Linguistic Variations between English News Headlines in the U.S. and Those in Korea

Abstract

Lee, Hye-Kyung, 2012, linguistic Variations between English News Headlines in the U.S. and Those in Korea, Linguistic Research 29(2), 329-350, This paper aims to address the similarities and differences between headlines of English political news in America and those in Korea. Acknowledging the contribution of the previous research towards the understanding of news headlines, the current paper investigates how the composing of news headlines is influenced by and interrelated with extra-linguistic factors such as the consideration of the target audience`s knowledge states or interests. For this purpose, two sets of data are collected from major online news sites within both countries and the collected data are classified according to the working criteria, especially in terms of employed structural patterns. The results regarding the comparison of the two sets of headlines reveal that headlines in Korean data employ shorter sentential headlines and a smaller variety of tense/aspect of sentences compared to American English counterparts. It is also discovered that cultural factors such as naming conventions practiced in the linguistic/cultural communities are taken into account. These differences are attributed to the consideration of the target audience`s multi-faceted states such as knowledge states, beliefs, or interests. At the same time, the two sets of data show similarities in terms of the variety of structural patterns they deploy.