Pragmatic Analysis Of English News Headlines: An Adaptation Approach

Nowadays, news is one of the most important mass media that convey a largeamount of information to people. As the eyes of news, a headline guides readers tograsp the main idea of the news; it provides linguistic channel for editors and readersto communicate with each other and is of great significance for pragmatic analysis.Jef Verschueren(2000) maintains that pragmatics is a perspective of language in hisAdaptation Theory, which offers a relatively comprehensive method for the pragmaticanalysis of news headlines.This study is a sample-based qualitative study. It aims to indicate whatlinguistic features English news headlines have, and tries to probe into howadaptability is realized in the process of news editing by the way of linguisticchoices-making and from what aspects news editors make adaptation to cater to thetastes of the readers.This thesis holds that English news headlines incisively present the process ofnews editors’ linguistic choices-making. During the process, editors make adaptationmainly from two aspects, namely, structural adaptation and contextual adaptation. Thestructural adaptation is manifested at the lexical adaptation, the grammaticaladaptation and the rhetorical adaptation. Lexically, the use of midget words,abbreviations and vogue words adapts to the brevity and the attractiveness of Englishnews headlines; grammatically, the employment of tense and voice, non-finite verbsand omissions adapts to the simplicity and formalness of English news headlines. Therhetorical adaptation is embodied in the editors’ wielding of the lexical stylisticdevices, the syntactical stylistic devices and the phonetical stylistic devices, which arebrought into full play to keep English news headlines more vigorous and interesting.The contextual adaptation falls into three parts, namely, linguistic channel adaptation,physical adaptation, social adaptation and mental adaptation. The adaptation tophysical world consists of the adaptation to time, the adaptation to space and theadaptation to material conditions. The adaptation to social world involves the adaptation to social politics, the adaptation to social economics and the adaptation tosocial culture. The mental adaptation finds its expression in the adaptation to theintentions of news editors and the adaptation to the expectations of the news readers.For editors, they intend to pursue their psychological needs for truth, attention,proximity and evocation in their inner minds. For readers, they expect to satisfy theirneeds for freshness, time-saving and interest. In summery, all these efforts that editorsexert to make adaptation in the process of their linguistic choices-making contributeto achieving their communicative purposes.The pragmatic analysis on English news headlines made in this thesis on thebasis of Adaptation Theory shows: first, the Adaptation Theory offers acomprehensive way to explain the interaction between the news editors and readers.Then, the study reveals the dynamics of adaptability during the process of newseditors’ linguistic choices-making, and this kind of dynamics is typically representedin the adaptation to dynamic contexts and to the selection of various linguisticstrategies. This study may be of great help for news readers to perceive thecommunicative purposes of the editors by appreciating the artistic language ofEnglish news headlines. The study provides a lot of enlightenment for both editorsand readers and English learners as well.