Abstract
Opinion articles are part of a professional discourse genre that can be found in newspapers. These articles are separated from news pages and written for the public, so they contain a variety of cultural backgrounds. This study looked at 151 opinion articles published in The Jakarta Post of the March 2016 editions. Shi and Kubota’s (2007)four pattern of rhetorical organization was adapted as the theoretical framework for the present study. The results of this study showed that the overall rhetorical pattern of The Jakarta Post opinion articles is a three-part structure of introduction, body and conclusion paragraphs. In term of the placing of the thesis statement, 47% of non-native writers and 38% of native writers put the thesis statement in the introduction part with a single sentence paragraph or two short single-sentence paragraphs, and 38% of non-native writers and 40% of native writers wrote the introduction part with two or more multi-sentence paragraphs, and put the thesis statement at the end of them. Only 8% of non-native writers and 5% of native writers put the thesis statement in the body part, while 7% of non-native writers and 17% of native writers put the thesis statement in the conclusion. Generally, there was a slight difference between native and non-native writers in terms of the placement of thesis statement, where the non-native writers tended to use a single sentence paragraph as the thesis statement as well as to begin the essays, while native writers preferred to use two or more multi sentence paragraphs. This study proves that professional writings such as newspaper opinion articles follow the English rhetorical conventions; deductive, logical, and direct style as represented in the three-part structure.
Highlights
The opinion pages in a daily newspaper have articles and columns written by readers and others with various cultural backgrounds and points of view and may include an editorial; the latter has been described as “an article in a newspaper that gives the opinion of the editor or publisher on a topic or item of news” (Sinclair, 1995, as cited in Bonyadi, 2010). Masroor (2013, p. 35) said that an important movement in the newspaper industry has been the separation of the news pages from those expressing public opinions
The separation of text structure attempted to seek the occurrence of the thesis statement and opinion, and categorized it based on the pattern proposed by Shi and Kubota (2007)
The findings of this study have shown that the three-part structure, namely introduction, body and conclusion is used in the opinion articles studied
Summary
The opinion pages in a daily newspaper have articles and columns written by readers and others with various cultural backgrounds and points of view and may include an editorial; the latter has been described as “an article in a newspaper that gives the opinion of the editor or publisher on a topic or item of news” (Sinclair, 1995, as cited in Bonyadi, 2010). Masroor (2013, p. 35) said that an important movement in the newspaper industry has been the separation of the news pages from those expressing public opinions. The opinion pages in a daily newspaper have articles and columns written by readers and others with various cultural backgrounds and points of view and may include an editorial; the latter has been described as “an article in a newspaper that gives the opinion of the editor or publisher on a topic or item of news” (Sinclair, 1995, as cited in Bonyadi, 2010). Public opinion discourses are often published in newspapers since they are viewed as a medium to interpret the current reality of events from the point of view of readers and others and to deliver the opinions of readers, so that they reflect the cultural backgrounds of the writers While implicit opinion is implied in the writer’s point of view, as shown in the other example above: (the writer thinks that) “KPI needs to ensure decent and responsible TV programming and avoid acting impulsively, to the detriment of the values it is supposed to hold dear”
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