Lexical Feature Variations between New York Times and Times Supplement News Headlines

Abstract

In 2004 The New York Times (NYT) launched a weekly Time Supplement (TS) with Taiwan’s United Daily News. This article is intended to explore lexical feature variations between TS headlines and NYT headlines as a discourse strategy, focusing on variations of lexical formality and accessibility. A textual survey and stylistic analysis were conducted on a corpus comprising (i) all the TS news articles published during the eight months ending on October 31, 2008, and (ii) all the corresponding NYT news articles. An attempt was made to establish and analyze the lexical features that characterize TS and NYT headlines. Colloquialisms, idioms, slang expressions, technical terms, and non-English words were found in far more NYT headlines than TS headlines. These lexical feature variations decrease the informality of TS headlines but increase their accessibility to general TS readers, making the writing and reading of TS headlines stylistically less informal or more neutral. Four patterns of dictional variations from NYT to TS headlines were detected: from more to less informal, from first-person to third-person viewpoint, from less to more accessible, and from persuasive to informative. These variation patterns reflect what the headline writers perceive to be the norms for the respective readerships.

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