As any other styles, the newspapers style also is characterized by particular features. Therefore I.R. Galperin (1977:297) defines the English newspaper style as a system of integrated lexical, phraseological and grammatical means which is perceived by the community as a separate linguistic unity. It serves the purpose of informing and instructing the reader. The first characteristics of newspaper style is its specific structure which criticized by the linguists as «slipshod». Another feature is informative and evaluative functions.
O.Denisova and L.Pozniak (2014:119) mentioned that the newspaper style is abound in some highlights from emotive style. Besides linguistic devices, there are a lot of stylistic devices like imagery, metaphors and etc. Moreover, scientific characteristics revealed in newspaper style contain the structure of news representation logically, paragraphing and flow.
While writing, the authors use the specific linguistic means to create appealing, interesting and informative articles for the buyers as possible as they can. Despite its function to provide the information the newspaper can educate, enlighten or entertain the readers. It affects to their minds and persuades them to think by influencing their opinion on different spheres such as politics, culture, economics and etc.
Besides above mentioned features, there are some lexical, syntactical and grammatical traits of newspaper style. In the below lines, we will discuss some of them:
1. A wide range use of passive voice is the most frequent feature for English newspapers, chiefly in news reports. Passive voice is utilized equally with the active voice since it conveys the meaning more formally. Furthermore, articles are written more informative and logical way owing to the wide use of verbal-noun constructions and verbal constructions, namely infinitive, gerund, participle 1 and participle 2. (All the following examples were taken from the British newspaper the «Guardian» [http://www.theguardian.com]
…The declaration on the future trade deal will be a separate document to the main withdrawal treaty, and will not be legally binding, allowing the language to be vague if both sides of the negotiations decide to defer major decisions to avoid a public row.…
… A Die Welt article, published on Friday under the headline «The British do not expect much from Brexit», said of the new poll provided to the German newspaper that 46% of Britons today would vote for remaining in the EU as opposed to 41% against…. (The Guardian, 31th August,2018)
2. The sentences in newspaper style tend to be in more complex and compound forms than other written literary English.
…(1) Some voices, including key figures in the European commission, believe a vague and aspirational declaration, (2) which does not rule out the UK’s demands for the future, despite Brussels’ complete opposition to many of them, (3) would be the safest way to avoid a no-deal scenario….
… (1) Two major European newspapers, Le Monde and Die Welt, have been given a YouGov poll of 10,000 Britons by the campaign group, (2) which shows that (3) 72% of people are opposed to a Brexit in which (4) the details of the future deal are unclear when the (5) UK leaves… (The Guardian, 31th August,2018)
The aforementioned are the syntactical peculiarities of newspaper style. Galperin (1977:299) states the syntactical characteristics of brief news items to be very distinctive because of the limitation in space for authors. Besides, the writers intend to be brief due to the reason of communicative function since the reader allocates relatively little time to read the newspaper.
3. While writing articles, English journalists are very keen on using clichѐ to make the text more appealing. Clichѐs are the words or expressions such as needless to say, outside the box, don’t get me wrong, this is not your father’s (something), at first glance, turned a blind eye, time will tell if.., if history is any guide, inflection point, at the end of the day, in the digital age, not so fast andso on. These commonplace phrases reflect the traditional way of expression in the newspapers more than anything else.
(3) … Sweden, it seems, for all its historic two-bloc system and apparently cast-iron political stability, is no exception. «The bottom line is that Sweden is another European country… (The Guardian, 10th September, 2018)
Moreover, there are some of the newspaper clichés used largely and repeatedly in articles making new meaning in the language. They are the result of sensational events and the repeated reports about them. Finally, these kinds of words are highly possible to become a neologism in English language. For example, there is a term «Brexit» which is omnipresent in the current English articles. It is an abbreviation from the words «British exit», about the UK’s efforts to leave the Europian Union during the referendum in June 23, 2016. This event resulted in many other debates and occurrences. Consequently, there appeared many other new expressions in newspapers: hard Brexit, soft Brexit, Brexit referendum, pro-Brexit, anti-Brexit, Brexit bill, Brexit Minister, no-deal, blind Brexit, Brexit vote and etc.
… «The threat of a ‘blind Brexit’ or a disastrous ‘no deal Brexit’ is rising, and evidence is piling up that whether it’s a no deal, a Chequers deal or a blind Brexit it would be a disaster for our young people, for our vital public services and for our country… (The Guardian, 31th August,2018)
4. English newspapers are rich in phrasal verbs such as carry out, take over, hand in, burn out, knuckle down, take over, lay off and etc.
…, which does not rule out the UK’s demands for the future, despite Brussels’ complete opposition to many of them,… (The Guardian, 31th August,2018)
5. Abbreviations are very common in newspapers. Among them there are a lot of various types: the name of state and public bodies, political institutions, organizations and establishments, companies, various offices and etc.
… Bolton’s démarche fits a pattern of unilateralist actions that has seen the US withdraw from the UN’s human rights council, discard both the multilateral pact on Iran’s nuclear activities and the Paris climate accord, raise new trade and tariff barriers and threaten to pull out of Nato and the WTO… (The Guardian, 10 September, 2018)
Apart from abbreviations, the articles embrace shortenings, particularly tabloids (it’s, aren’t, haven’t, won’t, doesn’t). For example, words like teenagers or high-technology can appear in teens or high-tech forms. This deliberate utilization of shortenings although being less formal possess several functions. First off all, it avoids an ample amount of repetitions of the complete word forms and serve as a synonyms. Second, it conveys the meaning understandable, simple and intelligible for any kind of community of readers. The last but not least, shortenings turn the language of news texts modern, fresh and expressive.
7. Special political, economic and law words are far widely used so as to provide factual information (stability, business, manufacturing, security, race, presidential vote and etc);
…Britain’s trade deficit with the rest of the world narrowed to £3.4bn from £4.7bn in the previous three-month period. Exports and imports of goods between EU countries did however increase by more than with those elsewhere around the world in the past year to July…(The Guardian, 10 September 2018)
Non-term political vocabulary (officials, hostages, kidnappers, protest, breakdown, regime, local terror cells and etc);
…James Knightley, chief international economist at the City bank ING, said: «Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding the economy, the toxic political backdrop and Brexit uncertainty, Britain is supposedly booming based on July data.»… (The Guardian, 10 September 2018)
The semantic structure of these types of words include both terminological and non-terminological connotation. There is less striking disparity in terms and non-terms between their borderlines.
8. One of the prevailing types of words in the newspapers is neologisms. It is irrefutable that any innovations, creations or news appear in newspaper as well as new notions or meaning related to them. Particularly nowadays, words related to computers and technologies are the most prevailing ones. Cybersickness is one of them which portrays the illness caused by working with computer excessively. Another domain is finance from where many new words come to existence. For example, the word dot-com is germane to both finance and computers conveying the meaning of a person or company whose business is carried out using the Internet. Biology is also very active sphere in terms of innovations. Thus many words appear from biological science, etc. biologically engineered, genetically modified.