Emotion and opinion in online tabloids and broadsheets

Abstract

This paper is a corpus-based study focusing on implicit evaluation expressed in newspaper discourse, namely, the semantic mapping of emotion and opinion. The corpus, compiled of online “front page” newspaper articles from both selected tabloids (The Sun, The Express, The Mirror) and broadsheets (The Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent) was used to answer three research questions: 1) Is evaluation markedly expressed in newspaper discourse? 2) What linguistic means are typical for construing evaluation in newspaper discourse? 3) Is there a difference between the tabloids and the broadsheets regarding the way in which/how evaluation is conveyed/employed? To answer these questions, a pilot keyword study on only six articles was carried out (one article from each of the aforementioned newspapers). The findings confirmed the importance of adjectives in expressing evaluation. Following this, a large study was conducted to detect local grammar adjectival lexicogrammatical patterns, introduced by Hunston (2000) and further amended by Bednarek (2007, 2009). These patterns, which are known for carrying the evaluative load, were analyzed in terms of frequency and function. It was observed that there is a difference in expressing evaluation between the tabloids and the broadsheets. However, more significant differences were found between the broadsheet newspapers themselves.