Accessibility Theory and Referring Expressions in Website Headlines.docx

accessibility theory and referring expressions in website headlinesabstract: this thesis describes the general characteristics of the preference of referring expressions in website headlines. couched within ariels accessibility theory and focused on the online news websites, this thesis makes the claim that the choice of different accessibility degrees of referring expression in headlines is a reflection of the editors assumption of the “assessed degree of accessibility of the mental entities corresponding to them” (ariel, 2001, p32). the thesis presents the results of an empirical study conducted of the headlines chosen from three different sections of y on one day. it shows a distinction among preferences of accessibility markers in the three sections, which can be naturally reduced to the notion of accessibility. the analysis explains how the conscious or subconscious choices are made on by editors based on their understanding of the audience, especially of the accessibility of certain background information in their brain. it also presents how to predict through the reference of headlines some characteristics of the audience group who are regularly interested in certain sections of the news websites.key words: headlines accessibility theory news websites cognitive linguistics 可及性理论与网络媒体标题的指示词研究摘要:本文描述了网络标题中指示词的选择与应用的一些特点。通过运用ariel创立的可及性理论, 重点对新闻网站进行了分析。本文认为，标题中可及性不同的指示词的选择，反映了网站编辑对读者“头脑中对应于现实物体的观念实体的可及程度”（ariel, 2001, p32）的猜测。 本文的研究对象均取自雅虎网站（y）上同一天的三个不同版块的新闻标题。结果显示，这三个版块的标题在可及性标志的选择上有明显差异。这一分析解释了网站编辑如何有意识或无意识的以他们对受众群的理解、尤其是对受众脑海中特定背景知识的可及性的理解来进行标题选择的。本文也解释了如何通过分析标题中的指示词，来对新闻网站中某一版块特定受众群的特点进行预测。关键词：标题 可及性理论 新闻网站 认知语言学1. introduction1.1 need for the studythe emergence of on-line news is the result of internet development. with an increasing number of people accessing to internet for various information, both traditional news agencies, and internet portal sites create their own online news websites, which are increasingly popular among “people who seek news online, particularly the young, a group that shows scant interest in traditional media” (an annual report on american journalism 2005, 2005, p. 27). therefore, online news are different from the traditional ones both in context structure and the reading method. because of the limitation of space, most news in front page of online newspapers merely include a headline and a lead. thus if the reader is interested in the piece of news, he must click the link in order to read the content. from this perspective, it is undoubted that headline is an essential element of online news, whose role is even more important than that of its counterpart in the traditional newspaper.1.2 the purpose of this thesisthis thesis is an attempt to study the headlines of online news from the perspective of cognitive linguistics and to seek the answer to the question that how proper referring expressions are chosen by editors for different types of online headlines to match their expectations of the target readers. through the analysis of an empirical study, it can be revealed that whether there are distinctive differences of the referential preference among different types of news. the result of this study also presents the general degree of referring expressions in various online headlines. in this study, ariels accessibility theory is applied to examine the accessibility markers in different sections of on-line news headings.1.3 an overview of this thesisthe literature review firstly covers conceptual definitions of some notions in this thesis. then it is a general introduction of ariels accessibility theory, which is the main theoretical framework adopted for my empirical study. in the following part, a wide range of theoretical and empirical studies on news headlines are reviewed, from both pragmatics and communication perspectives. surprisingly, however, the literature dealing directly with the cognitive function of on-line news headlines is rather sparse. in section three, i will briefly introduce the accessibility scale originally designed by ariel (1988, 2001), and then make some revisions to the scale to a more detailed extent. in section four, i will apply the revised accessibility scale to measure referring expressions of headlines selected from y, and present the results of the empirical study. i will show that the editors assumption of audience group is clearly revealed through their choice of various degrees of accessibility markers. different sections of online news are meant to attract special audience who hold certain mental entities, especially the background information of the news content. in section five, both the major findings and the implications will be presented. at the end of this thesis, limitations of this study and suggestions for further studies are offered. 212 literature review2.1 accessibility theory2.1.1 conceptual definitions of some notions in this thesis notions in accessibility theoryariel (2001) claims “speakers may wish to refer to given (i.e., familiar) pieces of information, regardless of their current degree of activation for the addressees” (p. 29). thus she (2001) introduces the concept of “accessibility”, which represents how easily pieces of information from memory can be retrieved. ariel (2001) believes that “each referring expression codes a specific (and different) degree of mental accessibility, and referring expressions are actually accessibility markers, i.e., expressions cueing the addressee on how to retrieve the appropriated mental representation in terms of degree of mental accessibility” (p. 30). the notion of on-line newsas emerged in the mid-90s, on-line news is yet a new member in the mass communication industry. though there is no existence of a standard definition for on-line news, some characteristics of it have been summarized by scholars. firstly, one-line news can be separated into two categories. yoo (2003) from michigan state university claims that the first category is that “the existing news media deliver their news through the internet” (p. 364); the second is that news originally made by “the news sites existing only in virtual space” (p. 364). meanwhile, compared with traditional newspaper, most news on internet are free (yoo, 2003, p. 367 368).2.1.2 general introduction of accessibility theoryaccessibility theory (ariel, 2001) describes the following:how human language, specifically, the referential system, is responsive to facts about human memory, where memory nodes are not equally activated at any given time. some are highly activated, others are only mildly activated, and in between, the range of activation is infinite in principle. (p. 29) this theory provides “a procedural analysis of referring expressions, as marking varying degrees of mental accessibility” (ariel, 2001, p. 29). according to zhou (2001), ariels research of anaphora is from the functional perspective, and her theory can be applied for the study of the structural function, pragmatics and cognitive function of anaphora in different languages, which is the most significant contribution of this theory.2.1.3 the accessibility scale and referring expressionariel (1998) suggests referring expressions mark degree of memory accessibility, “and the marking principle relating degree of accessibility with referring expression is that more accessible mental entities are retrieved by less informative, less rigid and more attenuated forms”, and less accessible mental entities are vice versa. therefore, she (1990) designed some accessibility marking scales accordingly, which rank markers from low accessibility to high accessibility as follows:full name+modifier full name long definite description short definite demonstrative+modifier distal demonstrative + np proximate demonstrative + np distal demonstrative (-np) proximate demonstrative (-np) stressed pronoun+gesture stressed pronoun unstressed pronoun cliticized pronoun verbal person inflections zero (p. 73)high long definite description first name zero(3 content words and up) full name last name personal agreement full name +modifier short definite description personal pronoun(up to 2 content words)lowlow accessibility markers intermediate accessibility markers high accessibility markerstable 2.1: accessibility scale this table is not the original form of the scale. kronord and engel (2000) describe ariels this scale in their paper and i demonstrate this table accordingly. these scales are used to test the mental accessibility assumed by the speaker for the addressee. in my empirical study, both scales are essential references.2.2 review of other relevant studies “traditionally, newspaper headlines have been functionally characterized as short, telegramlike summaries of their news items” (dor, 2003, p. 697), yet this definition cannot comprehensively explain the phenomenon that some headlines “which, rather than summarize the story, promote one of the details of the story”(nir, 1993, p. 25). lindermann (1990) discusses that the traditional definition of headlines does not embrace the function of newsheadings in the entertainment news or tabloids. because tabloid headlines are not informative in many cases, even less to be categorized as telegramlike. dor (2003) suggests an explanatory functional characterization of newspaper headlines with the adoption of sperber and wilsons (2003) relevance theory, and points out that “headlines are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers” (p. 695). by adopting accessibility theory (ariel 1990), kronord and engel (2000) examined various referring expressions in two types of israeli newspaper headlines, and suggest, “the accessibility scale is not influenced by genre differences in newspaper” (p. 102). all the above scholars examine headlines from different perspectives, some of which belong to communicative studies and others are the cognitive studies. their studies enable other researchers to view the function of headlines from various angles. comparatively speaking, however, most studies focus on paper news headlines only, and online news headlines have rarely been studied. with the emergence of electronic news, it is a question calling for study as to explain that whether the preference of referring expression is different in this new mediated communication.2.3 the significance of my studymy thesis is an attempt to examine the recently developed accessibility theory in a newly emerging realm: on-line news websites. according to an annual report on american journalism 2005 (2005), despite the online news webs are far from perfect, at the end of 2004 “between 42% and 59% of americans over 18-92 million to 128 million people had gone online for news at some point” (p. 11), and the “regular” according to the annul report, “regular” online news consumers are defined as those who go online for news three or more days a week. online news consumers have been increased from 23% in 2000 to 29% in 2004 as well. with internet and world wide web, people everywhere in the world can visit a same website. account for the diversity of audience accessing to news websites, it is a challenging for editors to choose proper referring expressions in headlines in order to increase the clicking times. furthermore, their choice is a reflection of their judgment of the accessibility of the audiences metal entities. through data collection and analysis, this thesis is hoped to observe the accessibility scale of referring expression and other factors, which affect the choice of journalists. in one respective, this paper contributes to the study of new meditated communication from the cognitive linguistics perspective. meanwhile, it verifies accessibility theory in a new field.3 methodology3.1 research questionsthis empirical study is aimed at references in headlines of on-line news, and tries to observe the preference of different degrees of accessibility markers. there are some questions to be answered through this study:1. what is the general tendency of referential form preference in different on-line news sections?2. is there any difference of editors choice for references among different sections?3. what factors may affect editors preference?4. how is editors assumption of certain characteristics of one audience group reflected through different degrees of accessibility markers?the answers to all questions above are embraced in the succeeding analysis of this thesis.3.2 operational definitions operational definition of referring expressionsin my study, referring expression is defined as an expression “cueing the addressee on how to retrieve the appropriated mental representation in terms of degree of mental accessibility” (ariel, 2001, p. 30). it should be noticed that the relation between referring expressions and their antecedents is co-reference instead of substitution. two following examples are used to distinguish the two relations:1. jenny didnt go back home last night. she went to visit her grandparents and stayed there. 2. i borrowed a book yesterday, and tom also borrowed one.in the first example, the possible understanding of “she” would be “jenny” in this context, thus the relation between “she” and “jenny” here is co-reference. meanwhile, in the second example, “one” means a book, but certainly not the same book “i” borrowed that day, therefore, their relation is substitution. only referring expressions that reflect co-reference relation are studied in this thesis. operational definition of accessibility markersthe two scales designed by ariel are the basis of my evaluation of the degree of accessibility markers. some significant characteristics of news headlines, however, account for a modification of the form of accessibility marker. zhang (2004) and li (2006) argue in their studies that omission is the most significant characteristic of english news headings. articles, auxiliary verbs, propositions and even some substantives would be omitted for the limitation of space. therefore, it is quite possible that in headlines, the form of some accessibility markers are not coherent to that required in the scales, but they are accessibility markers with the consideration of the context. thus, in my study, i will consider both the form in the accessibility scale and the context of the headline.3.3 selection of a proper news websitey is chosen as the target news website, and there are two reasons for this choice. firstly, news sites are separated into five categories in an annual report on american journalism 2005 (2005), in which y is one of the two internetonly sites. thus, compared with news sites associated with broadcast television networks or newspaper sites, y may better represent the current condition of on-line news sites. meanwhile, most news sites are in one of three categories in producing lead stories, which are:1. sites that were primarily staffwritten or performed their own verification and reporting.2. sites that customized wires and produced some original content.3. sites that relied almost entirely on wire stories without rewrite or much editing. such sites are really more portals than news organizations. (p. 2)y belongs to the third category and “the two aggregators, aol and y, made no attempt to produce their own work on their lead breaking stories.” (an annual report on american journalism 2005, p. 5) therefore, most news on y are gathered from various resources, from which the choice of editors in different news organizations is indicated. 3.4 framework of analysis: categorization of online news headlinesthree sections of news on y are chosen, which are world news section, entertainment news section, and opinions. world news and entertainment news belong to “quality news” and “tabloid” respectively. as discussed in the literature review part, the headlines of tabloid are usually less informative than those of quality news. meanwhile, informativity is one criterion that affects the degree of one accessibility marker (ariel, 2001).2 ariel (2001) argues that there are three overlapping criteria involved in the form-function correlations on the accessibility marking scale, which are informativity (the amount of lexical information); rigidity (the ability to pick a unique referent, based on the form); and attenuation (phonological size).2 opinions are indepth discussions or reports on certain topics. in my assumption, the audience who refer to this section should have obtained at least some background knowledge on the issues. the succeeding empirical studies tests whether the result is coherent to my assumption of categorization.3.5 design of an accessibility scalein my preliminary study, i found that the accessibility scale shown in table 2.1 was not detailed enough to embrace all the accessibility differences of markers, meanwhile, the other scale is too detailed for headline studies. therefore, on the basis of two accessibility scales designed by ariel (1988, 2001) and my preliminary study, i developed the following accessibility scale including twelve types of accessibility markers separated into three categories, which proceeds from low accessibility markers to high accessibility markers with an example in each column:accessibility degreesaccessibility markersexampleslow accessibility full name + modifiercolumbia writer garcia marquezstressed full name“death race”unstressed full namedrew barrymoreacr