A Study On News Headlines With The Relevance-adaptation Model

News headline is the summary and concentration of the news content,and it showsconciseness、vividness and induced force of the news theme. News communicators need toconsider many factors to make news headlines. And this process can be well interpreted bythe Relevance-adaptation Model. While making news headlines, news communicators notonly try to set up the optimal relevance between the content and the audience’s psychology,but also adapt to elements of the context which mainly refer to the physical world, the socialworld and the mental world. These results of adaptation ultimately are reflected on all levelswhich mainly include the phonological level and the lexical level of the linguistic structure.Between them, the adaptation at phonological level is mainly embodied in the adaptation oftone, and the adaptation at lexical level is shown by use of abbreviation, digital abbreviationand the choice of words. In this way communicators succeed in the adaptation of linguisticstructure. Communicators base on audience’s cognitive context, and adapt those contextassumptions which conform to the principle of relevance. News headlines are results ofcontext assumptions’ adaptation. In this unidirectional communication process, the contextwhich is not invariant but constantly changing has dynamic. In the process of making newsheadlines, communicators usually use some strategies to make headlines novel andunordinary in order to win more audience’s attention and achieve the goal of newscommunication. These strategies are new words strategy, highlighting strategy, comparisonstrategy, parody strategy, suspense strategy, oralization strategy and so on.