Newspaper headlines, relevance and emotive effects

Abstract

Readers' habit to glance over the news has spawned brief, creative and imaginative headlines. Of these, which element is capable of arresting eye movement on a newspaper (web)page, of sparking interest in the story? Lexical patterns, semantic content, pragmatic, or psychological effects elicited during interpretation? By raising this question, it may be possible to pull out the element which is an indispensable condition for captivating readers’ interest and ultimately, influencing public opinion. The variety of linguistic expression displayed in newspaper headlines (even when the same story is covered), vagueness, and creative style make convention and regularity less operative in an account of elements which influence the interpretation of headlines. It should then follow that an explanation of their distinctiveness and importance as autonomous, or accompanying, texts is to be sought elsewhere. Following up on Ifantidou (2009), I will grant that an adequate treatment of newspaper headlines presents a more pressing challenge: that of accounting for their non-propositional effects, i.e. emotions and experiential responses, which are capable of giving rise to inference and optimally relevant cognitive effects (as defined within relevance-theoretic pragmatics). In this way, the ultimate goal of engaging the reader in the story, by sharing the emotion of the story, is fulfilled.