Spanish language newspaper editorials from Mexico, Spain, and the U.S.

Abstract

The study examines discourse patterns among various Spanish-speaking regions within one single genre of newspaper editorials, as compared to English language editorials. It focuses on the varieties of Spanish used by Latino communities in the United States as represented by El Diario (New York) and La Opinión(Los Angeles) and compares the findings with previous studies on the genre from newspapers such as The New York Times, El País (Madrid), and El Universal(Mexico). Rhetorical and stylistic features such as sentence and paragraph length and complexity, editorial titles, placement of the main topic and the use of attribution to sources as a device of argumentation were analyzed. The results demonstrate regional differences among various Spanish-speaking countries, and between the two Spanish-speaking areas in the U.S.