| A news headline, together with lead and body, is one of the three basic components of a piece of news report, generally regarded as a summary of the news report. Many scholars have indicated that news headlines will orient the readers’interpretation of the subsequent ’facts’ presented in the article (van Dijk,1998a; Bell1991, etc). While there have been extensive studies on the news headlines’ influence on readers’understanding of news content, the study of thematisation in news headlines is an area that has not been adequately addressed.Theme is a concept put forward by linguists from the perspective of clause functions, and different linguists and linguistic schools have had various interpretations about it:the initial word of a clause, known information, mental subject, etc. According to Halliday (1967,1994), thematization is a process of selecting a discursive focal point. There are two types of themes:marked ones and unmarked ones. An unmarked theme can refer to the subject of a declarative sentence. Many linguists hold that thematization is not only a process of theme selection on clause level, but a discoursal process since the prioritized element may influence the reader’s understanding of the text by recontextualizing the event in line with its ideological stance (Brown and Yule,1983; Crystal,1991). This is what is called framing function. The present study focuses on the thematization in news headlines. We find that themes in news headlines are generally unmarked ones. We try to find out how thematization in news headlines contributes to the framing function of news headlines. The thematized entities in news headlines generally fall into three main categories:people, institution, and event.The data of the present study are the headlines of the New York Times’front-page news reports about the Vietnam War from1961to1973. The New York Times’coverage of the Vietnam War is selected for this analysis on the following grounds:(1) the long-stretching Vietnam War provides enough data for the observation on the change of the thematized entities in the news headlines;(2) as the war underwent several important stages, and in each stage there was marked change of policies, public attitudes etc., a study of the themes in the headlines across these stages can reveal the complicated selection process, thus shedding light on how thematization in news headlines can help decide the perspective. The data are collected from the ProQuest Historical Newspaper1and there are711front-page news reports about the Vietnam War in all. With reference to American Historians’(Daniel Hallin. Clarence Wyatt, etc.) studies on Vietnam War, the war is divided into three phases:Phase One (1961-1965), Phase Two (1965-1969) and Phase Three (1969-1973). The present analysis shows that there are great differences in the types and frequencies of thematized entities in the headlines across the three phases.The first phase has the lowest frequency of thematizations, which signals that the war was certainly not the central concern of the United States. Moreover, there shows a consistency in the war-supportive views of the thematized U.S. officials and a scarcity in the thematizations of non-official entities. The consistency in the pro-war stance seen in the thematizations of participants is echoed in the thematizations of institutions. Thematized events in the first phase emphasize North Vietnam’s aggression and the effectiveness of U.S. strategy in Vietnam.There are some striking changes in the second phase:(1) the great increase in the frequency of thematizations suggests that war was accorded core attention in this period;(2) things referring to the negative side of war have been granted attention through the thematizations. There exists a great diversity in the thematizations of participants, which can be seen from the diversity shown in the identities of the thematized participants, thematizations of Republicans increase greatly and the frequency of thematizations of anti-war people also rises sharply. As a result, the union seen in the thematizations of the first stage has been seriously corrupted in the thematizations. Likewise, thematizations of institutions in this phase reflect the pattern seen in the thematizations of participants. Two things have been emphasized in the thematizations of events:negativity about war in Vietnam and anti-war voice.In the third phase, the general frequency of thematizations drops drastically in comparison with the second stage. Moreover, the complexity and diversity seen in the thematizations of U.S. officials in the second phase seems to have vanished. Consistency is found in the views of the thematized U.S. officials and there is no thematization of war hawks. The union seen in the thematized officials’pro-peace stance is echoed in the thematizations of U.S. institutions. Things about peace in Vietnam and withdrawal of U.S. armed forces are given conceptual salience in the thematizations of events in this phase.A comparison of the thematizations in three phases shows that the New York Times reports the war from different perspectives across three phases. In general, the New York Times in the first phase mainly thematizes the support of war which can be seen from its selection of entities for thematizations. In the second phase, the New York Times’approach towards war shifted and the ostensible union presented in the first phase has dissolved and thematizations gain in complexity and diversity, such issues as Americanization of war, anti-war protests, etc.. effort to have peace have been given conceptual salience. The New York Times’coverage of war in the third phase stresses the negative effects of war in Vietnam and has much to do with the effort to have peace and the necessity to withdraw U.S. armed forces from Vietnam. In this phase, what has been presented is a united front for the ending of war.As is shown in our research, thematization contributes to the framing function of news headlines by granting perceptual salience to the thematized entities in news headlines, which help create a conceptual salience that will contextualize the news in a desired frame. As can be seen from the analysis of the New York Times’thematizations. only entities that are in line with its ideological stance have been thematized.The research has evidenced that thematization is a process of selection. What has been selected as theme in a news headline is in fact a selection of an item in a sea of items to be reported. In the New York Times’Vietnam reporting, the thematized entities are only a fraction of the complex reality of the war in Vietnam. Many people, institution, and events that are incompatible with its ideological stance are shoved away from the reader’s views. Thus, the New York Times’thematizations present only reduced and simplified "realities" of the Vietnam War. In this sense, the discursive reconstruction is an ideological simplification of the complex reality.The research on thematisation in news headlines also carries pedagogical implications. With the aid of the procedures to do analysis of the thematizations in news headlines set up in this study, news readers will cultivate their critical awareness of manipulation of the thematized entities in news headlines, the unmarked theme in particular. |
PDF Full Text Request