Abstract
This paper discusses one of the criteria of war news values in printed media. The current study concerns itself with only Topicality as the target of scrutiny. It explores this value through the application of a model of analysis based on a pragma-linguistic approach. The analysis is intended to achieve the following aims: first, bringing topicality as one criterion of news values to the attention of pragmatists; second, introducing an analytical framework which is hoped to be useful for pragmatists to analyze news values, and to be available in their hands for further development. This framework aims at explicitly revealing the linguistic as well as the pragmatic properties of the war news texts as far as topicality is concerned. In relation to the aims of the study and owing to the fact that people are eager to understand what is going on, it is hypothesized that topicality comes into viewable interaction between grammar and pragmatics. The findings of the data analysis indicate how topicality is transferred to the receiver of the message and how it shapes news reporting.
Highlights
People show a widespread desire to share and know about news from elsewhere, which they satisfy by traveling, talking to each other and sharing information
There are pragmatic levels and some grammatical structures of discourse which give a first impression of how topicality and its various structures may link up with some aspects of war news values
Languages lay out a wide range of strategies for the expression of information structure, with aspects from various areas of grammar, i.e. the principle of the existence of a close correlation between information structure and syntactic properties
Summary
People show a widespread desire to share and know about news from elsewhere, which they satisfy by traveling, talking to each other and sharing information. One of the basic questions news journalism students ask is “What is news?” Answering this question requires having sufficient knowledge in the field in addition to the ability to recognize the notion itself. News is a research topic just as relevance is in information science. Various definitions of the issue are suggested. Stephens (1997: 13) points out that a journalism history text defines news as “new information about a subject of some public interest that is shared with some portion of the public”. Farrell (2010: 2) states that the most quoted definition of news is commonly attributed to Charles A. Dana who ran the New York Sun from 18691897defines news as, “anything that interests a large part of the community and has never been brought to its attention before."
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
