| The news headline is the fundamental part of any piece of news. It informs readers of the main idea of the news so that they could determine whether to read on or not. The language of English news headline is very special and differs a lot from other styles of writing. Thus, to know the stylistic characteristics of it is of great significance to English newsreaders for it will help them to understand the news better and enjoy the beauty of language. It's also helpful to those English news contributors for it will help them to improve their writing ability of news headlines.Though many scholars have discussed the stylistic features and the skills of writing news headlines, no theories have been given to support their discussion. This dissertation is an attempt to analyze the stylistic features of English news headlines systematically and comprehensively on the basis of the theory of foregrounding.Foregrounding, which arouses spirited discussion among stylists nowadays, is accepted and summarized in this paper. The concept of foregrounding originally belongs to painting to mean those outstanding parts against background. In the 1930's, Prague School linguists applied it to linguistics to emphasize the importance of deviation which is so special that draws people's attention. Later, Leech and Short develop it to include both the deviant features as well as those which are not deviant, but nevertheless striking. Halliday, an authority on linguistics, develops the theory further now and regards it as "motivated prominence " from the angle of function. It implies that only when the deviant features as well as those which are not deviant, but nevertheless striking features, functioning in the context could they be taken as "foregrounding". That is to say, foregrounding is style.Fuctionlists believe that language function and its context determine the stylistic features. In any practical variety, only when language features are performing their various functions in the situational context, are they characterized,activated and foregrounded, and becoming the stylistic features of the article.As far as language function is concerned, the news headline is designed to fulfill many functions, among which attractive function is the most important one. The news headline is the beginning of the news, so it serves to attract readers' attention in a condensed or an artistic way. The theory of informativity is introduced in this paper. It indicates that the language of news headlines should be brief, readable, aesthetic, new, strange and special.Context could be classified into linguistic context and non-linguistic context. News headlines emerge from news, so news is the linguistic context of news headlines and deserves discussions. A news headline can be the theme of a piece of news. In the paper, the theory of themarization has been employed to analyze the relationship between news and the news headline.Non-linguistic context attributes to the collective work of field, mode and tenor. Concerning field, the news headline covers a wide range, for example, politics, economy, military, culture, technology, medicine etc. Any topics in any field could be reported. From the angle of tenor, the relationship in the news headline is between reporters and the public. Due to different purposes, some news headlines just summarize the news briefly and seriously, and some have an artistic flavor and act as lures to attract the public. As to mode, the news headline is carried by newspapers in written form.To achieve attractive function in such a context, news headline designers deviate language at graphological, lexical, syntactical and semantic levels, which develops from language form to language content, from the meaning of language on the surface to the meaning of it in a depth. Graphological deviation catches readers' eyes by visual means. With the help of various headline set-ups, punctuation and deliberately misspelling of some words, readers' interest is aroused. Lexicon in news headline is special in that some...
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