خلاصة:
It holds true that a flourishing fieldof Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) research has begun to address theway various text types and/or genres may differ across culturesand languages (Corner, 1996). Very much in line withthis development, this study was an attempt to characterizethe linguistic structures of headlines in the sports section of 2 English newspapers: one non-Iranian (The Times) and one Iranian (Tehran Times). The content analysis was based on a 3-week corpus of the headlines. The variability of syntactic and lexical features of the sample headlines in both newspapers was analyzed contrastively. The results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses of syntactic and lexical features indicated that the sports headlines of both newspapers were similar in using type of verb (dynamic and stative), headline types (verbal and nominal), voice (passive and active), tense (simple past, present, progressive, and future), and functional types (statement, question, and command), but significantly different in their quantitative use of headline types by predications (simple, complex, and compound). Besides, quantitative differences were observed in the type of modifications (premodification/postmodification), type of nouns (proper, common, and acronym) and exclamation type of headlines. The pedagogical implications of the study have been offered.
ملخص الجهاز:
The results of the qualitative and quantitative analyses of syntactic and lexical features indicated that the sports headlines of both newspapers were similar in using type of verb (dynamic and stative), headline types (verbal and nominal), voice (passive and active), tense (simple past, present, progressive, and future), and functional types (statement, question, and command), but significantly different in their quantitative use of headline types by predications (simple, complex, and compound).
Mårdh (1980), in a study of linguistic features in the headlines of English newspapers, identified the following features as typical of headlines: the omission of articles; the omission of verbs and of auxiliaries; nominalizations; the frequent use of complex noun phrases in subject position; adverbial headlines, with the omission of both verb and subject; the use of short words; the widespread use of puns, word play, and alliteration; the importance of word order, with the most important items placed first; and independent "wh" constructions not linked to a main clause (e.
The conclusion was that the headlines of English and Persian languages were similar in using dynamic verbs, active voice, short words, declarative sentences, finite clauses, and simple sentences and different in the use of tense forms, headline types, modification, and omission of words.
Table 1 displays the frequency and percentage of the headline types in both newspapers by structure (verbal, nominal, and adverbial), function (statement, question, command, and exclamation), and the number of predications and the type of clauses (simple, complex, and compound).