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Abstract: In today´s technology-driven society most news media are accessible to us in an online form. For this reason their objective shifted from as many people buying copies of a certain newspaper or tabloid to achieving as many “clicks” on their website as possible. An important factor contributing to a higher click rate are headlines. Their main aim is to attract a potential readers´ attention, spark their interest and thus increase the chances of them clicking on a certain headline. In order to achieve this, headline writers employ a number of rhetorical, linguistic and stylistic devices which serve as clickbait. The purpose of our thesis was to explore the differences in clickbait devices used in British and American online popular press. In the theoretical part, we focused on describing media language in general, division of press, popular press features, headline rhetoric and the clickbait phenomenon. In our empirical research we analysed 200 headlines collected from two British (The Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail) and two American tabloids (The Huffington Post and The New York Post) of the same rank. The results showed a high rate of similar strategies used in all four tabloids, as well as some distinctive characteristics typical of either one group or the other. Moreover, forward reference, a fairly recently defined device which is not included in any of the already established frameworks, was proved to be one of the leading devices used as clickbait.
Keywords: clickbait, clickability, popular press, headlines, tabloids
Published in DKUM: 08.01.2019; Views: 1476; Downloads: 187
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Abstract: Tabloids are a popular media and an important part of British culture and are divided in two categories Red and Black Top British Tabloids. Article writers try daily to get readers attention which they achieve also by creating neologisms. Neologisms are new words that enter a language and are in the case of British Tabloids understandable to readers since they are familiar with their context. Words are formed by different word formational processes where some take place more often than others. In order to understand the formation of words everything from its smallest elements morphemes to its context has to be understood. This research comprised three daily British Tabloids, two Red Top ones, The Sun and Daily Mirror and one Black Top British Tabloid, Daily Express. The presence of neologisms in article titles was the main interest. Neologisms were counted and analysed. Context, meaning, usefulness, morphemic structure and word-formational processes were analysed for all neologisms. The results have shown that neologisms are a regular part of British Tabloid language. They appear in different contexts but most often in the one that involves the most sensationalism, this is showbiz. Presence of neologisms is often emphasized by some tolls. New words are often formed of celebrity names and nicknames. Red Top British Tabloids use neologisms more often than The Black Top British Tabloids that tend to be more serious and less sensational. Nearly all neologisms found were nonce words, meaning that they were created for the single purpose only. New phrases were often formed by putting a word in a new context and therefore creating a new meaning. In terms of Grice’s theory of conversational implicature we found out that titles often flout the maxims of quantity and manner for a title can only be understood after reading the whole article. In the process of word formation conversion, compounding, derivation, clipping and blending take place more often than root creation and reduplication.
Keywords: British Tabloids, neologisms, word formation, word formation processes, nonce word, Daily Express, Daily Mirror, The Sun.
Published in DKUM: 08.07.2013; Views: 2205; Downloads: 126
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