Referential Terms in English News Headlines in the U.S. and Korea

Abstract

Expressions referring to human entities mirror the interaction between linguistic choices and the consideration of audience in relevant linguistic/cultural communities. Traditionally, referential expressions have been explored with respect to the relationship between an expression and its referent(s) in pragmatics and the philosophy of language, or approached by means of their accessibility to the language users’ cognition. Noticing that little research attention has been focused on how referential terms in the same language are actually used in different linguistic/cultural communities, this paper aims to compare the expressions referring to human entities in English political news headlines published in the U.S. and Korea. For the analysis, 1,000 headlines from major online news sites are collected, the expressions referring to human entities are culled and classified, and the possible reasons for the differences are discussed. The results of the analysis reveal that even when the same language, English, is used, the expressions that refer to human entities in news headlines are constrained by the extra-linguistic factors of the relevant communities, such as the consideration of the audiences and the naming practices.