The document discusses the style, features, and linguistic tools of journalistic genre. It examines how journalistic style uses lexical choice, sentence construction, modality, and rhetorical tropes like metaphor, metonym, and puns to effectively communicate information and influence readers. Key aspects of style covered include word meanings, sentence transitivity representing actions, commentary and attitude, and figurative language that aims to strategically persuade audiences.

1. {
Journalistic Genre:
Style, Features and Linguistic Tools
A Paper in Stylistics
Course Instructor
Assist. Prof.
Dr. Muhammed A. Al-Mallah
Dec.2013

2. Journalistic Genre: Style, Features and Linguistic Tools
 Journalistic style holds a special place in the style literary genre; it seeks
to satisfy both intellectual and aesthetic needs. The importance of topics
covered by the media requires a thorough reflection and appropriate
means of logical exposition of thought. Expression of the author's
attitude to events is often impossible without the use of emotional
language. Journalistic style is characterized by the wide range of literary
vocabulary, scientific and technical terms of everyday words. Sometimes
the writer goes beyond the literary language, using his speech or slang.
 Generally speaking, one of the important functions of journalism (in
particular, its newspaper and magazine types) is its informative nature.
The desire to promptly report the recent news is reflected in the nature
of communication. As fiction, it has considerable power to influence,
using variety of trails, rhetorical figures, and multiple lexical and
grammatical means.
 Form and style matter in journalism. To a large extent, a newspaper’s
identity is determined by its appearance and its tone. Readers want to
feel comfortable with a paper’s design, its departmentalization and its
use of illustrations, color and headlines. The style of writing and the
form of stories should please them.

3.  Journalism is a performative discourse which aims to impose
and legitimize valid representations of the social world. The
process of gathering, selecting and presenting news is mostly
based on unnoticed and undisputed conventions and
professional routines. Firstly, these principles and practices
determine which parts of reality are represented in the media – in
other words, which facts fit the form. Secondly, the form chosen
determines how news is framed – the same facts can be used to
construct many diverse stories. Michael Schudson argues that the
power of journalism mainly lies in its ability to provide the forms
in which things are declared to be true. Conventions of form and
style determine, therefore, which stories are told and how they
are told. By doing so they determine how we experience the
world. Schudson speaks in this respect of the politics of narrative
form. Style in journalism can be defined as ‘the choice between
functionally equivalents of language’. As one journalist puts it: ‘a
“that way” which could have been chosen instead of a “this
way” … and these different ways of speaking can carry different
social meanings’.

4.  Style refers to practices and routines which underlie them. These
routines are the cultural values commonly shared by groups of
journalists. They determine what journalism is and what it
should be to a specific group – what news is and how a journalist
should act. What is included in or excluded from stories is to a
large extent determined by routines. They offer the ideological
framework which lies behind the process of gathering, selecting
and presenting news.
 Features of Journalistic style:
 Lexical choice of words and their meanings:
Words convey the imprint of society and of value judgments in
particular. They convey connoted as well as denoted meanings.
Take this text for example, published in the Guardian Weekly,
which examined words used by journalists during the 1991 gulf war
against Iraq:

5. Iraq
Has
Coalition forces
We have
A war machine army, navy and air forces
Censorship reporting restrictions
Propaganda press briefings
Destroy suppress
Kill eliminate
Kill neutralize
Iraq Launches
Sneak attacks
Without provocation
We Launch
First strikes
Pre-emptively
Their men are
troops
Our men are
boys

6.  Sentence construction : Syntax and transitivity
Transitivity describes the relationships between
participants and the roles they play in the processes described in
reporting. The study of transitivity is concerned with how actions
are represented; what kind of actions appear in a text, who does
them and to whom they are done. For instance, consider the
sentences published by two politically divergent publications
during the miners’ strikes in 1983 in the UK: the Daily Mail, a
conservative, and the Morning Star, a left- wing newspaper.
- 41 policemen had been treated in hospital the Daily Mail
- Police horses and their riders were stoned
In terms of transitivity, the police are represented here as the
objects of violent transitive action, while the miners appear to be the agents
of this violence.
- Police attacked isolated group of miners The Morning Star
- Several miners were hit by truncheons
Here, the miners become the object of a violent police transitive action.

7.  Modality forms the counter-part of transitivity, referring to
judgments, comment and attitude in the text and talk, and
specifically the degree to which the writer or speaker is
committed to the claim he or she is making. Consider this
sentence in the Daily Mail.
- Britain could suffer a Madrid –style terrorist attack in the run
up to the Royal Wedding and General Election, the country’s
most senior police officer warned yesterday (Feb. 2005)
The ambiguity of such modal claim is paradoxically
heightens the sense of dread and threat.

8.  C. Rhetorical Tropes:
 Journalism is best approached in an argumentative discourse
genre. A journalist’s style should aim to persuade the audience
that his interpretation of an event is rational and appropriate.
Such an aim is best achieved through the strategic use of
figurative language tools like (metaphor, metonym and
wordplay).
 A Metaphor, in its general sense, perceives one thing in terms
of another. Such utilization of this trope is common in
journalistic style economy (overheated economy, stagnant
economy, tiger economies; Production: peak, financial boom),
Sports (attack and defense, counter-attack, shoot at the goal).
If a team is under pressure for a long time, it is under siege.
Four basic figurative tropes prevailed before the invasion of
Iraq 2003: games of the Iraqi regime, patience of the white house,
making a case and selling the plan.

9.  Metonym is a form of substitution in which something that is
associated with X is substituted for X. A metonym is one word;
phrase or object is substituted for another from a semantically
related field. Metonymic replacements are of several kinds, to
name but few:
 Replacing an object for another: Rachel Corrie was killed by an
Israeli bulldozer.
 People replaced by a place: the White house declared.
 Puns are another form of achieving effectiveness and
persuasion. It works by substitution of one meaning, sound,
spelling and so on for another - they can be aural or visual and
are very common. Ambiguity is essential for a pun, but
locating the exact point at which a pun works is not always
clear, and many involve meaning, spelling and sound together.
There are several types of puns employed in journalistic style:

10.  Homonymic puns – based on the similarity of words identical
in sound and spelling but with two or more unrelated
meanings;
e.g. Panda can’t bear beastly behaviour
In this headline the word bear has two meanings (animal [n.] vs.
to have tolerance [v.]). Furthermore, the stylistic significance of
the headline is supported by alliteration: bear beastly behaviour.
The Stone age
In its primary meaning the Stone Age is a period in human
history. However, the article refers to the surname of an
American actress to indicate that she is ageing.

11.  Polysemic puns – based on the similarity of words
identical in sound and spelling but with two or more
related meanings; e.g.
 It’s business and it’s fishy.
In its primary meaning, fishy means resembling fish
in taste or odour, but in the contextual meaning fishy refers
to something dubious.

12.  Homophonic puns – based on the similarity of
words identical in pronunciation but different in
spelling and meaning; e.g.
Czech out the prices in Brno
This example uses the word Czech instead of the verb
check. The article is about the Czech city of Brno and
the surprisingly low prices there.
Finnish and be done with it
The pun is based on the homophones Finnish – finish.
The article makes reference to the Finnish language
and political correctness.

13. References
 Broersma, Marcel (2006) Form, Style and
Journalistic Strategies. A paper in Stylistics
 Richardson, John (2007) Analysing Newspapers: An
approach from Critical Discourse Analysis. Palgrave
Macmillan, Hampshire, UK.
 Štulajterová, Alena (2010) Wordplay in Media
Discourse. An unpublished paper in stylistics.