Abstract
News headlines are key elements in spreading news. They are unique texts written in a special language which enables readers understand the overall nature and importance of the topic. However, this special language causes difficulty for readers in understanding the headline. To illuminate this difficulty, it is argued that a pragmatic analysis from a speech act theory perspective is a plausible tool for a headline analysis. The main objective of the study is to pragmatically analyze the most frequently employed types of speech acts in the news headlines covering COVID-19 in Aljazeera English website. To this end, Bach and Harnish's (1979) Taxonomy of Speech Acts has been adopted to analyze the data. Thirty headlines have been collected from Aljazeera English news website. The findings have shown that constatives and directives occur more frequently than commissives. Other types, like acknowledgments, effectives and verdictives are not employed. The study has concluded that to pay a special emphasis on COVID-19 as an issue that preoccupied and endangered the world, headline writers of Aljazeera website uses specific speech acts, constatives and directives, more frequently than others. This makes it clear that using specific speech acts in writing headlines is an effective way for inspiring readers to easily understand the intended message.
Highlights
The first case of COVID-19 reported in Wuhan-China on December 19, 2019 will be remembered as a critical period in the World history
The main objective of the study is to pragmatically analyze the most frequently employed types of speech acts in the news headlines covering COVID-19 in Aljazeera English website
3.1 Data Analysis and Findings Discussion To achieve the objective of this study, which reads: pragmatically analyzing the most frequently employed types of speech acts in the news headlines covering COVID-19 in Aljazeera English website, the researchers have adopted Bach and Harnish's (1979) classification
Summary
The first case of COVID-19 reported in Wuhan-China on December 19, 2019 will be remembered as a critical period in the World history. Since that date the world has been facing many problems at social, health, economic, and political levels. These issues have received considerable attention from media, including media internet Websites, where Aljazeera English is no exception. Aljazeera has loaded all pandemic related news This means that all media resources are updating people about the pandemic. As the pandemic of COVID-19 spread, mass media has played a role in revealing the danger of the pandemic (Hammad and Hussein, 2021). As a form of media, news headlines are an effective way of attracting people's attention in order to take the danger of COVIC-19 seriously and to be more careful of their health
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