JOHN MORLEY
The Sting in the tail: Persuasion in
English editorial1 discourse
1. Editorial language: Persuasion
Editorials are the voice of the newspaper. They classically comment
on recent events which are narrated elsewhere in the newspaper’s
news stories. One of the prime functions of editorial comment is that
of persuading the newspaper’s readers of its point of view.2
The editorial tries to persuade first of all through its
authoritarian stance. The Times may no longer be known as the
Thunderer, but it remains the voice of a newspaper which influences
politicians and the professional classes; The Sun Says, with its more
demotic tones, is as authoritative as The Times, if only because of its
twelve million readers, and it expresses itself in no less an
authoritarian way, as we hope to demonstrate.
Fowler (1991: 209) puts this in more linguistic terms:
What is distinctive about newspaper editorials is […] that they employ textual
strategies which foreground the speech act of offering values and beliefs.
1
2
The statistics derive from the relevant modules of the Newspool corpus of
media reporting and commenting on political matters, co-financed by the
Italian Ministry for the University and the University of Siena. The relevant
These modules contain either 200,000 or 500,000 words of English editorials
or English hard news reports from both popular and quality daily newspapers.
It may be significant that in Britain editorials are known as leaders.
John Morley
234
1.1. Modes of persuasion
We note that editorials tend to state, often in an unvarnished form,
what the paper claims to be the case at the present time; they also
assert what should be the case, and they predict what will happen in
the future. As van Dijk (1991: 133) says:
Although […] there may not be a conventional schema for Press editorials,
statements of opinions in the editorials […] may be of three different kinds.
[T]hey may be inserted into, or subsumed under, three functional categories,
Definition, Explanation or Evaluation, and Moral
Definition and Explanation might be said to tell us what is the case
now, whereas Evaluation and Moral tell us what should be the case
and predict what will happen in the future.
The rhetorical cast of the editorial article is argumentative: the
editorial attempts to persuade through logical presentation or well
marshalled appeals to the emotions.
Lastly, the editorial attempts to create a consensus of opinion
with its readers. To an extent the consensus pre-exists in that readers
tend to buy the newspaper which they know will express opinions
which coincide with their own; but the editorial will constantly try to
reinforce this pre-existing consensus. This short paper will say little
about this aspect of editorials (but see Fowler 1991: 221)
This essay present some linguistic features which attempt to illustrate
these points.
2. Stating what is the case
Stating what is the case in linguistic terms is frequently a question of
using the verb BE in the present tense: X is Y.
Fowler (1991: 221) observes:
Generic statements […] are not affirmations of obligation or necessity, but
descriptive propositions which are supposedly true of any kind of instances of
the entities to which they refer […]. Generic sentences are inevitably
The Sting in the tail
235
authoritarian, claiming total and definitive knowledge of some topic […]. It is
significant that the generic sentence is the most common semantic and
syntactic form for proverbs […]
We note that our corpus gives us 232.0 instances of the verb BE per
hundred thousand words (phtw) for editorial texts as against 136.0
phtw for news reports. That is, the verb BE is used almost twice as
frequently in editorials as in news reports.
Obviously not all uses of the verb BE in editorials are telling us
what is the case but the difference between the frequency of BE in
editorials and news reports is so great as to allow us to feel certain of
its significance without examining all the instances.
Editorials
Reports
2320.0
1360.0
Table 1. Present tense BE (phtw)
3. Asserting what should be the case and predicting
what will be the case
The simplest way to quantify assertions and predictions is to count the
modal verbs and the phrasal modals used in an article.
To quote Fowler again (1991: 211), speaking of editorial language:
Modality has the insistence of a speaker who has assumed a position of
authority. The authority includes a claim to know what is inevitably going to
happen […]. The modal auxiliary ‘must’ is a crucial word in editorials,
claiming that the source has the right to specify obligations […] .
The modals in Table 2 below have been organized into functional
groups following Biber (1988). A more precise analysis would require
a contextualized examination of each modal. For instance, in But at
least we can be grateful that at last we have a Government that is
getting Britain moving (Mirror, 21 July 2000), the function of can is
John Morley
236
not entirely self-evident. Whatever the imprecision of this system, the
difference between the frequency of modals in editorials and news
reports is clearly significant.
Verb form
can
could
may
might
Probability
must
ought
should
Necessity
shall
will
would
Predictive
Total
Editorials
310
160
150
70
690
280
10
260
550
1
540
310
851
2091
Reports
140
130
60
30
360
50
2
110
162
1
460
390
851
1373
Table 2. Modals - Quality and Popular newspapers (phtw)
The frequencies of the so-called phrasal modals are worth quoting,
particularly as their use is increasing in many forms of discourse.3
The list of phrasal modals is based on that in Francis et al.
(1996: 574): be able to, had best, had better, be bound to, be going to,
have got to, have to, be liable to, be meant to, ought to, would rather,
would just as soon as, would sooner, be supposed to, be sure to, be
unable to, used to, would do well to.
Editorials
Reports
1230.0
1100.0
Table 3. Phrasal modals - Quality and Popular newspapers (phtw)
3
See the paper presented by Leech at the conference Modality in Contemporary
English, University of Verona in September 2001:The English Modal
Auxiliaries 1961-1991: Modality On The Move.
The Sting in the tail
237
These statistics exclude examples where the phrasal modal was
preceded by a normal modal, e.g. He will be able to […] or by another
phrasal modal, e.g. He is going to be able to […] Phrasal modals
frequently combine with modals or other phrasal modals: BE able to
occurs 108 times in the editorial module of our corpus, but only 38
times not in the company of modals or other phrasal modals.
The difference between the frequencies of the phrasal modals in
editorials and in reports is not as great as it is for the classical modal
verbs, but their importance will be seen later on (cf. Section 6.1).
Counting modals is not the only means of identifying the way
editorials state what should be done and predict the future; it is simply
the easiest way to do it using WordSmith software (Scott 1998) and a
corpus which is not tagged semantically. We must, however, be aware
of the existence of what we might call “crypto-modals”, which have
the same force as grammatical modals but which are difficult to
identify automatically. Consider, for instance, this sentence from the
Economist:
In part, the very public style of Ms Bonino’s work is determined by the
substance of it. It is much easier to wax populist about refugees or public health
than, say, about capital goods or public procurement. (Italics added).
We might argue that the expression to wax populist about refugees
could be rewritten as to argue that something should be done about
refugees; in other words the expression is a crypto-modal.4
3.1. Predictive Modals
As we see in Table 2, there is an equal number of predictive modals in
editorials and news stories. This is not entirely surprising, if we
remember that in van Dijk’s schema for news stories (1988: 55),
reproduced below, there is a branch of the tree labelled comments,
which has the sub-branches expectations and evaluations.
The schema demonstrates that even in hard news stories not all
the article is dedicated to the narrative element. It is quite normal for
journalists to make their own evaluations, report the comments of
4
See Morley (1999: 60-61)
John Morley
238
actors in the story, give background and indicate follow-up, which
might well become tomorrow’s news story.5
Figure 1. A part of van Dijk’s hypothetical structure for a news schema
It is important to compare the use of modals in editorials not only to
their use in news reports but also to their use in the language as a
whole. The British National Corpus - World, with its 98 million words
of written text and two million words of spoken text from very
different linguistic contexts, gives us a way of representing “the
language as a whole”. The comparative figures for modal verbs are
given in Table 4. We can see that there is a significantly greater use of
modal verbs in editorials than in either the written or the spoken part
of the BNC.
BNC Written
BNC Spoken
Reports
Editorials
1220.0
1420.0
1373.0
2091.0
Table 4. Modals - comparison (phtw)
5
See van Dijk (1988), Bell (1991; 1996; 1998), Morley (1998) and, from a
rather different but compatible point of view, White (1997).
The Sting in the tail
239
4. Argumentation
We have suggested that editorials try to persuade their readers of their
point of view by using argumentative rhetorical devices. The devices
analyzed here are:
(i)
(ii)
(iii)
the grammatical structure - it is EVALUATIVE
ADJECTIVE that/to
the grammatical structure - there can be no
stance adverbials.
4.1. it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that/to
This structure is an obvious candidate for analysis, as its evaluative
function is plain to see.6 It is also a structure which strikes readers of
editorials at a very conscious level as being typical of persuasive
argument.
The concordance lines, which are simply a random and
illustrative sample, should give a clearer impression of the structure
and its function.
1 At this critical moment, it is fitting that the future of American democracy lies
once again in the hands of judges.
2 It is right that women alleging rape should be granted anonymity - it is hard
enough to bring a rape charge
3 But when one ruler is constantly being turned out and another installed in his place,
it is inevitable that weapons will never remain for long in responsible hands.
4 We stick with antiquated theories of deterrence when it is plain that longer
sentences do not lead to fewer offences but create a criminal class …
5 as the House of Lords recognised yesterday, it is vital to weed out the worthless
cranks …
Figure 2. it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that/to
Table 5 shows that the structure is more than twice as common in
editorials than it is in news reports.
6
It is also analysed in Murphy's paper in this volume.
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240
Editorials
Reports
46.0
19.2
Table 5. it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that/to (phtw)
4.2. there can be no
The WordSmith Keywords Tool highlights this as one of the key
clusters in comparing editorials with news reports, see below (Section
5.2).
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Vaz has done anything wrong he must go. There can be no excuses.
… a deed for which many believe there can be no atonement.
Precedent has shown there can be no half measures.
But there can be no justification for the sickening terror campaign
There can be no doubt yesterday’s drastic £4.3 million loan …
but there can be no better purpose than to give pensioners …
Japan, the assumption is that there can be no room for error.
Tonight there can be no excuse for a repeat of such detachment.
But there can be no meaningful "containment"
Figure 3. there can be no
Figure 3 contains all nine instances of this structure found in our
editorial module of 200,000 words. There are only three instances of
this structure in 500,000 words of news reports: 4.5 per hundred
thousand words as against 0.6 per hundred thousand words.
4.3. Stance adverbials
Stance adverbials are a sub-class of disjuncts. In Quirk et al. (1985:
440) we find the following distinction between disjuncts and
conjuncts.
[…] disjuncts and conjuncts have a […] peripheral relation in the sentence.
Semantically disjuncts express an evaluation of what is being said either with
respect to the form of the communication or to its meaning. We identify
disjuncts with the speaker’s authority for, or comment on the accompanying
The Sting in the tail
241
clause […] Conjuncts express the speaker’s assessment of the relation
between two linguistic units […]
Notice that disjuncts are associated with “speaker’s authority”.
The list we used for our statistical analysis is based on that
found in Biber et al. (1999: 869-70) and in Conrad and Biber (2000:
64).
Biber et al. (1999: 853) say of stance adverbials:
Stance adverbials have the primary function of commenting on the content or
style of a clause or a particular part of a clause. … [W]ith stance adverbials,
the author/speaker’s attitude or comment is … overt.
According to Biber et al. (1999) there are three kinds of stance
adverbs: (1) epistemic, (2) attitudinal, (3) stylistic. We will be looking
solely at epistemic adverbs as they are the most relevant to our
analysis of persuasive mechanisms in editorials. These can be further
divided into adverbs of: (1) doubt and certainty, (2) actuality and
reality, (3) source of knowledge, (4) limitation, (5) viewpoint or
perspective.
The statistics given in Table 6 relate only to adverbials of doubt
and certainty and actuality, as once again we considered these the
semantic areas most relevant to our analysis of persuasion.
Category
Editorials
Reports
Doubt
certainly
definitely
maybe
of course
perhaps
probably
Total
33.0
1.5
7.0
7.5
28.0
19.0
115.0
13.4
2.0
4.0
11.6
12.0
0.6
56.6
Actuality
actually
really
in fact
Total
Totals
6.5
31.0
15.5
53.0
168.0
11.4
19.2
3.8
34.4
91.0
Table 6. Adverbs of epistemic stance (phtw)
John Morley
242
As is clear from Table 6, these kinds of adverbs are used almost twice
as frequently in editorials as in newspaper reports.
5. Keywords
5.1. Single words as Keywords
Using this facility, the two hundred word module of editorials was
compared with the five hundred word module of news reports. Both
sub-corpora contained articles from Quality and Popular newspapers.
Content words were removed or “zapped”, to use WordSmith
terminology. This ensured that words central to particular stories, like
Blair or government, were not taken into consideration.
The results are given in Table 7. Many of the elements in the
list belong to the categories which we have chosen to illustrate the
difference between editorials and news reports. Keyword number one,
is, indicates how things really are (cf. Section 2); numbers two and
five, must and should, are modals and indicate what should be the case
(cf. Section 3); numbers six, 11, 14 16, 18 and 20, so, too, if, yet, but,
why, are words which help to organise the argument (cf. Section 4).
Finally, number 19, our, as Fowler points out (1991: 212), is a word
used to create consensus with the reader (cf. Section 1).7
7
Fowler (1991: 214) claims that we is more used in Qualities and right wing
Populars, “as this form signifies, certainly in the ‘quality’ papers and the
tabloids of the Right, a directive force, an instruction as to what ‘we’, i.e.
‘you’ being addressed, should think or do. Instead of ‘we’, the Mirror relies
on the generic pronouns ‘anyone’ and ‘no one’ [and] in questions and
negations […] the absolute pronoun ‘everyone’.” In fact, the Sun, which at
the time Fowler was writing was very Thatcherite, uses anyone/everyone/no
one 124.23 phtw, against the Mirror’s 83.12 phtw. Such observations
underline the value of corpora for testing and re-evaluating researcher’s
intuitions. Having said that, this paper clearly owes a great deal to Fowler’s
insights.
The Sting in the tail
N°
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
243
word
is
must
this
it
should
so
has
can
not
be
too
even
now
if
such
yet
much
but
our
why
keyness
748.8
611.9
383.4
266.9
179.5
176.8
165.5
163.4
160.5
150.1
137.3
106.5
100.7
99.7
95.9
94.2
84.6
82.0
76.1
74.9
Table 7. Zapped keywords
5.2. Clusters as keywords
Clusters are defined by Scott (1998) as “words which are found
repeatedly in each others’ company”; effectively, they are a kind of
extended collocation. We can apply the Keyword facility to lists of
clusters as well as to lists of single words.
Table 8 shows an abbreviated list of the key clusters obtained
by using Keywords to compare four word cluster lists from 500,000
words of editorials and 500,000 words of news reporting. The list
contains those clusters that are found significantly more frequently in
editorials as compared to news reports.
The expressions the Church of England and the rule of law
indicate some on-going argument in the editorials about those
subjects. Other sequences illustrate some aspect of typical editorial
discourse: as we report today links the editorial to the paper’s news
reports on which it typically comments; it is hard to, for the sake of
John Morley
244
and in the case of structure the flow of the argument and there can be
no is a heavy modal typical of the authoritarian style of editorials.
N°
cluster
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
at a time when
it is hard to
for the sake of
there can be no
the Church of England
in the case of
the rule of law
as we report today
frequency
keyness
27
26
22
21
20
19
18
18
37.6
36.2
30.6
29.2
27.8
26.4
25.1
25.1
Table 8. Key clusters
6. The sting in the tail
A close reading of many editorials suggest that the elements we have
identified as helping the persuasive function of editorials tend to
concentrate towards the end of the articles, as van Dijk’s news schema
led us to expect (cf. Section 3.1). The concept of the peroration was
well known to classical rhetoric. The New Oxford English Dictionary
(1998) defines peroration as “the concluding part of a speech,
typically intended to inspire enthusiasm in the audience”. We might
substitute the words persuade the audience when speaking of
editorials.
The six linguistic features chosen to illustrate the persuasive
nature of editorial articles all increase in frequency in the last
paragraph.
The use of the present tense of BE shows the least marked
increase: from 2320 instances per hundred thousand words to 2590.
This may be because the peroration requires the use of more obvious
rhetorical features, such as modal verbs, stance adverbials and the
very heavy structures it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that and
there can be no.
The Sting in the tail
245
6.1. Modals and phrasal modals
Tables 9 and 10 clearly show the increase in the frequency of modal
verbs and phrasal modals in the last paragraphs of editorials.
Full text Editorials
Last Paragraph Editorials
203.0
290.0
Table 9 Modals - Last paragraph (phtw)
Full text - Editorials
Last Paragraph – Editorials
123.0
191.0
Table 10 Phrasal modals - Last paragraph (phtw)
The increase in the frequency of the phrasal modals in the last
paragraph of editorials is even greater than that of the classical
modals: 55.3% as against 42.9%.
6.2. Adverbs of epistemic stance
As Table 11 shows, there is a significant increase in the frequency
adverbials of both doubt and certainty in the last paragraphs of
editorials.
Category
Doubt
Actuality
Totals
Editorials full text
115.0
53.0
168.0
Editorials last paragraph
155.2
65.7
220.9
Table 11. Adverbs of epistemic stance - Last paragraph (phtw)
6.3. The grammatical structures
Tables 12 illustrates the increase in the frequency of the grammatical
structure it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that/to in the last
paragraphs of editorials. Of the nine instances of the structure there
can be no given in Figure 3 all but number nine are found in last
John Morley
246
paragraphs of editorials. This gives us 4.5 phtw in full editorials as
against 18.4 phtw in last paragraphs of editorials.
Editorials
Editorials - Last paragraph
46.0
51.7
Table 12. it is EVALUATIVE ADJECTIVE that/to -Last paragraph
7. Conclusion
The increases in the frequency of the six linguistic elements we have
examined signal that the intensity of the persuasion becomes greater
as the article moves towards its conclusion. In contrast there is
White’s (White 1997, 114) finding for hard news reporting that: “The
Headline/lead nucleus is most typically the primary site within the text
for the intensifying interpersonal meanings […]”.
It would seem that the hard news “narrative impulse” comes at
the beginning of the article, whereas the editorial’s persuasive voice is
heard more clearly at the end.
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