DOES GENRE INFLUENCE THE CHOICE OF EVALUATIVE LEXICOGRAMMATICAL PATTERNS IN BRITISH ONLINE NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE?
DOES GENRE INFLUENCE THE CHOICE OF EVALUATIVE LEXICOGRAMMATICAL PATTERNS IN BRITISH ONLINE NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE?

Author(s): Petra Peldová
Subject(s): Politics, Language studies, Gender Studies, Media studies, Lexis, Criminology, ICT Information and Communications Technologies
Published by: Masarykova univerzita nakladatelství
Keywords: evaluative language; newspaper discourse; lexicogrammatical patterns; crime; politics;
Summary/Abstract: This paper aims to analyse the use of evaluative adjectival lexicogrammatical patterns in selected British online newspaper discourse in terms of genre specification. It focuses both on the normalised frequency of the patterns as well as on the evaluative semantic groups of the adjectives embedded in the patterns analysed. The genres chosen for the analysis are politics and crime. 282 articles from six national British online newspapers (the Sun, the Mirror, the Express, the Guardian, the Telegraph, and the Independent) were downloaded to create the corpus. These were then analysed via Sketch Engine for the evaluative adjectival patterns introduced by Bednarek (2009). The adjectives found in the patterns were further examined and manually divided into semantic groups introduced by Collins COBUILD. The data were then compared in an attempt to identify discourse patterns and contrasts, and valuable insights were gained into the lexicogrammatical features studied. The analysis indicated that evaluative adjectival patterns are indeed embedded in newspaper stories and both the tabloids and the broadsheets employ these patterns more or less equally for the same genres. Both types of newspaper mainly embed patterns ‘v-link ADJ’ and ‘v-link ADJ prep’ in both genres. However, when broadsheets report on politics, the use of the ‘it v-link ADJ finite/non-finite’ pattern, can be considered marked.

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