NEWSPAPER HEADLINES AND COLLOQUIAL ENGLISH: ANYTHING IN COMMON?

Markéta Malá

What is typical o f written language might be expected not to be typical of spoken language, and vice versa. However, as far as newspaper headlines and colloquial speech are concerned, there appears to be at least one feature which the two seem to have in common. Characterising “minor sentences”, i.e. sentences constructed in an irregular way, Crystal points out that “There are only a few minor sentence types, but instances o f each type are frequently used in everyday conversation and when conversations are represented in fiction. They are also common in certain types o f written language, such as notices, headlines, labels, advertisements, subheadings, and other settings where a message is presented as a ‘block’.” 1 Kotlandova goes even further when she describes contemporary newspaper headlines as “public colloquial style”.2 The present study sets out to compare irregular sentences in the two registers to find out whether minor sentences are indeed something they share or whether sentence irregularity as an important stylistic feature, though present to some extent in both, shows some specific differences distinguishing between the registers. Crystal and Davy (1992) stress the differences between the language of conversation and the language o f newspaper reporting which includes as a distinct subtype the language of headlines. The two registers differ in discourse dimensions o f medium (written vs. spoken, although unlike typical written texts, headlines are not written to be reread or read carefully) and participation (monologue vs. dialogue). However, the differences in the dimensions referring to more “relatively localised or temporary variations in language”3 are not that straightforward. There seem to be more common features than usually expected. Both informal conversation and headlines cover a broad range o f topics, although the former is, “situationally speaking, the most neutral kind o f English one can find”.4 As far as the participants’ status is concerned, there is “a tendency to bring the language o f newspaper headlines closer to the reader’s verbal expression”,5 a tendency towards “the introduction into this sphere o f constructions o f everyday speech”6. This aspect of 1 Crystal (1997: 216). 2 Kotlandova (1993: 130). 3 Crystal and Davy (1992: 71). 4 Crystal and Davy (1992: 95). 5 Kotlandova (1993: 130). 6 Kotlandova (1993: 130).

informality and closeness is connected with another feature the two registers share, viz. the high level o f context-dependence. Both tend to rely strongly on (or act as if there was) common knowledge shared by the writer / speaker and the addressee, i.e. not only the knowledge o f our world in general but also the participants’ being familiar with the persons referred to by their names only and the events discussed. In both registers, the participants rely extremely on linguistic context, which makes it possible to use various kinds o f abbreviated structures, ambiguous out o f the given context. The recoverability o f parts o f the text from context makes it possible for the writer / speaker to focus on the new, important or emotionally charged items o f information. Before we can proceed to the description of the diverse sentence structures encountered in the two registers, it should be explained what will be considered a sentence here, and what the criteria of sentence regularity are. In A Comprehensive Grammar o f the English Language (Quirk et al. 1985, henceforth CGEL), both the irregular sentences typical o f colloquial speech and those occurring in headlines are dealt with in two sections o f chapter 11, Irregular Sentences and Nonsentences. These sentences satisfy the CGEL criteria o f irregularity in that they are marked as subordinate (although used independently) or lack constituents that are normally obligatory. I f it is “less convincing” or impossible to postulate ellipsis in the case o f omitted constituents, the structures are described as nonsentences “since we cannot analyse them with confidence in terms o f clause elements” {CGEL, p. 838). Newspaper headlines are further characterised as containing block language, i.e. “most often nonsentences, consisting o f a noun or noun phrase or nominal clause in isolation” {CGEL, p. 845). However, Dušková shows that the difficulty to analyse the structure o f “nonsentences” can be resolved by “the conception o f the element(s) constituting such utterances as a nonverbal predicate (+ its com plem ents).... Moreover, the predicative conception is fully consistent with the information structure o f these sentences: they invariably represent the rhematic section, the theme being supplied by the situational and/or linguistic context.”7 The criterion o f identifiability o f the predicative function in the sentence can thus be used to differentiate it from lower units, “predication being the constituent feature o f the sentence as against denomination or naming, which merely provides a name for an object.”8 It was on the basis o f this criterion that the names o f regular columns and sections o f the newspapers were excluded from the description. The criterion o f complete intonation contour (reflected in punctuation in written texts) has been adopted for distinguishing the sentence with respect to higher units, which was important for the delimitation o f sentence boundaries especially in spoken English (on the basis o f this criterion, sentence fragments, aposiopeses, as well as parcels were not considered equivalent to sentences). 7 Dušková (1991: 78). 8 Dušková (1991: 78).

The syntactic structure of both headlines and informal conversation comprises two basic groups o f sentences: first, syntactically regular sentences and “regularly incomplete” sentences, i.e. elliptical structures derived from the regular sentences. The second group consists o f various types o f irregular sentences. The criteria o f sentence regularity vary, but the most generally accepted feature o f a regular sentence is the presence o f both a subject and a predicate in a complete sentence structure. Unlike elliptical sentences, nonelliptical irregular sentences, although superficially incomplete, are in fact complete in themselves in that they neither require, nor permit any unique extension. However, the boundary between ellipsis and nonelliptical irregular sentences is not always clear-cut. The transitional instances include e.g. predications implying the v6rb be or the sentences where the narrow semantic range o f the elided verb, though not the verb itself, is understood from the context. The irregularity o f nonelliptical sentences may consist in the absence o f an overt subject in the sentence. The subjectless sentences deviate from the central sentence types also in that their predicate is nominal, i.e. expressed by means other than the finite verb. Nominal realisation o f the predicate can also be the source o f irregularity in sentences containing both the subject and the predicate. If the predicate o f a subject-predicate sentence is expressed by the finite verb, the sentence shows a deviation from the regular pattern on a level higher than that o f the simple sentence itself. This is the case o f subordinate clauses operating as independent sentences. The irregular sentences constitute about 25 to 35% o f the informal dialogue.9 The percentage o f irregular sentences in newspaper headlines in our material was about 33%.10 In both registers the subjectless sentences outnumber the structures containing both the subject and the predicate. The percentual representation o f irregular sentence types in the sample analysed in the present study is given in Table 1. Table 1 Percentual representation of irregular simple sentence types: subjectless sentence subject-predicate sentence

specific sentence structure nominal predicate only nominal predicate finite-verb predicate

colloquial English 88.1% 51% 49% 74.8% 11.9% 25.2%

newspaper headlines 2.6% 62.3% 97.4% 79.7% 37.7% 20.3%

9 Bowman (1966) 10 Colloquial English will be represented here by the texts of contemporary British theatre and radio plays. The newspaper headlines were obtained from The Times, The Independent and The Guardian, published between June and September 2000.

In the following description o f the irregular sentences obtained from our material, we shall always focus first on colloquial English constructions falling into a sentence subtype and then comment on the structurally corresponding constructions typical of the language o f headlines. The subjectless sentences either display a specific sentence structure or consist of the nominal predicate only. The subjectless nominal predicate sentence patterns typical o f colloquial English are often characterised by a fixed opening, as exemplified by (1). (1) a. A: A nd you can come and live with us. B: What i f I d o n ’t want to? b. In the end, what I fe e l fo r Janusz is pity. A nd to think he brought it all on himself. c. The way that shit o f a driver took the corners, my bum skidding, my stomach churning, my head pounding. d. Why stop it i f you enjoy it? However, the fixed structure is not always unequivocally linked to a particular communicative function. The degree o f fixedness seems to form a gradient. At one end of the scale there are formulae and even whole formulaic conversations (2) used in stereotyped social situations. (2)

A: Goodbye. Good luck. B: Andyou.

The fixed question So what? (3) has changed its communicative function to an expression o f disagreement with the presupposed opinion o f the preceding speaker, and moved towards the formulaic end of the scale. (3) So she gives him a lift home, so what? The sentences with a fixed opening What or How about followed by a noun (pronoun) have two distinct communicative functions: that o f a real question, often introducing the topic o f the following conversation (4a.) and that o f an invitation or suggestion (4b.). The same construction with gerund instead of the noun is limited to the latter function only (4c.). (4) a. What about Michael? How was he? Was he all right? b. Well, m ightn’t it help i f you published something? What about a monograph? c. What about our publishing your fellowship dissertation? At the other end o f the scale there are adverbial directives (5) that have no fixed opening and often border on ellipsis. What makes it possible to describe the adverbial directives as fixed is the invariable connection o f this type of nonevaluative adverbial predicate sentence with directive communicative function.

(5)

Up mountain and glacier!

The infinitive clauses introduced by Oh expressing an exclamatory wish (6a.) illustrate a movement o f a structure away form the fixed pattern. They are usually used without the poetic or archaic fixed opening in informal speech (6b.) even though it makes their communicative function context-bound rather than sentence-structure-bound. (6) a. Oh to be free! b. A: Well, we used to lie in every weekend. B: Oh d o n ’t. A lie in. What I w ouldn’t give fo r a lie in, and to read the Sunday papers in bed. Infinitive clauses beginning with How (7) constitute the only fixed subjectless nominal sentence type occurring in our headline excerpts. Unlike the formally identical directive headings used in instructional writing, these sentences do not introduce instructions to the reader but rather the author’s or another person’s opinion on the way to reach the goal indicated by the clause. (7) a. How to save the West End b. How to be selected as a Tory MP However, there seems to operate a different pattern o f fixed structures among the subjectless nominal sentences in newspaper headlines. A large number o f these verbless sentences take the form o f 'noun + preposition + noun1(8). Some o f these constructions border on ellipsis, forming a subject and predicate sentence. The prepositions {at, in, on) denote spatial (or metaphorically spatial) relations, the verb be is implied: (8)

a. Earth in asteroid near-miss b. Chinese athletes in first Olympic drugs scandal c. Student on target d. Euro a t record low

Structurally similar subjectless clauses display a broader range of prepositions (of, by, for, in, on, to, with). Among these there is a subgroup of sentences comprising a deverbal noun, which makes it possible to interpret them as nominalizations o f sentences whose predicate is formed by the corresponding noun (9). (9) a. Confessions o f an artist’s model b. Record profits fo r Enterprise on back o f high oil prices The majority o f sentences o f 'noun + preposition + noun' structure, however, are more adequately described as a nominal head followed by a prepositional postmodification, the relation between the two nouns depending on the preposition.

A similar fixed nominal predicate sentence type formed by a noun + the preposition fo r + a noun occurs in colloquial English. However, it invariably has the force of a directive, the first noun denoting the desired object or state to which the noun or pronoun referring to the person involved in the implied action is connected by the preposition (10). (10) Psychiatrics fo r her. A second large group o f subjectless sentences in both registers comprises structures with nominal predicate only. There being no fixed structure, the communicative function of the individual sentences is totally dependent on the context. In colloquial English these sentences can perform more functions simultaneously within the given context. They serve as means o f textual cohesion and progression, and convey an appeal or evaluation at the same time. E.g. the sentence (11) can be used by the speaker to comment negatively and often ironically on the preceding context, usually summarising it. The speaker implies being familiar with the topic and having had negative experience with it. (11) A: Hagg was a brother to me. B: Ah, fraternal love! I have heard o f such things, [self-mocking] The interpretation o f these sentences used as headlines (12) is also totally context-bound. (12) a. Concorde clue b. Prodigy school A small subgroup o f these sentences (13) contains the possessive case o f a noun. (13) a. Speedway’s second coming b. Ono's fig h t c. Twins' check As the examples show, the head noun is often deverbal, which makes it possible to understand these structures again as nominalisations o f full regular sentences containing the corresponding verb (cf. subjective / objective genitive, CGEL, p. 321). In colloquial English, some o f the nominal predicate sentences allow for elliptical interpretation (14a.) but, as (14b.) shows, others are to be understood as nonelliptical, the absence o f the article as compared with a complete sentence suggesting the nonelliptical interpretation. There are no indicators o f nonelliptical interpretation in adjectival predicate sentences. On the contrary, the question tags appended to them (14d.) often support their treatment as ellipsis o f subject + be.

(14) a. A: A nd all this fo r little Debbie. A: A very lucky vouns ladv. b. S h e ’s not the least bit interested in politics. B: Lucky lady. c. A: I think h e ’s got a talent quite definitely. B: Marvellous. d. Neat, isn ‘t it? The presence versus the absence o f articles in newspaper headlines cannot be relied on as a criterion of elliptical interpretation as the articles themselves are often subject to ellipsis in all block language. However, the function of nominal headlines is usually to summarise the contents o f the article below (and attract the reader’s attention to it) rather than represent a part o f it that would be repeated in the text, which supports the nonelliptical interpretation: e.g. (15) is a headline of a text beginning with the following sentence: Appeal Court judges trying to determine whether Siamese twins should be separated are having sleepless nights over the dilemma. (15) Nightmare choice In both registers, the subjectless sentences can be subclassified on the basis of the word class representing the nominal predicate (a noun phrase, adjective, adverbial; infinitive in spoken English). The main difference in the use o f this type of sentences in the two registers does not consist in the form the sentences have but in the range o f functions they perform. As we have mentioned before, the principal irregularity o f the sentences with a subject and predicate structure may consist in that the predicate is expressed by other means than the finite verb. In colloquial English, the nominal realisation of the predicate is not the only irregularity encountered in these sentences. The most frequent type, exemplified here by (16), deviates also from the unmarked theme - rheme ordering: the rhematic nominal predicate is in initial position, followed by the thematic subject. The imperative type (17) can either follow the unmarked subject - predicate sequence (17a.) or have the reversed order (17b.). Here the irregularity consists not only in the subjective rheme - theme order in the latter type o f sentences and in the nonverbal predicate, but also in the presence o f subject in an imperative sentence. However, some o f these sentences can be interpreted as ellipsis o f a finite verb o f motion, the closeness to ellipsis depending on the uniqueness o f the verb implied. The following exclamatory or interrogative type (18) makes use o f repetition as a device o f conveying surprise or doubt. (16) Greedy creatures, gulls. (17) a. A ll passengers in the subway please. b. Pens down everybody. (18) A: They (= he + Dorcas) cycle everywhere, d idn’t you know? H e ’s the fittest man I ’ve ever met. B: Yes, but Dorcas cvcline. I d o n ’t believe it.

Subject - nominal predicate sentences that do not allow for elliptical interpretation are rare in headlines. Apart from the prepositional type mentioned above (8), a sequence o f two juxtaposed nouns occurs (19). The theme - rheme sequence is preserved and the verb be is implied, which makes even these sentences borderline cases o f ellipsis. (19) a. Malmaison a stage on MWB ’s journey o f transformation b. Parking threat to Toad’s Meadow Another type of subject - predicate nominal sentences takes the form o f two noun phrases linked by a colon, the first part being thematic, the second functioning as a rheme o f the construction (20a.). Examples (21a.) and (21b.), containing as their second parts an elliptical compound sentence and a complex sentence respectively, show that the status o f these sentences is sometimes indeterminate between a simple sentence and a compound sentence. (20) Women and the pill: the stormy love affair (21) a. PROMS: Showman at the helm o f Scotland’s finest; and youth triumphant in a marathon performance b. Edinburgh Comedy: Hettie Judah finds obsessions with aliens, nouns and statistics can be compulsively funny The only regular type is constituted by (active or passive) infinitival predicate sentences (22). This seems to be the only sentence type headlines regularly employ for the expression o f future. (22) a. Honda to double UK car output b. Titanic to be raised as a Las Vegas casino The irregular finite-verb predicate sentences comprise subordinate clauses used as independent sentences. The /^clauses (23) used to express an exclamatory wish and that-clauses with putative should (24) expressing disapproval or regret in colloquial English have both been thoroughly described in the literature." (23) Everything I do is a mistake. I f I could start again, but how fa r back. (24) That I should have hit Humpty. O f all people. In newspaper headlines, subordinate clauses beginning with How, Why or What are used independently either with an instruction-like function similar to the corresponding infinitival subjectless sentences (25a.) or as a minimal summary introducing the following article (25b.-d.). (25) a .H ow movie wannabes can take a short cut to reel-time stardom b. How Rembrandt's pupil fa iled the test 11 Cf. Duskova (1988,1991).

c. Why Rome w o n ’t forgive the sins o f Canterbury d. What the students say Certain types o f irregular sentences can become parts o f complex sentences. In colloquial English, the inclusion can be accompanied by a change in function o f the nominal sentence. Subjectless nominal clauses appear in a conditional relationship to the following regular clause, to which they are often connected by and (26a.). If the order o f the clauses is reversed (26b.), the irregular clause o f the subject-nominal predicate type functions as an adverbial referring to the circumstances o f what is expressed by the preceding clause, conveying the speaker’s disapproval. I f the same nominal clause is used independently (26c.), it has a rather different function, i.e. that o f conveying the speaker’s surprise. (26) a. A man th a t’s been in the sea a week has no eyes. You can tell how long h e ’s been there, threshed around, by his face. Ten days and i t ’s the lips and the nose. b. You ’re leaving this minute and you ’re taking that young man with you. Honestly, Helen. Turning up like this. What are my neighbours going to say, and vou a married woman. c. A: I married John yesterday. B: You a married woman. In the register o f headlines, complex as well as compound sentences, regular or irregular, are rare (about 2% in our material). Nominal clauses can be followed by a temporal dependent clause introduced by as, after or before (27a.-c.), or by a relative clause (27d.-e.). They can also be coordinated with a regular sentence (27f.). (27) a. Panic buying as blockade squeezes pumps dry b. Scooter alert after boy loses fingertip c. Tough talk before TV debates even start d. Fanatical campaigners who show no mercy e. Little Irish comedy that is wowing L A ‘s finest f. Tears at bedtime (and th a t’s ju s t the au pair) The comparison o f the individual types o f irregular sentences characteristic o f the registers o f English newspaper headlines and colloquial speech suggests that there exist quite a large number o f superficially similar structures, which makes it possible (contrary to Straumann’s claim that “block-language cannot in any case be comprehended by means o f the traditional categories of grammar”,12 based on the language o f headlines before 1935) to apply the same classification procedure for both the registers. As Kotlandova has shown, the headlines have changed since the publication Straumann’s monograph 12 Straumann (1935: 21).

(Straumann, 1935), displaying a shift towards structures identical with those typical o f everyday speech.13 However, as we have seen above, the shift has been only partial. While in colloquial English specific communicative needs lead to the use o f sentence types whose function is dependent on the context, linguistic or situational (e.g. 11, 14), or give rise to new sentence patterns (1, 4, 23, 24), manifesting thus a balance between the implicative tendency (towards the prevalence o f the significance o f function over that o f structure) and the explicative tendency (towards the emergence o f new fixed sentence types with a more or less clearly defined communicative function),14 the communicative requirements the headlines have to answer are by far more limited. As the central purpose o f a headline is “to attract the reader’s attention, and, basically, to sell the information”,15 colloquial English constructions can provide welcome means whereby to imply the relevant informal speech features, viz. personal contact, closeness based on shared knowledge, emotional colouring, taking a stand (cf. also the frequent use o f direct speech in headlines, often without indicating the speaker, e.g. “You torturer, I hope you get cancer", Top policeman “sexually abused his women sta ff”, or without quotation marks, e.g. L e t’s p u t the show on right here). The functional boundedness o f headlines may easily lead to structural limitedness which can be offset by the use o f everyday language. On the other hand, the functional limitations also lead to restrictions concerning the range o f colloquial English sentence types that can be used as headlines. As the colloquial patterns cannot preserve their communicative function when used as headlines, the overlaps between the two registers can be expected mostly in the cases where the connection between a syntactic structure and a communicative function is not unequivocal.

REFERENCES Bell, A. (1991), The Language o f News Media, Oxford: Blackwell. Bowman, E. (1966), The minor and fragm entary sentences o f a corpus o f spoken English, The Hague, M outon & Co. Crystal, D. and Davy, D. (1992), Investigating English Style, London, Longman. Crystal, D. (1997), The Cambridge Encyclopaedia o f the English Language, Cambridge University Press. Dušková, L. et al. (1988), Mluvnice současné angličtiny na pozadí češtiny (‘A Grammar of Contemporary English Against the Background o f Czech’), Academia, Prague.

13 Cf. also Bell (1991). 14 Cf. Skrebnev (1985). 15 Kotlandová (1993: 130).

Dušková, L. (1991), “An Attempt at a Classification o f Irregular Sentences and Nonsentences”, Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica 1, Prague Studies in English 19, pp. 71-81. Kotlandová, D. (1993), “The Language o f Newspaper Headlines before the War and at Present”, Acta Universitatis Carolinae, Philologica 1, Prague Studies in English 20, pp. 129-140. Quirk, R. and Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., Svartvik, J. (1985), A Comprehensive Grammar o f the English Language (CGEL), London, Longman. Skrebnev, Ju. M. (1985), Vvedenije v kollokvialistiku (‘Introduction to the Study o f Colloquial Language’), Izdatel’stvo Saratovskogo universiteta, Saratovsk, Straumann, H. (1935), Newspaper Headlines, London.