Syntactic tactics

 Apposition is a grammatical construction in which two elements,

normally nouns or noun phrases, are placed side by side and so one
element identifies the other in a different way.
 So both of them refer to the same person or the same thing
1. Apposition  Separated by commas
 The two elements are said to be in apposition, and one of the
elements is called the appositive
  Another form of opposition: titles
 Not separated by commas
Another form  Considered as essential part of the main noun phrase
of opposition  Professor Smith
 Bishop Andrew
 Governor Cure
  Bring about a semantic change on the noun phrase
 Adds extra information and titleness to the noun
 Adds uniqueness to the noun
 Creates the assumption that the referred person is well-known

Characteristics of
apposition:
 Or quasi titles to make the news characters seem well-known:
why used in news

 Because this method adds to the news value

  Use titles
How can the  Quasi-titles
news writer use  Titles or quasi-titles with one or two modifiers

appositions?  To add to the news value

  We can use adjectives and words that modify a noun in different ways:
 That man is generous
 A generous man.

 But the second one is more brief and is used just like a title for the noun
 When there are many modifiers modifying a noun, journalists use
preposition techniques:
 Using modifiers before a noun

 Why?
2. Modifier  To achieve the goal of brevity
preposing  To create a sense of titleness
  In English grammar, nominalization is a type of word formation in
which a verb or an adjective (or another part of speech) is used as
(or transformed into) a noun.
 It is also called nouning.
 This can be done by adding suffixes
 Destroy: destruction
3. nominalization  Attend: attendance
 Improve: improvement
 Save: saving
 Grow: growth
 ….

 So verbal actions in English can be expressed by nouns as well,

through nominalization (changing the verb to a noun)
  Advantages of using nominalization:
3.1. Nominalization helps the writer avoid mentioning the news actors’
individual identity
 When the writer does not know the identity of the news actors
 When the writer is not interested in the identity of the news actor or
does not want to reveal their identity

3.1.What is the 3.2. Nominalization takes an event out of time because in nominal
form the writer does not need to situate the event in time
advantage of  The event is taken out of the world of specific and concrete

using
nominalization?  to the world of general and abstract
3.3. Nominalization creates a feeling in the reader as if the reader
knows the deleted person or thing
3.4. Nominalization helps the news writers impose their own personal
attitude on the reader by attempting to structure their own
interpretations of the events through nominalization
  Look at the following examples:

3.1. Loss of
identity of the  Someone saves birds
news actors  Stabilization to someone stabilizes something
 Someone taxes someone’s excess wage
through
 Through nominalization the specific identity of the entities
nominalization involved in the action are lost.
3.2. The event is  A sentence must be situated in time
placed in the  But a nominalization needs not to be placed in time
world of general
and abstract
through
 In these examples we have matter-of-fact generalizations
nominalization
3.3.  In many cases it is hard for the reader to realize the news actors
 But nominalization creates a feeling as if the reader knows the
Nominalization news actor
creates a  And the writer deliberately deletes the news actor through
nominalization, because they assume that it is not hard for the
feeling as if the reader to recover the news actors:
reader knows
the news actor
  Here the writer seems to be reporting the public’s or the reader’s
viewpoint while s/he is not; they are imposing their own views:
3.4. To impose
their writer’s
attitude about
the news on
the reader
  Part of the news value:
 Setting of the event: the time and the place

 The information that contain a time element in news:

 The recency and frequency of a story
 Its synchronization and harmony with daily news cycle
 Unexpectedness
4. Adverbials  Continuity
 Predictability

 The information that refer to the place:

 Geographical proximity of the news story
 Consonance with stereotypes about a place and its people
  Gives the possibility of deleting the subject or the agent of a news
story
 Used to avoid any direct reference to people as actors causing the
actions for which they are responsible:

5. Passivization
  When the controversy is not strong, the writer adds
 modal auxiliaries (might, could, can, would, etc.)
 Adjectives expressing certainty or uncertainty (possible, likely,
certainly, etc.)
 Verbs which express mental process (seems that, feels that, etc.)

 What is the advantage?

 The writer presents the material in a way that is close to their and
the newspaper’s own ideology without declaring any distinct
6. Modality position about the matter.