Page 397 - Gabrijela Kišiček and Igor Ž. Žagar (eds.), What do we know about the world? Rhetorical and argumentative perspectives, Digital Library, Educational Research Institute, Ljubljana 2013
P. 397
the representation and reception of paraphrase
in newspaper headlines 397
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Representation of Paraphrase in Daily and Weekly Newspapers
In the overall corpus of nine thousand eight hundred sixty-six
headlines fifty-seven headlines with some periphrastic conversion were
found. In the headlines extracted from the corpus, journalists arranged
known lexical groups – phrases, movie titles, songs, books, lyrics, classi-
cal proverbs – into new combinations. They modified them to produce
an allusion, a game between the original and its transformations.
As it has been expected, the analysis of the representation of para-
phrases in daily and weekly papers revealed some differences. In the ra-
tio of paraphrased and non-paraphrased headlines the results are the fol-
lowing: in daily papers twenty paraphrases were extracted from the total
number of seven thousand ninety-five headlines, which makes up “only”
0.28 % of the corpus, while in weekly papers thirty-seven paraphrases
were extracted from the total number of two thousand seven hundred
seventy-one, which makes up 1.34 % of the corpus. This difference is also
confirmed with the measure of frequency defined in the absolute num-
ber of paraphrased headlines.
Figure 1: Percentage of paraphrases in daily and weekly newspapers
In daily papers twenty paraphrases were found, which amounts to
35 % of the total number of selected headlines, while thirty-seven para-
phrases were found in weekly papers, which amounts to 65 % of the to-
in newspaper headlines 397
4. Results and Discussion
4.1. Representation of Paraphrase in Daily and Weekly Newspapers
In the overall corpus of nine thousand eight hundred sixty-six
headlines fifty-seven headlines with some periphrastic conversion were
found. In the headlines extracted from the corpus, journalists arranged
known lexical groups – phrases, movie titles, songs, books, lyrics, classi-
cal proverbs – into new combinations. They modified them to produce
an allusion, a game between the original and its transformations.
As it has been expected, the analysis of the representation of para-
phrases in daily and weekly papers revealed some differences. In the ra-
tio of paraphrased and non-paraphrased headlines the results are the fol-
lowing: in daily papers twenty paraphrases were extracted from the total
number of seven thousand ninety-five headlines, which makes up “only”
0.28 % of the corpus, while in weekly papers thirty-seven paraphrases
were extracted from the total number of two thousand seven hundred
seventy-one, which makes up 1.34 % of the corpus. This difference is also
confirmed with the measure of frequency defined in the absolute num-
ber of paraphrased headlines.
Figure 1: Percentage of paraphrases in daily and weekly newspapers
In daily papers twenty paraphrases were found, which amounts to
35 % of the total number of selected headlines, while thirty-seven para-
phrases were found in weekly papers, which amounts to 65 % of the to-
