Concise, Compact and Active News Language

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

The kiss and tell principle

The essence of good journalism is expressed in the formula: Keep It Short and Simple and tell the story:● Simple and concise language

● Native English vocabulary

● Tendency to avoid complex sentences with subordinate clauses

For print papers, conciseness helps to reduce production costs

Online, concise news is more appealing

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Style of news

Conciseness is at the basis of a news style that:● packs as much information as possible into as short a text

as possible

● favours nominal structures over verbal structures

● prevents major distortions if text is cut from the bottom up

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

A highly lexical language

Lexical density: nominal groups prevail over verbs

Characterized by:

● Complex noun groups

● Nominalizations

Heavy cognitive load © M. Grazia Busà 2013

Nominalizations

Transform verbs (and adjectives) into nouns

Actions/events are described as entities (i.e., things or concepts) ● Actions/events become decontextualized and abstract

e.g., Italy is withdrawing The Italian withdrawal

Can occur in all sentence positions (i.e., verb, subject, a direct or indirect object, etc.) ● Information can be moved around in the sentence for

style, emphasis, etc.

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Examples

• We donated to charity. This made us happy

• The problem is complex and needs to be solved

• He writes wonderfully. I like it

• Our charity donation made us happy

• The complexity of the problem needs a solution

• I like his wonderful writing

fewer wordsfewer clauses

more abstractmore complex© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Complex noun groups

Strings of two, three, and sometimes more, words

Consist of a head noun, optionally preceded by a determiner, adverbs, adjectives and other nouns

May result from nominalizations

Typical of written English

Exploited particularly in portable electronic devices, such as smartphones and tablets

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

How do you work out their meaning?

The head is the very last word in the group

The meaning can be worked out by moving backwards from the head

Example:China coal mine blast death toll jumps to 87

(AP, November 23, 2009)

The toll of death in the blast at the coal mine (mine of coal) in China

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Other examples

Japanese catwalk model robot Flesh-and-blood fashion model A slightly manga-inspired human face Humanoid research leader Shuji Kajita Her sound recognition sensors

(www.telegraph.co.uk, March 16, 2009)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Plain language ...

Avoids words that carry little meaning

Favours synthetic over wordy expressions

Prefers familiar to less familiar words, such as:● Slang

● e.g., bad instead of ‘good’; awesome for ‘great’; dope for ‘drug’

● Jargon: the specialized language of a professional group, often meaningless to outsiders

● e.g., in basketball, pole for ‘bat’; hard cheese for ‘fastball’; cork for ‘hit’

● Words of French or Latin origin● e.g., accommodate for ‘put up’

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Avoiding words that carry little meaning

betterworse

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Using synthetic expressions

worse better

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Preferring native to Latinate words

worse better

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The passive voice

Form:• A does B B is done [by A]

(active) (passive)

The subject is the one who performs the action

The subject is the person or thing affected by the action

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

One of the attendees raised a question

A question was raised by one of the attendees

A suspected suicide bomber killed three men 

Three men were killed by a suspected suicide bomber

Examples

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Active vs passive voice

The active voiceReflects the way people think and process information

● More direct and easier to understand

The passive voiceTypical of written stylesSentences are more difficult to process logically than active sentences

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Uses of the passive voice

The performer of the action is:

Unknown or irrelevant:● A car was broken into last night on Laurel Road

● Office mail is now delivered

Purposely left out:● A mistake was made [instead of]

● The government made a mistake

Moved to sentence-initial position for emphasis or stylistic reasons:

● The student was arrested [instead of]

● FBI agents apprehended a 21-year-old art student© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Subject thematization

Involves focusing attention onto or away from:● the performer (agent) of the action ● the person/entity (affected) undergoing the action or

process expressed by the verb ● the participant who experiences an emotion or is the

carrier of a property (actor)

Formalized as the grammatical subject in a sentence

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Action verbs

Express actions are divided into:

● Transitive verbs: involve an Agent and an Affectede.g.: Robber kills NYC jewellery store worker

(www.msnbc.msn.com, January 27, 2010)

● Intransitive verbs: only one participant is directly involved in the process. No Affected is involved

e.g.: Al Ahly’s dream run continues at Club World Cup(http://edition.cnn.com, December 9, 2012)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

About transitive action verbs

Subject is linked directly and unambiguously to action● attribute direct responsibility for actions to subjects

May be used to imply blame: e.g. Police in California arrest man in friend’s gun death

(http://www.huffingtonpost.com, October 29, 2012)

Police in California arrest man in friend’s gun death (Daily Mail Online, August 14, 2012)

Using an inanimate subject depersonalizes the process and creates an indirect link between action and performer:

● Bomb rocks Damascus as peace envoy meets with Assad(www.latimes.com, October 21, 2012)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

About intransitive verbs

Represent events as if they had no external cause bringing them about

Can be used to avoid direct references to the agency of the action: e.g.:

● Terror leaders die as prison revolt is crushed by police(The Times, March 16, 2005)

● Man dies as violence breaks out at Greek anti-austerity demonstration (http://independent.co.uk, October 23, 2012)

● Arctic sea ice vanishes – and the oil rigs move in(http://science.time.com, September 11, 2012)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Relational verbs

Express states of ‘being’ or ‘having’

Set up relationships between one thing and another

Used to present qualities or attributes of people and objects● Verbs like be, show, represent, mean, reveal make

sentences difficult to contest:● Qatar ruler’s visit is major boost for Hamas

(http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk, October 23, 2012)

● China manufacturing shows signs of recovery (The West Australian, October 24, 2012)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

How can syntax be used to convey a different angle in news reporting?

Compare the following headlines + leads from two stories dated March 25, 2008

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

Two killed at pro Tibet rally in China

(the Guardian online, March 25, 2008)

Compare ...

Focus on the victims

PASSIVE VOICE

The author of the action is not mentioned (implication: not

known or not relevant)

Victims are unspecified

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Paramilitaries open fire on hundreds of monks and nuns at Tibet rally

The Times online, March 25, 2008

Compare …

Focus on the author of the action

ACTIVE VOICE Verb choice is

highly connotated

Victims are specified (as implicitly powerless)

© M. Grazia Busà 2013

A police officer and a Tibetan monk were killed in Sichuan province, southern China, it was reported today, after another Tibetan independence demonstration turned violent.

(the Guardian)

How is this reflected in the texts?

Victims are on both sides; demonstration is blamed for violence

Paramilitary police opened fire on hundreds of monks, nuns and Tibetans who tried to march on a local government office in western China yesterday to demand the return of the Dalai Lama.

(The Times online)

Victims on one side only; police are blamed for violence

© M. Grazia Busà 2013