Contrastive Textual Analysis of Selected Online Mainstream and Alternative Philippine Editorial Newspaper Headlines

Abstract

Newspaper editorials constitute a part of media discourse, which is an extremely important field of research in intercultural rhetoric analysis and EFL (English as a foreign language)/ESL (English as a second language) studies. Specifically, certain features of editorial headlines and also their important role in monitoring and directing readers’ attention have made the interface between the linguistic analysis of newspaper editorial headlines and teaching of EFL as a relevant issue in language teaching. Through conducting a contrastive textual analysis of selected headlines, culled from the electronic versions of editorials of mainstream newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI), and those of alternative online newspaper, Rappler, the present study aimed at exploring the kind of textual and rhetorical strategies the two newspapers used for propagating their preferred ideologies. The results of the study indicated certain qualitative and quantitative similarities and differences between the mainstream and non-mainstream editorial headlines. In terms of verbal/ nonverbal distinction, Rappler’s editorial writers preferred to write full sentences headlines, while those of PDI are inclined to write the headlines in punchy and short phrases. Moreover, the analysis revealed that the two papers to some extent were identical in using existential presupposition and lexical presupposition for persuasion purposes. Lastly, in terms of rhetorical devices employed, metonymy was found to be used in the two papers equally. However, in terms of other rhetorical devices, editorial writers in PDI use literary devices such as rhetorical questions and testimonials which made the headlines look persuasive. Meanwhile, writers in Rappler preferred another set of devices such as quoting out of context, parallelism, and neologism.