Stylistic Analysis of Headlines in USA Today--From the Perspective of the linguistic features---开题报告

With the coming of information era, people would like to read news to learn what is happening around the world every day. News is becoming an integral part of people`s society. But people are always moving fast today, and often do not have much time to read all the content of news. And the news headline could help people quickly and accurately to find the interested information and save their time. 

Definition and function of News Headline

The structure of English news often contains headline, lead and body. The headline is the text at the top of the news, indicating the nature of the news, and summarizing the most, valuable content of news. with a purpose to quickly and briefly draw attention to the news. According to Schneider (2000:48), “a typical headline describes the essence of a complicated news story in a few words, it informs quickly and accurately and arouses the reader`s curiosity.” A good news headline speaks out event. Therefore people claim that the headline is the “face” or “eye” of the news.

General review of the researches on News Headline

As the significance and unique of news headline, many researchers have done studies about news headlines. They also developed some different theories system of English news headlines. Some of the important and representative studies will be reviewed as below.

Some researches focus on the stylistic analysis. For example For example， Wang Keyu(2003) in his Reading technique for English Newspapers and Magazines explained the writing characteristics, styles of News and language features of news headlines． 

Some focus on rhetorical feature of news headlines. Such as, Li Ming (2009) examined and analyzed the news headlines of News Titles in Time based on the database for the period since 1997 to 2004 and indicated the news headlines` rhetorical feature and rule. And Qiu Ju (2015:3) researched the cognitive metaphor of English News Headlines by discussed and analyzing the characteristics of metaphors.

Some focus on the translation of news headline. For example, Li Hongxia (2005:41-46) discusses the common rhetorical feature of English news headlines and introduces how to translate these news headlines. 

    Some researches focus on the writing of news headlines, for example, James Glen Stovall (2006:95) summarized some principles of headline writing, and indicated logic is important—“headlines should not only be accurate, but also they should make sense.” 

Other special features, such as communication, cultural feature, foregrounding forms, also attract researchers to study, for example, Galina I. Shostak; David Gillespie (2014:76-279) examined British newspaper covered the period from 1990 to 2014. Through analyzing naming strategies, word choice and language devices, they showed that communicative tactics of headlines were informative and persuasive, and could capture readers` attention to trivial events. 

The researches on USA Today News Headline

The USA Today, launched on September 15, 1982, is one of the famous news companies in American. The website of USA Today had nearly 80 million unique visitors and 917 million page views in July 2015. 

The USA Today is so popular and important in American. To studies the USA today news headline also becoming one of researcher subjects. For example, Luo Chuan-wei, ZHANG Xin-yue (2013:138-139) examined the vocabulary in English news headlines based on the USA Today and China Daily website. They made a comparison of USA today and China Daily website headlines, and illustrated their lexical features: short, new, wonderful.

But this research will analyze the linguistic feature of USA Today news headline. Not only studying from the lexical features, but also from Grammatical and Rhetorical Features. And to conclude their characteristics to help readers to better understand the English news headlines and read required news. To do that, the researcher collects about 500 news headlines of USA Today covered from October, 2014 to September, 2015.

二、^范文提纲

Abstract

1 Introduction

The introduction of USA Today

1.2 The Objective of the Study

1.3 Methodology and Data Collection

2 Literature Review

2.1 Definition and function of News Headline

2.2 General review of the researches on News Headline 

2.3 The researches on USA Today News Headline

3. Lexical Features

3.1 Short words

3.2 Abbreviations

3.3 Acronyms

3.4 Journalistics Coinages

3.5 Loanwords

4. Grammatical Features 

4.1 Omission

4.2 Tense

4.3 Predicate

4.4 Punctuations

5. Rhetorical Features in the News Headline

5.1 Metaphor

5.2 Simile

5.3 Pun

5.4 Personification

5.5 Metonymy

5.6 Irony

5.7 Antithesis

5.8 Parody

5.9 Rhyme & alliteration 

6 Conclusions

Bibliography

三、参考文献

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