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Tropes in Newspaper Headlines
Ivan Ivas
Sažetak
The article considers the figurativeness of newspaper headlines in general
and especially tropes, aiming to reveal their possible roles and the responsibility
that goes with them. The headline is defined as a somewhat autonomous
text which belongs to the genre of so-called small texts with emphasized autoreferential
characteristics. Figures of speech in headlines act more with their
pragmatic than semantic function. But these two functions are hard to distinguish
in the main aim of the headline – to attract attention and organize the
understanding of the titled text. Tropes in newspaper headlines are usually not
new – they appear more often in the headlines of the so-called soft news and
do not appear at all in long headlines. The functions of tropes in headlines are
illustrated with examples of subspecies of tropes, which are defined as different
kinds of substitution of an ordinary expression by one less ordinary: substitutions
by likeness (metaphor, comparison, personification and antonymization), substitutions by time-space and cause-consequence relations (metonymy
and synecdoche), metaphorically metonymical substitutions (periphrasis and
the descriptions of movement), substitutions by opposition (irony), substitutions
by strength (hyperbola) as well as double-sense and allusions. Tropes are
often marked by stress signs or written in italic. The most common trope is
metaphor; asteism and litotes are rare, probably because of the preference of
the newspaper style (especially titling) for stressing and intensifying negativity.
Immanently figurative, due to its privileged position in the text and its exposure,
the headline with the trope is implicitly intensifying. That is why titling
requires responsibility, especially figurative titling. Tropes, like other
figures of speech, can be used to increase the informativeness of the headline
and to establish a preferential sphere for communication based on wittiness.
But it can also serve as a strong means of expression and attitude – a confirmation
as well as denial of somebody’s identity through ridicule.
Ključne riječi
tropes; newspaper headlines; figurativeness; figures of speech
Hrčak ID:
22999
URI
Datum izdavanja:
28.11.2004.
Posjeta: 5.672 *