Discourse Analysis of the Editorials of Local Newspapers in Bacolod City

Abstract

This study aimed to describe syntactically and semantically the editorials of local newspapers in Bacolod City. The corpora included nine editorials from the three local newspaper publications published from August to November 2016. The extracts of each editorial were analyzed using Swales’ (1990) CARS model to find out the organizational moves used. It was found that the most prevalent move was Move 2, which was optional since obligatory and optional moves are based on the cut-off frequency of 60 percent occurrence as a measure of move stability (Muangsamai, 2018). Moreover, the most prevalent among Flowerdew’s (2002) Signalling Nouns [Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) General Nouns] was change with six occurrences. Among Halliday and Hassan’s (1976) four Conjunctive Relations, the additive type prevailed with 138 occurrences; and, with 125. As for the Modal Verbs of Roberts and fellow authors (2010), can transpired the most with twenty-two counts. In terms of Flowerdew’s (1993) Concordances, people was the most prevalent, with eight concordances on the left, namely where, their, a, but if, and the, as well as six concordances on the right, look, care, cam, cooperate, Power, and – Negrenses. This study adopted the protocol by Pilar (2014), which states that the independent coders are at least a master’s in English or have researched Discourse Analysis and Contrastive Rhetoric to achieve a high-reliability level. The results were thoroughly analyzed, described, and discussed individually. Hence, it can be concluded that editorial writers in Bacolod City express their argument by stating the problems of the target issue since they focus on a better change for the citizens by proposing possible solutions. Therefore, students should be taught significant lexical items and the organization of arguments. The results of this study may serve as the basis for an intervention program that would develop the editorial writing skill of students.