Online English Newspaper Headlines as Media Linguistics Phenomenon (an Attempt of Linguistic Description)

Abstract

From the point of view of linguistics, mass media play an important role in studies of the language, since, on the one hand, they are a rich source of language material and data, and on the other hand, the language used by mass media does not comply with the current norms of the literary language. Studying and explaining various linguistic phenomena adds to development of efficient language teaching methods. All this determines the topicality of the research. The newspaper article headline is considered its most significant element, and thus, its wording is to be aimed at attracting the target readers attention, making them interested, and encouraging them to read the whole article. Therefore, the authors choose to focus this study on online newspaper headlines, their linguistic and structural features, particularly, phonetic alliteration, transformation of lexical units, elliptical structures, grammatical means and word order, as well as stylistic devices, which help to strengthen emotional impact on the reader. The outcome of the study shows that newspaper headlines feature more mobile and flexible language structures than the standard language, and do not comply with the linguistic norms and rules of word order.