Issue

Vol. 8 No. 2 (2019)

Analysis of Newspaper Headlines: A Case of Two Tanzanian English Dailies

https://doi.org/10.56279/jhss.v8i2.17
erasmus akiley msuya

Corresponding Author(s) : erasmus akiley msuya

msuyaerasmus@gmail.com

Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS), Vol. 8 No. 2 (2019)

Abstract

The current study analyses newspaper headlines in respect to three categories:
international, local, and business news (irrespective of the geographical scope) of two
English dailies: a government-owned Daily News, and a privately-owned The Guardian. The
study sought to analyse newspaper headlines guided by semantic under-determinacy, an
important theoretical framework in accounting for a balance between linguistic economy
that characterises newspaper headlines and communicative precision. The data were
collected via documentary review. The headlines were analysed under three categories:
local, international, and business news that included local and international spectrums. A
total of 2004 headlines were randomly selected for analysis: 1088 from The Guardian, and
916 from the Daily News. The headlines were classified into five semantic underdeterminacy categories as developed by Carston (2002), which are: multiple encodings,
missing constituents, unspecified scope of elements, over-specificity, and underspecificity. Frequencies of occurrence of headlines were computed in each category. The
findings showed that local news predominated over international and business news
headlines both in frequencies of occurrence and in the categories of missing
constituencies and multiple encodings in both newspapers. The study concludes that
there is no specific in-house news headlines’ framing between the two newspapers.

Keywords

headlines newspaper semantic under-determinacy Tanzania
Analysis of Newspaper Headlines: A Case of Two Tanzanian English Dailies. (2020). Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS), 8(2). https://doi.org/10.56279/jhss.v8i2.17
Download Citation
Endnote/Zotero/Mendeley (RIS)
BibTeX
References
  1. Bed?ichová, L. 2006. Headlines and Subheadlines in Newspaper Reporting Based on Discourse
  2. Analysis of Newspaper Articles in’ the Guardian’ (December 2005 – February 2006). M.A. Thesis,
  3. Masaryk University.
  4. Bell, A. 1991. The Language of News Media. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
  5. Bell, A. & P. Garrett. 2001. ‘Preface’. In Bell, Allan & Peter Garrett (eds.). Approaches to Media Discourse.
  6. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  7. Belleri, D. 2005. Semantic Under-determinacy: Content and Context, Thesis, University of Bogna.
  8. —. 2011. Semantic Under-determinacy. Lagos: Research Group in Analytic Philosophy. Accessed from
  9. http://www.ub.edu/grc_logos/ on 18th October. 2016.
  10. Bonyadi, A. & M. Samuel. 2013. Headlines in Newspaper Editorials: A Contrastive Study. SAGE Open,
  11. April-June 2013: 1–10.
  12. Carston, R. 2002. Thoughts and Utterances: The Pragmatics of Explicit Communication. Blackwell, Oxford.
  13. Crystal, D. 1987. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Language. Cambridge University Press.
  14. Dzahene-Quarshie, J. 2013. Language Choice in Swahili Newspaper Advertising in Tanzania, USChina Foreign Language, 11(6); 447–460.
  15. Franklin, B. 1998. Local Journalism and Local Media: Making the Local News. https:// ebookcentral.
  16. proquest.com/lib/aul/detail.action?docID=240326: Taylor and Francis.
  17. Ifantidou, E. 2009. Newspaper Headlines and Relevance: Ad hoc Concepts in ad hoc Contexts.
  18. Journal of Pragmatics, 41: 699–720.
  19. Isani, S. 2011. Of Headline & Headlines: Towards Distinctive Linguistic and Pragmatic Genericity. Asp
  20. [online] Accessed from http:// asp.revues.org/2523; doi: 10.4000/asp.2523 on 12th June. 2019.
  21. Kress, G. & T. van Leeuwen. 2001. ‘Front Pages: (The Critical) Analysis of newspaper layout’. In Bell
  22. Allan & Peter Garrett (eds.), Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
  23. Lore, T.A. 2011. An Analysis of the Coverage of Genetically Modified Crops by Mainstream Kenyan Print
  24. Media: The Case of ‘The Daily Nation’, ‘The Standard’ and ‘Taifa Leo’. 2007-2009. Master of Science
  25. Thesis in Agricultural Information and Communication Management, University of Nairobi.
  26. Lusekelo, A. 2010. Morphology-Pragmatics Interface: The Case of the Tanzanian Commercials in
  27. Swahili Newspapers. Afrikanistik Aegyptogie. Online.
  28. Magonya, L. 2012. A Pragmatic Analysis of Figurative Language Used in HIV/AIDS Discourse in Kenya:
  29. A Case Study of English and Kiswahili Messages. PhD Thesis, University of Geneva.
  30. Mapunda, G. & A.M. Keya. 2015. An Analysis of Language Use in the Tanzania’s 2010 Pre-election
  31. Newspaper Headlines in the Swahili Press. African Review, 42: 58–78.
  32. Moe, S. 2014. A Brief Study on the Language of Newspaper Headlines Used in ‘The New Light of
  33. Myanmar’. Hinthada University Research Journal, 5(1): 82–92.
  34. Mugumya, L. 2013. The Discourse of Conflict: An Appraisal Analysis of Newspaper Genres in English
  35. and Runyankore-rukiga in Uganda (2001-2010). Doctoral dissertation, Stellenbosch University.
  36. Rahmawati, A. 2016. The Analysis of Ambiguity in Cable News Network (CNN) Streaming Video News
  37. Headlines (A study of Video News Headlines in April -May 2016). Sarjana degree thesis in English
  38. Language Education, Antasari State Institute for Islamic Studies Banjarmasin.
  39. Shie, J. 2010. Lexical Feature Variations between ‘New York Times’ and ‘Times Supplement’ News
  40. Headlines. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 36(1): 79–103.
  41. Tiono, I. N. 2003. Analysis of Syntactic and Semantic Factors Found in Newspaper Headlines.
  42. <http://puslit2.petra.ac.id/ejournal/index.ph<http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/newspap
  43. accessed Feb. 2013.
  44. Ungerer, F. 2000. ‘Introduction’. In F. Ungerer (Ed.), English Media Texts Past and Present: Language
  45. and Textual Structure (pp. vii–xiv). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
  46. van Dijk, T. A. 1988. News as Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Read More
Author biographies is not available.

How to Cite

Analysis of Newspaper Headlines: A Case of Two Tanzanian English Dailies. (2020). Journal of Humanities & Social Science (JHSS), 8(2). https://doi.org/10.56279/jhss.v8i2.17
Download

Similar Articles

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.