Journalese

Last updated

Journalese is the artificial or hyperbolic, and sometimes over-abbreviated, language regarded as characteristic of the news style used in popular media. Joe Grimm, formerly of the Detroit Free Press , likened journalese to a "stage voice": "We write journalese out of habit, sometimes from misguided training, and to sound urgent, authoritative and, well, journalistic. But it doesn't do any of that." [1]

Contents

Examples

As early as the 1880s, people criticized the stilted, cliched language used in journalism as journalese. [2] Journalists, who write many similar stories under time pressure, may fall back on cliched or familiar phrases. [3] Journalese often takes the form of specific turns of phrase, such as "hammered out agreement" or "called for tighter restrictions". Terms with legal meanings, such as "mayhem", may be overused to the point that they become meaningless. [4] Journalese can also take the form of specific word choice. This is most obvious with the use of rare or archaic words such as ink (as a verb), nab, slated, ailing, quizzed (in place of "asked" or "questioned"), funnyman, or synonyms of attack to mean criticise. In some cases, this is due to fossil words that are present in idiomatic journalese statements. Journalese can be a result of a desire to save on page space by using shorter words or phrases. [5]

Brevity is particularly important in headlines, [6] which have their own idiosyncratic style of writing called headlinese. Headlinese's focus on using the smallest possible words has influenced the vocabulary choice of news stories themselves. [7] Anthropomorphization is another form of journalese, such as with the use of the verb saw (past tense of see) in the phrase "The 1990s saw an increase in crime", which is used to avoid using the past tense of "increase", as in "Crime increased in the 1990s". Other forms include use of onomatopoeia, genitives of place names ("New York's Central Park" rather than "Central Park, in New York"), and gap filler articles like bus plunge stories.

Some people regard journalese with amusement, due to its frequent colourful use of language, [8] and some terms can make news reports easier to understand, such as replacing complex jargon with simple and concise phrases. [9] However, one critic[ who? ] says that "lazy writing goes with lazy thought", and it is often a mark of a weak story with poor evidence or an attempt to dress up something as more significant or interesting. Political correspondent Robert Hutton said, "Journalese is like a poker player's tell: it shows that the reporter knows the story is flimsy, and he or she is trying to make it appear more solid." [8] Other critics fault the use of the passive voice and similar constructions in journalese as a form of weasel wording where the writer chooses "to hide the culprit" of the action that the writer is describing. [10] Newspaper subeditors (copy editors) are often trained to remove journalese, and the New York Times has a customised grammar checker that flags egregious journalese examples. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

In linguistics, a copula /‘kɒpjələ/ is a word or phrase that links the subject of a sentence to a subject complement, such as the word is in the sentence "The sky is blue" or the phrase was not being in the sentence "It was not being cooperative." The word copula derives from the Latin noun for a "link" or "tie" that connects two different things.

Infinitive is a linguistics term for certain verb forms existing in many languages, most often used as non-finite verbs that do not show a tense. As with many linguistic concepts, there is not a single definition applicable to all languages. The name is derived from Late Latin [modus] infinitivus, a derivative of infinitus meaning "unlimited".

English grammar is the set of structural rules of the English language. This includes the structure of words, phrases, clauses, sentences, and whole texts.

News style, journalistic style, or news-writing style is the prose style used for news reporting in media, such as newspapers, radio and television.

In linguistics, the Indo-European ablaut is a system of apophony in the Proto-Indo-European language (PIE).

The headline is the text indicating the content or nature of the article below it, typically by providing a form of brief summary of its contents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Weasel word</span> Words or phrases using vague claims to appear meaningful

In rhetoric, a weasel word, or anonymous authority, is a word or phrase aimed at creating an impression that something specific and meaningful has been said, when in fact only a vague, ambiguous, or irrelevant claim has been communicated. The terms may be considered informal. Examples include the phrases "some people say", "it is thought", and "researchers believe". Using weasel words may allow one to later deny any specific meaning if the statement is challenged, because the statement was never specific in the first place. Weasel words can be a form of tergiversation and may be used in advertising, popular science, opinion pieces and political statements to mislead or disguise a biased view or unsubstantiated claim.

Runglish, Ruslish, Russlish, or Russian English, is a language born out of a mixture of the English and Russian languages. This is common among Russian speakers who speak English as a second language, and it is mainly spoken in post-Soviet States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Grammar checker</span> Computer program that verifies written text for grammatical correctness

A grammar checker, in computing terms, is a program, or part of a program, that attempts to verify written text for grammatical correctness. Grammar checkers are most often implemented as a feature of a larger program, such as a word processor, but are also available as a stand-alone application that can be activated from within programs that work with editable text.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Maasai language</span> Eastern Nilotic language

Maasai or Maa is an Eastern Nilotic language spoken in Southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania by the Maasai people, numbering about 1.5 million. It is closely related to the other Maa varieties: Samburu, the language of the Samburu people of central Kenya, Chamus, spoken south and southeast of Lake Baringo ; and Parakuyu of Tanzania. The Maasai, Samburu, il-Chamus and Parakuyu peoples are historically related and all refer to their language as ɔl Maa. Properly speaking, "Maa" refers to the language and the culture and "Maasai" refers to the people "who speak Maa".

In linguistics, agreement or concord occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Belizean Creole</span> English-based creole language

Belizean Creole is an English-based creole language spoken by the Belizean Creole people. It is closely related to Miskito Coastal Creole, San Andrés-Providencia Creole, and Vincentian Creole.

A snowclone is a clichéd phrase in which one or more words can be substituted to express a similar idea in a different context, often to humorous or sarcastic effect. For example, "the mother of all pizzas" is based on the phrase "the mother of all battles" that became famous after it was uttered by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. The term snowclone was coined in 2004, derived from journalistic clichés that referred to the number of Eskimo words for snow.

The grammar of Macedonian is, in many respects, similar to that of some other Balkan languages, especially Bulgarian. Macedonian exhibits a number of grammatical features that distinguish it from most other Slavic languages, such as the elimination of case declension, the development of a suffixed definite article, the lack of an infinitival verb, and the constructions with ima/nema formed with the auxiliary "to have", among others.

Lau, also known as Mala, is an Oceanic language spoken on northeast Malaita, in the Solomon Islands. In 1999, Lau had about 16,937 first-language speakers, with many second-language speakers through Malaitan communities in the Solomon Islands, especially in Honiara.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Inflection</span> Process of word formation

In linguistic morphology, inflection is a process of word formation in which a word is modified to express different grammatical categories such as tense, case, voice, aspect, person, number, gender, mood, animacy, and definiteness. The inflection of verbs is called conjugation, while the inflection of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, etc. can be called declension.

In linguistics, speech or indirect discourse is a grammatical mechanism for reporting the content of another utterance without directly quoting it. For example, the English sentence Jill said she was coming is indirect discourse while Jill said "I'm coming" would be direct discourse. In fiction, the "utterance" might amount to an unvoiced thought that passes through a stream of consciousness, as reported by an omniscient narrator.

A false, coined, fake, bogus or pseudo-title, also called a Time-style adjective and an anarthrous nominal premodifier, is a kind of preposed appositive phrase before a noun predominantly found in journalistic writing. It formally resembles a title, in that it does not start with an article, but is a common noun phrase, not a title. An example is the phrase convicted bomber in "convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh", rather than "the convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yolmo language</span> Sino-Tibetan language of Nepal

Yolmo (Hyolmo) or Helambu Sherpa, is a Tibeto-Burman language of the Hyolmo people of Nepal. Yolmo is spoken predominantly in the Helambu and Melamchi valleys in northern Nuwakot District and northwestern Sindhupalchowk District. Dialects are also spoken by smaller populations in Lamjung District and Ilam District and also in Ramecchap District. It is very similar to Kyirong Tibetan and less similar to Standard Tibetan and Sherpa. There are approximately 10,000 Yolmo speakers, although some dialects have larger populations than others.

Karipúna French Creole, also known as Amapá French Creole and Lanc-Patuá, is a French-based creole language spoken by the Karipúna community, which lives in the Uaçá Indian Reservation in the Brazilian state of Amapá, on the Curipi and Oyapock rivers. It is mostly French-lexified except for flora and fauna terms, with a complex mix of substratum languages—most notably the Arawakan Karipúna language.

References

  1. ↑ Grimm, Joe. "There is no ease in journalese". Archived from the original on February 21, 2009.
  2. ↑ Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid (2009). An Introduction to Late Modern English. Edinburgh University Press. p. 144. ISBN   978-0-7486-2598-7.
  3. ↑ Harrigan, Jane T.; Dunlap, Karen Brown (2004). The Editorial Eye. Bedford/St. Martin's. pp. 79–80. ISBN   0-312-15270-1.
  4. 1 2 Corbett, Philip B. "Fluent in Journalese". New York Times.
  5. ↑ Astle, David (December 29, 2014). "Wordplay: Columnist probes journalistic cliches". The Sydney Morning Herald . Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  6. ↑ Collins, Lauren (November 4, 2013). "Mother Tongue". The New Yorker.
  7. ↑ Bodle, Andy (December 4, 2014). "Sub ire as hacks slash word length: getting the skinny on thinnernyms". The Guardian . Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  8. 1 2 Hutton, Robert. "Journalese is like a poker player's tell: it shows when a story is flimsy". New Statesman. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
  9. ↑ Collins, Lauren (November 4, 2013). "Mother Tongue". The New Yorker.
  10. ↑ "The weasel voice in journalism, The Economist, May 26, 2018

Further reading

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.