring authority and expertise to the House of Lords.”

Last night, Lord Strathclyde, the Conservative leader in the Lords, said he favoured the introduction of new working peers, since around 75 hereditaries had died in the three and a half years since the last announcement. But he warned that resurrecting the people's peers scheme should not be a means of shying away from complete reform of the House of Lords or of installing cronies.

Gordon Prentice, a senior Labour backbencher, said: “I am disappointed this farce is continuing.”

The Guardian, November 10, 2003

Task 2. Analyse the lexical, grammatical and syntactical features of the article above. How would you head the article, were you a journalist?

Task 3. Take a look at the headline on the next page. What syntactical structure is it? Read the material to see whether it conveys in full the idea of the article.