Effects Of Meaning Expression In Headlinese

Headline is 'a heading, usually in large, heavy type, at the top of an article in a newspaper, magazine, or other publication, indicating the subject of the article' as Xrefer defines2. However, 'constraints on space affect the language of headlines, sometimes known (in its more extreme forms) as headlinese. It (headlinese) has developed from more or less conventional syntax to increasingly brief, generalized, powerful, and cryptic units.'3Headlinese is quite a new entity that cannot be found in most of the dictionaries; and the subject it refers to is also a totally new language register that any special and technical research in this field is quite few that this paper is destined to act as one of the pioneering approaches towards the significance of headlinese. Anyway, in the search for the mystery of headlinese, which differs a lot from our usual speech, many varied and colorful linguistic and social sceneries are to be explored.In all kinds of media, news headlines are responsible for attracting audience and introducing the news content. However, news headlines meet some fatal obstacles when accomplishing these missions as Xrefer also refers to: they are always confined by the space of newspapers, magazines, television and computer monitors or by the time limitation on the radio.This paper is to reveal the expression and its effects of headlinese, borrowing Geoffrey Leech's theories about language meanings (conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflected, collocative and thematic) and functions (informational, expressive, directive, aesthetic and phatic) as theoretical foundation. What's more, lots of theories and research methods from stylistics, pragmatics, psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics are also adopted to further explain headlinese and support Leech's theories.With bountiful headlines from authoritative news institutions, in an allround stylistic approach, looking into wording, syntactic structure and even punctuation, thethesis carries on detailed analysis towards headlinese's literal expression. Turning to qualified theoretical linguistic explanations, this paper thoroughly investigates meanings' conveying and their respective effects in headlinese's language functions' achievement.In this way, this paper also supplies a framework as a research model to other language registers' researches.