7. The Newspaper Style. The style of journalistic articles.

Functional style = stereotypes of speech behavior, which are norms for wide classes of texts or utterances, which correspond to socially significant spheres of communication. The borderline btw functional styles aren’t clearly marked. There’re types of discourse, whose position in CLSFs is uncertain. Kuznets’ CLSF: A. Literary, or Bookish Style. 1) Publicistic; 2) Scientific (Technological); 3) Official Documents. B. Free (Colloquial) Style. 1) Literary colloquial; 2) Familiar colloquial. Arnold’s CLSF: 1) poetic; 2) scientific; 3) newspaper; 4) colloquial. Galperin’s CLSF: I Belles Lettres: 1) poetry; 2) emotive prose (худ. лит-ра); 3) the drama. II Publicistic style: 1) oratory & speeches; 2) the essay; 3) articles (journalistic). III Newspapers: 1) brief news items; 2) headlines; advertisements & announcements; 4) the editorial. IV Scientific prose. V Official documents. Functions of the newspaper style: informative, emotive, to a certain extent urging. News items are extremely compressed. Unlike journalistic artlicles their chief function is not to convince or persuade, but the informative function. And yet the very selection of news items can have a “brain washing” effect. The info in a news item is objective, no evaluative words. Advertisements = even more compressed, many abridged words. News items, on one hand, have to give complete info, but on the other hand, if the readers are quite in the know, u may use a great deal of compression.The newspaper style has its specific vocabulary, characterized by an extensive use of: 1) Special political & economical terms: constitution, president, General Assembly, gross output, per capita production, by-election. 2) Non-term political vocabulary: public, nation-wide, progressive, unity, peace, representative. 3) Clishes: vital issue, pressing problem, informed sources, danger of war, war hysteria, to escalate a war, overwhelming majority. 4) Abbreviations: UNO, EEC (European Economic Community), NATO, TUC (Trades Union Congress), FO (Foreign Office). 5) Neologisms: McDonaldization, Coca-Colanization. Grammatical peculiarities: 1) complex se-ces with a developed system of clauses; 2) specific word-order (the “5-w-and-h-pattern rule”: who-what-why-how-where-when): Mystery last night surrounded the whereabouts of a girl who may never know how rich she could be. Headlines:

short & catching => 1) full declarative sen-ces; 2) interrogative sen-ces; 3) nominative sen-ces; 4) elliptical (“Will Win”); 5) with articles omitted; 6) phrases with verbals (“Keeping Prices Down”); 7) questions in the form of statements (“The worse the better?”); 8) direct speech.

Заголовки «Русского Newsweek» пестрят трансформированными фразеологизмами, пословицами, поговорками, крылатыми выражениями, названиями фильмов, которые переосмысливаются в нужном для журналиста ключе: «ШИК, БОКС, КРАСОТА» (от «шик, блеск, красота»), «ПРИЗВАТЬ НЕЛЬЗЯ ПОМИЛОВАТЬ» (от известной фразы «Казнить нельзя помиловать» из мультфильма), «Хотели как лучше, а получилось по-советски» (производное от фразы, которую произнёс Виктор Черномырдин на пресс-конференции, рассказывая, как готовилась денежная реформа 1993 года), «КНИГИ СКАЗОК И ПРЕДЛОЖЕНИЙ» (от «книга жалоб и предложений»), «СЕКРЕТНЫЕ МАТЕРИАЛИСТЫ» (от названия известного американского сериала «Секретные материалы»), «У СТРАХА НОСЫ ВЕЛИКИ» (от поговорки «у страха глаза велики»), «МОЙ ДОМ – МОЯ СЛАДОСТЬ» (от поговорки «мой дом – моя крепость»). Наряду с вышеперечисленными приемами авторы статей применяют в заголовках такие эффективные стилистические средства как каламбур («НЕ ЗА БУДДУ НЕ ПРОЩУ» - статья о беспорядках в Тибете), олицетворение («БРИТВА БРЕДИТ ГОРЛОМ»), оксюморон («БЫСТРЫЙ ТИХОХОД»), метонимии («ЖИДКИЕ ГАРАНТИИ» - статья о французском ломбарде который начал выдавать ссуды под залог вина и шампанского) и т.д.

Журналисты американского «Newsweek» применяют несколько иную стратегию для привлечения внимания читателей. В заголовках очень активно используются вопросительные предложения и вопросительные местоимения. Авторы статей «закидывают удочку» и приглашают читателей найти в публикациях ответ на поставленные вопросы: «What If?», «Who Dropped The Ball?», «Counting the Minutes …Or the Months?», «Sick Man, Sick State?», «The Answer? A Domestic CIA», «After Fidel, What Next?», «What Went Wrong», «Will the Blogs Kill Old Media?», «What Goes Around...». Эмоционально окрашенная лексика тоже помогает расставить нужные акценты и вызвать интерес читателя: «The Bush and Putin Encore». Американские журналисты также прибегают к таким стилистическим приемам, как оксюморон («ASPIRIN: THE OLDEST NEW»), гиперболы («THE SKY’S THE LIMIT»), метафоры («Dispatches From Hell» - о войне в Чечне) и т.п. Заголовок «Economics of Acrobatics» запоминается благодаря рифмовке и четкому ритму.

Journalistic articles

Irrespective of the character of the magazine and the divergence of subject matter—whether it is political, literary, popular-scientific or satirical, all the already mentioned features of publicistic style are to be found in any article. The character of the magazine as well as the subject chosen affects the choice and use of stylistic devices. Words of emotive meaning, for example, are few, if any, in popular scientific articles. Their exposition is more consistent and the system of connectives more expanded than, say, in a satirical article.

The language of political magazine articles differs little from that of newspaper articles as described in the chapter on Newspaper Style (see below). But such elements of publicistic style as rare and bookish words, neologisms (which sometimes require explanation in the text), traditional word-combinations and parenthesis are more frequent here than in newspaper articles.

In an article dealing with what were forthcoming presidential elections in the USA, which it is impossible to quote here because of its length, we find such bookish and highflown words as ambivalent, exhilarated, appalled, etc. Its argumentation and emotional appeal is achieved by emphatic constructions of different kinds: 'how dim the outlook for victory was', 'Stevenson is anything but an irresponsible man', 'it could well have been, though' ..., 'he is at once exhilarated and appalled'. Humorous effect is produced by the use of words and phrases which normally are out of the range of this sort of article: melancholy, graciously, extending his best wishes, and by periphrases.

Literary reviews stand closer to essays both by their content and by their linguistic form. More abstract words of logical meaning are used in them, they often resort to emotional language and less frequently to traditional set expressions