The structure of newspaper editorials

The structure of newspaper editorials

Adriana Bolívar

Text

• Shaped in social interaction. • Needs to respond to communicative needs

that are born and maintained within groups and cultures.

• Evaluation has the fundamental role of contributing to shape text structure - and may serve as a potential indicator of genre.

Editorials

• Their agreed social aim is to evaluate current events, and so

• An opinion or recommendation for action is obligatory.

Evaluation

The type of information that concerns the expression of feelings and opinions.

• In the course of structuring a text, the writer makes evaluations which are expressed in sentences.

• From a grammatical point of view, in this structuring, the writer exchanges ideational, textual and interpersonal meanings with the reader (Halliday).

• The most important of these is the interpersonal because this is concerned with the lexico-grammar of mood and modality.

Change

• The most important notion for the study of evaluation in written text.

• Changes are taken as signals of interaction because they indicate the writer’s evaluations about the state of knowledge and the evaluations of the reader.

• Main clauses in sentences: where changes in mood take place.

In the analysis of written text

Text structure Prospective patterns.

Speech acts assumed to be performed by the writer.

Interaction between writer and reader.

Text organization

Retrospective patterns .

Patterns likely to be discovered by the reader .

Interaction between the reader and the text .

A text can be described on two planes

interactive• relates the text to the

participants (real or imagined).

• Bolívar uses the term posture to account for what the writer is ‘doing’.

autonomous• Each participant in a turn

has an opportunity to develop his personal messages out of what has gone before.

• Recall refers to what the writer is ‘saying ’, the semantic content.

The model of analysis

• The basic unit of interaction in written text.

• Consists of three elements of structure.

• Its function is to negotiate the transmission of information and evaluation in written text.

« a coherent segment of text with a topic and a function»

The triad

Its internal structure can be described in terms of three turns

Lead (L)

Follow (F) and

Valuate (V)

realized by sentences conceived as the product of ordinary language behaviour (Lyons 1977)

Content triad

• The lead introduces the «aboutness» of the triad and a posture or modality.

• The follow responds to this initiation, keeping the same topic and evaluating the preceeding piece of information.

• The valuate closes the unit with an evaluation of the preceeding two turns.

Boundary triads

• Used between movements when the writer refers to the text itself to guide the reader along the text.

• May indicate an act of identification (the event to be dealt with), analysis or explanation, conclusion, recommendation, or a reminder.

• Most consist of only one turn.

Not all content triads consist of three turns

• Triads can exhibit more than three turns provided the sequence L F is repeated and V is final.

• This happens when the writer delays the evaluation either to introduce more information or to make the reader wait for his opinion on a particualr point.

Triads can be classified according to position and function

Situation Triad (S): initial position. They refer to an event and evaluate it.

Development Triad (D): medial position. They develop the reference to and the evaluation of the event considered in the preceeding S triad(s).

Recommendation Triad (R): final position. They close the reference and the evaluation of the event introduced by the S triad that initiates the sequence.

Movement

• Triads may combine with other triads to make up a unit at a higher rank: a movement (Mv).

• Movement, then, is the second largest unit in the model.

• A movement may combine with other movements to make up the largest unit at the highest rank: the artefact.

• The size of a movement depends on the number of triads that relate the text to the world of events within the same modal perspective.

Movement types

• Type A: the actual world, a world that is or was.

• Type B: the world of possibilities, or the world that might be.

• Type C: the world that should be. Constitutes a major evaluation that refers back to movements A and B.

Turn-change and turn-maintenance in triads

• It is necessary to examine the forms used by the writer in the L turns: tense selection , modality selection, and lexical anticipation.

Informing triad: typically contains a L realized by a sentence in declarative syntax.

Eliciting triad: initiated by a L in interrogative form. Has the function of asking a question in order to obtain an answer.

(In editorials, rhetorical questions are used to give information in evaluative terms or simply to evaluate already given information).

Tense selection

• Tense selection in the lead indicates the time dimension.

• Tense changes can be classified by adverbials (last year, this year, etc.) or by discourse adjuncts which indicate agreement or disagreement (In fact, Indeed, But, However).

Modality selection

• The most common way of indicationg turn-change and turn-maintenance in an editorial.

• Through signals such as modal verbs, modal adjuncts, special nouns, adjectives, verbs and others, the writer indicates his attitude towards his own speech.

Lexical anticipation

• Can also serve as a signal for turn-change.• Expressed by means of a noun, an adjective or

a prepositional phrase.• Commits the writer to give new information in

another turn.• These signals are typically evaluative.• Must be distinguished from enumeration,

which is a category of prediction.

Triads consistently close with Valuates

Concluders: indicate that a conclusion has been reached, with reference to the present time

Prophecies: indicate the assessment of probabilities for future developments. They are typically realized by verbs that indicate futurity.

Directives: propose or suggest «desirable» courses of action.