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Title:
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A Cross-cultural Analysis of English Newspaper Editorials
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Author:
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Hasan Ansary
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Email:
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click here to access email
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Degree Awarded:
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Shiraz University
, Ph.D. in Applied Linguistics
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Degree Date:
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2004
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Linguistic Subfield(s):
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Text/Corpus Linguistics
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Subject Language(s):
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English
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Director(s):
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Lotfollah Yarmohammadi
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Abstract:
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The express purpose of this study was three-fold. First, an attempt was made to characterize the global and/or macro-rhetorical structure of English newspaper editorials and formulate what Halliday and Hasan (1989, p. 64) call the 'Generic Structure Potential' (GSP) of a genre in order to (dis)establish English newspaper editorials as a distinct genre. Secondly, this study explored the local and/or micro-linguistic texture of English newspaper editorials and cataloged what Halliday and Hasan (1989, p. 94) refer to as the 'Cohesive Harmony Index' (CHI) of texts. Finally, a qualitative and quantitative cross-comparison was made in order to examine whether there was statistically any significant micro-textual and macro-structural variation from one culture to another within the same genre.
To this end, a total of 90 editorials electronically culled from three English newspapers (30 editorials each) published in three different socio-cultural environments by native speakers of English (The Washington Times), and non-native speakers (The Iran News, and The Pakistan Today) were text-analyzed. Specifically, two types of analysis were performed. First, a qualitative GSP analysis of texts was carried out with reference to the rhetorical elements of texts. Secondly, a quantitative inquiry was made into the kind of Chain Interactions (CI) that existed in texts— CI Analysis of texts produces a CHI which is a formal (in contrast to functional) measure of cohesion as well as coherence of texts (cf. Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p. 91).
Results of the GSP analysis of texts indicated that, in terms of the rhetorical elements of structure, there is 'statistically' no significant difference (a = .05) between English newspaper editorials written by (non)native editorial writers, in whatever socio-cultural and socio-political context they are produced and disseminated. In other words, results revealed that an 'unmarked' English newspaper editorial, published either in Iran or Pakistan or the USA, typically consists of four obligatory structural elements (Headline, Addressing an Issue, Argumentation, and Articulating a Position) and two optional elements
(providing Background Information and Closing Remarks). In 82.2% of the cases studied, 'the obligatory elements' that, in fact, 'define the genre to which a text belongs' (Halliday & Hasan, 1989, p. 62) in this research appeared in this canonical order: H^AI^A^AP (the caret sign indicates sequence). However, in some variants of editorials certain processes appeared to recur and some elements seemed not to occur at all.
Besides, results of the CI analysis of texts demonstrated that, in terms of the cohesive harmony in texts, there is no significant difference (a = .05) between native and non-native editorial texts. In other words, results revealed that the CH indices of editorial texts- as a formal quantitative measure of cohesion as well as coherence of texts- turned out to be analogous across various texts suggesting that the editorial texts produced by non-native speakers of English enjoy almost the same degree of linguistic cohesiveness as native texts.
The results, likely to be of interest to those involved in education, applied linguistics, and the media, are discussed in relation to the validity of the GSP analysis in the context of Contrastive Rhetoric (CR) research, the significance of CI analysis to genre theory, and their implications for both genre pedagogy, in general, and the theory and practice of Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL), in particular. There is surely no implication here that the details of description provided above is beyond reproach.
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