Discourse genres in English newspapers of Singapore, South India and Sri Lanka.

Abstract

This study investigates two important types of writing found in English newspapers: lead stories and editorials. While there have been numerous studies on newspaper English seen as a functional variety or register, there have been fewer attempts to study similarities and differences between genres in this particular register. As the texts investigated are drawn from leading newspapers in South and Southeast Asia, another aim is to investigate the extent to which non-native/new Englishes have spread into the quality English press of this region. The lead story and editorial are first examined separately, and close analysis produces a distinctive discourse structure for each, consisting of a number of obligatory elements. In the case of the lead story these are: Headlines, Summary, Main Event, Related Events and Comments. In the case of editorials these are: Title, Preparatory Comment, Main Topic, Analysis and Directives. It is further found that the lead story and editorial can each be broken down into a small number of 'types'. The typology of lead stories for instance, comprises Attributed events, Possible events and Definite events. It is concluded that both types of text constitute distinctive genres in newspaper writing. They have different communicative purposes, rationales, structures and linguistic realizations. This genre-status is further borne out by the ethnographic findings which show that the journalistic discourse community views them as two different types with different functions. It turns out that language used in the texts investigated reveals only very minor traces of the new Englishes. While this finding is somewhat unexpected in terms of the observations of other scholars, it is not completely surprising if seen in the context of the 'st and ard bearer' role taken on by editors of the quality press, and in the prestige accorded the two genres. The interesting contrasts with other genres such as advertisements, obituaries and marriage proposals, which do use the new Englishes, suggest that there is a continuum of different Englishes amongst the different genres of newspaper discourse.