Historical Corpus Stylistics (Corpus and Discourse)

Historical Corpus Stylistics

Corpus and Discourse Series editors: Wolfgang Teubert, University of Birmingham, and Michaela Mahlberg, University of Liverpool. Editorial Board: Frantisek Cermak (Prague), Susan Conrad (Portland), Geoffrey Leech (Lancaster), Elena Tognini-Bonelli (Siena and TWC), Ruth Wodak (Lancaster), FengZhiwei (Beijing). Corpus linguistics provides the methodology to extract meaning from texts. Taking as its starting point the fact that language is not a mirror of reality but lets us share what we know, believe and think about reality, it focuses on language as a social phenomenon, and makes visible the attitudes and beliefs expressed by the members of a discourse community. Consisting of both spoken and written language, discourse always has historical, social, functional and regional dimensions. Discourse can be monolingual or multilingual, interconnected by translations. Discourse is where language and social studies meet. The Corpus and Discourse series consists of two strands. The first, Research in Corpus and Discourse, features innovative contributions to various aspects of corpus linguistics and a wide range of applications, from language technology via the teaching of a second language to a history of mentalities. The second strand, Studies in Corpus and Discourse, comprises key texts bridging the gap between social studies and linguistics. Although equally academically rigorous, this strand will be aimed at a wider audience of academics and postgraduate students working in both disciplines. Research in Corpus and Discourse Meaningful Texts The Extraction of Semantic Information from Monolingual and Multilingual Corpora Edited by Geoff Barnbrook, Pernilla Danielsson and Michaela Mahlberg Corpus Linguistics and World Englishes An Analysis of Xhosa English Vivian de Klerk Evaluation in Media Discourse Analysis of a Newspaper Corpus Monika Bednarek Idioms and Collocations Corpus-based Linguistic and Lexicographic Studies Edited bv Christiane Fellbaum

Working with Spanish Corpora Edited by Giovanni Parodi Conversation in Context A Corpus-based Analysis Christoph Ruhlemann

Studies in Corpus and Discourse English Collocation Studies The OSTI Report John Sinclair, Susan Jones and Robert Daley Edited by Ramesh Krishnamurthy With an introduction by Wolfgang Teubert Corpus Semantics An Introduction Anna Cermakova and Wolfgang Teubert Text, Discourse, and Corpora. Theory and Analysis Michael Hoey, Michaela Mahlberg, Michael Stubbs and Wolfgang Teubert With an introduction by John Sinclair

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Historical Corpus Stylistics Media, Technology and Change

Patrick Studer

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Continuum The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX

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© Patrick Studer 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Patrick Studer has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 97^08264-943(^6 library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record of this book is available from the Library of Congress.

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This study was accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the Faculty of Arts of the University of Zurich in the winter semester 2005 on the recommendation of Prof. Dr Andreas Jucker and Prof. Dr Udo Fries.

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Contents Acknowledgements

xii

Introduction

1

1

5

Historical Corpus Stylistics and Early News Media 1 The Historical Stylistic Perspective 1.1 Historical Stylistics and Stylistic Foregrounding 1.2 Historical Stylistics and other Approaches

6 7 11

2 Genre-Specific Considerations 2.1 The Historical Dimension 2.2 The Stylistic Dimension 2.3 The Physical Dimension

14 15 19 27

3 Corpus-Linguistic Considerations 3.1 Time Parameters 3.2 Corpus Dimensions 3.3 Corpus Sources 3.4 Usefulness and Limitations

32 33 35 37 43

4 Conclusion

46

Part I: Socio-Stylistic Dimensions

51

2

Media Performance and Organization Profiles

55

1 Performance Variables

57

2 Media Organization Profiles 2.1 High-Performance Profiles 2.2 Medium-Performance Profiles 2.3 Low-Performance Profiles

64 64 68 70

3 Conclusion

71

Media Variation and Stylistic Change

73

1 Stylistic Variables

75

3

X

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS 2 Stylistic Profiles 2.1 Conservative Profiles 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6

4

Conservative-Popular Profiles Quality Profiles Popular Profiles Quality-Popular Hybrids Balanced Profiles

79 82 85 86 93 97 100

3 Conclusion

100

Performance and Style: A Socio-Stylistic Profile

103

1 Towards Market Diversification

103

2 Concluding Remarks

109

Part II: Technologically Facilitated Innovation

111

5

Visual Foregrounding in Eighteenth-Century Headlines

113

1 Corpus Details 1.1 Graphic Types 1.1.1 Distribution of Graphic Types

114 115 118

2 Headline Functions 2.1 Attributive Headline 2.2 Thematic Headline 2.3 Performative Headline 2.4 Structural Headline

120 121 123 124 125

3 Correlation of Graphic and Functional Patterns

126

4 Late Eighteenth-Century Headlines

128

5 Conclusion

136

Syntactic Foregrounding in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century News Discourse

140

1 Corpus and Method

141

2 Verbal Headlines

142

3 Modes of Syntactic Foregrounding

144

4 Stylistic Dimensions 4.1 Unstressed Forms 4.2 Topicalized Forms 4.3 Dislocated Forms 4.4 Complex Forms

147 147 149 152 157

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H I S T O R I C A L CORPUS STYLISTICS 5 Outlook to the Nineteenth Century

158

6 Conclusion

161

Part HI: Situational Aspects: News Context and Early Media Change 7

8

XI

165

Macrotextual Foregrounding Strategies in Eighteenth-Century News Discourse

169

1 Event Focusing

169

2 Textual Emphasis 2.1 Early Forms of Textual Emphasis 2.2 First Phase of Consolidation 2.3 Towards Event-Related Thematic Structures

175 175 180 184

3 Conclusion

190

Microtextual Foregrounding: Comment and News Context

194

1 Modality in Early News Discourse

194

2 Stylistic Realizations of Modality

197

3 Distributional Patterns

203

4 Contextual Domains

211

5 Modality Patterns 5.1 War 5.2 Politics 5.3 Social Life 5.4 Commerce & Trade 5.5 Entertainment & Features 5.6 Accidents & Disasters 5.7 Crimes 5.8 Announcements

214 215 216 218 219 220 222 223 224

6 Conclusion

224

Conclusion

231

References

236

List of Abbreviations

249

Appendices I-III

251

Index

257

Acknowledgements

This volume is based on my doctoral dissertation, submitted to the English Department at the University of Zurich in autumn 2005. A number of sections were previously presented at conferences and colloquia. An outline of Chapter 1 was read at the 2004 Colloquium on Contrasting Text Types in the Press (Helsinki, Finland) and at the 2004 Symposium on Inter-varietal Applied Carpus Studies (IVACS) in Limerick, Ireland. Earlier versions of Chapters 5 and 6 were published in instalments in the Journal of Historical Pragmatics 4.1 (2003) and in a volume of collected essays following the 2002 conference on Organization in Discourse II in Turku, Finland (Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, 2005). Both articles, which were published by John Benjamins, have been incorporated in the present study. An outline of Chapters 7 and 8 was presented at CHINED (Conference on Historical News Discourse) in Florence in 2004. I am indebted to all conference participants, reviewers, editors and colleagues who offered me their valuable feedback and advice. Zurich, July 2008 Patrick Studer

Introduction

Style is a fuzzy concept that defies easy definition. We believe that we recognize style when we see it but much of our intuition is based on vague and unanalysed impressions. In its most general sense, style makes linguistic expression meaningful and distinctive. In literary texts - the traditional domain of stylistic study - style is understood as a reflection of an author's personality and originality. But what do we mean when we speak of the style of newspapers or media enterprises? The present study seeks to give an answer to this question by defining and analysing style in the context of early modern news discourse. The term 'news discourse', as understood here, embraces the range of stylistic perspectives in which early modern media genres can be embedded. Throughout this book, the terms 'newspaper' and 'news publication' will be used interchangeably as expressions referring to media genres which are intended to convey periodically current affairs to a public audience. The study is concerned with news discourse from the beginning of daily publishing to the onset of the Industrial Revolution in England. While the period studied is historical, the aim of this book is not: the book intends to give insights into fundamental stylistic principles of news discourse by outlining constitutive characteristics of early media genres and principles of media change. The analysis is corpusassisted in that it relies on machine-readable corpora of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century news publications. For the most part, the study makes use of the digitalized database of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN) compiled by the English Department of the University of Zurich. All newspaper sources, unless otherwise specified, have been taken from the 2004 CD-Rom edition of ZEN (version 1.0). This book unites several perspectives that have not previously been combined. It applies the stylistic perspective to the past and combines it with corpus-assisted research methods. This approach will be called historical corpus stylistics. I have given this procedure a name not because I propose a new research discipline but because it expresses most appropriately the focus adopted in this study. However, historical corpus stylistics will not simply be understood as an extended form of corpus stylistics (cf., recently, Mahlberg 2007: 355-98), despite the common ground of the two fields.

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The reference to corpus is primarily meant to emphasize the fact that historical corpus stylistics is based on the computer-assisted processing of empirical text data. Stylistics, as the term is used in this book, reflects distinctive linguistic practice that characterizes genres and types of discourse. Distinctive linguistic practice, however, has different layers. From a synchronic perspective it may be viewed as motivated linguistic activity in a specific context at any given point in time that is characteristic of a whole population of texts. This may be called genre- or discourse-specific linguistic behaviour. From a diachronic perspective distinctiveness is seen as a dynamic process that changes over time and is subject to changing norms and conventions. With its focus on distinctive linguistic practice in early London newspapers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the present study primarily adopts a diachronic perspective of historical stylistics. With this focus, the study aims at identifying and empirically analysing stylistic factors that played an active role in the diffusion of stylistic change in early news discourse. It is assumed that any global change in early news discourse first occurred in specific, isolated (linguistic and extra-linguistic) contexts before it became an accepted part of the genre. These contexts are believed to be the key to understanding how news discourse evolved in detail and which factors were likely to have facilitated or inhibited stylistic innovation. In reconstructing particular discourse situations in which innovation is believed to have occurred, this book emphasizes the interrelationship between context and stylistic innovation. The present corpus-assisted analysis of style presents a serious challenge to traditional historical research methods as it needs to examine carefully the potential of computer tools in the study of past stages of language use. Unlike present-day linguistics, historical linguistics is dictated to a large extent by the availability of primary data and contextual information about these data. Historical text sources, however, are often not as easily accessible and processible as present-day data. This is especially true for the study of early newspapers where linguists struggle with illegible copies, unscannable data and incomplete runs. Given these natural constraints, historical stylistics is forced to walk on a tightrope between traditional historical studies, philology, and strictly systematized, computer-aided research methods. This makes it a highly flexible, dynamic and interdisciplinary area of research but, at the same time, susceptible to falling prey to the demands of either side. The present study is hoping to take adequate account of both research perspectives. The study emerges in the context of recent English language projects based on the corpus-assisted approach to the analysis of historical news texts. These projects have resulted in the compilation of various machinereadable corpora in the 1990s such as the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (cf. Fries 1994; Studer and Schneider 1999; Fries and Schneider 2000), the Rostock Newspaper Carpus (cf. Schneider 1999,2000a, 2002a) and the Lampeter Corpus (cf., for example, Ciaridge 2000, 2003). More recent examples

INTRODUCTION

6

include Newsbooks at Lancaster and Florence Early English Newspapers. Newsbooks at Lancaster started in 2002 as a research project run by the Department of Linguistics and Modern English Language at Lancaster University. Florence Early English Newspapers, or FEEN, developed out of the Zurich English Newspaper Carpus in 2000 (cf. progress report by Fries 2000: 167). FEENis based in the Department of Modern Languages in Florence University and is directed by Nicholas Brownlees. Newsbooks at Lancaster and FEEN concentrate on the seventeenth century; the other projects extend to the eighteenth century (Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and Lampeter Corpus} and beyond (Rostock Newspaper Corpus). The compilation of historical news corpora has further led to studies of a variety of micro- and macrolinguistic phenomena. Among these we find studies of isolated phenomena or text classes such as, for example, different types of advertisements and death notices (Fries 1990a, 1990b, 1997; Auf dem Keller 2004) or multi-verb words (Claridge 2000), as opposed to the analysis of more global developments such as the development of popular journalism (Schneider 2002). More recently, the study of historical news discourse has received wider attention in a workshop on the topic and the publication of selected proceedings resulting from this event (Brownlees 2006). With its distinct focus on newspaper style, variation and change, the present book is similar in approach to Schneider (2002) in that it addresses general trends and issues in early news discourse. It differs, however, from all previous studies through its emphasis on the interface between style and linguistic change, particularly stressing the concept of stylistic foregrounding as an explanatory model for stylistic innovation in news discourse. Although the need to address issues of causation and change in diachronic study has been acknowledged (Fowler 1991: 226), this perspective has received little attention to date. The underlying assumptions of this study are that news discourse was motivated culturally/institutionally, socially, technologically and situationally. Institutional factors refer to censorship regulations, aspects of press freedom, and stylistic conventions or expectations that may have influenced the style of news publications in general. Technological factors obviously relate to the current state of technology at the period studied in as much as it is relevant to the style of early media genres, while social factors involve information about the current publishing body of a newspaper as well as details about readership and market performance. Situational parameters include current affairs (i.e. the actual news printed in the publication) and their potential influence on the style of a publication. The present book seeks to address these four dimensions in turn by analysing, in quantitative and qualitative terms, the specific role they may have played in stylistic innovation. The distinction between quantitative and qualitative approaches is made to differentiate between research procedures that are based on numbers or statistics for verification, and those procedures that are entirely based on intuition. It is clear, though, that the boundaries between the two approaches are fluid (cf., for example, Schlobinski 2005:

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992-7 for an introductory summary of the issue). Historical corpus stylistics is strongly empirical and quantitative in that it seeks to quantify the distribution of linguistic factors in discourse. However, historical corpus stylistics is not strictly speaking quantitative in a statistical sense as the term is used in the more socially-oriented linguistic disciplines (cf. Rietveld and van Hout 2005; Kallmeyer 2005). The book is divided into eight chapters and grouped into three thematic parts. Cultural and institutional factors will be examined first in the form of an introductory chapter to the study (Chapter 1). Social, technological and situational dimensions will be addressed separately in Parts I to III. Chapter 1 marks out the terrain of the historical stylistic approach and is intended to situate the study of early news discourse in the larger historical and stylistic framework. It outlines the research procedures suited for historical stylistic analysis, and presents in detail the methodological challenges as well as the cultural/institutional constraints encountered in stylistic research on early news media. Part I highlights the role of the individual news publication by examining newspaper variation, change and performance in a representative cross-section of newspapers published between 1701 and 1791. The three chapters of Part I put newspaper style into the publication context, particularly stressing the concept of stylistic identity and the ideology of individual publications as well as the performance and success of specific stylistic constellations on the market. Part II examines the role of technologically facilitated innovation in early news discourse by looking in detail at the stylistic realization of short text forms such as headlines published between 1701 and 1860. The chapter analyses how graphic means facilitated visual foregrounding in news publications, bringing about the newspaper headline and its modern short and disjunctive style. Part III concludes the book by addressing the interface between news situation and style. The two chapters of Part III analyse over time the ways in which newspaper editors sourced and edited their news for publication. In particular, they study the interface between news, its (edited) representation and its thematic organization in the text, thus looking for correlations between contexts, or local causes, and foregrounded areas of style.

1 Historical Corpus Stylistics and Early News Media

The discussion of style in early newspapers prompts a number of conceptual questions that pertain to general method as well as to the specific object of study. This introductory chapter intends to review these questions in detail and to propose a new approach to the study of early mass media texts. The proposed approach takes account of recent technological developments that facilitate digital scanning and processing of historical text resources. Thus the particular interest of this chapter lies in evaluating areas of overlap and combination between traditional stylistics and corpus linguistics. This approach will be called historical corpus stylistics in order to delimit it clearly from approaches that use contemporary text sources, and to express a diachronic research focus inherent in the perspective. The main concern of this chapter will be to outline, in a systematic way, methodological issues underlying historical corpus stylistic studies, and the implications methodological decisions may have on the outcome of research. For this purpose the practicability of stylistic analysis and its suitability to corpus-based procedures will need careful consideration. Conceptually, the approach described as historical corpus stylistics incorporates a number of perspectives that have been addressed in different research contexts. The specific combination of these perspectives is believed to open up new paths in stylistics that can be explored using present-day technological resources. The attempt to describe the potential of traditional methods in a changed research environment has led to the foundation of new disciplines or to the incorporation of new research methods into traditional forms of enquiry. What these attempts have in common is their concern with research viability rather than with ideational perspectives. In other words, they focus on the applicability of a research project or the testing of theories, and not on developing theories in the first instance. In this context two recent examples from related areas may be quoted which provide what may be called a 'consolidated' account of linguistic research activity. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) review the sociolinguistic method in relation to the linguistic past, thus describing the domain of historical sociolinguistics. Semino and Short (2004) undertake a similar initiative to

D

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combine stylistics and corpus linguistics into corpus stylistics. The present chapter applies the same procedure to the study of past stylistic activity. Like Semino and Short (2004), however, this chapter does not propose a new discipline. Rather, it is intended as 'another (very useful) approach to add to the analytical armoury of the stylistics enterprise' (Semino and Short 2004: 7). The present chapter is divided into three sections that reflect three essential tasks with which corpus-based historical research is associated, such as 'systematicity in data collection, extensive background reading and good philological work' (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003:26). Section 1.1 defines terminological conventions and the key perspectives underlying the concept of style in historical linguistics and, in particular, die stylistic analysis of historical news discourse. The historical stylistic perspective entails a number of methodological constraints on the planned research activity. These constraints are developed in sections 1.2 and 1.3. Section 1.2 takes eighteenth-century news discourse as a starting-point to investigate the relationship between historical factors, prescriptive writing and stylistic expectations. These are the classical domains of historical stylistics that can be examined by consulting appropriate historical text sources. Historical factors, prescriptive writing and stylistic expectations are taken together in this study to refer to the cultural/institutional dimension underlying and motivating stylistic change in news discourse. Section 1.3 examines the contribution of corpus linguistics to historical stylistics by applying stylistic constraints to considerations concerning data collection and retrieval. Recent technological innovations, most notably machinereadable databases, have undoubtedly opened up entirely new methods of linguistic enquiry. While the contribution of corpus linguistics as a complementary method to traditional linguistic analysis is undisputed, its paradigmatic impact on historical stylistics is questionable. This part of the chapter draws attention to the specific challenges involved in the machinereadable analysis of historical texts by evaluating the viability and reliability of this approach. 1 The Historical Stylistic Perspective The focus of this book - the stylistic (discursive, textual) development of early newspapers - necessitates a historical stylistic perspective and methodology. There are several reasons for this. Firstly, early newspapers constitute a genre with specific characteristics and discursive patterns. Secondly, the object of study is set in the past and covers a specified period of time. Thirdly, the study of early newspapers and their changes over time involves the analysis of largely unconscious discourse practices that depend on stylistic norms and conventions. Fourthly, the stylistic changes of a genre are ideally studied by means of distinctive language practice that deviates from or violates stylistic norms and conventions. Fifthly, early mass media provide sufficient data for corpus-based research and have been used in similar

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contexts before, making it the ideal object to illustrate the scope of the historical stylistic approach and to put its research potential to the test. In the following two sections, I will situate the historical stylistic enterprise in the broader concept of style and historical linguistics. As will be shown, the approach draws from a variety of related disciplines such as pragmatics, sociolinguistics and text linguistics. The relevance of these disciplines to historical stylistics is addressed in section 1.2. The notion of style and, in particular, the concept of foregrounding is explained in section 1.1. 1.1 Historical Stylistics and Stylistic Foregrounding

Today stylistics is an established discipline in modern linguistic thinking but has been, throughout the twentieth century, the target of incessant criticism. In linguistics, the stylistic approach was especially criticized for the intuitive or 'non-quantifiable' dimension it was supposed to entail (e.g. Leech 1985: 41). The notion of style, indeed, is somehow elusive. In their comprehensive bibliography of English stylistics from antiquity to the twentieth century, Bailey and Burton (1968: viii) quote an unpublished dissertation by Leo Rockas to emphasize the difficulty in defining the concept: '[Ojne's notion of style is logically tied up with one's notion of stylistics [...] Critics will define style in such a way as to rationalize whatever stylistic activity they choose later to indulge'. This statement, we may argue, applies as much today as it did half a century ago. Thus, the definition of what is perceived as style naturally offers some scope for interpretation, as is suggested by Wales (2001: 373): Intuitions and interpretative skills are just as important in stylistics and literary criticism; however, stylisticians want to avoid vague and impressionistic judgments about the way formal features are manipulated [. . .] Stylistics is only 'objective' (and the scare quotes are significant) in the sense of being methodical, systematic, empirical, analytical, coherent, accessible, retrievable and consensual.

Traditionally, style is a literary concept, deriving from rhetoric and the classical notion of elocutio, which includes a set of rhetorical strategies used for persuasive purposes (cf., for example, Hough 1969: 1-4). Style originally referred to rhetorical figures of reinforcement and repetition that lent a message persuasive power. The core of the original meaning of style is still visible in modern stylistics, which, as a research discipline, potentially encompasses both literary and non-literary discourses. Stylistics is not primarily concerned with formal (i.e. constitutive) aspects of a text but emphasizes their stylistic significance, their meaningfulness, in the context in which they are produced. This definition involves the notion of style as a motivated choice of linguistic strategies applied to induce specific effects. Historical stylistics, as understood in this study, focuses on the study of style in this second sense of the word by emphasizing the choice writers make in their use of discursive strategies, especially in non-literary contexts.

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However, when style is studied over time, motivated choice may lose its significance, as it becomes a language routine below the level of consciousness. Thus, the historical stylistic approach needs to take account of both levels by studying the interface between stylistic routine and motivated application of style. Using the concept of style to describe linguistic processes over time, historical stylistics is particularly, though not exclusively, indebted to the functional perspective of language, as founded by the Prague school of linguists in the first half of the twentieth century and later developed by Halliday (e.g. 1973, 1985). This school of thought emphasizes the pragmatic function of style in its communicative context (functional stylistics). Style in this context is defined as motivated by and responsive to particular extra-linguistic constellations. Some constellations may facilitate the use of style, while others might inhibit it. By relating stylistic features to their extra-linguistic constellations, one gains insight into the inherent system of the genre and its ways and forms of evolution. Historical news discourse lends itself particularly well to the analysis of extra-linguistic constellations. Early newspapers were beginning to be exposed to commercial constraints in the course of the first two centuries of their existence, forcing editors and publishers into competition with one another. Competition, in turn, had its effect on the style of publications, which was increasingly biased towards persuading and winning, rather than informing, the newspaper audience. As a result publishers began using strategies believed and intended to improve a newspaper's market performance. This included not only the visual appeal or the layout of a publication but also the prioritization of news items through different language strategies that facilitated greater ease of reading. The stylistic concept by which this process can be described is called stylistic foregrounding. The concept of foregrounding was introduced by Garvin (1964) as a translation of the Prague School term ' aktualisace'. The concept is best known today from seminal papers by Leech and Mukafovsky (reprinted by Freeman in 1970).l Foregrounding was traditionally used in the context of literary studies to distinguish between marked (foregrounded) and unmarked (backgrounded or unnoticed) forms of discourse. This restricted sense of the term was expanded by linguists to describe any linguistic process that reflected 'motivated deviation from linguistic or other socially accepted norms' (Leech 1970: 121). Foregrounding can thus be seen as the effect of a linguistic process that involves deviation from linguistic norms established in different discourses. According to Leech (1985: 45-50), this broad definition includes deviation at three levels, referred to as primary, secondary and tertiary deviation.2 Primary deviation concerns language in general (i.e. the process of deviation that distinguishes discourse from natural language), while secondary deviation refers to discourse-specific norms (i.e. the process of deviation from established discourse conventions). Tertiary deviation describes the process of internal deviation of linguistic elements in a particular instance

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of linguistic expression. Secondary and tertiary deviation create foregrounding effects of varying degrees, ranging from slight deviation from an established norm to severe violations of genre conventions. In historical stylistics, all three levels must again be seen as acting in conceit. Primary deviation constitutes the genre which is to be studied at a specified point in time. This genre, of course, is not a fixed or 'frozen' text form but subject to change if consistently exposed to secondary deviation (violations of genre conventions). Thus, genres evolve and merge into new forms. Secondary deviation, in turn, is closely related to tertiary deviation in that (text) internal foregrounding at one diachronic stage may lead into a commonly accepted (genre-specific) convention at another. The three forms of deviation are best seen in terms of a triangle where every point may be the starting (triggering) or end point of a stylistic process (also see function-to-form mapping in section 1.2 below). Potential objects of study include deviation at phonological, lexical, (text) syntactical and sociopragmatic levels. In principle, all three levels of deviation can be studied in any genre at any one point in time. However, the main focus of historical stylistics lies on what Levin (1965) termed external deviation, that is, on those forms of deviation with respect to norms that are external to the studied discourse (genre or discourse event). External deviation includes Leech's (1985) concept of primary and secondary deviation but excludes tertiary deviation in the above sense of the term. The norm-external perspective is particularly suited to the analysis of constitutive and conventional patterns of discourse, which is central to historical stylistics. Internal deviation (deviation from text-internal norm) is not of immediate interest to the historical stylistician unless the planned study explicitly deals with the interface between stylistic conventions and stylistic change. In that case, the study of internal deviation may reveal constellations favourable or unfavourable to changes in discourse conventions. I would like to illustrate briefly what this means in relation to the present study. All parts and chapters in this book illustrate in different ways the potential of deviation in its application to a concrete text corpus. In the case of historical news discourse, the study of primary deviation accounts for the development of histories into periodicals and periodicals into daily newspapers, as is described in section 1.2 and, in more research-pragmatic terms, in section 1.3 of this chapter. Patterns of secondary deviation are dealt with extensively in Chapters 2 to 4, which study the distribution of conventional stylistic features in a representative diachronic corpus. The aim of Chapters 2 to 4 is to refine the results of the study of primary deviation in such a way as to examine genre-internal allocation of style and the potential of certain textual constellations facilitating stylistic development and change. This process involves the classification of the corpus into text types or sub-genres. A similar angle is taken in Chapters 5 and 6, albeit with a different focus: Chapters 5 and 6 are concerned with the form and temporal dimension of large-scale secondary deviation in historical news

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discourse as they look at structural mechanisms that underlie important visual and syntactic foregrounding effects. Chapters 7 and 8 shift attention to individual instances of deviation in the corpus and to the possible correlation with situations of use. Those instances of deviation potentially lead to stylistic changes at a broader level. The 'by-product' of historical stylistic analysis - the study of stylistic change - needs some further explaining. Cook's (1990, 1994) concept of 'discourse deviation' may be particularly useful in contextualizing the process of stylistic change. Discourse deviation as a linguistic concept describes the dynamic interrelationship between discourse analysis and schema theory, that is, it seeks to explain how discourse and mental images interact.3 Cook (1994: 197) argues that there is a correlation between schema theory and discourse analysis at three distinct levels. He assumes that (1) the concept of world schemata relates to the knowledge dimension in discourse analysis, (2) text schemata correspond to the functional structure of discourse (defined pragmatically), and (3) language schemata interrelate with grammar (and cohesive links) at discourse level. Cook (1994: 191-2) further argues that discourses can effect changes in (language, text or world) schemata, and vice versa. For example, the consistent use of the word 'black' for 'negro' may eventually change the view we may have of Afro-Caribbean people (i.e. language-schemarelationship), while disruptive events, ideas or discoveries may result in changes at the level of discourse (schema-language-relationship). This can be illustrated, for example, with the term '9/11' as a linguistic expression carrying the connotation of terrorism and war. With regard to languageschema-relationships, Cook (1994: 191) suggests three effects which discourses may have on existing schemata, such as (1) schema reinforcement, (2) preservation or (3) disruption (i.e. refreshing). For the study of stylistic change and innovation, disruptive or refreshing linguistic behaviour is of particular importance as it represents discourse deviation at linguistic or text-structural level (Cook 1994: 198). Cook (1994: 192) describes two types of refreshing discourse: the first type is achieved by disruption through conventional text and language structures, while the second type refers to the disruption of world schemata that is achieved by deviant text and language structures. Since historical stylistics, as understood in this study, is primarily concerned with nonliterary text forms, the first category will be of particular relevance to the researcher. In literature, the foregrounding or schema-refreshing effect is often intended to be noted in an act of imaginative interpretation (van Peer 1980). In functional discourses, such as news reports or advertisements, schema refreshment is equally intended but the active decoding process on the part of the reader is not as relevant as in a literary context. The difference between foregrounding in literary and non-literary texts, however, is one of degrees, not of absolute values. In literature, the decoding of motivations underlying the use of foregrounding techniques requires considerable interpretive efforts. Schema refreshment in functional discourses, on

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the other hand, reflects a limited set of strategies used to reinforce the message of a text, that is, to emphasize or highlight the message. Thus, schema-disruptive behaviour in non-literary texts, such as early mass media, shows specific properties that contribute to establishing group identity through the disruption of language and text schemata, while preserving or reinforcing world schemata (Cook 1994:193).4 It is the aim of the historical study of stylistic change to take account of these factors by looking at 'how schema refreshment is effected through language and text structure to relate linguistic and text-structural features to particular changes in schemata' (Cook 1994:199). Leech (1985: 47) notes several core 'communicative values' of deviation in literature, such as contrast, similarity, parallelism, and mimesis. In historical stylistics, research will be guided along the lines of two of these dimensions, which can be summarized as parallelism or unexpected regularity, and deviation or unexpected irregularity (also called syntagmatic and paradigmatic foregrounding by Leech 1970; see also Leech and Short 1981). Chapters 5 and 6, for example, deal with the degree of unexpected regularity in the textual organization and information structure in early news publications, while Chapter 7 analyses the degree of unexpected irregularities in the printing order of news reports. At the same time, historical stylistics allows for a more general perspective altogether in that it systematically studies different stages and variation of foregrounding strategies in a denned population of texts. This perspective provides a detailed picture of the degree of establishment of stylistic features in a genre, and the level of innovative and foregrounding potential they have in the respective periods under consideration. 2.2 Historical Stylistics and other Approaches

While the historical stylistic approach has a clear focus on stylistic foregrounding, its perspective overlaps with various other disciplines which share the emphasis on past language and their situation of use. These are notably historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics and historical text linguistics. Historical pragmatics is a discipline founded by Andreas Jucker (1995, 2000; Jucker et al. 1999) and can be denned as 'the study of historical data from a pragmatic perspective, the diachronic study of pragmatic elements or the study of language change from a pragmatic perspective' (Jucker 2000: 90). Historical stylistics overlaps with the domain of historical pragmatics, as it studies, in different ways, the relationships between situations of use and linguistic phenomena, particularly emphasizing 'changes in the linguistic structure resulting from altered communicative needs which are due to changes in the social structure [...]' (Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 6). Within historical pragmatics, Jucker and Jacobs (1995: lOff.) distinguish between pragmaphilology and diachronic pragmatics, the latter approach

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focusing 'on the linguistic inventory and its communicative use across different historical stages of the same language' (Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 13). The authors further divide diachronic pragmatics into two approaches, which they call form-to-function mapping and function-to-form mapping. While there exists 'no hard and fast boundary between these two approaches' (Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 13), the historical stylistic approach may be said to adopt a function-to-form perspective, as it studies the development of a specific population of texts (e.g. early news publications) that share basic functional properties (e.g. informing). The difficulty with function-to-form mapping in diachronic research lies in the changing functions of the speech situation studied (Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 19; Jucker 2000: 96). Thus, function-to-form mapping may merge into the opposite approach if the linguistic realization of a speech situation studied at one synchronic stage leads to an entirely new function in another time period. This interaction and reciprocity between form and function applies to the historical stylistic perspective and, to some extent, to all chapters of the present study as they analyse and compare the stylistic significance of functional parameters at different points in time. While there are clear overlaps of historical stylistics with historical pragmatics in the methodology and conceptual considerations they use for approaching text analysis, the historical stylistic perspective falls slightly outside the main focus of historical pragmatics, as it does not aim at offering general explanations of language developments and innovations in the past but singles out and examines factors motivating language change of a particular text form or population. The speciality of historical pragmatics, on the other hand, is the analysis of communicative events based on 'approximations to the spoken language' (Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 10; see also Jucker et al. 1999; Fritz and Hundsnurscher 1993). The proximity of historical stylistics to historical pragmatics brings us into the vicinity of historical sociolinguistics, which is concerned with linguistic variation and language change as a result of social interaction. While sociolinguistics presents itself as a well-established linguistic discipline, the historical sociolinguistic dimension is still an under-researched domain. The first study applying sociolinguistic models to historical data was Romaine (1982). More recently, Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003) published an ambitious introduction to the discipline in which they combine sociolinguistic research methods with corpus linguistics. Despite the relatively low attention accorded to historical sociolinguistics to date, most sociolinguists today agree with Milroy (1992: 72) who calls for historical linguists to take more account of speaker-activity in social contexts. Historical stylistics naturally involves the study of sociolinguistic factors of language use. The close relationship between stylistics and sociolinguistics is shown in Jucker's (1992: 12-21) model of the sociolinguistic triangle (traditional stylistics, ethnography of speaking and correlational sociolinguistics). The first discipline of this triangle, the traditional stylistic method, focuses on style as 'characterized by a pattern of recurrent selections from

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the inventory of optional features of language' (Winter qtd. injucker 1992: 12). This perspective motivates the analysis of broad stylistic dimensions such as, for example, patterns of variation across speech and writing (Biber 1988). The historical stylistic enterprise, however, takes us beyond traditional stylistics, as it emphasizes stylistic strategies and their variation in a specific genre. Thus, the sociolinguistic view adopted in the present study comes nearer to the two other stylistic approaches of the sociolinguistic triangle, stressing the notion of style as determined culturally (or conventionally) as well as the correlational patterns that exist between linguistic factors and contextual constellations. The cultural or conventional dimension of style is a dynamic parameter which can be difficult to assess, especially if the researcher lacks intuitive knowledge of the communicative situation (cf. Nevalainen and RaumolinBrunberg 2003: 6-8; also Jucker and Jacobs 1995: 9). At the same time, the contemporary perception of language use is an invaluable tool for the historical project (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 6) and thus needs to be examined before analysis. In historical stylistic analysis the boundaries of the genre must first be defined before one can turn to the analysis of 'self-monitoring, i.e. the amount of attention paid to speech' (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 187-8). Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg (2003: 20) base their methodology on both correlational and constructivist perspectives, and include qualitative as well as quantitative research methods. In the present study, all elements of Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg's methodology are represented: Chapters 2 to 4, for example, take a correlational perspective as they try to correlate stylistic factors with information about the participants - i.e. publishers, editors and audience. Chapters 5 to 8 construct social meaning without correlating language with text-external social parameters. The sociolinguistic and pragmatic dimensions are particularly important in historical stylistic study of genres at their point of emerging from other forms of discourse. This is a fragile phase in the development of a genre in which innovations or changes appear irregularly or suddenly in one text, while they may be absent in another. To give a precise account of these seemingly spontaneous changes, it is important to describe and include both pragmatic and sociolinguistic variables which can 'explain the conditions in which an innovation is successful in addition to those in which it is unsuccessful' (Milroy 1992: 77). At the same time, one must also be aware of the limitations of the historical sociolinguistic and pragmatic enterprise. Reconstructing a communicative situation in the past is by definition always fragmentary and selective (cf. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: Chapter 2). In a recent volume in honour of Roger Lass, Hickey (2003) presents state-of-the-art insights into current debates on language change. Perhaps one implicit conclusion of the study might be that more attention must be paid to 'local causes' (Lightfoot 2003), i.e. local motivations or conditions

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facilitating linguistic innovation, and that abstraction and generalization from these local causes is limited by the very dynamic and unpredictable nature of language. Owing much of its approach to the above considerations, historical stylistics may finally be said to share a textlinguistic perspective insofar as it deals with text classification and the study of textual patterns and regularities in a particular text form. The principles of the traditional textlinguistic approach have been outlined in a number of studies over the past thirty years (e.g. Brinker 1985; Dimter 1981; Dressier 1978; Kalverkamper 1981; Plett 1975). From a historical stylistic point of view, the textlinguistic perspective is useful in determining text boundaries, textual signals or basic text functions. This perspective is particularly important in Chapters 5 and 6 in which textual structures are correlated with their textual functions, and in the third section of this chapter which addresses text classification problems in the compilation and analysis of text corpora. 2 Genre-Specific Considerations This section is concerned with the traditional domain of stylistics and historical stylistics: the concept of genre-specific or constitutive parameters of a text population. The idea of a textual or stylistic norm underlying languages or genres is, of course, a widely debated issue (see, for example, Leech and Short 1981). I will not enter the debate from a theoretical point of view but would like to apply the historical stylistic perspective to historical news discourse in order to illustrate how 'extensive background reading' (Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg 2003: 26) can be carried out in a systematic and gainful way to reveal stylistic norms in a historical genre. Defining the norms of a genre becomes a difficult task if the concept is understood as a culturally and functionally defined text population (Hiltunen and Skaffari 2003: 8; also Fairclough 1995b: 213). Such definitions of genres are frequently used as 'umbrella categories' (Taavitsainen and Pahta 1997: 71) reflecting loose concepts that defy straightforward linguistic explanation. This is the case with newspapers whose very eclectic nature makes it difficult for the researcher to speak of common textual criteria that represent general properties of the genre. This part of the chapter argues that genre-specific considerations pertaining to the cultural and institutional sphere are constitutive of the historical stylistic enterprise. I propose three genre-specific dimensions that need to be considered in preparation of historical stylistic analysis. I will call them the stylistic dimension, the historical dimension and the physical dimension. Together they offer a three-dimensional picture of the specific text population under investigation, and set the spatial and temporal boundaries of the genre. The stylistic dimension represents the perspective that embeds a genre in the broader context of style in society. It specifically addresses questions of stylistic expectations that surround the production of texts associated with a genre. The historical dimension deals with issues

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of changing cultural acceptance and status of a genre in society. It gives account of major cultural trends influencing a genre over the years. The final dimension refers to the physical existence of a genre at the time the study is conducted, and the availability and condition of text materials for research. 2.1 The Historical Dimension

The historical dimension relates to the reconstruction of the cultural conditions in which a genre was embedded in the past and to the consistency of such conditions in the course of time. It can be distinguished from the stylistic dimension in that it does not directly address matters of style as such (i.e. the production process or appreciation of texts) but focuses on supra-individual constraints that form the undercurrent of the relationship between the participants involved in a past speech situation. These constraints may be institutional and legal factors (e.g. censorship vs press freedom), cultural achievements such as technological advancements (e.g. printing technology, electronic information transfer, postal delivery systems) or, more generally, the code of practice expected by society. At the same time, the reconstruction of cultural conditions involves the careful reviewing and analysis of the documentation status of historical genres. Since the historical stylistic enterprise is primarily diachronic in perspective, the study of historical factors helps determine the optimal timeframe for analysis, and draws attention to unusual cultural patterns or time periods that will have to be factored into the analysis. The historical dimension, as understood in this context, becomes particularly relevant if longer periods are studied during which paradigmatic changes occurred in society (e.g. the establishment of democracy or the abolition of slavery). This perspective assumes that genres may change paradigmatically as a result of such events, and therefore must be analysed separately for each period in which historical constellations are deemed reasonably consistent Of course, much of this process is done automatically and intuitively when a linguistic study is prepared. Yet, the spelling out of these soft margins inside a genre is a necessary activity that pre-defines the stylistic territory of the planned analysis. While a cross-cultural perspective is thinkable in this context (cf. Studer 2005b: 47-59), the focus of historical stylistic analysis lies on changes in a genre within one culture (as a geographically, ethnically, historically or linguistically defined society or group of people). Historical stylistic analysis thus assumes the definition of genres as culture-bound linguistic activity. I will now outline the historical dimension of early newspapers. There is a wealth of historical sources describing in detail the development of individual newspapers, or the press in general, in England and Europe. The interest in writing about early newspapers arose in the nineteenth century (Jones 1996: 51-72). The first major attempt was the Contributions towards a History of Newspapers by Frederick Knight Hunt, which came

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out in 1850 (Hunt 1850). His work was subsequently used as a valuable source for many historians after him, notably Alexander Andrews who published his history of British journalism in 1855 (Andrews 1855a, 1855b). Andrews' work, Jones (1996: 54) notes, 'claimed an accuracy to which Knight Hunt could only have aspired'. Andrews set the tone for historical newspaper research in the nineteenth century and served as a rich source for other major studies, such as James Grant's The Newspaper Press, published in 1870/71 (Grant 1871-2), or Charles Peabody's history, which came out in 1882 (Peabody 1882). The last major historical study of the nineteenth century appeared in 1887 in two volumes, written by Richard Fox Bourne, a working journalist, like many other newspaper historians before him. His ambition was to 'fill many gaps and correct many errors in previous works on the subject' as well as to 'call attention to the ways in which newspapers have influenced the general progress of society' (Fox Bourne 1887, qtd. in Jones 1996: 63). Many histories followed in the twentieth century, of which only a few can be mentioned: Williams (1908); Symon (1914); Morison (1932); Werkmeister (1963, 1967); Williams (1977); Boyce et al. (1978); Lake (1984); Black (1987, 1996). One of the most significant contributions is Morison's Account of the Physical Development of Journals Printed in London between 1622-1932, as is seen in the high appraisal given by fellow historians (e.g. Lake 1984; Harris 1978: footnote 354). As readers of these volumes, we notice the enormous complexity of media history and the almost infinite number of historical aspects that need to be taken into account for the linguistic study of early newspapers. At the same time, we can see recurrent patterns and constellations that seem to appear systematically over the years and have had continuous influence on the development of the printing press. It is these constellations that are of interest to me in this section of the book. Most historians agree on the relevance of some key events in the timeline of the press. It is known that periodical printing arrived comparatively late in England. While periodicals appeared in Germany from as early as the mid-fifteenth century (cf., for example, Clark 1981: 1), the first periodical news publications in England did not make their appearance until the 1620s.5 Originally appearing in the Dutch language, these publications were printed in Amsterdam and later imported and distributed in England. Between the 1620s and 1641, when Charles I was brought to trial and executed, publishers were not allowed to print home news and the publication of any news was subjected to tight control and regulations. The interregnum period following the trial of Charles I led to a boost in periodicals and pamphlets as home news was permitted again in the press. However, with the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, strict publishing laws were reintroduced. The Licensing Act of 1662 was a rigorous measure by parliament to prevent abuse in the printing of books and pamphlets. A few years later, in 1665, the government expanded its prevention policy against scandalous prints by introducing a state-authorized paper, the Oxford Gazette,

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which was later to become the famous London Gazette, commonly called the first newspaper proper in England. While the appearance of the London Gazette may be taken to mark the beginning of modern news publishing, the true watershed in early newspaper history was the abolition of censorship in 1695, which prompted a veritable mushrooming of periodical publications. In the course of this development several important rivals to the Gazette were launched, notably the Daily Courantin 1702, which is claimed to be the first daily newspaper in England. In 1709 copyright laws passed through parliament for the first time, following a series of copying scandals. This law guaranteed protection for the author and demanded transparency in the use of sources. The initial success of the eighteenth-century press was, however, seriously hampered when stamp duty was introduced for the first time in 1712 (subsequently raised in 1724,1743,1757,1776, 1789,1797). Stamp duty, which was abolished in 1855, may be seen as one of the key factors that interfered with the free development of the press. These 'taxes on knowledge' caused many smaller publications to close down and made newspaper printing altogether a highly unprofitable business. Together with a restrictive subsidization policy and strict prosecution for those who did not comply with the law, taxation was the new means for the government to control press output and selectively support their own publications.6 The situation of newspapers did not improve when in 1738, for a period of thirty years, parliamentary reporting was only permitted by special authorization. Between 1768 and the French Revolution in 1789 the press enjoyed comparative freedom despite heavy taxation. In 1779 the first Sunday paper appeared on the market (British Gazette and Sunday Monitor) and in 1788 the first daily evening paper was launched (Star and Evening Advertiser). The closing years of the century, following the aftermath of the French Revolution, were again marked by reaction and repression. In 1799 the socalled Seditious Societies Act was passed. The law, which was intended to suppress secret and unlawful societies, had a tremendous impact on newspaper publishing. It required that all presses and printing types be registered and that the printer always be named on printed matter. The result was that many newspaper publishers were again forced to close their business. While legislation made it especially difficult for smaller and unsubsidized presses to survive, the market was challenged to find cheaper and faster ways of newspaper production and distribution which would guarantee a living even under adverse economic conditions. The advent of new printing techniques at the turn of the nineteenth century (e.g. hand-operated steam presses around 1790) enabled printers to produce at much faster rates than ever before (see, for example, Kaufer and Carley 1993). Traditional printing presses of the eighteenth century were very similar to those invented by Gutenberg three hundred years earlier. Not only was the printing done manually by hand-run presses, but paper was also made by hand. In 1807 the first Foudrinier machine was built, which produced continuous rolls of paper. The papermaking machine was based on an earlier invention by the

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Frenchman Nicholas-Louis Robert in 1798. Seven years later, in 1814, The Times built their first mechanized steam press which managed to print at an approximate rate of 1,100 sheets per hour (for details see Goebel 1883). This technological revolution is also immediately reflected in the many new newspaper tides that appeared on the market after 1800. The newspaper press census released by Saunders, Otley and Co. in 1861 (qtd. in Jones 1996: 23) reveals that for the years 1665 to 1800 no more than 88 newspapers were established. Between 1800 and 1830 this number rose to 126 (an increase of 38 titles) and subsequently to an incredible 415 newspapers by 1855 and 492 tides in 1861. The combined impact of advancements in technology and increased market pressure at the beginning of the new century motivated a major paradigm shift in newspaper publishing, setting an endpoint to the first phase of the early newspaper. Harris and Lee (1986: 107) comment on this change: Although the bulk of surviving copies of the eighteenth-century newspapers is prodigious, there is within them a certain uniformity in style and approach. It is possible to get one's bearings with reasonable ease. The publications of the nineteenth century are an altogether different matter and the sheer scale and range of material is alarming.

From this brief discussion it can be seen that the timeline of the early English newspaper spans approximately two hundred years, covering the period from the first corantos in 1620 to the Seditious Societies Act in 1799. This rough timeline provides the basis for the study of early newspapers, and suggests important institutional factors involved in the history of the press that need to be addressed in stylistic research. One major factor that emerges in this context is freedom versus censorship and control (cf., for example, Harris 1978). The role of censorship is of central importance throughout the whole period of early news publishing, but is particularly evident in publications printed before the lapse of the Licensing Act in 1695. It is likely that news publications of the seventeenth century reflect changing institutional conditions more immediately and directly in their style than publications following the lapse of the Licensing Act. The censorship factor is particularly obvious in two periods in which important news sections were not allowed to be addressed. In the first period, 1620 to 1641, home news was not admitted, while in the second period, between 1738 and 1768, parliamentary affairs were banned from printing. Government control was also exercised more subtly by subsidizing and authorizing newspapers such as, for example, the London Gazette, which was established in 1665. Supported papers were obviously government-friendly and reflected the opinions and issues approved by higher authorities. Papers like the London Gazette became opinion leaders for whole generations of publishers who tried to adopt a successful model. The political position of the publishers and the support they may have received is clearly reflected in the agenda and style of their publications.

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Following in the footsteps of others often meant that editors copied whole articles and sections from important news sources. Text re-use, or verbatim quoting, was a common strategy throughout the whole period of the early news publishing. The Copyright Act of 1709 did not improve the situation significantly. Although it gradually caused newspapers to specify their sources in short headings (e.g. From the London Gazette), many news editors continued their practice of verbatim quoting throughout the eighteenth century. The factor of text re-use is a relevant parameter in determining the ideology of a publication. Another factor reflecting government control is taxation on printed paper. Stamp Duty, which was introduced in 1712, brought down the range of publications and made it impossible for many to gain a foothold in the market. It can be assumed that increased market pressure affected the policy of publications regarding their advertisement intake as well as their choice of topics, layout, periodicity and language. A look at the historical timeline of the early newspaper points in various directions. It shows that during the two centuries of existence the press was largely influenced by legislation - either through censorship or heavy taxation. Changes in legislation had an immediate effect on the publishing world, forcing publishers to adjust to the new situation if they wanted to survive. These adjustments are likely to be reflected in the style of a publication. Although the development of the early newspaper is by no means linear, the following trends are clearly visible in the first two hundred years of news publishing: a gradual opening up of the news market, increasing professionalization and acknowledgement of the press, increasing diversification of publications, press freedom, and increasing market competition. The effects the constellation of these factors may have had on the style of news publications depend on the specific periods selected for analysis, but are likely to transpire in any diachronic study spanning several decades. It is also likely that the influence of these global historical trends on the style of news can be found through all publication types and text forms. The discussion implies that early newspaper style may be expected to become more assertive over the years, leading to more controversial editorial commentaries and more outspoken opinions as well as to a more dynamic and flexible discourse in general, customized to its readership. At the same time, the tone is likely to become bolder and more striking, following the increased market pressure and need for reader attention. Table 1.1 summarizes the major steps in the history of the early English newspaper. The first column indicates years and periods, while the second column lists the main events that occurred during these periods. 2.2 The Stylistic Dimension

While most of us would intuitively agree on a range of distinctive media and newspaper genres today (e.g. dailies, weeklies, magazines, TV news), we

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Table 1.1 Timeline of the early newspaper 1620-1641

Beginning of periodical printing Dutch-English corantos Newsbooks Licensing system Suppression of domestic affairs

1641-1655

Abolition of Star Chambers (1641): press freedom Domestic affairs admitted

1655-1662

Licensing system suppressing unofficial publications

1662-1695

Licensing Act State-controlled publications Proper newspapers (London Gazette)

1695-1709

Lapse of Licensing Act (1695) Abolition of censorship First daily newspaper (1702, Daily Courant)

1709-1738

Copyright Act (1709) First introduction of Stamp Duty (advertisement, paper and stamp duties, 1712)!

1738-1768

Suppression of parliamentary reporting

1768-1790

Right to report parliamentary affairs (1768) Right to report parliamentary proceedings (1771) First Sunday paper (British Gazette and Sunday Monitor, 1779) First daily evening paper (Star and Evening Advertiser, 1788)

1790-1799

Steam-driven hand press (1790)

1799-1807

Seditious Societies Act (registration of all presses and inclusion of printer's name on printed matter, 1799)

1807-1814

Foudrinier paper machine (1807) First steam press for The Times (1814)

1

Stamp duty was abolished in 1855.

would probably find it harder to do the same for media genres in the past. And while we intuitively interpret certain linguistic cues as signs of news discourse today, we may find these cues to be largely absent in its historical antecedents. In order to establish a feeling for the stylistic territory that one is moving into, one must first of all familiarize oneself with the basic properties of the discourse or genre that is studied. In historical stylistics, the evaluation of such properties is guided by factors that embed a genre or genre-specific discourse in the stylistic tradition of the time. For the historical stylistic enterprise, factors will be particularly

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relevant that position a genre in relation to accepted stylistic practices at the time studied. The analysis of these factors allows us to assess, in qualitative terms, the potential for 'deviant' stylistic behaviour. In the study of past stages of language, this potential can be reconstructed by looking at the genealogy of the genre under investigation, current stylistic debates or movements that influenced the genre, and prescriptive standards as suggested by grammar books or contemporary style guides. This procedure facilitates not only the establishment of universal and constitutive factors of a genre, but also provides the stylistic common ground needed to identify large areas of marked and unmarked style. In this section I will review the above factors with respect to the domain of news writing in early modern England. I will pay particular attention to the following points: news discourse and the tradition of history writing, general stylistic developments in history writing during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and controversial areas of style associated with history writing. The concept of history writing shaped news discourse in many ways. The decline of traditional historiography in the sixteenth century paralleled the emergence of the periodical press in the seventeenth century. Yet it can be argued that the early newspaper that resulted from this development was but an old and popular genre in a new and modern dress; it was basic ally a modern form of history writing. But unlike the newspaper, which appeared as a novelty in the seventeenth century, history writing had had a long tradition in Europe and was a most respected form of discourse. Historians, as Dean (1947: 1) put it, were 'applauded for the civilizing effect of their delightful instruction'. If we are to understand the early newspaper as a genre, we first have to look at its immediate predecessors and at the connections that exist with preceding forms of discourse. Medieval chronicles, when analysed linguistically, have a number of characteristics in common. They consisted of a variety of (often short) historian, little stories, which minimally illustrated a statement and were connected with one another in associative order. When reading histories from the Middle Ages one can see different text forms within this larger category which distinguish themselves through their rhetorical properties, such as sentences, allegories, parables, examples, and others. At the heart of all these forms, however, lay the quest for truth and the 'objective' event (Arbusow 1963: 109). The common core of the historia in the Middle Ages was the historical sense - sensus historicus- which reflected the (objective) event that was sup posed to have taken place. It was 'dans le texte, la "prima significatio"; chez le commentateur, la "prima expositio"; chez le lecteur, le "primus intellectus" ' (De Lubac 1959 : 425). The historical sense provided the basis for all further interpretation of a text; any hidden or implied meaning was traditionally classified according to three mystic or spiritual senses.7 Depending on the function of the individual story, either the literal or the mystic sense was emphasized. This basic twofold distinction between the truthful

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rendering of an event and the interpretation of the same is an essential characteristic of medieval history writing in general. While sharing these basic features, historiography in late medieval and early modern England had its own style, which is documented in seminal studies such as Krapp (1915), Dean (1947) or Fussner (1962). Dean (1947: 1-8) comments on the so-called conventional theory of history writing in the Tudor age which is 'conveniently discussed under six headings: (1) scope and subject matter, (2) purpose, (3) scholarship, (4) causation, (5) rhetoric, and (6) organization' (1947: 3). According to the theory, the scope of history had to be limited and its purpose was entirely practical. It was essential that the account was understood to be truthful. Creditworthiness was achieved by adducing evidence in the form of first-hand experience or oral testimonies. Outward causes and human motives had to be included in the narrative, together with a factual description of events. Rhetorical techniques were used to enhance the desired effect of histories. This was commonly done by putting the narrative into set speech to lend it dramatic intensity; lengthy digression, at the same time, had to be avoided. The style, similarly, reflected the purpose of the genre: it was supposed to be brief, clear and interesting. The narrative was usually arranged chronologically as long as this did not affect the logical unity of the text. One of the foremost theorists in history writing was Thomas Blundeville, who published his True Order of Wry ting and Reading Hystories in 1574 (Blundeville 1574). Blundeville based his treatise on the Dialogues of Francisco Patricio, 'a Methodicall writer of such matter, and partly out of a little written Treatyse, whych myne olde friende of good memorie, Accontio did not many yeares since present to your Honor in the Italian tongue' (Blundeville 1574: Epistle). The agenda that he drew for histories consisted of nine points, of which the deed, performed by a person, formed the core element. The account of the deed was further divided into eight critical parts which were to be included in the narrative: Hystories bee made of deedes done by a publique weale, or agaynst a publique weale, and such deedes, by eyther deedes of warre, of peace, or else of sedition and conspiracie. Agayne, every deede, be it private, or publique must needs be done by some person, for some occasion, in sometyme, and place, with meanes & order, and with instruments, all which circumstances are not to be forgotten of the writer, and specially those that have accompanyed and brought the deede to effect. Every deed that man doth, springeth eyther of some outwarde cause, as of force, or fortune, (which properlye ought not to be referred to man:) or else of some inward cause belonging to man: of which caues there be two, that is reason and appetite. (Blundeville 1574: A.ij.vi-B.j., emphasis added)

This agenda, Blundeville maintained, had universal character and applied to 'the principall deede' as well as to 'the meane and smallest deedes of all' (Blundeville 1574: B.j.i). The order in which these points occurred in the narrative was fixed as follows: doer, motives, intent, end, place, means, and

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instruments (Blundeville 1574: E. ij.v-Fj.i). In addition to these elements, the exact time of every reported detail of the event had to be indicated. The doers who ought to be recorded in chronicles were persons 'whose lyves have beene such as are to bee followed for their excellencie in vertue, or else to be fledde for their excellencie in vice' (Blundeville 1574: C.ij). Blundeville believed that the account of the deed in historical writing was identical to the deed as it happened in reality. The office of true historiographers, he claimed (Blundeville 1574: E.ij.v-vi), was 'to tell things as they were done without either augmenting or diminishing them, or swarving one iote from the truth. Whereby it appeareth that the historiographers ought not to fayne any Orations nor any other thing, but truely to reporte every such speach, and deede, even as it was spoken, or done'. The rise of modern experimental research in the seventeenth century brought an end to traditional historiography. With the new century, history writing took a new direction: in the sixteenth century and before, chroniclers and historiographers were encouraged to use rhetorical devices and style to manipulate the reader (Dean 1947: 7-8), which partly earned them their doubtful reputation as fabulists. Historiographers of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, were encouraged to relate only the bare facts and, above that, to relate these facts in as factual a style as possible. This new trend did not only apply to history writing but must be seen in the larger context of the modern scientific style which had arrived in England at the turn of the seventeenth century. While this general trend toward scientific language permeated through all levels of intellectual activity, it was nowhere as evident as in histories. Histories, together with epistolary genres, were often referred to as model genres of the new plain style (Trimpi 1962: 60ff.). The strong links between seventeenth-century plain style and histories appear in the many public debates on the issues of the time. Francis Bacon set the trend in the new century with his Advancement of Learning, which was published in 1605. With his triple distribution of human learning into natural history, civil history and ecclesiastical history, Bacon advocated a new definition of history which embraced both traditional writing and scientific prose. Bacon particularly stressed the practical value of histories in areas of 'Civil Knowledge' such as conversation, negotiation or business, and government and law (1605: 170). For this 'variable argument of negotiation and occasions' Bacon's preferred form of writing wa the 'discourse upon histories or examples' (1605: 178). At the same time, Bacon distrusted style and 'advocated a styleless Natural and Civil History, in which ornaments were "utterly dismissed" ' (Adolph 1968: 76). While Bacon's advancement set the ground for controversy, the importance of the history as a model genre for the new style was acknowledged by most theorists of the seventeenth century. Ben Jonson, who published his Discoveries in 1641, praised the genre for its closeness to truth: 'History aims at verisimilitude by stating facts, not in a hierarchy, but one by one, as they present themselves to the observer' (qtd. in Trimpi 1962: 31). And Thomas Sprat (1667: 35), founder member of the Royal Society for the Improvement of

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Natural Knowledge, also recognized the importance of Bacon to the Society in his History of the Royal Society, which was published in 1667. Sprat (1667: 413) argued that the most 'delightful Wit' had to be 'founded on such images which are generally known, and are able to bring a strong, and sensible impression on the mind'. The genres from which wit had been 'raised' in all times, Sprat (1667: 413) further claimed, were 'the Fables, and Religions of the Antients, the Civil Histories of all Countries, the Customs of Nations, the Bible, the Sciences, and Manners of Men, the several Arts of their hands, and the works of Nature'. Sprat (1667: 414) concluded that 'The Wit which is rais'd from Civil Histories, and the Customs of Countries, is solid and lasting: The Similitudes it affords are substantial, and equal to the minds of men, being drawn from themselves and their own actions'. The stylistic programme for history writing of the seventeenth century differed from the traditional genre by degrees, but not substantially. It was again Francis Bacon who first ventured to tackle the issue in his Aphorisms on the Composition of Histories in 1638. It is not surprising that the style he suggested was characterized by what it should avoid rather than by what it should include. The result was a 'lean' or 'zero' style without any rhetorical ornament. Bacon's (1638: 218-19) warnings to the historian were the following: First, then, let them dismiss antiquity and quotations, or the suffrages of authors, all disputes, controversies, and discordant opinions, and, lastly, all philological disquisitions [...] and as for the ornaments of language, and comparisons, and the whole treasury of eloquence, and the like puerilities, let them be wholly renounced [.. .].8 Secondly, there is not much real use in the lavish abundance of descriptions, painted representations of species, and collections of their varieties with which natural history is adorned. These trifling varieties are the mere sport and wantonness of nature, and approximate to merely individual characteristics, affording a pleasant digression, but a mean and superfluous sort of information as regards science. Thirdly, we must reject all superstitious narratives (I do not say prodigious, where faithful and probable accounts may be obtained, but superstitious), together with the experiment of natural magic. For we would not accustom philosophy in her infancy, whose very nurse is natural history, to old wives' tales.

These clear instructions were followed by suggestions about the content which was permitted. Bacon (1638: 222) considered three kinds of matters worthy of historical treatises: ' 1. the most common matters, such as one might think it superfluous to insert from their being so well known; 2. base, illiberal, and filthy matters [...] and also those which are trifling and puerile; lastly, such matters as appear too minute, as being of themselves of no use'. With regard to the credence that should be given to these matters, Bacon (1638: 223) distinguished between three types which had to be addressed in different ways:

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With regard to the credit due to the matters admitted into our history, they must either be certain, doubtful, or absolutely false. The first are to be simply stated, the second to be noted with a 'report states,' or 'they say,' or 'I have heard from a person worthy of credit,' and the like. [...] If, however, there be any instance of greater importance than the rest, either from its use, or the consequences dependent upon it, then the author should certainly be named, and not barely named, but some notice should be taken as to whether he merely heard or copied it [...] or rather affirmed it of his own knowledge, and also whether it were a matter within his own time or before it, or whether such as if true must necessarily have been witnessed by many; or, lastly, whether the author were vain and trifling, or steady and accurate, and the like points, which give weight to testimony. Lastly, those matters which are false, and yet have been much repeated and discussed, such as have gained ground by the lapse of ages, partly owing to neglect, partly to their being used as poetical comparisons [...] all these ought not to be silently rejected, expressly proscribed, that they may never trouble science more. As a result of this minimalist programme Bacon (1638: 219) had to admit that 'this chastened and precise style must afford less pleasure both to the reader and to the author'. This comment was not unusual at the time. Within the larger framework of seventeenth-century thought, the barrenness and dullness that was attributed to modern history writing corresponded to the faults that were identified for the so-called plain style (Trimpi 1962:56). In the seventeenth century the ancient Ciceronian-Senecan controversy flared up again between followers of stylistic simplicity and supporters of an oratorically ornate style. This controversy was reflected in die opinions writers had on the style of historians (Trimpi 1962: 28). Bacon was the main engineer of this movement in the seventeenth century. By promoting a new philosophy of science which 'found in the very nature of its material a manner of expression characterized by the lack of literary qualities' (Jones 1951: 105), Bacon lent this debate a new momentum which differed from traditional anti-Ciceronianism.9 The early English newspaper can be located at the edge of these debates and controversies. Unlike histories, newspapers were neither in the focus of stylistic attention nor exposed to the same intellectual scrutiny. News writers were by no means attributed with as honourable intentions as their fellow historians, and news publications were often the cause of public grievance and annoyance. And yet, the style in early newspapers seems to reflect perfectly the same trends and tendencies as found in their mother genre, history-writing. And even if newspaper editors often had a more than doubtful reputation, most of them took their business seriously and believed that what and how they wrote was truthful and relevant to a wider audience.10 But newspapers were exposed to further constraints: while newspaper editors enjoyed greater freedom with regard to style, they had far less time (and support) to edit the news before publication. The prose of seventeenth-century histories may have been simple, but it was consciously

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so. Newspapers were always produced under severe constraints on time and money. The little time editors had to invest in editing their articles resulted in a 'styleless' (in Bacon's sense), functional prose which often communicated only what was necessary for the message to be understood by the reader. Wit or stylistic beauty, if present at all, came second. Newspaper language carried all the features Aurner (1923) found in Caxton two hundred years before the first newspaper was printed: a rudimentary, formless and careless prose with WH-clauses after full stops, no fixed punctuation system, long and cumbrous sentences, lack of main clauses in sentences, and similar characteristics. Thus, the early newspaper moved along several stylistic dimensions: it can be located somewhere on the continuum between consciously laboured simplicity, minimalist factuality, and careless communication. Moreover, the early newspaper carried many aspects of the stylistic tradition inherited from its mother genre, ranging from similarities in content and style to the organization of the narrative. All in all, this leaves the researcher with an interesting combination to study: the standard article in early newspapers is expected to be a rather short, functional and possibly abrupt text which communicates a 'true' event in a minimal way. The event that is narrated includes a variety of standard parameters such as the persons involved, the purpose, means, and other factors commonly used in the description of historical events. The writer is marked by his or her absence from the text, and commentaries or background information are kept to a minimum. Rhetoric and stylistic ornament are avoided or not heeded; there may be mistakes and clumsy expressions. The order in which individual articles are joined together tends to be associative or random. The vocabulary and stylistic repertoire are expected to be limited and to be repeated throughout the paper. One may also assume that different news publications from the same time or place resemble one another in structure and organization. If we try to identify areas of marked style, then we could mention the other end of the spectrum: witty and elegant discourse, (persuasive) argumentation, digression, exaggeration, evaluation and commentaries, stance of the author/editor, clear organization of text and articles, careful editing, illustrations, and other areas related to stylistic editing. Some of these areas such as, for example, witty and elegant discourse, persuasion, digression, commentaries or political stance, represented clear faults of the stylistic conventions mentioned above, prompting public criticism or reprimand and, in extreme cases, legal action. Other features such as clearer organization of texts or careful editing earned newspaper editors praise, as they reflected their endeavour to improve the quality of the prints. Seen diachronically, the stylistic 'faults' are expected to become less noticeable over the years as they are gradually accepted as features of the new discourse. It is likely that this development had already started in the eighteenth century when newspaper editors began to feel the economic realities of having to sell a product to the public. Increasing market pressures

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demanded from editors a more aggressive approach to publishing if they wanted to survive in a competitive environment. Hence, they were forced, within the bounds of acceptability, to write in a more forward style in order to make their voice heard. Likewise, the pressure on the editors to publish at shorter intervals in the eighteenth century must have affected the style and content of the papers. The editors were no longer in the privileged position of waiting until something important happened, but they were forced to go and find (or invent) events that they thought would be of interest to the public, or to present small events in such a way as would make them appear more important (cf. alsojucker 2005). The factors mentioned in this section are essential to the stylistic investigation of early news discourse in that they indicate important stylistic trends and possible areas of diachronic developments. The main stylistic divide in early newspapers can be found in followers or promoters of a traditional style and 'faulty' papers which deviated in some ways from traditional reporting. 2.3 The Physical Dimension

Historical genres, finally, are defined by the boundaries of the text sources, that is, the hard-copy materials that are available in libraries, bookshops or museums. In the case of early newspapers, but also in most other historical genres, the very eclectic nature of extant collections widens the gap between intended study and the scope offered by the sources. Many text sources are poorly and unsystematically documented. While research is ideally guided by historical and stylistic considerations, it is the hard-copy version that finally determines the viability of a project idea. While text resources for the study of current linguistic trends are theoretically infinite, historical research is determined by a body of texts that has been preserved and handed down to us. Preservation normally takes the form of collecting text materials and grouping them according to textual or functional criteria. The assessment of library holdings is an important step in the preparation of a historical stylistic project as it contributes to (and reflects) the perception of 'genre' in a society. For the historical stylistician, the critical evaluation of methods pertaining to collecting and cataloguing text documents is of particular relevance. Since collections are often the result of obsolete classification standards and historical circumstances (e.g. acquisitions) that lead to the grouping of specific texts, one-genre collections can be highly misleading in stylistic analysis. Part of historical stylistic research, therefore, is to reconstruct the history, classification concept and consistency of one-genre collections and to outline problem areas arising from the use of these collections. I will elaborate on this issue in some more detail on the following pages. Early modern English news publications have been preserved in various collections in major libraries throughout Great Britain, but the most significant holdings are kept in the British Library in London. There are three

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major pre-nineteenth century news resources available in London and Oxford: the Thomason Tracts and the Burney-Nichols libraries. Taken together, they form the largest collections of early London news periodicals in the world. The only true rivals to the Burney-Nichols collection in terms of size and scope are the so-called Thomason Tracts, which consist of more than 20,000 different items published between 1640 and 1661 and can be viewed either on microfilm or photocopies in the Rare Books Reading Room of the British Library. A general catalogue to the complete collection was edited in two volumes by G. K. Fortescue in 1908, which can be found on the open shelves at St Pancras. The catalogue of the microfilm edition is also available at St Pancras Rare Books as well as in the Humanities Reading Room. The preface to volume I of the Fortescue catalogue (1908: iii-xxv) provides useful information and facts about the collection. In 1640, George Thomason, bookseller and publisher, began to collect systematically 'ever)' book, pamphlet and newspaper issued in London and as many as he could obtain from the provinces abroad' (v). Following his short imprisonment and after enquiries in relation to the conspiracy known as the 'Love-Plot' in the early 1650s, Thomason sent the whole collection to 'the care of Dr Barlow, at Bodleian, and obtained from him the document [...] which could be produced to prove that a sale had actually taken place and might thus prevent the confiscation of his treasure' (x). However, after Thomason's death it took almost one hundred years before the collection was finally presented to the British Museum in 1761. The Fortescue catalogue is divided into three sections (1908: xxiv-xxv): The first section consists of a chronological list of books, pamphlets and manuscripts classified according to the dates of the events they record. The second section presents newspapers in chronological order according to the year and month of their issue. The third section consists of a tide and name index. In his introduction to the collection, Fortescue refers to Florence Madan who in 1897 wrote an article for Bibliographica in which he presented first estimates of the complete Thomason holdings (302-08). It may be interesting to note that no information is given by Madan as to which criteria were used to distinguish between different publication types. All publications are generally referred to as tracts published in different formats. In total, Madan (1897: 303-4) counted 882 volumes of small quartos, 147 volumes of large quartos, 905 volumes of octavos, 24 volumes of folio sheets and 25 volumes of folio acts. The only differentiation Madan makes is between manuscripts and prints. Madan counted a total of 73 manuscripts and 22,761 prints. This loose categorization of the material comes near to Thomason's own classification, which Fortescue (1908: xxiv) refers to as an 'unfortunate division'. In terms of estimates, Fortescue (1908: x-xi) deviates from Madan due to differences in calculation. Fortescue counts each book or pamphlet as one

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item if published on the same date, irrespective of number of volumes or parts. If parts are published separately, however, each part is counted as a separate publication. Fortescue (1908: xx-xxi) further distinguishes between different publication types such as pamphlets (14,942), newspapers (7,216) and manuscripts (97), leading to a total of 22,255 pieces in 2,008 volumes, arranged chronologically in the catalogue. The Burney collection in its entirety is accessible to the reader through a four-volume photostat copy of the original manuscript Burney Collection Catalogue of Newspapers on the open shelves in the Rare Books Reading Room of the British Library. The seventeenth-century parts of the Burney Collection are mostly covered by the Nelson and Seccombe (1987) Catalogue of Early News Periodicals, which contains details of the definite library holdings of serials printed in England, Scotland, Ireland, and British America for the seventeenth century. The eighteenth-century part of the Burney Collection, however, has not been reliably indexed and described so that access to Burney is incomplete and difficult.11 The Nichols Collection is better accessible through Milford and Sutherland (1936), which can be found on the open shelves in the Rare Books Reading Room. It provides a complete list of items from the Nichols periodicals held at the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Parts of Burney and Nichols are available for consultation on microfilm. The microfilmed parts of the Burney-Nichols collection, which were to form Early English Newspapers (EEN), are indexed in Cox and Budeit (1983). This catalogue lists all the titles in the microfilm set and links them to reel numbers. In 1818 the British Museum acquired the library of Dr Charles Burney and, with it, one of the largest newspaper collections that was ever formed. Dr Charles Burney Jr (1757-1817) was the son of Dr Charles Burney (17261814), a famous critic and music historian (see Lonsdale 1965).12 Charles Burney Jr became known as a classical critic around 1783, but today may be better known for the vast library of books and periodicals he accumulated during the last years of his life. The Dictionary of National Biography record of Burney (Goodwin 1886: 419) reports that the library was purchased for £13,500 shortly after Burney's death by order of the House of Commons, and was subsequently deposited in the British Museum. It consisted of five parts as classified by the Committee of the House of Commons: 1. The printed books numbered from 13,000 to 14,000, and consisted mostly of classical editions bought by Burney at sales beginning with that of the Pinelli collection. [...] The editions of the leading classics, especially the Greek tragedians, exceeded in number those in the British Museum before the accession of the former. 2. The manuscripts included the Townley Homer, considered to be of the thirteenth century, and valued by the commissioners at 1,0001.; and two manuscripts of the Greek orators assigned respectively to the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. 3. A collection of newspapers from 1603. 4. A collection of from 300 to 400 volumes in quarto, containing materials for a history of the stage. 5. Theatrical prints from the time of Elizabeth.

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A few years before the acquisition of the Burney collection, in 1812, the British Museum received an offer to purchase the newspaper collection of John Nichols.13 Although the offer was turned down, the trustees accepted Nichol's proposal to fill gaps in the collection of gazettes (Harris 1998: 35). Fifty years later, in 1865, the Bodleian Library eventually purchased the complete collection, which consisted of 96 volumes of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century London periodicals. The collection was to supplement a gift made earlier by the Rev. F. W. Hope of around 1,300 volumes of eighteenth-century periodicals, which had been collected by his father John Thomas Hope. The Nichols-Hope collection 'set the Bodleian Library on an entirely new footing' (Craster 1981: 77) and today accounts for the largest part of the library's pre-nineteenth-century newspaper holdings. Together with the smaller collections by Anthony Wood and Elias Ashmole, the Bodleian Library holds a collection 'that is second in importance only to that of the British Museum' (Craster 1981: 280). In the 1980s, the attempt was made to combine Burney and Nichols on microfilm under the name of the Early English Newspaper Microfilms Collection (EEN). The detailed list of photocopied newspaper tides contained in EEN along with their corresponding reel numbers is recorded in a booklet shelved both in the Newspaper Library at Colindale and in the main building at St Pancras (Cox and Budeit 1983). While the idea behind the formation of EEN was that each of the two collections would fill in the gaps of the other (Cox and Budeit 1983: v), a manually attached note on the book-cover informs the user that only selected items from the Burney Collection were filmed. The fragmented nature of EEN is also highlighted by Nelson and Seccombe (1987: viii) who, in the preface to their catalogue, find that '[t]he newspapers have been well filmed, but many issues and tides have been omitted from the published version. Some tides appear in scattered fragments, while others are mixed together'. It appears that the project was suddenly stopped and, unfortunately, never finished. In total, the microfilmed EEN set contains approximately 635 different newspaper tides, about two-thirds of which date from the seventeenth century. The set begins with the Dutch corantos from the 1620s and ends in around 1800. Like the Thomason Tracts, the Burney-Nichols collection consists of highly heterogeneous materials so that the terms 'periodical' or 'newspaper' must be understood in a liberal sense. The British-Union Catalogue of Periodicals (1968: x) offers the following definition of periodical, which seems to apply to the contents of Burney and Nichols as well: It includes (a) all magazines, journals, reviews and the other publications commonly regarded as periodicals by the ordinary reader; (b) all the Acta, Mitteilungen, Proceedings, Transactions, etc., of academies, universities, societies and institutions of all kinds; (c) periodical reports of all kinds of organizations which embody the results of research into any subject; (d) year-books and other annual publications; (e) miscellaneous publications, including series, issued by universities, societies and similar institutions.

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Nelson and Seccombe (1987: ix-x) follow the British-Union Catalogue in their wide interpretation of the terms 'periodical' or 'serial'. They list several criteria for inclusion of a publication in their catalogue, one of which is the presence of a serial number, even if the serial's individual numbers are undated and irregularly issued or if only one number is extant. If unnumbered, serials would at least have to be issued within regular intervals of less than a year. They find that monthlies in particular tend to be unnumbered, although they may carry a dateline. In that case, they may simply be unnumbered reprints of a serially issued item. Alternatively, they may contain a statement of intention to publish periodically or be one item in an unnumbered series of identically or similarly tided items (e.g. the numerous parliamentary diurnals). What all three collections presented in this section have in common is their wide and uneven range of materials and the problems librarians encountered in classifying and indexing them. This means for compilers of a corpus that they have to solve these problems for their particular project largely without being able to rely on previous indexing and classification attempts. The initial problems that need to be solved by researchers concern availability, physical quality and classification of the materials selected for study. If the method of principled sourcing is adopted in which specific publications are sampled in strict intervals, the success of the sampling depends on the availability of the publications on the particular day/month/year. The nature of the newspaper collections generally speaks against such a method, and it is likely that compilers have to switch to alternative dates because, on the dates chosen, no publication will be available. A similar problem exists for the quality of the copies. Relevant passages or sections within one issue may be barely legible, which means that there is a need for flexibility when selecting texts for the corpus. Classification of materials seems to be the most complex issue which should be thoroughly examined prior to deciding on the types of publications to be included in a corpus. As can be seen from the introduction above, the librarians who indexed the collections did not always agree on a common strategy in classifying different publication types. This may be due to the fact that differences between publication types in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were not as distinct as they may be today. Particular problems that may arise for the researcher, for example, are changes in editorship and changes in newspaper titles or mastheads. Since newspapers were often produced as one-man businesses, the position of editor was far more important than today. This means that changes in editorship often resulted in an entirely new publication, even if the newspaper kept its original title. In newspaper collections, however, editions are generally classified as belonging to one publication if they carry the same title. A change of the publication title tends to be seen to indicate the boundary between two publications even if the two publications were edited by the same hand. While this may be appropriate for library indexing, it may be suggested

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that, for research purposes, continuous editorship should be rated more important than a change in publication title, as continuous editorship guarantees stylistic consistency. One might further wonder whether some of the collected materials such as minutes by societies or annual reports can be regarded as news publications at all. The only aspect these parts of the collections share with proper news publications is the fact that they appeared periodically. Although some of the text types in these boundary publications also occurred in newspapers (e.g. minutes, proceedings), and thus broadly fall into the domain of news discourse as a particular text type or register, they do not by any means qualify on their own as newspapers, nor as news magazines or any other regularly published journal. They do not potentially address a wide reading public but only a small exclusive audience. Unfortunately, the accompanying guidelines to the collections do not offer much help in distinguishing different items. For the linguist, this means that the collections will have to be accessed through newspaper histories. Histories contain valuable information about many news publications in the collections, thus helping researchers cutting through the bulk of paper and indices. The downside of working with histories is that they leave the researcher with a pre-selected body of texts that presents, at best, a small glimpse into the universe of early mass media. 3 Corpus-Linguistic Considerations In section 1.2 of this chapter, I introduced genre-specific factors relevant to the stylistic analysis of early news publications by analysing the broad historical and stylistic background of news publishing in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as well as the nature and condition of major newspaper collections available in newspaper libraries. The following discussion shifts the perspective to machine-readable newspaper corpora in general, with the aim of assessing the overall suitability of corpus linguistics in historical stylistic studies. For this purpose, I will examine the compilation criteria and approaches to text classification adopted in three historical news corpora, notably the Lampeter Corpus, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, and the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus. Based on these three corpora, I intend to review corpus design criteria, elicit differences and overlaps in set-up, and offer suggestions for future research. In this context, the question of the general usefulness of diachronic media corpora for text linguistic and stylistic analysis will be addressed. When, for example, can we speak of a sufficiently homogenous set of data that allows for (text) linguistic generalizations? While no conclusive answer can be given in theory, this question gives rise to considerations on at least three practical levels: timeline, sample size, and sourcing/classification of materials. These three levels are invariably interconnected and, although ultimately depending on the goal of the researcher, they are to some extent subject to general constraints dictated by the genre.

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One-genre corpora, as opposed to multi-genre corpora, such as, for example, the Helsinki Corpus (cf. Rissanen et al. 1993; Kyto 1996), concentrate on a coherent body of texts that share some relevant constitutive factors. If the individual samples of a corpus do not take adequate account of the properties of the genre, the whole corpus loses force as a research tool for the study of a particular genre. The corpus linguistic approach to news discourse, therefore, requires and presupposes reviewing carefully and critically the very conventions under which a genre is traditionally examined. I will evaluate these constraints in sections 3.1 to 3.4 and emphasize the most effective combination of factors for diachronic studies of early news discourse. The focus will be placed on two areas, i.e. problems of genreconsistency from a synchronic and diachronic perspective, and the consequences these problems may have for the compilation and classification of news corpora. 3.1 Time Parameters The first point that will be addressed is the general timeline that is suitable for corpus linguistic investigation of early news publications. The three corpora reviewed here clearly differ in the periods they cover: the earliest of the three corpora is the Lampeter Corpus (1640-1740), starting twenty years before the first publication of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (1665—1791) and sixty years before the first record in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus (1700-2000). Unlike the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, the Lampeter Corpus includes criteria other than genre-specific ones to mark the start/end date of the period under consideration. The compilers of Lampeter resorted to important dates in history to delimit the corpus. The start date (1640) correlates with the beginning of the Civil War, while the end date (1740) was chosen to mark the end of early modern England before the beginning of industrialization (see Claridge 2003). The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, on the other hand, use genre-related constraints, but do so in different ways. The starting year in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus coincides with what is believed to have been the publication of the first newspaper proper, the London Gazette (1665), while the Rostock Newspaper Corpus takes an important political event, the repeal of the Newspaper Licensing Act of 1695, as the starting point for the compilation (Schneider 2002a: 52). The same applies to the final years of the corpora: while the Lampeter Corpus takes a historical development (i.e. the beginning of industrialization in the 1740s) as indicative of an immediate change in newspaper publishing, the final year in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus coincides with the end of the eighteenth century, which is commonly referred to as the end of the period of the Early English Newspaper. The Rostock Newspaper Corpus is a special case as its time samples continue to the present day.

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With regard to the overall timeline of the three corpora, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus covers significantly more ground than the other corpora. Unlike the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and the Lampeter Corpus, which span approximately one hundred years of news publishing, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus was designed for large-scale diachronic study of newspapers from 1700 to the present day. The comparison of time parameters in the three corpora shows that the compilers had different research questions in mind while sampling their materials. The Rostock Newspaper Corpus, for instance, seems to lend itself to comparative analysis of early and modern newspaper style; the Lampeter Corpus was likewise designed to meet the needs of both historians and linguists, and is thus suited to the investigation of news published in a historically relevant and self-contained period of time. The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus seems to be suitable for an analysis of the early English newspaper over different historical periods in terms of its stylistic consistency as a genre. Put differently, the Lampeter Corpus seems to raise the question: How are certain historical events reflected in the media of the times? The compilers of the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, on the other hand, try to find answers to the question: What have been the main stages in the development of the newspaper to the present day? The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus, finally, may respond to the question: If we speak of the Early English Newspaper as a phenomenon of a particular period in the history of the press, can we equally speak of a stylistically consistent body of texts? The three corpora are similar in that they are ideally used for the study of general linguistic phenomena relevant to longer time periods in early news publishing. These can be broad textual and stylistic factors that reflect general properties of the genre. None of the corpora, however, seems particularly suited to linguistic research bound to specific events and historical contexts (e.g. the French Revolution or the Restoration period). For the purpose of such specific historical-philological studies, shorter, more focused, timeframes would be more appropriate (see, for example, Brownlees 1999, who examines corantos and newsbooks published between 1620 and 1641). Ideally, a corpus of early news publications should be large enough to be indicative of broad trends as well as specific developments over time. The problem with corpora covering long periods of time lies in the individual time samples of each synchronic stage and the time intervals between them. It is practically impossible to take adequate account of all the nuances and subtle historical stages that lie between the start and end date of such a corpus. This, in turn, affects the scope of a possible linguistic study. It would be naive to assume that any of the three corpora provides a representative and balanced historical picture of the early English newspaper or of news discourse in general. These corpora offer, at best, very selective glimpses into a highly complex and dynamic linguistic system. Care must therefore be taken in the interpretation of statistical results, no

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matter how unambiguous they may look on paper. It is important that the time samples selected for stylistic analysis are contextualized historically and brought into accord with the general aim of the study. Without this previous evaluation, corpus linguistic studies of historical news corpora are prone to fail. A flexible and modular approach to selecting time samples is strongly suggested in the context of the three corpora analysed. Not all the samples in a corpus always have to or should be chosen for a particular analysis, even if the aim of the study is to cover the whole period represented by that corpus. It is the role of the analyst to adapt the given or suggested timeline of a corpus and 'cut and paste' as deemed appropriate for the particular project that is planned. Of course, the suitability of a time sample further depends on its size and its particular composition. 3.2 Corpus Dimensions The second problem that needs to be addressed in the context of corpusbased historical stylistics pertains to the optimal size of diachronic samples. In other words, we need to ask ourselves how much primary text is needed to ensure that a corpus is maximally representative for the period it covers. It is obvious that corpus size and research question go hand in hand in the compilation of a corpus: if the purpose of a sample, for instance, is to find evidence of the existence and development of a single phenomenon in news discourse, a relatively small collection might be sufficient for the analysis. If, however, the general purpose of a collection is to offer sufficient data for the analysis of linguistic change on a broader (e.g. textual, stylistic) level and over a longer period, much more primary text will be needed. As was seen in the previous section, the three corpora in comparison were basically compiled with larger research aims in mind; i.e. they were designed for the stylistic analysis of a particular genre or text type. Thus, the samples are expected to be representative of the genre in the years they cover. Schmied (1994: 81) confirms this assumption when he calls the Lampeter Corpus a corpus for 'research into historical socio-linguistic variation'. Fries and Schneider (2000: 3) similarly introduce the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus as a collection 'designed to enable users to study the newspaper language of the whole period, to make comparisons of the language of different newspapers within the period, to study the newspaper language of the period in comparison with other 17th- and 18th-century and modern newspaper language'. As a general rule, we may argue that the greater the complexity of the planned analysis, the larger the sample should be. In fact, large text samples are normally expected to be more reliable than small corpora, regardless of the type of study planned. It can be further assumed that continuous sampling with minimal interruption in the timeline is likely to yield more accurate and finely-grained results than samples selected at longer intervals. Continuity is more accurate because in diachronic study one always

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compares different states of the same type of text over time. If the distance between two texts is very long (e.g. one hundred years or more), we run the risk of comparing two different types of texts rather than different instances of the same type. Moreover, the analysis of text samples at long time intervals may lead to starkly contrasting results which could easily be found without substantial keying, annotating and processing. It may therefore be appropriate (and faster) in some cases not to use the corpus-linguistic method at all. If we wish to assess the representativeness of the three newspaper corpora, we must therefore look at the degree of discontinuity and distance between the time samples in relation to the overall period to be analysed and the size of the samples and corpus in relation to overall media output, library holdings and other corpora. If we look at the distance between the time samples in relation to the overall period, we can see that all three corpora use fixed time intervals between their start and end years if at all possible, which makes such a comparison relatively easy. The distance between two time samples is potentially the longest in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, which is divided into thirty-year or even forty-year intervals (1700,1730, 1760, 1800, etc.). In the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and, to some extent, in the Lampeter Corpus ten-year intervals between the samples were used. However, the intervals had to be adjusted if no or insufficient materials were available for one particular year. For example, the reason why no entry is found in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus in 1671 is because the early English newspaper collections show no records for this year at all. The compilers were therefore forced to switch to different years. Thus, it seems that any fixed division of news corpora into periods other than the natural periodicity of the publications seems arbitrary. However, if we assume that minimal interruption in the timeline ultimately guarantees more reliable results, then ten-year or shorter intervals may be better suited to the overall design purpose of news corpora than thirty or even forty years. The second point that must be addressed in this discussion is the absolute and relative sample and corpus size, respectively. For an exact evaluation of absolute corpus size, one would need precise figures of the overall output of publications throughout the whole period in question. However, information on news production is scarce and incomplete. We may find relatively precise and detailed information on some publications, while other newspapers are not mentioned at all or appear only in footnotes. It is obvious, however, that in absolute terms the quantity of newspapers that has been made available in digitalized form is marginal. Moreover, only a small proportion of news publications has been preserved in the existing library collections. In comparison with these collections, the three corpora represent a tiny text sample of the total of newspapers available in library shelves and archives. With approximately 600,000 words, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus is the smallest corpus of the three, followed by the Lampeter Corpus (1.1 million

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words) and the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (1.6 million words). The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and the Lampeter Corpus are similar in that they were both divided into successive ten-year intervals of roughly equal size (c. 100,000-150,000 words for each year included), while the Rostock Newspaper Corpus includes fixed 60,000 word samples, compiled at much larger intervals. In relation to the overall production of news, the Lampeter Corpus seems to be the most consistent and representative collection of texts, as the period it covers shows the smallest total output of news and the slightest increase in printed pamphlets. The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and, more significantly, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus share the problem of increasing newspaper production and circulation in their respective periods, which affects the representativeness of some of the time samples. In the case of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus, 100,000 words in 1791 is a much smaller sample relatively speaking than the same number of words one hundred years earlier. This discrepancy is greatest in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, where 60,000 words may be regarded as acceptable for 1700 but a tiny figure for the year 2000. Thus, the analysis of corpus size shows that although size must primarily be seen in relation to the research question the specific representativeness of time samples can be determined on the basis of the temporal distance that lies between them. The shorter the temporal distance between two samples and the larger their size, the more representative the corpus is likely to become. For example, breaking a corpus into ten samples of 60,000 words over a period of 300 years drastically reduces the amount and complexity of features that can be compared. From this perspective, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus is the least representative corpus. The Zurich English Newspaper Corpus and the Lampeter Corpus, on the other hand, are comparable to each other in terms of size and structure. With regard to size, both corpora seem to be at least partly suitable for linguistic generalizations concerning development and change of some general stylistic factors. The stylistic factors which can be studied diachronically with these corpora must pertain to the genre and be universal in nature. Thus, stylistic areas that might be suggested for corpus linguistic research include the general layout of the publications, recurrent sections or textual structures, and forms of stylistic editing, so long as they reflect general tendencies in news discourse. 3.3 Corpus Sources

The last major task in preparing corpus-based stylistic research is the sourcing of material for study. Although the sourcing of material for a corpus largely depends on the aim of the project, there are general considerations that will be relevant to all research projects dealing with this particular type of discourse. These considerations will need to be made independent of historical considerations or decisions about the size of the corpus used for

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the intended study. In the following, I will first analyse the sourcing and text classification criteria applied by the compilers of the diree corpora introduced above, and then draw conclusions about the suitability of these sources for stylistic research. If we compare the general selection criteria used for the three newspaper corpora, we can see that the compilers of the Lampeter Corpus concentrated on what they defined as tracts and pamphlets. Their sampling method, however, was surprisingly simple: the authors relied on definitions of the terms 'pamphlet' and 'tract' taken from OED (1992). But the definitions in OED are so vague that Siemund and Claridge (1997: 63) have to admit that [a]s the definitions of 'pamphlet' and 'tract' show, the Lampeter Corpus cannot be subsumed under a single text type or genre. Texts vary in format, length, argument structure, function and topic, and to arrange them under a single genre category would be as inadequate as to attribute a single text type to books. Tracts, like books, are a production type or publication form rather than a genre or text type.

It is obvious that this argumentation is circular and brings us back to the initial problem of breaking very large categories into smaller, manageable units. However, insofar as production type and publication form refer to the fact that most of diese pamphlets and tracts were one-off publications, as against periodically published papers, the Lampeter Corpus can be distinguished from other types of news publications. Based on this preliminary classification, the compilers of the Lampeter Corpus selected publications which covered broad thematic fields or domains typically found in this discourse, such as Religion, Politics, Economy/ Trade, Science, Law and Miscellaneous (Schmied and Claridge 1997). These domains are equally represented in each decade of the corpus. In addition to these thematic criteria, the pamphlets had to satisfy some sociolinguistic constraints. Anonymous publications, although frequent at the time, were not considered for selection, nor were celebrities or people of public importance, since their style could be studied separately in their literary works (Siemund and Claridge 1997: 63-4). The resulting machine-readable collection was to represent 'a "principled" [...] effort to mirror the range of publications at the time' (Siemund and Claridge 1997: 62). The idea of a principled corpus of news publications and the systematicity with which this was done in the Lampeter Corpus certainly merits praise. At the same time, one can see problems in the rigid application of these sourcing criteria over the period considered. This has to do, first of all, with the timeline of the corpus. While the intention may have been to obtain a homogeneous sample of texts, at least as the publication form is concerned, the line between periodical and one-off publications is not always easy to draw, especially in the early parts of the corpus. As established in section 2.3, publication titles often changed even if the publications were written by the same authors. In the seventeenth century, different

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publications which could clearly be attributed to one source (author or editor) were not always printed under the same title (as is the case with, for example, The Times or the London Gazette}; the tide often varied depending on current affairs. The idea that a publication should represent a consistent identity came only much later in the century. Moreover, sequential numbering was only standardized in the second half of the seventeenth century, but it took some time until it became an established feature of the press. The situation is different in the eighteenth century where the consistent use of one single title for a publication was common practice. If an editor or author did otherwise, it was clearly done by choice. The choice in publication format also implied choosing a specific register. One-off pamphlets served as a platform for specific purposes (expressing opinions) and were not intended to convince their audience by a professional news service. In other words, the one-off criterion has different meanings for the different periods investigated. In the seventeenth century, some of these pamphlets were regular, more often irregular, commentaries made by single authors, similar to many news publications that were started on a weekly or twice-weekly basis. The audiences of the two sheets may have been different (national vs regional), but the general publication form was the same. In the eighteenth century, on the other hand, when periodicity became an important issue, pamphlets were used to mark a contrast, to discuss matters that would not have been printed in dailies or thrice-weeklies. It does not seem that the specific problems of genre-consistency were taken into consideration in the sourcing of the Lampeter Corpus. It may be worth noting in this context that although Schmied and Claridge (1997: 126) do identify problems of changing genre conventions for the various sub-domains of their pamphlets, they do not mention the same problem for the population as a whole. The argument made by Schmied and Claridge that they see an advantage in the 'fuzzy edges' (1997: 120) of pamphlets sounds more like an excuse for not facing the deeper problems of text classification. Schmied (1994: 82) admits: 'Thus the Lampeter Corpus is NOT really a single-genre corpus, because the words "tracts" or "pamphlets" do not refer to one genre, but cover a wider range of what would be considered under the formal category of "letter" '. The same applies to the criteria they use to classify texts internally. They stress the importance of the communicative purpose for the classification of domains but mention difficulties in defining 'functional types' (1997: 128). Unfortunately, the problem is only suggested but not solved (see also Claridge 2000: 17 [footnote]). The compilers of the Rostock Newspaper Corpus made a similar attempt at text sampling in that the potential sources were first cut down to publications containing news reports (Schneider 2002a: 52). Following on from this, further criteria were added, such as the importance of each publication in its time, the period of existence, and market orientation (Schneider 2002a: 56f.). Unlike the Lampeter Corpus, however, the Rostock Newspaper Corpus

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consists of news sections rather than complete texts, and uses different factors to obtain a representative spread of data. While the importance of a publication and its period of existence are relevant factors, the division of complete texts into sections, as done in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus, is problematic. Classification prior to analysis can only be recommended if the criteria are objectively verifiable and consistent throughout the period under consideration. The criteria, however, are unclear in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus. According to Schneider's definition of 'news report' (2002a: 52), for example, death notices might have to be classified as news, since they announce (or report) 'recent events or occurrences, brought or coming to one as new information' (OED quoted in Schneider 2002a: 52). It is unlikely, though, that the compilers counted common death notices under the heading of news reports. At the same time, one wonders what one might have done with death notices that reported, for example, the decease of a king. The same problem exists with the criterion of syntactic completeness (Schneider 2002a: 53), which was introduced to distinguish news reports from other text types, such as advertisements or announcements. No details are given that would support the claim that news reports were more complete than advertisements. Similarly, the classification of early news publications into fixed categories such as up- and down-market papers (Schneider 2002a: 56) is difficult to maintain. It is indeed questionable whether such a clearly differentiated market existed at all at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Thus, the Lampeter Corpus and the Rostock Newspaper Corpus show similar problems of text selection in their design. It seems that in both corpora the design criteria for sourcing did not take full account of the complexity and diversity of the nature of the genre. As a consequence, it is up to future research to find out whether the Lampeter Corpus really consists of pamphlets, and to define their boundaries, or to assess the degree of market differentiation in the early press. Reservations also apply to the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus, which started as a small-scale linguistic research project in the early 1990s. The project gradually expanded into the largest machine-readable collection of pre-nineteenth-century London newspapers. The corpus is distinguished by its continuous growth over more than ten years. What makes it different from the two other corpora is the fact that it was originally designed as a dynamic newspaper corpus to which material could be added at any stage (Fries and Schneider 2000: 7). No systematic sourcing method seems to have been used for the compilation of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus except for the factors of availability, legibility (see Fries and Schneider 2000: 7) and, to some extent, text diversity. However, the last criterion must have been entirely subjective as it cannot be ascertained why certain publications were selected for inclusion and others were rejected. Likewise, the decisions that were made about the number of editions selected for individual publications

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probably depended on criteria that cannot be reconstructed in detail. The lack of a clear design concept lends the corpus a somewhat disorganized note. The conceptual shortcomings of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus make diachronic stylistic research difficult, as important information about the composition of the individual time samples has to be reconstructed before analysis. Only a careful evaluation of the corpus contents can reveal the reliability of the database. The shortcomings in the design of ZEN are felt more acutely as we are dealing with historical text sources. Historical corpus linguistics differs from corpus linguistics using present-day data in that the former basically deals with a finite body of texts which has come down to us in variable condition and documentation (see Fleischmann 2000). This makes pre-determination in the minds of researchers an indispensable quality and advantage. Unlike researchers using present-day data, historical linguists can inform themselves clearly about the status of their material before starting actual field research. As a result, the analytical method must be historical and linguistic by nature. Random collections such as the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus can only be fruitful with texts that fulfil at least three conditions: they have to exist in large numbers (mass productions); they should be convertible into digital databases without much effort; and they should be interchangeable in respect of some unambiguous criteria. In comparison to today's wealth of news publications, the amount and range of publications in the early modern period is very limited. Moreover, these texts take an enormous amount of time to convert into digital databases. Finally, interchangeability can only apply to single issues of the same publication, but not to the publication as such. A possible scenario for random sampling might be to collect different issues of one publication (e.g. 20 random issues of the London Gazette of 1741). But even there, it might be advisable to take into account the four contextual dimensions that influence news discourse (institutional/ cultural, social, technological and situational), if one wishes to minimize the risk of an unbalanced coverage of topics. Similar problems as with the sourcing method exist for the internal classification of texts in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus. Unlike the compilers of the Lampeter Corpus who concentrated on modern text linguistic classification models (notably Werlich 1983 and Reiss 1986), Fries (2001:167) largely followed text-internal principles of the news publications included in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus: 'One of the guidelines of our work has been to stay as close as possible to categories established by the editors of the individual newspapers'. The result is a list (Fries 2001: 176) of semantically overlapping categories, which - useful as these categories may be as vague indicators of the internal organization of newspapers - prove to be as arbitrary and fuzzy as the domains adopted for the Lampeter Corpus when looked at in detail:

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Accidents Advertisements Births Deaths Foreign news Letter Proclamation Ship news

Address Announcement Crime Essay Home news Lost and found Review Weddings

Fries (2001:178) is aware of the problem and speaks of'borderline cases' in instances where traditional text classes cannot be applied, considering multiple text classes for one text 'a serious option for further investigation' (2001: 180). By the concept of multiple text classes, Fries seems to suggest that one text item may be assigned to more than one text class from the above list (e.g. home news and announcement). This approach is inherently problematic, as it seems to confuse and mix the internal classification of a publication with text classes assigned by the researcher. The two classification systems should be strictly separated the internal classification of the newspaper is the property of the object of study, whereas the annotated categories reflect the effort of the corpus compiler to divide the text into different sections. The result of such a combined text classification might lead to greater confusion than no classification at all (cf. Schmied and Claridge 1997: 122-6 and Schmied 1994: 86). But even if the two systems were successfully kept apart, it would be problematic to use Fries's text categories as criteria to classify the contents of the corpus. First, the categories mirror the complete inventory of text types found in the whole period investigated. These categories were, however, not stable throughout the whole period of the corpus; they at best mirror forms that may have been on their way to becoming distinct text types in the course of time. Some grew more fixed (e.g. death notices) during the eighteenth century, while others only emerged towards the end of the period (e.g. reviews). Thus, a text classification system must take account of the changing text class conventions and the enormous differences between early and late publications in the corpus. For example, a death notice from 1665 might have to be classified as ordinary news reporting the death of a person, while in 1791 death notices appear in a clearly established format with specific text-linguistic characteristics. Secondly, and more importantly, Fries refers to text-internal classification principles where no unambiguous internal classification exists in early news publications. Often, newspaper editors confused or mixed categories that would seem completely incompatible with each other (e.g. foreign and home news). As can be seen from these examples, the discussion of sourcing criteria in three machine-readable news corpora highlights some persistent weaknesses of corpus-based stylistic research, leading to the following tentative conclusions. The aspect of genre consistency in the selection of news

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publications must be assessed prior to compilation or stylistic study. In particular, diachronic samples must be contextualized and seen in relation to changing genre conventions. The analysis of the three corpora has shown that the broad umbrella categories or stylistic labels (e.g. pamphlet, newspaper, up-market papers, journal, etc.) are fuzzy and dynamic concepts that need to be addressed with particular care when sourcing texts for a corpus. The approach to sourcing, therefore, must be both principled and balanced. The principled approach is guided by verifiable sourcing criteria, while the balanced nature of a corpus takes account of the variety of text forms in every time sample of the population. A corpus of early news publications ideally represents a balanced collection of publications based on text pragmatic (e.g. institutional/cultural, social, technological and situational constellations) as well as publication-internal criteria (e.g. format, periodicity, time of publication) relevant to the specific period of time studied. Thus, the genre is defined by the sum of publications included in the corpus, the stylistic differences that exist between them, and the features these publications have in common. None of the three corpora can be said to be balanced in the way suggested; they are eclectic in nature and would need major adjustments to be called representative of their genre in the above sense. As first attempts to combine stylistic analysis with corpus linguistics, however, they offer valuable tools for the study of broad trends and tendencies in early news discourse. At the same time, the eclectic nature of the collections necessitates particular care in the interpretation of results. 3.4 Usefulness and Limitations In the previous sections I have highlighted major challenges involved in the compilation of one-genre corpora that are aimed to be used for the investigation of early news media. I have further discussed the compilation methods adopted in three specific projects. In this final section I will be concerned with the question of how the above findings fit into the larger discussion of corpus linguistics, and what agenda they set for future corpus-based historical and stylistic research projects. Based on Biber (1993: 243-57), McEnery and Wilson (1996: 63-6) identify the following large parameters that need to be considered in the construction of a corpus of written language: (1) definition of the sampling frame (i.e. definition of a population against which a text selection can be measured, such as major bibliographical indices or library holdings); (2) definition of the strata of a population (i.e. hierarchical classification of a population into different genres, channels, etc.);14 (3) definition of optimal sample size in terms of length and number. McEnery and Wilson believe that (3) is the most difficult parameter to assess. In the context of the present discussion, it can be seen that while the first parameter is relatively straightforward with early news discourse, greater

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difficulty was observed in all corpora with the parameters optimal sample size and stratification. Point (3), optimal sample size, apparently has natural physical boundaries, since only a limited number of texts can be digitalized in a given amount of time. The difficulty here exists in finding the right balance and compromise between ideal and manageable sample size. Compared to the early stages of the Helsinki Corpus, which contained an Early Modern English section of only 550,000 words covering more than two hundred years of language history (see Rissanen etal. 1993:3), the three news corpora introduced in this study are far more specific and focused. At the same time, these corpora show some shortcomings in the overall time frame they cover and in the size of individual parts of the collection. Although Rissanen et al. (1993: 7-14) argued that chronological coverage in a diachronic corpus should be representative of all parts of the periods it covers, they recognize difficulties in shaping this chronological ladder for the Helsinki Corpus. Consequently, the compilers of the Helsinki Corpus decided to resort to practical factors rather than systematic or symmetrical compilation criteria. Kyto and Rissanen (1997:13) arrive at similar conclusions when they find that it might be 'a feasible idea to create a corpus with very tight time limits - to restrict it to one generation, or to one "lifetime". The concept of diachrony would in this way convert into past synchrony'. Coming from a more philosophical angle, Lightfoot would probably agree with this statement, arguing in a similar context that explanations for language change must be essentially synchronic (2003: 107): 'St Augustine held that time comes from the future, which doesn't exist; the present has no duration and moves on to the past, which no longer exists. Therefore there is no time, only eternity [...]. So perhaps linguists are better off without time'. The same problem exists for McEnery and Wilson's second point stratification of the population - and the implications that stratification methods may have on sampling procedures. As discussed in sections 3.1 to 3.3, all corpus compilers struggled in similar ways with the heterogeneous nature of the sources. It may be of little comfort to mention that the compilers of the Helsinki Corpus encountered the same problems. It seems that precise historical knowledge of the population is needed to guarantee maximum quality of the text samples. As regards early news discourse, historical knowledge comes in at two levels: knowledge of the genre, and of the individual circumstances that accompany the production of a publication. While historical knowledge of a genre may help in marking boundaries between text classes, the selection and classification of texts ultimately has to be based on historical-pragmatic considerations. This argumentation agrees with most traditional studies in text classification. Sociolinguistic parameters concerning authorship and audience may be easy to assess with important publications; for smaller anonymous pamphlets, however, these factors may not be recoverable at all. A solution to this problem may be to consider only well-documented texts. With the exception of the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus, this was the approach taken by the

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compilers of the news corpora. However, the variables chosen for inclusion seem arbitrary or at best incomplete at times, and a more exhaustive and systematic list of factors reflecting the specificity of this particular discourse may be desirable for future research. While contextual information must be gathered from history books, reliable sampling and annotation based on historical knowledge of the genre seems to be almost impossible, precisely because boundaries between different text types are not stable in the period of early news publishing. But this seems to be a general problem of historical text corpora. Rissanen et al. (1997: 2) emphasize that [...] the varying importance of conventions or innovative pressures in the evolution of each genre or group of genres may decrease the usefulness of such classifications, as genres are also internally heterogeneous, and the pace and direction of change may be different in individual texts representing a particular genre.

Arguing that text corpora should include a representative variety of samples, Rissanen et al. (1993: 10) admit that generic coverage is very problematic and that, for the compilation of the Helsinki corpus, 'rather heuristic than logical principles' were adopted. The compilers of the Helsinki Corpus, therefore, decided to reject stylistic coding altogether and not to classify their texts into groups for which they could not 'as yet claim any theoretical or even empirical validity for solely this kind of grouping' (Kyto and Rissanen 1988:174). It seems that the limitations of the Helsinki project for genre studies led Rissanen to voice concerns about the general usefulness of text corpora. These reservations, as we have seen in the previous sections, should also be borne in mind when dealing with early news publications. Rissanen (1989) puts forth three concerns which should remind us of limitations of historical corpus linguistics: (1) overreliance on corpora which cannot replace the study of original materials in context; (2) limitation of generalizations possible with a text sample; (3) use of too many annotations in the corpus. It may be on the grounds of these reservations that Rissanen et al. (1993:1) praised the Helsinki Corpus for its usefulness as a tool in morphological, syntactic and lexical studies, but found it only of secondary value for stylistics and historical discourse analysis. The three news corpora reviewed in this section are different from the Helsinki Corpus in that they were designed as one-genre corpora in the first place. Therefore, their primary purpose is to offer text sources for the study of a complete genre rather than of isolated linguistic phenomena, even if such studies will be important in historical linguistics. The problem with one-genre corpora is that they are only useful for the study of a genre to the extent that the materials included are representative of that particular population. As demonstrated above, the three news corpora should be used with caution and with a constant view to Rissanen's general reservations (l)and(2).

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One way to significantly enhance reliability would be to make transparent as many facts about the texts as possible. This would give corpus users the amount of background information needed to decide for themselves which conclusions they can draw from their investigations. After all, linguists might benefit more from accurate historical research of the corpus compilers than from their preliminary classification attempts. In principle, text classification should be the result, not the basis, of linguistic investigation. This does not mean that compilers should do without text linguistic or stylistic annotations altogether; this simply means that all annotations at textual level must be very general in nature and require careful methodological consideration as well as careful historical investigation before they can be applied. 4 Conclusion The aim of this chapter has been to mark out the large territory of historical corpus stylistics by situating the present approach in the framework of historical linguistics, historical and contemporary perceptions of news discourse, as well as corpus linguistics. Historical corpus stylistics was suggested as a complementary approach to traditional historical disciplines rather than as a discipline in its own right. The first part of the chapter addressed conceptual considerations that are relevant to historical stylistic analysis, showing that the approach shared part of its methodology and perspective with other (historical) disciplines, notably historical pragmatics, sociolinguistics and text linguistics. The baseline of these approaches is similar in that they are essentially corpus-based, quantitative as well as qualitative and principled, emphasizing the relevance of the historical-cultural dimension, the communicative context of a speech situation and the functional perspective of language use. At the same time, the present approach adds a new dimension to these disciplines, as it focuses on the analysis of distinctive linguistic features - the style - of a genre and its patterns of evolution and change over the years. In the second part of the chapter, the historical-cultural dimension was addressed in detail, and genre-specific factors relevant to the period studied were analysed. Genre-specific factors refer to constraints on historical and linguistic research that arise from the genre itself. These constraints indicate the rough domains of marked-unmarked style, the temporal dimensions of the genre, and the nature of primary sources available for research. The examination of the history of the genre showed that early news publications were exposed to two main trends in the first two centuries of their existence: control of the press by authorities and control of the press by the reading public. Control by authorities involved current censorship legislation, stamp duty and subsidization policies by the government The government not only interfered with the type of news that was allowed to be made public (e.g. foreign news, home news) but also selectively supported

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the types of press organs that represented their opinion best. In the course of the years, the press gradually gained freedom as these regulations became laxer and the market was opened to the press. While government control had an influence on what publishers decided to print and the degree of opposition that was allowed in the press, the free market facilitated an increase in production rates and the introduction of sensational journalism. The analysis of contemporary perceptions of newspaper style showed that early newspapers must be embedded in the larger context of history writing from which they emerged. In history writing, there were clear rules about how current events had to be tackled by historiographers, requiring above all total objectivity and truthfulness in the reporting of events. This was achieved by a set number of news parameters (e.g. doer, deed, chronology, etc.). At the same time, the style was expected to be 'scientific', without ornamentation and addition or comments by the editor. The result was a characterless, bland style that laid no claim to textual appeal or reader-friendliness. Stylistic foregrounding, as was postulated, was the result of deviation from this strict stylistic programme, facilitating editorial commentary, opinion, and sensational heightening of the discourse. These stylistic 'faults', however, became more accepted and established in the course of the eighteenth century as readership expectations changed and the market opened up to competition. The last aspect relating to genre-specific considerations dealt with the historical background of the newspaper libraries, the quality of the text materials, and the strategies and approaches to indexing these materials. The examination of the major newspaper collections revealed that the librarians were confronted with highly heterogeneous source materials (e.g. pamphlets, yearbooks, proceedings, etc.). These materials were not systematically divided into different categories or publication types, and the current division is unfortunate for researchers planning corpus-based stylistic analysis. Further difficulties were seen to exist with the fragmentary runs collected and the variable physical quality and legibility of the materials. To access early news publications, therefore, one must rely entirely on newspaper histories, which can only offer selective glimpses into the subject matter. The third part of the chapter sought to respond to general methodological constraints that arise from corpus linguistic projects on historical news discourse, discussing factors of corpus compilation that are normally addressed when a machine-readable corpus is being compiled. These aspects involve decision-making processes with regard to the timeframe that may be suited to the object of study, the optimal size of the samples, as well as sourcing criteria and text classification schemes that reflect best the research aim of the corpus. For the purpose of comparison, the designs of three news corpora were analysed and examined for their usefulness in stylistic research.

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One suggestion of the analysis was to avoid a fixed sample size for each synchronic stage of the corpus. Fixed sampling may be a suitable way of distributing data over short periods in which there are only minor changes in overall publication figures. Over a period of one hundred and more years, however, this method becomes insufficient, since the samples do not accurately reflect the dynamics of the genre. Secondly, a short temporal distance between two samples should be preferred over longer intervals and hence short periods should be chosen for study rather than long periods. Ideally, a corpus should be sampled continuously in the natural intervals of the publications. Also, the sourcing of material for a corpus should be dynamic and take account of the media agenda in each respective period. At the same time, a balanced representation of different publications, possibly based on sociolinguistic parameters, would guarantee sufficient variation of the data. The conclusion was that traditional sampling methods were prone to fail or at least significantly reduce the representativeness of a corpus if they were applied rigidly. In the study of historical news discourse it is the genre that dictates the procedure, not the machine. This genre is a highly volatile, flexible and adaptable form of communication which is constantly caught in the crossfire of external influences. These influences have to be studied carefully and built into the sampling process in order to guarantee maximum quality of the linguistic data. The considerations put forward in this introductory chapter provide the basis for the analysis of the three other dimensions - social, technological and situational — that motivate the stylistic evolution of historical news discourse. At the same time, these considerations are likely to hold in any given historical stylistic context using corpus linguistic methods: they are believed to constitute universal parameters of historical corpus stylistics. Notes 1. For a comprehensive discussion of foregrounding refer to van Peer (1980, 1986). The concept of stylistic foregrounding in historical stylistics can also be seen in relation to stylistic focusing, which has its origins in the theory of Functional Sentence Perspective (FSP), as introduced by the Prague School of linguists (notably Firbas 1992). Stylistic focusing is particularly concerned with form, variation and function of textual structures. This focus is seen, for example, in Chapters 5 and 6, which address the explicit foregrounding of topics in text-initial position that function as accentuated transitions from one topic to another (similar to acts in conversation as described by Sinclair and Coulthard 1975). 2. Levin (1965: 226) mentions only two levels of deviation in literary stylistic analysis: 'First, there is that type of deviation which takes place against the background of the poem in which deviation occurs. Second, then, is that type where the deviation is to be explicated against some

CORPUS S T Y L I S T I C S AND EARLY NEWS M E D I A

49

norm which lies outside the limits of the poem in which the deviation occurs. For convenience of reference, we may call these types internal and external deviation, respectively.' I prefer Leech's (1985) inclusion of a third type of deviation as it reflects a more refined picture of the stylistic mechanisms at work in the development of genres. 3. Like Cook (1994: 19), I am not interested in asserting the validity of schema theory in practice but I will borrow schema theory as an explanatory framework that contributes to the understanding of stylistic processes in discursive events. 4. Cook's (1994) concept of world schemata can be related to the notion of style as a marker of perspective and positioning of the speaker or, in other words, the ideology of the publishing body as reflecting and reinforcing community values. The concept of ideology in a discourselinguistic context has become increasingly popular since studies by Fowler et al. (1979) and Fairclough (1989) and fits into what today is called Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA). CDA stresses the socially constitutive nature of discourse (e.g. Fairclough 1995a, 1995b; Fowler 1991). In the study of news discourse CDA focuses on news as being 'made', as being subjected to specific extra-linguistic constellations (cf. Coates and Johnston 1983), emphasizing both the gatekeeping mechanisms of the press and the mapping of reality or linguistic realization of the news (Hall etal. 1978). 5. Folke Dahl (1952) published a catalogue of extant corantos with a historical preface. For a useful introduction to the topic also see Williams (1977) andBrownlees (1999). 6. The complex background of stamp duty is analysed in Hill (1992), Fox Bourne (1887/1997, II: 209-31), Williams (1961: 180-94). The nineteenth century is analysed in detail by Asquith (1975). 7. I am referring to the fourfold meaning of scripture which consists of the following elements: 'Littera gesta docet, quid credas allegoria, moralis quid agas, quo tendas anagogia' (De Lubac 1959: 23). 8. Ironically, Bacon (1638: 218) makes use of a comparison to illustrate what he means by the first point: 'For no one, who is preparing and laying by materials for building houses or ships, or the like, takes the trouble, as they would in shops, of arranging them elegantly and showing them off to advantage, but rather attends only to their being strong and good, and to their taking up as little room as possible in his warehouse. Let the like be done here.' 9. I follow Jones (1951) in believing that the scientific movement did motivate a new form of simple style in the seventeenth century. Croll (1966) argues that both Bacon and the Royal Society in principle repeated anti-Ciceronian efforts. For further details about the CrollJones controversy see Adolph (1968) and Williamson (1960). 10. In the eighteenth century, newspaper editors still emphasized the links between history writing and serious news reportage by publishing parts of the paper in book form: 'Several newspapers in the century, such as

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the Craftsman, WestminsterJournaland Mist's papers, published their leading essays in book form. This yielded additional profit and enhanced their claim to serve a historical purpose, to be journals of record, not as the Gozettewas with its recital of facts [...]' (Black 1987: 34). 11. There has recently been a proposal by the Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research (CBSR) at the University of California at Riverside to create a digitalized version of the Burney Collection together with the British Library. Such a project would ultimately provide full and free access to the collection (cf. Rare Books and Manuscript Section Newsletter, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions [winter 2002]). 12. See also Burney's Memoirs (Klima, Bowers and Grant 1988; Frances d'Arblay 1833) and collected Letters (Ribeiro 1991). 13. The John Nichols referred to here was the author and collector from Islington (1745-1826); his son, John Bowyer Nichols (1779-1863), was a famous printer and antiquary, as was Bowyer's son, John Gough Nichols (1806-1873). See DNB (1895: xxxxvii; 2-8) for details. 14. Stratification, however, is an ambiguous factor as it constitutes an 'act of interpretation on the part of the corpus builder [...] dividing up language into entities which it may be argued are not naturally inherent within it' (McEnery and Wilson 1996: 65).

Parti Socio-Stylistic Dimensions This part of the book consists of three separate chapters that are concerned with the sociohistorical background of early mass media organizations and its correlation with empirical factors relating to economic and stylistic performance. The three chapters are intended to highlight the interrelationship between sociolinguistics and stylistics from an empirical perspective, thus explaining stylistic variation and change as a social phenomenon. All three chapters represent different stages in the socio-stylistic analysis of early news media: Chapter 2 examines the role of performance as a factor in socio-stylistic analysis of historical genres; Chapter 3 introduces ways of investigating stylistic variation and dimensions of change; and Chapter 4 combines the two perspectives in a short overview, and summarizes the findings. One of the central aims of this part of the study is to offer insights into the complexity and principles of performance, style and change rather than to provide a definitive analysis of such interrelationships. In particular, the notion of performance — both economic and stvlistic — will be of relevance in this context as it constitutes the main criterion against which mass media are ultimately measured, today as much as in the eighteenth century. The study of sociohistorical and stylistic dimensions, however, poses great difficulty from a methodological point of view. How can we find relevant sociohistorical information about early mass media published in the eighteenth century? How can such information be measured? How can we successfully correlate sociohistorical information with internal variables? The main conceptual problems these questions raise, as far as the study of historical news discourse is concerned, can be summarized as follows: firstly, a coherent methodology for the social analysis of mass media has not yet been developed. Howard Davis (1993: 39) puts this problem in a nutshell: There is no apparent consensus about the kinds of social data which are essential for serious analysis of the media and even less concern about collecting them systematically in ways which would be useful for social analysis.' Secondly, since the analysis is based on historical texts, the sociohistorical data that would be relevant to the analysis may not only be poorly recorded but may also be verv difficult to access. The process of extracting

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sociohistorical information is further complicated if different media organizations are to be studied diachronically. This means that relevant information has to be collected over periods of decades or centuries, which makes the reliance on media histories indispensable. Thus, the historical study of social factors in early news media essentially depends on the information that has been handed down to us. This approach entails the problem of cultural relativism and the question of historical method. Labov (1994: 10-27) points out the difficulty of the historical sociolinguistic enterprise in his Principles of Linguistic Change. He particularly laments the limitations of data with regard to die social position of the writers, the social structure of the community, information about the receiver, the possibility of performing controlled experiments, and the knowledge of distinctive versus non-distinctive patterns. Nevalainen and Raumolin-Bmnberg (2003: 26) acknowledge, albeit in more optimistic terms, Labov's comments in their assessment of historical sociolinguistics. But despite Nevalainen and Raumolin-Brunberg's optimism, the study of sociohistorical parameters in early news media is a compromise by definition - a compromise between research aims and realities. The three chapters in this part of the book, therefore, must be understood as such a compromise in their attempt to reconstruct social constellations pertinent to a most accidentally documented medium and time. Social constellations as referred to here include facts, generalizations and principles concerning early media production (as well as their violation and paradoxes), as put forward by Labov (1994: 12-16). The methodological framework of this part of the study is informed by media sociology and the related (sub-) disciplines of sociolinguistics, in particular critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis (CDA), as expressed by Fowler (1991: 67): Critical linguistics seeks, by studying the minute details of linguistic structure in the light of the social and historical situation of the text, to display to consciousness the patterns of belief and value which are encoded in language - and which are below the threshold of notice for anyone who accepts the discourse as 'natural'.

In Chapters 2 to 4, the style of early news media will be embedded in its historical and social situation in three stages. In Chapter 2, universal social and historical factors of the early press will be reconstructed on the basis of historical accounts of eighteenth-century media organizations. These factors will be examined in a cross-section of media organizations represented in the Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN). Chapter 3 analyses a range of stylistic factors that are believed to play a significant role in the evolution of the early press. In Chapter 4, sociohistorical profiles are correlated with the corresponding stylistic profiles. The correlation patterns are expected to be indicative of the ways in which the stylistic profiles of early mass media organizations reflected and contributed to the performance of newspapers on the market. In focusing on the interface between style and

SOCIO-STYLISTIC DIMENSIONS

53

sociohistorical constellations, this part of the study contributes to the development of a new agenda for the empirical investigation of early mass media performance. The period of time covered in Chapters 2 to 4 spans most of the eighteenth century, as it follows the timeline of ZEN. The specific sections of the ZEN corpus under investigation will be the years 1701, 1741 and 1791, containing entries of eighteen news publications as listed in Appendix I. The corpus section of the London Gazette (1791) has been excluded for the purpose of the present analysis as the publication cannot formally be counted as a media organization in a journalistic sense. The London Gazette (1791) functioned as an official public outlet of the authorities which did not print any hard news.

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2 Media Performance and Organization Profiles

Media discourse has been given widespread attention in Critical Discourse Analysis (Fairclough 1995b, 2003; Toolan 2002; Fowler 1991; van Dijk 1997; Wodak and Myer 2001). Through its focus on texts and its aim to study textual practice as socially and culturally determined (see Fairclough 1992), the approach lends itself to the political and ideological analysis of both historical and contemporary mass media texts. The specific focus of CDA on the interrelationship between power, ideology and text as well as its commitment to neo-marxist theory move CDA slightly outside the research focus of traditional sociolinguistics.1 Whereas sociolinguistics primarily uses the quantitative variationist method to correlate linguistic variables with social data about participants in speech events, CDA has a strong quantitative orientation. For historical projects, and in particular stylistic studies, the research angle taken by CDA is generally much more suitable as a methodological orientation since the traditional dimensions studied by sociolinguists do not offer conclusive insights into the mechanisms of largely anonymous enterprises such as mass media organizations. What is needed in the stylistic analysis of early mass media is a set of complex and abstract parameters that help situate mass media within their cultural and ideological frameworks. The following investigation of mass media performance is particularly indebted to the insights of the Glasgow Media Group (see Eldridge 1993, 1995) and has been inspired by Allan's (2004) concept of 'news culture'. McQuail's (1993) study on media performance brings the different strands of research together in a comprehensive volume on the topic, suggesting different social levels for assessing media, such as state, society, audience and professionals (i.e. the communicators). However, McQuail (1993: 12) notes methodological difficulties in dealing with the 'mongrel' character of this field of research: The diversity of values, claims and criteria generated by the normative framework adopted [...] as well as the differences of level at which research can be directed, calls for a multiplicity of methods and can also lead to inconsistency. For the would-be researcher, the task is further complicated by the need to

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deliver systematic and objective evidence on matters which will have many subjective components.

Systematicity and objectivity in the evaluation of media performance are the two goals McQuail attempts to achieve. While these are desirable objectives of media analysis in principle, they present a particular challenge to historical linguists who will have to assemble information from historical sources. The aim of the historical linguist is not to develop an objective evaluation model for the study of contemporary and future media but to describe objectively how the performance of bygone media was evaluated by those involved as participants and historians. Contemporary evaluation models are only useful in as much as they provide a reference framework of criteria likely to be found in historical sources. The task of the researcher is to try and put sociohistorical information against such an evaluation model and to develop different analytical categories into which this information fits. The analytical categories should be broad in concept, and reflect major sociohistorical or stylistic dimensions rather than narrow variables for analysis. In the evaluation of historical data, attention must not only be paid to information which is present but also to the type of information which is missing in order to ascertain which aspects of mass media organizations require particular consideration. Information that is systematically omitted, for example, signals low relevance to historians or contemporaries and vice versa. The main dimensions of traditional research into media performance are briefly introduced by McQuail (1993: 13-15). These are organizational efficiency, the media effect model, the Marxist-critical approach, the media cultural studies approach, the social cost-benefit analysis, and the media ethics approach.2 While these approaches are different in their research focus, they can be provisionally grouped into traditions that reflect an organization-internal perspective and those that concentrate on organization-external factors. An organization-internal perspective is mainly taken by the organizational efficiency approach, social cost-benefit analysis, and the media ethics approach. An organization-external perspective is adopted by the media effect model, the Marxist-critical approach and the media cultural studies approach. Given the historical nature of the project, internal and external perspectives cannot be rigidly separated as they are strongly mediated by the historian. The distinction, however, ma serve as a valid starting point to classify sociohistorical information according to its principal focus. References to organizational efficiency are likely to be found in the form of information about profitability, size and structure of early media ventures. This may include references to circulation, business, quality of networking, persons involved in the publication process, the publication tradition, and institutional support and facilities. The social cost-benefit analysis, which refers to the awareness of media organizations of their role in 'broad public policy fields' (McQuail 1993: 14), will be of marginal

MEDIA PERFORMANCE PROFILES

57

importance in historical news discourse since news media and their professional status were still relatively undefined at the end of the eighteenth century. Media ethics, on the other hand, can be more fruitfully studied in early media organizations, as the term refers to ethical standards set by media producers themselves. Since early media producers occasionally printed promotional statements explaining the benefit of their newspapers or publications, it can be expected that in some cases mission statements are discussed by historians to emphasize the success or failure of a publication model. External perspectives on media performance focus mainly on unintended consequences of newswork. The media effect model, for example, studies the specific effects media organizations may have in the real world. In the case of historical media, this especially includes references to controversial activities by media producers and the effects these activities had on the participants such as, for example, libel and sedition cases, imprisonment, the banning of publications - in other words the 'flak' publications received 'as a means of disciplining the media' (Herman and Chomsky 1988:2). The Marxist-critical perspective is concerned with the class bias of media content and its consequences for the audience. The study of class bias in historical media may not be as clear a concept as today, since media organizations did not have a defined and recognized public 'mandate' at the time. References to the political orientation and public response to media organizations, however, can be studied in this context The cultural studies approach, on the other hand, potentially includes a broad range of references to media which emphasize the interpretative dimension of performance analysis. This may include comments about the larger cultural tradition of media organizations as well as the quality and cultural significance of media texts. This broad distinction between internal and external perspective in the study of media performance is also used in stylistic analysis, and is reflected in the Hallidayan concept of field, tenor and mode (e.g. Halliday 1985; Halliday and Hasan 1989). The concept of field - in this context referring to the internal perspective - entails information about the social setting and function of a publication, such as information about media actors, the ideology of a publication and its political orientation. Tenor and mode, on the other hand, reflect the external perspective: tenor relates to the connections between text producers and recipients, as it stresses aspects of audience feedback and response to media. Mode, finally, refers to the medium of communication in its most basic as well as extended sense, emphasizing linguistic criteria that define a basic text form as well as the style that distinguishes subforms within such a text form from one another. 1 Performance Variables We shall now see how the distinction between an external and internal perspective can be kept in the analysis of early media organizations. In this section of the chapter, information about media organizations has been

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classified according to its principal perspective (external or internal) and, inside the external perspective, into the sub-categories tenor and mode. Field, tenor and mode break down into further, more refined, stylistic dimensions for each perspective, reflecting the different research orientations in studying performance as outlined above. These dimensions in turn consist of sets of relevant performance variables that can be analysed in each publication of the corpus. In this introductory section I will briefly outline these variables and show how they are distributed in the corpus. The performance variables selected for analysis are sodohistorical categories relevant to the description and perception of early media organizations. These categories are based on descriptions by newspaper historians, notably Andrews (1855a and b), Fox Bourne (1887), Morison (1932) and Black (1987). While the analysis of performance variables is clearly historical in method, the historical 'truth' of these descriptions is not of primary interest in this case. The ami of this analysis is to break information about newspapers into transparent categories so as to retrieve patterns of description rather than historical facts. The results are collected in Tables 2.1 to 2.3. Every newspaper is referenced with its three-letter short form (e.g. CJL, LPT, etc.) and sorted by publication year (1701,1741,1791). The classification procedure used to evaluate the performance of a publication follows binary application steps (i.e. a question with only two possible answers). These answers are represented with a (+) and (-) respectively. In Tables 2.1 and 2.2, binary values are entered on the basis of a possible yes-no answer to the analytic question: Is descriptive category 'x' referred to in historical sources? While the binary method is useful where only yes or no answers are expected, it does not provide insights into the internal dynamics of a category. The analysis can thus only be understood as an attempt to classify according to broad performance profiles; each profile is further discussed in a separate section below (2.1-2.3). In Table 2.1, the stylistic dimensions belonging to the organizationinternal perspective (i.e. the field perspective) have been called 'organization', 'performance' and 'mission/ethics'. The first dimension organization - is used to indicate the degree to which reference is made to the organizational complexity of a media venture. Organizational criteria divide into the areas 'resources/subsidies' (references to external funding or support of a publication), 'infrastructure' (information about infrastructural facilities such as network of correspondence, printing and distribution systems) and 'corporation' (references to the type of corporation or business). The second dimension - performance - is used to indicate the importanc attached to actual sales and business performance in the description of a newspaper. Business performance includes five different categories. These are 'management', 'circulation/revenue', 'role of advertising', 'efficiency' and 'effectiveness'. 'Management' includes all the qualitative information about the organization management (people, relationships, family history,

Table 2.1 Organization-internal criteria relating to newspaper performance

1701 EPT

Organization Resources / subsidies Infrastructure Corporation Performance Management Circ./revenue Roleo Advertising Efficiency Effectiveness Mission /Ethics Format Content Style Partisanship Opposition

1741 FPT

LGZ LPT

NSE

PBY

PMN

CEA CJL

1791 DPT

LDP

LGZ

EVM

LCR

MCR

MOP PAD

Table 2.2 Organization-external criteria relating to newspaper performance 1741

1701 EPT

Effects

Public reaction Prosecution Censorship Copycatism Used as model Fluct. sales Cultural Embedding

History Relevance Contributors Quality

Authoritative Boring / dull Broad appeal Careless/ unreliable Comprehensive Controversial Factual / exact Heavyweight Innovative / appealing Satirical / bold Scandalous Sens. / cheap Soft / light

FPT

LGZ

LPT

NSE

PBY

PMN

CEA

1791 CJL

DPT

LDP

LGZ

EVM

LCR

MCR

MOP PAD

MEDIA PERFORMANCE PROFILES

61

etc.), while 'circulation/revenue' applies to descriptions that provide statistics or estimates relating to performance. If the 'role of advertising' is discussed, information is normally given about the importance for a newspaper's performance of advertising revenues or its reliance on it. 'Efficiency' refers to comments on actual work performance, such as timeliness, delivery and flexible publication intervals, while 'effectiveness' includes all information about the size of a media enterprise and its ranking on the market. The third dimension is called 'mission/ethics'. A high profile in the dimension 'mission/ethics' refers to a newspaper historian's emphasis on organizational targets and objectives as well as on activities a media organization is planning to undertake to meet those objectives. The most relevant categories found in secondary sources are 'format', 'content', 'style', 'partisanship' and 'opposition'. The three categories 'format', 'content' and 'style' apply to descriptions that outline a particular objective in these areas (e.g. specialized coverage, introduction of a new format or style). 'Style' is used here in its specific sense of content presentation. 'Format' denotes the strategic use of a publication form (e.g. journal form, essay paper, parliamentary reporter, etc.). These categories are ticked in the tables if their relevance to a publication's performance is consistently emphasized. The last two categories are 'partisanship' and 'opposition'. 'Partisanship' has proved an important parameter in the context of performance analysis and includes references to a newspaper's political orientation, while 'opposition' has been included to refer to publications for which opposition was an explicit part of their programme. In Table 2.2, the dimensions selected for the analysis of the organizationexternal perspective (i.e. tenor and mode) are: 'effects', 'cultural embedding' and 'quality'. The dimension 'effects' is used here to analyse the degree to which public response to newswork is related to the success of a newspaper. The most important effects mentioned in histories can be summarized as 'public reaction', 'prosecution', 'censorship', 'copycatism', 'model' and 'fluctuating sales'. The first category, 'public reaction', refers to cases where newswork gave rise to public controversy, debate or complaints. The second category, 'prosecution', is relevant when public reaction led to legal action in the form of libel and sedition cases or even imprisonment of journalists. A more global measure includes 'censorship', which refers to the banning of certain media content or publications as a result of newswork. The last three parameters reflect economic consequences that can be linked to newswork. The effects found in newspaper histories include 'copycatism' (the act of copying a newspaper format from another publication) and its opposite, here called 'model', which indicates whether or not a publication served as a model format for other papers. Finally, 'fluctuating sales' has been included in the list to mark possible consequences of newswork on the sales of a publication (gain or loss). The dimension 'cultural embedding' refers to the endeavour of

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newspaper historians to locate a publication within the broader historicocultural context of news publishing. 'Cultural embedding' has been divided into the parameters 'history', 'relevance' and 'contributors'. 'History' is used to indicate whether reference is made to the foundation background of a publication, that is, the foundation date and its founding members. 'Relevance' draws attention to the larger role of a publication in the tradition of newsmaking in general, i.e. to its importance and contribution to the evolution of the genre, and 'contributors' indicates whether references to important journalists (e.g. famous philosophers, authors) can be linked to the performance of a publication. 'Quality' represents the final dimension in Table 2.2, subsuming all information relating to the assessment of newspaper style by contemporaries or newspaper historians. This dimension has been divided into a list of adjectives that include the most frequently found attributes in newspaper histories. Theoretically, all attributes can be found in the description of one newspaper. I will briefly explain the usage of these attributes in the analysis. Papers characterized as having a 'broad appeal' are publications that did not excel in any specific area of reporting but provided a neutral summary of current affairs. 'Broad appeal' can be contrasted with the three variables 'soft/light', 'scandalous' and 'sensational/cheap'. 'Soft/light' stresses the human interest factor of a paper (e.g. royals, sport, etc.), while 'scandalous' emphasizes events in breach of moral standards. The attribute 'sensational/cheap' has been ticked when a media organization was associated with cheap journalism. While the above characteristics refer to publications that may not have been taken seriously as a news provider, the attributes 'authoritative', 'factual/exact', 'heavyweight', 'comprehensive', 'innovative/appealing' and 'controversial' reflect the opposite, namely the appreciation of a paper's effort to publish serious news. The variable 'careless/unreliable' is used when newspapers allegedly printed false or unverified news, when the editor of a paper was accused of carelessness in sourcing news, or when no care was taken in the composition of the newspaper. The characteristics 'satirical/bold' or 'boring/dull' may apply to either serious or unserious publications as they primarily refer to the perception of textual quality in news publishing. Table 2.3 puts the findings into the perspective of the life-cycle of the media organizations studied. This perspective helps contextualize the above results as it indicates whether performance profiles can be related to specific developmental stages of news publications. I have distinguished between two categories: the overall life-cycle of a publication and the relative age of a publication at the time studied. Relative age has been divided into the three broad categories of early years of a media organization (younger than ten years), its prime period (older than ten years), or past its prime (shortly before ceasing operation). The life-cycle of publications equally divides in to three categories (under 20 years, between 20 and 50 years, or over 50 years).

Table 2.3 Life-cycle arid age of media organization

1701 EPT

Life-Cycle > 50 years 20-50 years < 20 years Relative Age

Young Prime Past its prime

1741 FPT

LGZ LPT

NSE

PBY

PMN

CEA

1791 CJL

DPT

LDP

LGZ

EVM LCR

MCR MOP PAD

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HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

2 Media Organization Profiles It is not surprising that the most successful publications were most carefully reviewed in historical studies and thus show the highest reference score in Tables 2.1 and 2.2. I am now going to discuss relevant patterns in these profiles, dividing the ZEN corpus into three publication profiles that reflect differing degrees of performance in eighteenth-century media organizations (i.e. high-, medium- and low-performing news publications). The classification into one of the three profile types is based on a simple count of references: high performance will be used for those papers with a reference count higher than average; medium performance accounts for papers with an average score; low performance is for papers significantly below average. Low performance, however, does not automatically coincide with commercial failure. The rating of a media organization as poor may equally be the result of its negative evaluation in historical sources. In the year 1701, four newspapers - the Flying Post, the I^ondon Gazette, the Post Boy and the Post Man - score higher than average. The London Post scores average, while the English Post and the New State of Europe fall noticeably below average. In 1741, the only high-performance paper is the Country Journal. Performance of the Champion, the Daily Post and the London Gazette was middling to good, while the London Daily Post can be regarded as performing poorly. In 1791, the paper showing the strongest profile is the Morning Chronicle; the Morning Post, though significantly weaker than the Chronicle, falls somewhere between medium and high. The Public Advertiser and the London Chronicle represent the midfield category of that year, while the Evening Mail falls into the low-performance bracket Some descriptive categories appear more consistently in the profiles than others over the period studied. These core descriptive categories contain references to a newspaper's management, its effectiveness as a business venture, the historical context in which it was published, and its political partisanship.The specific constellations of these categories form the baseline profile of early newspaper performance. 2.1 High-Performance Profiles Flying Post, London Gazette, Post Man, Post Boy (1701)

There are eight core categories that characterize high-performance publications at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Of these, references to political partisanship and the effectiveness of a media organization are two constant factors shared by all four high-performance publications in 1701. In all other categories, high-performance publications divide into profile types separating commercial from non-commercial papers (the Flying Post, the Post Boy and the Post Man vs the London Gazette). The London Gazette is the only paper published by public authority, which may account for its special status on the early newspaper market While most high-performance newspapers are described in terms of a range of

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65

Table 2.4 Performance profiles in ZEN Publication High performance year

Medium performance

Low performance

1701

London Gazette (LGZ) London Post (LPT) Flying Post (FPT) Post Man (PMN) Post Boy (PBY)

English Post (EFT) Afoy State of Europe (NSE)

1741

Country Journal (CJL) London Gazette (LGZ) Champion (CEA) Daily Post (DPT)

London Daily Post (LDP)

1791

Morning Chronicle (MCR) Morning Post (MOP)

Evening Mail (EVM)

Public Advertiser (PAD) London Chronicle (LCR)

characteristics, such as their financial situation, circulation, revenue, specialized format/content, political opposition, or their stylistic merits, the profile of the London Gazette includes no such references at all. Instead, the profile of the London Gazette contains information about its management and, more importantly, about the contribution it made to the genre. The description of the London Gazette shows that the paper was not primarily concerned with business matters or sales. Rather, it is portrayed as a paper of authority that automatically carried weight and was respected as an important source of information. In terms of style, the London Gazette was considered dull and largely uncritical. Other high-performance papers, by contrast, were characterized by an innovative style and controversial content, especially in relation to their political attitudes. These papers were not considered moderately political but as newspapers with strong views and allegiances causing public controversy and debates. While high-performance papers shared controversy as one of their main characteristics, they differed in the extent and manifestation of their controversial nature. The Flying Post, for example, appears in several categories under the heading 'effects'; a result that reflects the paper's constant provocation and picking on enemies. Provocation in turn led to negative reactions from the audience on various occasions, with the drastic consequences of tightened censorship, legal prosecution and even imprisonment (see Andrews 1855a: 84-5). Also the Post Boy and the Post Man often found themselves in the opposition role. While the Post Boy must have come under attack for political bias occasionally (see Black 1987:205), the paper was mainly defined in terms of its innovative contribution to journalism and its business success; these were characteristics it shared with

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its main rival, and indeed offspring, the Post Man. The Post Man resembled the Post Boy in its political commitment, which was more moderate than that of the Flying Post. All high-performance papers in 1701 were used as models by other publications. Yet, only three of the four papers were thought to be innovative. Innovation is described by historians in different ways. It is often associated with provocative news content, as in the case of the Flying Post and, to a lesser extent, of the Post Boy and Post Man. At the same time, innovation is mentioned in the context of stylistic modernization and enhancement of audience appeal. These factors are clearly visible in all high-performance papers, except for the London Gazette, which had lost most of its textual appeal by the turn to the eighteenth century. The London Gazette remained, however, authoritative in news coverage for many more years to come. Part of the Flying Post's success (as well as part of its controversy) was the introduction of the so-called half-printed, half-written method of publishing, which meant that anybody could write and submit an article for publication. While this innovation implied a broader range and more liberal coverage of issues, it also led to the paper being rated poor in quality and to its sensationalist reputation (Andrews 1855a: 86-7). This innovative feature did not automatically mean a drop in quality. The Post Boy, for example, was praised for its impartial coverage of events, although it was the first newspaper to introduce the so-called postscript (a more open news section that was attached to the official part of the edition). Yet, publications struggled with 'piratical and forged written and printed' postscripts (Morison 1932: 65). Forgery affected some papers more than others, as was the case with the Post Man, which had copied the Post Boy's format and whose reputation reportedly suffered from the accusation that its postscripts were doubtful and that even parts for which the paper did take responsibility were regularly falsified. Another characteristic of high-performance papers from 1701 was their specialization in foreign news. Only the London Gazette is not mentioned in this context, as the paper was known for its authoritative coverage of both home and foreign affairs. Comprehensive foreign coverage, especially of the Spanish succession, was considered an asset.3 Country Journal (1741) The Country Journal, one of the best-documented papers in 1741, shows by far the highest score in all performance categories for that year. In 1741 the Country Journal was still in its prime but its popularity began to wane slowly in the course of the 1740s (see Fox Bourne 1887: 116; also Morison 1932: 109). The Country Journal was characterized by a very diverse and balanced profile throughout, but some organization-internal characteristics stood out as particularly noteworthy. Advertising, for example, is of marginal importance in 1701 but becomes a relevant success factor towards the middle of the eighteenth century. Moreover, features relating to organizational or stylistic specialization appear as strong characteristics in historical

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descriptions of the Country Journal. The journal's thorough coverage of home affairs is said to have 'commanded European attention' (Black 1987: 228), and the paper's journal format, with which it became identified (Morison 1932: 112), was particularly suited to expressing strong political views. The Country Journal further resembled other high-performance papers in political outspokenness and opposition. In the organization-external dimension, the Country Journal showed similarities to early eighteenth-century papers with regard to its model character and contribution to public debates and controversies. The Country Journal is reported to have been 'a murmuring trumpet, which blows a political rumour in a few minutes from Berwick to Cornwall' (qtd. in Black 1987: 103) and is said to have contributed substantially to public debate over press freedom (see the famous Hague letter as mentioned in Black 1987: 122). In fact, its influence was such that the government sometimes gave orders to restrict its circulation (Black 1987:103,161-2). While cultural embedding is important in both early and mid-century high-performance papers, the historical relevance of a publication and references to famous contributors become increasingly foregrounded in 1741. Attributes relating to the textual quality of the Country Journal are similar to those found in 1701, except for references to the paper's 'vindictive satire' (Black 1987: 46), which can be added as a new factor of stylistic performance. Morning Chronicle, Morning Post (1791) Similar to the Country Journal, the Morning Chronicle was characterized by a strong performance profile in all areas analysed and shared many of its distinguishing features with the Country Journal, such as its strong mission and ethics profile, its controversial but authoritative reputation, and its innovative and advanced style. At the same time, media organizations became more professionalized in the course of the century, which is seen in the increasing emphasis on descriptions of organizational structures of media ventures (e.g. co-ownership, trusts, business syndicates, etc.). This applies, in particular, to high-performance papers, which tended to be embedded in larger organizational structures. While clever advertising strategies are not mentioned as a factor contributing to the success of the Morning Chronicle, the paper's high degree of specialization, both organizational and stylistic, as well as its political opposition are constantly highlighted in all sources (e.g. Fox Bourne 1887: 192). In fact, the paper's political opposition was so strong that the revolutionary government of France 'placed high hopes' on the editor when he went to France in 1791 to represent the English Revolution Society (Black 1987: 30). Instead of advertising, fast and efficient publishing appears as a performance factor in relation to parliamentary reporting, which was the paper's area of specialization (Andrews 1855a: 229-31), as well as its specialized printing format, which followed 'invariable rules' (Morison 1932: 163-4). Not surprisingly, the Morning Chronicle was considered highly controversial in terms of its political orientation and was mentioned as 'London's

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leading political journal' (Morison 1932: 165). The list of complaints made against the editor of the paper seems to have been endless (see, for example, Andrews 1855a: 198,209,216,217). Similar to the Country Journal, media events sometimes resulted in significant fluctuation in sales. It may be because of the pioneering character of the paper as well as the long list of famous authors and writers who contributed to it over the years that Morison (1932: 167, 161) called the Morning Chronicle'the most influential foundation of the period, 1775-89' and 'the most formidable competitor of The Times'. In terms of style, the Morning Chronicle may be seen as a continuation of the Country Journal, especially in relation to its satire and bold tone (Andrews 1855a: 231), but also because of its diversified stylistic profile using satire combined with serious and thorough reportage (Fox Bourne 1887: 17-18). The Morning Post, though modelled on the Morning Chronicle (Morison 1932:165-7), never reached the latter's heights or fame. Unlike the Morning Chronicle, the original proprietors of the Post are not even known; they are referred to as a 'co-operative scheme' (see Morison 1932: 144, 164 [footnote]). The paper, however, was a commercial success (Andrews 1855a: 227), so much so that soon after its appearance a rival paper with the same tide was launched in competition (Black 1987: 16). As a Tory paper (Fox Bourne 1887:354) the MorningPostprinted 'anti-Jacobean and anti-Gallican articles' written by prominent members of society (Andrews 1855b: 3-5). The paper, however, essentially lacked the boldness of the Morning Chronicle and hence was not exposed to criticism in the same degree. For years after the resignation of editor Henry Bates in 1780, the paper enjoyed 'an evil reputation as a retailer of coarse social gossip' and as 'an advocate of the debasing policy of the ministry' (Fox Bourne 1887: 221). Its content was associated with softness and scandals, while its style was largely perceived as fashionable (Fox Bourne 1887: 306).

2.2 Medium-Performance Profiles

London Post (1701) The London Post is the only medium-performance paper in the corpus of 1701. Its profile contains relatively few references to cultural embedding, effects and textual quality. No information is provided about the paper's business performance. One of the main characteristics of the London Post seems to have been its obvious lack of originality and independence. It is described as one of many similar news-sheets that accommodated to the London Gazette style (Morison 1932: 57), providing standard information in a moderate fashion without ambition or courage to be taken seriously (Black 1987: 131). The few references to its quality indicate that the paper was considered poor and sensational (Andrews 1855a: 102).

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Champion, Daily Post (1741)

The Champion and the Daily Post from 1741 fall into the mediumperformance bracket of the corpus. Both papers are similar in that, despite assumed commercial success, they were not taken too seriously, either by the public or by the authorities. They were essentially judged in relation to the papers whose style they copied. While the Champion and the Daily Post appeared to have a certain lightness or sensationalism in common, little is mentioned in secondary literature about negative effects of their newswork. The role of advertising as a source of income, however, is pointed out in both papers. The commercial success of the Daily Post is linked to the fact that the paper received government funding. Black (1987: 62) maintains that funding enabled the editor of the Daily Post to print advertisements at a moderate price in the 1720s and 30s. The Champion is reported to have sold its copies at a lower price than other papers (Black 1987:107), which can be explained by the higher volume of advertisements it printed. Although the Post was considered a 'daily Tory paper in ostensible opposition to the government' (Fox Bourne 1887: 107), Morison (1932: 88) observed that it was not 'of any serious political character'. Consequently, the paper aimed to provide balanced and impartial reportage 'neither lessening one side nor magnifying the other, with clear and unbiased reasonings to explain doubtful cases' (qtd. in Black 1987: 210; cf. also 13). The Post did not cause much controversy or offence but was basically printed 'in the conventional style of a daily' (Morison 1932: 88), following in the footsteps of the Daily Courant, the first daily newspaper in London. Although Daniel Defoe wrote for the Daily Post (Andrews 1855a: 130), the paper was not held in high esteem by contemporaries and historians (Black 1987: 223; also Fox Bourne 1887: 141). The Champion was similar to the Daily Post in its soft opposition to the government but owed part of its format and its opposition role to its rival, the Country Journal (Morison 1932: 131; Black 1987: 21). The Champion is mentioned in connection with copying false or controversial reports, having earned itself the reputation of being careless and thoughtless (see Andrews 1855a: 207; also Black 1987: 229). At the same time, the paper does not seem to have been very consistent in its opposition role, as there are conflicting reports about the paper's criticism of the Walpole and Pelham ministries (Black 1987: 149, 162; but cf. Fox Bourne 1887: 132). Public Advertiser, London Chronicle (1791)

Two publications can be attributed to the category of medium-performance papers in 1791: the Public Advertiser and the London Chronicle. Although both papers were commercially successful during a period of their existence, they were considered far from high-flying publications at the end of the eighteenth century. The Public Advertiser, in particular, was thought to have long passed its peak by 1791. The London Chronicle was different in that it never became very successful in the first place.

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This difference is seen in the way the two papers are portrayed. The Public Advertiser is mentioned in particular in relation to its prime time, the 1760s and 70s, when it was praised for all the qualities attributed to high-performance papers - controversial tone, political criticism, innovative content (e.g. its famous Juniusletters), ambitious foreign and domestic coverage, or famous contributors. Little is said about the final years of the paper, except that it began to weaken by the 1780s (Morison 1932: 187-9) and that it had gradually been losing ground during many years before Woodfall eventually sold it in 1792 (Fox Bourne 1887: 285). The London Chronicle, on the other hand, emerged in the context of a new generation of themed essay-papers that focused on specific (political) topics (Black 1987: 287). Yet Black (1987: 34) maintains that it was an 'ordinary tri-weekly' which neither featured a prominent essay nor had a campaigning political tone. This impression is supported by Morison (1932: 135) who argues that the paper, though trying to be accurate and impartial, 'had no ambition to be important' and was, in fact, 'a family paper'. Thus, the London Chronicle was considered as only moderately opposed to the government (see Andrews 1855: 208). With Dr Johnson as one of the first, and possibly regular, contributors to the paper, the paper must have been successful, having 'its influence upon the minds of the newspaper trade' (Morison 1932: 137). In the first decade after its foundation, several Chronicles appeared as copies of the London Chronicle, notably Lloyds Evening Post and British Chronicle (Morison 1932: 137). 2.3 Low-Performance Profiles English Post, New State of Europe (1701) The reason why the English Post and the New State of Europe appear in the low-performance bracket in this study is that the two papers are poorly documented in secondary sources. Although the English Post is described as a commercial success by Andrews (1855a: 101-2), the paper does not seem to have left any trace after its disappearance. The few references to the English Post suggest that its editor was considered a 'collector' (Andrews 1855a: 102) and 'a very ingenious person, [who] can talk fine things upon any subject' (Fox Bourne 1887: 57). It seems that the paper was a compilation of news items from various sources rather than a proper newspaper conducting its own research. While the English Post was obviously respected for its solid compilation work, it was not considered in any way as setting the standard or trend in news coverage. Nothing relevant at all is said about the New State of Europe. London Daily Post (1741) The only low-performance paper in 1741 is the London Daily Post, but very little information about it exists. It probably did not last very long (less than 20 years), although the famous Henry Woodfall started the paper and

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Daniel Defoe is said to have supported it (cf. Fox Bourne 1887: 141; Andrews 1855a: 188). The London Daily Post is not listed as an opposition paper and does not seem to have been subsidized by the government (Black 1987: 62). From the litde evidence at hand it must be concluded that the paper was either commercially unsuccessful, or considered unimportant in other ways. Evening Mail (1791) Nor is much mention made of the Evening Mail. The paper was founded in 1789 by John Walters and came out on a tri-weekly basis (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays). The 'handsome-looking sheet', as Morison (1932: 192 [footnote]) called it, printed no advertisements during the first ten years of its existence and changed its name to The Mail in 1868 (incorporated with die The Times Weekly Edition, which was founded in 1877). The Evening Mail, which is mentioned by Black (1987: 279) for its advanced headlining system, started with die ambition to satisfy a readership with both a commercial interest and a demand for short and precise information (Black 1987: 67-8). The poor documentation status of die Evening Mail in 1791, dierefore, seems to reflect die fact that die paper had only been launched, rather than serious shortcomings of design or quality. 3 Conclusion In this chapter, I looked at ways of investigating sociohistorical parameters relating to newspaper performance. For this purpose, die concept of performance had to be adapted to die historical object of study. This meant that performance had to be defined in terms of references or comments made by newspaper historians about the historical background, production context or sales performance, and general feedback or evaluation of early news publications. The chapter showed, however, that news publications were often not systematically documented. More often than not, die information available for sociohistorical study was fragmented and had to be assembled into identifiable shapes. The problem of unsystematic documentation was solved in this chapter in that the documentation process was built into die analysis. Thus, die approach to studying performance was not primarily historical but, more importandy, critical, guided by the very way historians commented on die early newspaper press. It can be argued that such a critical evaluation is particularly suited to die analysis of historical mass media publications, and might be used as a model in future studies. In particular, McQuail's (1993) division of performance factors into an organizationinternal and organization-external perspective proved helpful in systematizing the research procedure. This research procedure could be related to the Hallidayan concepts of field, tenor and mode, showing diat fundamental stylistic concepts can be successfully operationalized for historical linguistic purposes.

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Notes 1. For a detailed discussion of Marxism in mass communication research see Stevenson (1995: 9-46). The principal research methodologies in sociolinguistics are presented in an overview in Milroy and Gordon (2004). 2. I do not wish to reiterate the different approaches to media performance in detail here. I adhere to McQuail's (1993) terminology mainly because he discusses these concepts in the context of media performance. Similar dimensions are explained by Herman and Chomsky (1988: 3-31) in their study of propaganda, which is summarized by Allan (2004: 53-5). 3. There was an implicit set of criteria against which early news publications were rated, as can be seen in the following comment by John Dunton: The Observator is best to towel the Jacks, the Review is best to promote peace, the Flying Post is best for the Scotch news, the Postboy is best for the English and Spanish news, the Daily Courant is the best critic, the English Post is the best collector, the London Gazette has the best authority, and the Postman is the best for everything' (Andrews 1855a: 102).

3 Media Variation and Stylistic Change

Style is motivated choice, and thus closely interconnected with the situation in which it occurs and the participants who take part in the communicative event. The interrelationship between context and the performance of media organizations has been established in the previous chapter; this second chapter will be concerned with the stylistic analysis of a representative text sample from the media organizations introduced above. The stylistic analysis is based on a text corpus of more than one hundred complete editions from ZEN (2004) in the years 1701, 1741 and 1791. Although the three time-samples are similar in absolute corpus size (see Appendix II), they vary significantly in terms of the number of editions included for each newspaper. These differences are, for one part, caused by changes in newspaper size over the course of the eighteenth century. The average length of a publication approximately doubled in the period from 1701 to 1741, and doubled again from 1741 to 1791. There are also considerable differences with regard to the number of editions selected for individual newspapers. The section of the London Gazette in 1701, for example, contains thirteen full editions, while most sections in that year do not exceed seven or eight editions per publication. Similarly, in 1741, some papers include as many as eight editions, while others have only two. In 1791, the number of newspaper editions selected for the corpus varies between two and three. The conceptual framework for this and the following chapter is largely based on Halliday (1971: 332-4) and Fairclough (1995a: 183-214), who claim that textual analysis in social studies involves both linguistic and intertextual analysis. Since this part of the study explores possible interrelationships between newspaper style and social configurations of news production, the concept of intertextual analysis is of particular relevance. Intertextual analysis, Fairclough (1995a: 188) explains, 'shows how texts selectively draw upon orders of discourse - the particular configurations of conventionalized practices (genres, discourses, narratives, etc.) which are available to text producers and interpreters in particular social circumstances'. The present analysis is concerned with the selective use of conventionalized discourse strategies in different media contexts. The

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analysis emphasizes the concept of style as a motivated choice of discourse strategies available from a stylistic repertoire, aiming to examine the degree to which publications are 'relatively homogenous or relatively heterogeneous' with regard to a core set of stylistic features (Fairclough 1995a: 189). This core of stylistic features consists of linguistic realizations of major discursive strategies that carry a particular potential for variation and change in historical news discourse. The discussion in Chapter 1 revealed that 'ideal' news discourse was perceived as largely conventionalized and invariable in format and presentation, based on an impartial, essentially unmediated, account of 'true' events. This ideological perception of early news discourse motivated a strictly formalized approach to news writing. As a result, only a small amount of stylistic freedom was allowed for publication. The language of early news publications carried all the features of official discourse in Fowler's (1991) sense of the term. Official discourse was marked by nominalizations, reference to persons of high prestige with tides, important events or deeds, absence of embellishment and emphasis, absence of editorial mediation, and the use of speech acts (e.g. this is to announce that. ..). Fowler (1991: 174) compares news discourse to a 'Pandora's box' that creates a 'number of conceptually appropriate fillers for a slot'. In reference to De Beaugrande and Dressier (1981: Ch. 4), Fowler (1991: 173-4) describes three basic functions, or rather effects, of text conventions (formulae) pertaining to news discourse, these being homogeriization, generation of variants, and equation of stylistic differences. Fowler (1991: Ch. 10) analyses these factors in the context of one specific news event, the media hysteria about salmonella in eggs in the 1980s. The general susceptibility of news discourse to formulae, as postulated by Fowler (1991: 177), particularly applies to early forms of the discourse which were embedded in a much tighter and stricter stylistic system than the contemporary press. In the present analysis, however, I am not so much concerned with homogenization or equation of stylistic differences as with the opposite: the degree of freedom of the early press in relation to the standards of quality and media ethics discussed earlier in this book (Chapter 1). The analysis of linguistic dimensions pertaining to stylistic freedom is expected to be most sensitive to sociohistorical constellations and a key factor 'implicated in coding social values' (Fowler 1991: 67). Measured against the standards of quality established in Chapter 1, all newspapers today, and many papers from the eighteenth century, would certainly be regarded as 'deviant'. In order to study the extent to which a newspaper deviated from quality standards, I will try to classify early newspapers on the basis of their proximity to stylistic parameters frequently associated with quality and popular journalism. Although quality and popular are commonly accepted terms to refer to the up-market, highbrow, broadsheet press as against down-market, lowbrow, tabloid papers, it is difficult to objectify this distinction (see Patterson 2000).* The distinction seems to refer to a specific way of writing as well as to specific types of news

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or aspects of reality that are represented. While the realization of a tabloid or broadsheet style may have changed over time, the distinction as such is as old as the press, and has been used since the beginning of journalism to differentiate between papers that strive to follow the code of serious newsmaking practice and those that are either unable or unwilling to do so.2 Today every newspaper can be located on this continuum. Both quality and popular newspapers today are independent and established genres of the press that follow different codes of practice and serve different markets. Both genres have their own, perfectly acceptable, ways of mediating journalistic 'truth' to their respective readerships. The distinction between quality and popular journalism cannot, however, be clearly made for the eighteenth century since stylistic mediation was not at that time perceived as essential to news discourse. News discourse was understood to be free from editorial interference and the editor was simply a messenger of the news, not a negotiator. If this aspect is factored into an analysis of early news media, a third category is likely to emerge alongside the continuum quality-popular that falls outside the analytic spectrum associated with these terms. In the following sections I will review the concept of quality journalism in early news publishing in more detail, proposing a classification of eighteenth-century newspapers into different stylistic profiles that relates to the above continuum in some way. 1 Stylistic Variables The stylistic analysis of early news media constitutes the third element of Fairclough's (1995a: 211) three-dimensional model of discourse analysis (besides context and processes of text production): the analysis of text, or interpretation. As pointed out by Fairclough (1995a: 212-3), the concept of discourse in a study of intertextuality needs to be adequately framed for the research enterprise.3 A considerable part of framing has been done in Chapter 1. In this section, I would like to briefly introduce the discursive strategies considered in the stylistic analysis of the ZEN corpus. This will again be done by describing major stylistic dimensions, or continua, which may carry a spectrum of values, alongside fixed, measurable variables. The dynamics within these dimensions will later reveal themselves in the detailed discussion of examples from various newspaper editions. In one of the few linguistic corpus-based studies of the early popular press, Schneider (2000a: 321-7, 2002a) proposes an operational definition of the term 'popular' based on the parameters readership composition, external criteria (price, circulation) and internal criteria (content, organization, readability, advertisements). Schneider suggests a weighting scale of the individual parameters to determine the overall degree of'popularity' of a paper. Internal criteria, particularly human interest content, receive the maximum score on Schneider's scale, indicating high popularity. In keeping with Schneider's definition, I will rely on internal criteria to distinguish between the two styles.

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While the internal criteria proposed by Schneider seem useful, her analytic concept lacks consistency and needs to be expanded for the present analysis. Incorporating Schneider's fourth dimension - advertisements into content, I would like to suggest a more detailed analysis of the following three areas: content, coherence relations and reinforcement. These areas reflect Fairclough's (1995a: 202-3) linguistic categories of text design ('representations' and 'relations and identities'),4 which in turn go back to the Hallidayan (1971: 332-4) concept of transitivity and modality. The areas of content and coherence relations fall into the frame of transitivity, while reinforcement strategies can be linked to the domain of modality. Transitivity and modality reflect the distinction between the ideational and the interpersonal function of language. Transitivity - the ideational element - involves the selective choices that a text producer makes in representing reality (i.e. in news discourse: the content and the sequencing of content). Modality, on the other hand, refers to the interpersonal function of language as a mediator of roles and personal relationships. Transitivity" and modality will be discussed in greater detail at a later stage in this book (Chapters 7 and 8). It is difficult in practice to keep the two dimensions strictly apart as they often overlap and reinforce each other, but the distinction is relevant as it will provide the conceptual framework for the development of analytic categories. The study of newspaper content is a classical approach taken in media studies. Fairclough (1995b: 105) sees content analysis as a 'valuable complement' to microlinguistic analysis. In the context of the present study, content analysis will not be carried out to compare coverage of events across different newspapers,5 but will be limited to the comparison of broad categories of content (e.g. domestic news, foreign news, etc.) and, more importantly, to the sequencing of news applied by the publisher. In order to measure content systematically, the corpus will be divided into different thematic sections following as much as possible the internal structure of the original editions. The coding schedule used for annotating the text sample is based on the principles of a simple content analysis by which a text is broken into its fundamental textual and thematic constituents (see, for example, Krippendorff 1980 or Hansen 1998). The standard categories considered for annotation are the following: date/time of publication; sections used in publication; position of section within the newspaper; genres; and size/length of section. Most of these standard textual parameters are already included in ZEN or can be identified easily. The exact date of publication is always written on the title page of every edition. The internal arrangement of sections in newspapers is marked by textual cues such as datelines (e.g. London, 31 December), headlines or section headings. With regard to genres, three basic distinctions can be made. The corpus can be divided into proper news sections, commercial advertisements, and editorials (essays, literature or other philosophical and political contributions). These distinctions

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are straightforward, as both commercial advertisements and essays are normally separated by section headings. The concept of coherence relations as used in this study goes back to Fairclough (1995b: 103-24) and, in particular, to his concept of information sequencing. Coherence in early news discourse refers to the way dif ferent news items hang together in a text, cohesion is established within individual news items, and a text makes sense from a pragmatic perspective. The assumption underlying the use of this category is that early news discourse shows a minimal degree of cohesion and coherence and consists of a loosely organized and edited compilation of separate pieces of news. The third category is called reinforcement. The category is understood in a broad sense of the term as referring to all microtextual strategies used to mediate feelings, opinions of participants, images, stereotypes or presuppositions, thus encompassing linguistic representations and interpersonal parameters as discussed by Fairclough (1995b: Chs 6 and 7). These strategies are interconnected with content and coherence relations, and enhance the textual effects achieved by the two other dimensions. Content, coherence relations and reinforcement strategies have been incorporated in this analysis in various ways. Each publication in the corpus has been analysed for the presence of relevant stylistic variables pertaining to these dimensions. The variables in turn have been classified according to their assumed textual function, i.e. whether they contribute to a quality or popular newspaper profile. Thirteen stylistic variables can be identified as quality factors in early newspapers. Five of these thirteen variables represent the content dimension and refer to the 'serious' focus of a publication. The first variable is called 'news focus' and applies if more than fifty per cent of a publication i.e. of its total size - is filled with news. Quality newspapers are further assumed to contain more than thirty per cent of their content related to current political affairs (either foreign or domestic). Like Schneider (2000a: 321-37), I will consider predominantly non-commercial content as a relevant characteristic of quality papers. In the analysis, the cut-off point for a quality paper has been set at a maximum of thirty per cent of commercial content on average. The printing of feature sections in a newspaper has been counted as a mark of quality publishing if their contents relate to current affairs or public debates. Five parameters are listed under coherence relations in the quality press. These parameters are assessed qualitatively in the corpus. The first relation - relevance consistency - refers to a paper's consistent focus on relevant news. The concept of relevance has been borrowed from Galtung and Ruge (1973: 62-72) where it appears as a news value under factor four (meaningfulness). The four other variables considered in this context are stylistic consistency, consistent coverage, thematic cohesion and pragmatic coherence. A high score on any of these variables points to strong macrotextual editing. Stylistic consistency, for example, means that incoming reports were not printed literally the way they were sent to the publisher but that

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they were consistently adapted to the style of a newspaper before publication. In other words, differences in style between correspondents were systematically removed throughout the paper. An indicator of lack of stylistic editing would be disparity in style in the reporting of similar events. Consistent coverage, on the other hand, refers to a similar process in relation to topical focus. Even if relevant news was printed consistently, newspapers often treated every piece of news with the same importance and priority. Consistent coverage is understood as the practice of treating news according to its assumed relevance, i.e. of giving appropriate space to a topic in an edition. Thematic cohesion is best defined in terms of its absence in newspapers. The absence of thematic cohesion suggests that the pieces of news printed in newspaper sections do not hang together thematically but only by reference to the place of origin (of the mail) and date. Moreover, topics may be repeated in different mails in the same edition, which may even lead to conflicting information on a specific topic or to continuous updates on the same matter in different places of a text. The absence of pragmatic coherence, lastly, involves a similar problem of printing writers', correspondents' or witnesses' statements without prior editing, which potentially leads to ideological conflicts between writer and newspaper (e.g. the printing of a report deploring French losses in an Anglo-French conflict). Moreover, pragmatic coherence indicates the degree of contextualization provided by the editor, i.e. it refers to the endeavour of the editor to contextualize extratextual references for the reader. The absence of contextualization, which may be considered the norm, results in an insider discourse using references that cannot be resolved by the reader unless s/he is familiar with a topic. Three more factors have been included as quality categories: truth consistency, argument consistency and opinion consistency. The three factors will be added to reinforcement strategies as they reflect the consistent negotiation of beliefs, opinions and desires of the editor. Truth and argument consistency fall into the classical concept of modality, including references to truth (epistemic references) or references to desires and logic, while opinion consistency indicates consistent and systematic inclusion of the editor's viewpoint on political matters printed by a paper. A similar number of popular categories have been used in the analysis. These are human interest, theming, news-copying, emphasis, humour, moralizing, narrative, categorization and personalization. The concept of human interest news, as adhered to in this analysis, relates primarily to apolitical non-current affairs (Allan 2004: 86) but will be extended to include ungrounded reports and foreign news that is not immediately relevant to the readership of the paper. Thus, human interest comprises all areas of social and personal life (informal events, births, weddings, illnesses, etc.) as well as entertainment and instruction (reviews, scientific experiments, curiosities, etc.). Human interest will become a relevant factor in the analysis if it covers more than one fifth of a newspaper's content.

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Theming and news-copying represent popular qualities of coherence relations. Theming is understood to be an extreme form of coverage consistency introduced above and applies if a newspaper shows a consistent focus on a specific topic that is not necessarily related to current affairs (e.g. sports). News-copying, on the other hand, applies in cases where news sections are consistently filled with reports from other papers (e.g. from the London Gazette). News-copying implies a lack of original field work and a need to fill a paper with relevant content. Emphasis, humour and moralizing represent the 'popular' modality categories. Emphasis and humour may be taken together as they essentially heighten or evaluate the effect of a statement or a report. Humour, in particular, refers to all ironic and sarcastic comments made by newspaper editors to express disapproval. Moralizing comes closest to deontic modality used to judge action by reference to law or moral obligation. The commenting on the ethical conduct of people is a particularly valid factor in the assessment of the early popular press, as it combines the personal focus in popular papers with opinioning. The use of the word narrative in this chapter is restricted to refer to the linguistic realization of a news story, that is, its presentation. In particular, narrative will be understood as a type of discourse carrying Toolan's (2001: 4-6) characteristics of constructedness, typicality, trajectory, teller, displacement, and the recalling of temporally remote happenings. These characteristics 'fictionalize and sensationalize' (Fairclough 1995b: 93) the event-line of a news story, and create a dramatic tension in the text. I have also included here the concepts of categorization and personalization (cf. Fowler 1991: 54-8; 90-3; Fairclough 1995a: 203; Gaining and Ruge 1973: 62-72), as they overlap to some extent with evaluative modality. Categorization as used in this context refers to images of people created by the media. Personalization, on the other hand, takes account of the tendency in newspapers to emphasize personal circumstances and conditions of people involved in news events. Table 3.1 provides a synoptic summary of all variables considered for the analysis of quality and popular style in early news publications. 2 Stylistic Profiles Having established die main stylistic dimensions for analysis, I will now proceed to categorize the publications of the ZEN corpus into newspaper profiles that reflect different co-occurrence patterns of quality and popular variables. The profiles will be discussed in detail in sections 2.1 to 2.6 below. Table 3.2 shows the results of this analysis in tabular form. In the table, newspaper profiles have been represented as a combination of different grayscales. Darker shades of grey have been used to indicate moderate to strong popular profiles. White and pale grey mark high and moderate quality profiles, respectively. The higher a newspaper scores in variables associated with quality, the lighter its quality profile. If a high-quality profile

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Table 3.1 Quality and popular variables in early news publications Dimension

Criteria

News focus

Content

>50 per cent of content filled with news reports

Foreign politics

Content

>30 per cent of news dealing with foreign affairs

Domestic politics

Content

>30 per cent of news dealing with domestic politics

Advertising

Content

<30 per cent of commercial content

Features (politics, science, society, letters to editor)

Content

Inclusion of editorial sections on current affairs

Relevance consistency

Coherence

Meaningful coverage of hard news

Variables Quality variables

Stylistic consistency Coherence

Standardized newspaper style

Consistent coverage

Coherence

Variation of topical focus depending on importance of news

Thematic cohesion Pragmatic coherence Truth consistency Argument consistency Opinion consistency

Thematic arrangement of news Contextualization of extra-textual references Reinforcement References to truth value of news Reinforcement References to editorial desires and logic in relation to news events Reinforcement Inclusion of editorial opinion in political news Coherence Coherence

Popular variables Human interest

Content

>25 per cent of apolitical, noncurrent affairs content

Theming

Coherence

News-copying

Coherence

Focus on single non-current affairs topics Copying of sections from other newspapers

Emphasis

Reinforcement Heightening of news (adjectives, attributes, lexis)

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Humour

Reinforcement Use of irony and sarcasm in editorial comments

Moralizing

Reinforcement References to law or moral obligation in editorial comments

Narrative

Reinforcement Use of narrative mode in

recounting news events (tense, verb) Categorization

Reinforcement Stereotyping, construction of images in relation to news events

Personalization

Reinforcement Personal circumstances and conditions of persons involved in news events

coincides with the lack of popular variables, the overall profile of a newspaper in the table will be pale grey to white. In the opposite case, a strong popular newspaper profile will show a high score in popular variables and a low score in quality variables respectively, resulting in a darker profile in both categories. Hybrid newspapers, finally, are combinations of quality and popular variables that result in neither a dark nor a light stylistic profile. Table 3.3 classifies all publications into their nearest category taking account of all different hybrid profiles found in the analysis. Seven different profiles are proposed: conservative, quality, popular, conservativepopular, quality-popular, popular-quality and balanced. As expected, not all publications can be located on the quality-popular continuum on the basis of the assessed categories. Publications from 1701 and 1741 particularly resist classification into either category. For these publications, the profile 'conservative' has been created that is characterized by a low level in both quality and popular categories. Their greyscale profile in Table 3.2 corresponds to dark in the quality category and light in the popular category. Within the profile 'conservative', papers are further classified according to their specific combination of variables. Papers that match the quality parameters pertaining to content, relevance and coverage are classified as conservative papers fulfilling the minimum requirements of a serious publication (London Gazette, English Post). Papers featuring quality categories other than those three are classified as conservative-popular (Flying Post and London Daily Post). Quality profiles are easily recognizable in their light greyscale pattern in both quality and popular categories. In the analysed corpus, four papers show such a pattern: the New State of Europe, the Post Man, the Country Journal and the Morning Chronicle. Popular papers (showing a darker profile) are represented by the London Post, the Post Boy, the Champion and the Morning Post. All other publications show either a hybrid profile or do not fit into the triangle conservative-quality-popular at all. The Public Advertiser is found in the quality-popular bracket with a consistently high score in

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both categories but a slight tendency towards the quality end. The opposite applies to the London Chronicle, where the popular profile appears to be slightly stronger. The Evening Mail, where quality and popular features are equally strong, provides an interesting case in point in that it cannot be described by any of the three profiles suggested. This seems to suggest that both categories were beginning to be amalgamated by the press at the turn to the nineteenth century and were gradually losing their force to differentiate between styles. A new age in journalism lay ahead where newspapers - both quality and popular - were more distinctive and diversified in style. 2.1 Conservative Profiles London Gazette, English Post (1701)

Only two publications qualify as conservative papers in 1701: the London Gazette and the English Post. Both papers clearly focused on foreign politics and their editions were filled with reports about troop movements, parliamentary resolutions or negotiations between states and the journeys of statesmen and other persons of public importance. Very little space was left for rumours and speculations; most news items reported simple facts. While the London Gazette was very reserved with regard to domestic news it printed, the English Post devoted some space to crime stories. The advertisement sections in the two papers were standard in length (between 25 to 30 per cent per issue). Coherence relations were poorly developed in both papers. However, the London Gazette, more than the English Post, showed a distinct thematic focus and a high degree of thematic consistency. This is seen, for example, in press coverage of the Spanish succession. When the conflict between Imperial and French troops broke out, reports from war camps reached previously unknown dimensions (e.g. No 3713, 700 words, No 3732, 1,200 words, No 3733,630 words, No 3746,1,300 words, No 3757, 705 words). But thematic consistency seems to have been the only strong point of the papers. Incoming mails do not seem to have been consistently edited, nor was there any thematic organization visible apart from chronological ordering of news. The internal structure of mails reveals poor thematic editing, leading to frequent thematic overlaps and to a somewhat clumsy, nonuniform discourse (e.g. several mails breaking the news of the victory at Narva in 1701LGZ03669).6 Another characteristic of the London Gazette was its frequent literal translations, probably from foreign correspondence, resulting in many confusing deictic references. One of many examples is the following mail from Milan where the perspective of the writer, obviously from Milan, was printed without adapting it to an English readership. The word our at the beginning of the sentence misleadingly refers to an English-speaking audience:

Table 3.2 Quality and popular profiles in the ZEN corpus 1701 EPT FFI Quality categories

News focus (>50%) Foreign politics (>30%) Domestic politics (>30%) Advertising (< 30%) Features (politics, science, society, letters to editor) Relevance consistency Consistent coverage Stylistic consistency Thematic cohesion Thematic sections Pragmatic coherence Truth consistency Argument consistency Opinion consistency Popular categories

Human interest Theming News-copying Emphasis Humour Moralizing Narrative Categorization Personalization

1741 LGZ LPT NSE PBY PMN

CEA CJL

1791 DPT LDP LGZ EVM LCR MCR MOP PAD

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Table 3.3 Stylistic classification (1701-1791) 1701

1741

Conservative

English Post London Gazette

ConservativePopular Quality

Popular

London Daily Post Daily Post New State of Europe, Country Journal Post Man, Flying Post London Post Champion

Quality-Popular

Post Boy

Popular-Quality Balanced

1791

Morning Chronicle Morning Post Public Advertiser London Chronicle Evening Mail

Our Senate have received Orders to provide Bread for the Subsistence of the French and Spanish Forces in their Winter Quarters [...]. (1701LGZ03757) Similarly, eye-witness reports from war scenes were often printed unaltered in the Gazette, even if they represented the view of the enemy. Despite this rather conservative appearance, the London Gazette was capable of suddenly changing its format if something very important took place. There is one such special edition in the corpus (1701LGZ03757), in which the King's proclamation for the dissolving of parliament, including official addresses relating to this event, were printed in full (c. 6,500 words). The King's proclamation was even moved from its chronological position to the beginning of the paper, which is one of the few occasions when the London Gazette changed its section order. There are many similarities between the London Gazette and the English Post. The latter appears to have been even more rigid in its adherence to old-type news style than the London Gazette, and its issues resemble one another in layout and general arrangement of sections. Not even the death of King William III was regarded as sufficiently important to change the chronological organization of news. The King's demise was reported at the very end of the paper in a short message (1701EPT00210). The style of the two papers is best described as factual and unspectacular, consisting of many long-winded sentences, or rather periods, reminiscent of Caxtonian style. Clauses were attached to one another by colons, resulting in long periods that consisted of thematically loosely-related information chunks. Both papers show similar patterns with regard to the

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types of reinforcement strategies they used. The only reinforcement strategies present in all editions - as in most publications of the corpus are references to the credibility of news and intelligence sources. These references were standard expressions routinely printed by most papers at the beginning of news sections or mails: Letters from Stockholm say, an Express was come thither over Land from Livonia, who brings a Confirmation of the King of Sweden's Victory, and adds, that 'tis computed that the Muscovites have lost above 40000 Men [...]. (1701LGZ03668)

Categorization strategies are also frequently found in both papers, especially in reports on the ongoing German-French conflict in Italy. Categorization subtly occurs in side-remarks emphasizing the superior strength of British allies or the weakness of their enemies: [...] that the Germans (who keep very good order, and pay for every thing they have from the Country People) are every where very well received [...].

(1701LGZ03721) Such stereotypical images were sometimes reinforced in the English Post by references to classical authorities (often in Latin): Alpibus Italiam penetrat Germanis Fratris, Casarea incessunt Gatte resistis. The Germans having pass'd the Alps, no fear. But they in Italy will soon appear. (1701EPT00197)

2.2 Conservative-Popular Profiles London Daily Post, Daily Post (1741)

Only two papers, the London Daily Post and the Daily Post, appear in die conservative-popular bracket in Table 3.3. Although both papers resemble conservative profiles such as the London Gazette or the English Post, they appear significantly weaker in the categories of relevance and coverage consistency, while at the same time using editing strategies typical of popular newspapers. Little can be said about the London Daily Post except that the paper shows a consistently low score in all stylistic areas analysed. The paper printed very little news in general (approximately 1,000 words on average) and was mostly filled with commercial advertisements (70 per cent). The structure of the paper is noteworthy because foreign news was not clearly separated from domestic news but appeared under the heading 'London' in mails from abroad (e.g. 'Holland', 'France'). The style of the London Daily Post may be equally called unspectacular. Since the paper mainly printed advertisements, news sections were short and news topics very broad and general in nature. Only particularly gruesome or shocking events occasioned stylistic excursions and longer accounts such as, for example, the breaking news of fires in London (1741LDP01938).

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A moral note sometimes appeared at the end of a report expressing the editor's view on ethical issues: - This Accident should make it a fix'd Rule with the Commanders of Ships to see their Guns drawn themselves, as soon as they come into the River, and not trust to their Men. (1741LDP02060) The Daily Post was a fairly short newspaper, showing many characteristics of a conservative newspaper profile. Like conservative papers the Daily Post printed predominantly foreign politics, which it seemed to have covered consistently well. Unlike conservative papers, however, the Daily Post had a feature section where it printed letters to the editor or other editorial affairs. A miscellaneous news section including both foreign and domestic news appeared at the end of each edition. In Table 3.2 above, the Daily Post shows consistency in the categories of relevance, coverage and coherence. At the same time, the paper lacked essential characteristics of a quality newspaper such as stylistic consistency and thematic cohesion. This may be the reason why the reader occasionally stumbles into different versions of 'truth' about an event in the paper (e.g. in 1741DPT06793, the editor speculates about the whereabouts of the Prussian army). The overall heterogeneous appearance of the paper suggests that much of its content was translated literally or printed directly as it came to the editor. What may strike the reader of the Daily Post are the frequent direct quotations in the form of letters, memorials or, rarely, supportive and emphasizing statements, which were used as proof of a report's accuracy. Direct quotations also appeared in eye-witness reports relating to war. The Daily Post united very different styles in one and the same issue. Its style moved somewhere between traditional reportage of facts and soft reportage with a slight sensational touch. The two extremes co-exist in the corpus as two separate stylistic strands without significant overlaps. The effect of this parallel existence of styles is that of a zero style, of a neutral paper uncommitted to either side. 2.3 Quality Profiles

In Table 3.3 five publications have been listed as quality newspapers, one in 1791 (Morning Chronicle), one in 1741 (Country Journal) and three in 1701 (Post Man, Flying Post and New State of Europe). Post Man, Flying Post, New State of Europe (1701) The agenda of all quality and conservative papers in 1701 was similar: a strong focus on foreign affairs, a much shorter section dealing with official domestic news and, finally, advertisements. The papers were further comparable in their perceivable intention to cover news thoroughly and impartially. The approach to achieving this aim was, however, fundamentally different in quality and conservative publications. In terms of

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content, quality papers concentrated more on diplomacy, negotiations, news analyses and a general understanding of processes and affairs, rather than on the traditional strength of troops or warfare and the listing of facts without comments. Quality papers allowed a certain degree of human interest into their publications. Yet, human interest did not serve propagandistic aims, as may have been the case with popular papers, nor entertainment purposes; it served to inform the reader by providing further context in addition to the facts reported in conservative papers. A perfect example of this type is the Post Man. The Post Man, which contains the highest proportion of advertisements in the corpus from 1701 (slightly over one-third of the paper), utilized all available strategies and means to improve the quality of its prints. It is not surprising that the paper scored highly in most areas related to coherence. While the paper adhered loosely to the structure typical of early newspapers, it sometimes abandoned its fixed section order in favour of an improvised structure when urgent matters arose. Such is the case, for example, when King William III died. The news of his death, first reported on 7 March 1701 (1701PMN00940), prompted the creation of extra news sections in subsequent editions (see 'Durham', 'Montgomery' in 1701PMN00945). News reports within sections were, like in most other papers, printed in chronologically ascending order. But the Post Man made exceptions when it felt fit to re-arrange the news by topic. A particularly obvious case is again edition 1701PMN00940, in which home news (the sudden death of King William) was printed before foreign news from Madrid and Frankfurt Quality papers may have printed very long reports if the news was considered sufficiently important. The longest articles in the Post Man, for example, reached one thousand words or more. The Hague mail in 1701PMN00919, for example, deals at great length with the role of Sweden in the European crisis of 1701 (c. 1,020 words). The author makes use of different sources by comparing and evaluating reports before finally presenting his conclusions. The article appears very modern and suited to a present-day audience. Yet, not only important news, but practically every report in the Post Man, even the shortest, consisted of at least one complete sentence. Thus, the Post Man differed substantially in readability and elegance from the abrupt Caxtonian style typical of the London Gazette and other conservative papers. The most noticeable feature of the Post Man was its stylistic complexity. The style of the Post Man was characterized by a combination of different reinforcement strategies that let the reader question a fact or analyse a situation. The Post Man had a decided opinion in political matters and was aware of the influence news may have had on its readers. This can be seen in the care with which the paper acted as gatekeeper and stylistic editor of news. The Paris mail of 1701PMN00920, for example, represents the first instance in the corpus where a newspaper referred to itself as an ideological entity in a specific news situation:

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Our Gazette commends very much the Vigour and Courage the Duke of Mantua expresses, shewing himself every day upon the Ramparts, but was not that Prince intirely in our interests, People would take the Eulogy for a Banter, for certain there is no great stock of Bravery required to appear on the Rampers of a Palace which is not besieged, and the Duke of Mantua, whose Courage made some years ago, so much noise in Hungary, stood in no need of the insipid flatteries of our Gazeteer.

Style and rhetoric were utilized carefully by the Post Man, always underlining the serious purpose of a news report and often reinforcing the standpoint of the newspaper. These careful interventions by the editor frequently resulted in subtle irony, adding an entertainment factor to the blank reporting of news: The French and Spaniards live in great correspondence together, and People cannot but admire, that the Antipathy which appeared between those two Nations, should have in an instant vanished away. (1701PMN00851)

Such short comments were sometimes expanded into full and complex articles. The writer of the Hague mail in 1701PMN00856, for example, weaves parenthetic comments, exaggerations and understatements into a thoroughly ironic article about the pointless negotiations between Holland and France surrounding the treaty of Ryswick. The article starts with an introductory statement of the author expressing utter disappointment at the outcome of the conference in which the Dutch had put so much hope. The author then continues the irony by first caricaturing and mocking the negotiation efforts made by the French before going on to present the ironic Dutch response. The conclusion echoes the tone of the beginning: No great matter [understatement] was transacted in the Conference, which was held some days ago with Count d'Avaux. That Minister according to his custom [parenthetic comment] made a world of fine Compliments [exaggeration], and declared afterwards, that his Master was willing to live in Peace with his Neighbours, and therefore offered to renew the Treaty of Reswick. He insisted very much [exaggeration] on the admission of Mr Stanhope, as a demonstration of the sincerity of his Masters intentions, whereupon one of our Deputies told him that the States expected something more [irony], but seeing he had offered to renew the Treaty of Riswick, tho the same was not temporary [parenthetic comment] , it was fit to admit into the conferences a Minister of the Emperor, who was concerned therein. Monsieur d'Avaux answered, that he had no orders on that subject, but that he would aquaint his Master with that motion, and so they parted; and 'tis thought the Conference was only designed for keeping the Negotiation on foot, till they see what turn the affair of Italy will take [emphasis added].

Often news and commentary alternated with each other (e.g. Paris mail in 1701PMN00851) and topics were developed in a uniquely elaborate way. The Stockholm mail in 1701PMN00852 begins with the general topic

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(defeat of the Muscovites at Narva), continues with independent sub-topics (number of prisoners made, losses suffered by the Muscovite army) and ends with speculations surrounding the whereabouts of the Czar. Another repeated pattern in the paper is the critical evaluation of conflicting reports on the same event. This mode was employed in cases where the truth of the news was felt to be particularly important, as in the Amsterdam mail of 1701PMN00919 which analyses Swedish troop advances in Lithuania. Like many other papers commenting on foreign politics, the Post Man had an implicit anti-French undertone, especially in the later editions of the corpus.7 Yet the Post Man cannot be called propagandist^ in the sense of conservative or popular papers; it often allowed several versions of the 'truth' to be printed. This can be seen, for example, in the comments on the so-called 'glorious' victory of Sweden over the Muscovites at the Battle of Narva. The commentator of the Post Man analysed the facts from a surprisingly distant perspective: The Muscovite Ambassador has notified to the States by way of Memorial, that he has orders from his Master, to aquaint them, that the report of the total defeat of his Forces before Nerva, is not true, but contrived by his Enemies; He owns, however, that there has been an Action before Nerva, and that the Muscovites having been betrayed by their General, and all the Collonels of the Guards were put into confusion, and obliged to retire, with the loss of about 3,000 men; but if we believe him, it was rather because of the great cold, then out of fear of the Swedes, and that the Army of Czar was still in a good posture.

(1701PMN00859) The Flying Post, by contrast, showed characteristics of a conservative or quality newspaper with a popular tinge, thus being both similar and different to the Post Man. The content profile of the flying Post reflected a diverse range of topics. Its main focus, as that of all other papers from the same year, wa current foreign affairs, dealing with diplomatic visits and the mobilization and movement of troops. Foreign news was followed by much shorter home news and advertisements. The flying Post, however, at times printed extensive sections on official domestic news, especially from Scotland (parliamentary affairs), as well as commercial news. At the same time the paper featured human interest stories such as instructive news reports (e.g. book reviews) or 'softer' news involving social events, personal affairs or human tragedy. Like other papers from 1701, the home news section of the Flying Post contained a miscellany of unofficial foreign as well as domestic news reports. Coherence relations in the Flying Post are clearly visible at thematic, stylistic and pragmatic levels. The paper creates the impression of having had a strong editing hand that cut the news into the desired publishing format. This is seen, for example, in the way sections were arranged within editions. Similar to the Post Man, there was a loose order of sections, which was often abandoned in favour of a more open structure listing news in the order of importance. A good example is again the news of King William's

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death in the edition of 7 March 1701 (1701FPT01067). Compared to the same account in the conservative English Post (1701EPT00210), the Flying Post was much more detailed (c. 1,630 words), more personal, and treated the topic with higher priority. In terms of relevance consistency, one might get the impression that the paper did not always cover current affairs thoroughly and comprehensively but preferred selective coverage of news that reflected the particular interest of the editor. While the style of the Flying Post may be regarded as sufficiently original to be called consistent, it was not particularly flexible in terms of the registers it had at its disposal to respond to different news situations. Its stylistic repertoire was limited to a set of major strategies found in most papers at the time. The frequent use of references to the truth value of news in the Flying Post brings it close to a quality paper seeking to communicate news events in exactly the way they took place. Yet, the Flying Post lacked the political fervour of, for example, the London Gazette or the English Post, or the propagandistic tone of the London Post (see section 2.4 below). Instead, the reader came across rather personal statements and graphic descriptions of scenes that had particularly impressed the editor. One example highlighting the more graphic side of the Flying Post is the report of a wrecked ship from Pennsylvania whose passengers were all tragically killed. While the London Gazette would have simply reported the bare facts, the Flying Post personalized the event by magnifying the human tragedy involved in the accident. The image of a woman drowning with her children compelled the reader to revisit the horror of the scene: [...] she struck upon a Rock and sunk, and all the Men were lost. After which 80 Passengers were taken up, and buried, who by their Habit appear to be Quakers; amongst them a Woman who had a Child at her Breast and another in her Arms. (1701FPT00888)

The last quality profile of 1701 is the New State of Europe. The New State of Europe was similar to the Flying Post or the Post Man in its focus on foreign affairs. Unlike the Flying Post, however, the paper almost exclusively printed current affairs, a feature it shared with conservative profiles. Domestic news, on the other hand, was in very short supply in the New State of Europe and was attached at the end of the paper as a list of short statements containing political news. Since the New State of Europe included practically no non-current affairs, it printed a substantial amount of instructive reports, reflecting its aim to be 'useful' as well as 'diverting' (1701NSE00001). Similar to the two quality papers discussed above, the New State of Europe was a publication with a strong editor in the background. The format of the paper appears to have been even more consistently and radically edited than either the Post Man or Flying Post. The editor of the New State of Europe put considerable effort into making its format visually appealing, using different headings and visual devices to enhance this effect This can be seen in the meticulous organization of news reports into larger sections and

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the commentaries attached to each of these sections.8 No similar format can be seen in other papers of the same year. Moreover, the New State of Europe is the only paper of the corpus that included a feature section, which was printed between news and advertisements. This feature section provided background information on geographical topics.9 Similar to the flying Post, but unlike the Post Man, news content in the New State of Europe showed a high degree of thematic specialization, seemingly directed at a specific news audience rather than the wider reading public. While thematic cohesion was strongly developed, the paper does not seem to have been very consistent in its own (political) position, as can be seen in instances of conflicting or confusing references in the corpus. For example, there are pro-Spanish comments hailing the accession of Philip to the throne (1701NSE00005) or anti-German feelings expressed in a later edition (1701NSE00030). Such comments conflict with anti-Spanish or anti-French comments normally found in English newspapers at the time and may be due to literal translations from source texts. A similar case is the paper's coverage of French troops moving north into Holland, which appeared separately both in the Hague and Paris mails of the same edition (1701NSE00005). While references to the truth value of news were frequent in the New State of Europe, die paper did not make use of dramatization strategies typical of the Flying Post. Apart from occasional stylistic blunders and political statements, die New State of Europe can be located on the factual side of reporting, although it sometimes indulged in a narrative mode, describing atmospheres and impressions surrounding events. This is seen in the following report in which the author first offers his thoughts on a subject before describing the actual event: Here is no more talk of the Investiture of Naples and Sicily; yet there is no doubt, but the Pope and the Cardinals, appointed to examine the Matter, have had time enough to bring in their Verdict. But we are not like to have it, till the Sword has cut that Gordian-Knot. The Spanish Embassador takes a particular care to tender the Oaths here, to all Princes and others, who are Feudataries of the Crown of Spain. And 'tis said, That his Excellency invited some Days ago, the Marquis del Vasto, with a design to steal him away, and send him to Naples; because he could not perswade him to enter into the young King of Spain's Interest; but the Marquis having had notice of what was designed against him, excused himself from accepting of the Honour proffered him. (1701NSE00030)

Country Journal (1741) Quality profiles in 1741 show no fundamental change or paradigm shift from the features found in 1701. While similar in their core characteristics, the stylistic trends seen at the beginning of the century appear in intensified form. In 1741 newspapers were more systematically edited and provided a more coherent read overall. Better editing meant a clearer separation of styles into rough text types, as well as a clearer indication of transitions

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between styles within a text passage. This is seen, for example, in the introduction of editorials which were to become an indispensable feature of the press by the middle of the century. The growing interest of the news audience in editorials reflects the general rise of interest in matters of opinion and argumentation. The editorial section was often (ab)used for expressing a newspaper's opinion on sensitive political and ethical affairs and matters relating to society. Another trend of the mid-century press was its growing reliance on advertising as a source of income. The Country Journal is a good example of the mid-century quality press. The Country Journal printed up to sixty per cent advertisements and had a long editorial section that filled more than thirty per cent of the complete edition. Its editorial section sometimes contained explosive material for public debate, as is seen in at least one of the two essays published in the journal (1741CJL00758), where the author responds to the debate about people's rights to instruct their representatives. Much, if not all of the Country Journals political zeal and irony went into these essays; the actual news sections - given the ban on printing parliamentary affairs - contained very little domestic politics and a small amount of foreign politics. In structure the Country Journal resembled other papers in the corpus (e.g. the Champion) but differed in its high relevance and coverage consistency and its low score in popular stylistic categories. Truth consistency was paramount, which can be seen in its many references to the truth value of news reports but also in its use of direct or reported speech as an authenticating device. While in early eighteenth-century newspapers direct speech was normally not marked by the editor, quoting and announcing direct speech had become a conscious stylistic technique by 1741. This is seen in long verbatim quotations of formal texts (documents, letters, declarations) or, occasionally, in the use of short informal speech. In the Country Journal quotations were consistently referenced in the editions, as in 'Sir John Strange, their Recorder, made their Compliments in the following Speech [...]' (1741CJL00758). The consistent use of referencing, the systematic distinction between news and comment, as well as the absence of reinforcing strategies, contribute to the stylistic profile of the paper. The Country Journal style was clear, dry, minimalist and logical, guiding the reader through the news of the day without any marked touch of sensationalism. Morning Chronicle (1791) When one looks at late eighteenth-century newspaper profiles, as is shown in Table 3.2, one can see a more even distribution in quality and popular categories than in earlier years. In fact, the table suggests that quality and popular categories were beginning to blend into each other and that the boundaries between the two styles were slowly disappearing. The general increase in macro- and microtextual strategies in late eighteenthcentury newspapers may have been caused by changing conventions that were beginning to take effect Conservative profiles, for example, had disappeared completely by the end of the century and most newspapers

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appeared with strong stylistic contours. During the second half of the century newspaper articles had grown again in size, offering more room for stylistic variation than before. Yet, the categories used to describe quality and popular newspapers were still valid variables that indicated the broad stylistic orientations of late eighteenth-century news publications. The Morning Chronicle is the only late eighteenth-century paper with a consistent quality profile. While other papers in the corpus may share some of its characteristics, the profile of the Morning Chronicle is unique in its extreme combination of popular and quality features. The popular categories found in the Morning Chronicle - theming, humour, moralization and personalization - move it very close to the sensational end of the quality-popular continuum. Theming is very obvious in the paper's focus on parliamentary news, which may make up to ninety per cent of the Morning Chronicle's content. The Morning Chronicle printed parliamentary debates word-for-word or in reported speech, confirming the trend towards an increase in quotations found in the quality press of 1741. But the most striking novelty in the quality press of 1791 was its biting humour and irony, which was not limited to editorials but occurred in all types of news. This trend reflects a greater involvement of the journalist as a participant in the news event, which can be contrasted with his previous function as an impartial and neutral reporter. The author's opinion was of central importance to the press and manifested itself in every aspect of the printing process - from the selection of news for publication to the way the news was presented and edited. While irony, sarcasm and cynicism may be found in all papers in the corpus, the degree to which these strategies were practised in the Morning Chronicle was extraordinary. Mockery and ridicule filled whole mock-sections in the paper which were especially designed for that purpose ('Glass of Fashion' or 'Mirror of Fashion'). The main targets of these verbal attacks were politicians and celebrities. The strong presence of mockery in late eighteenth-century newspapers can be interpreted as proof of a growing self-awareness of the press as a political voice of the public, especially in matters with which it did not agree. While mockery as such was nothing essentially new in newspapers or pamphlets, its systematic exploitation which began at the end of the century indicates the start of a new era in journalism. This trend was paralleled by an increase in moralizing comments in matters of public concern, which confirms that the media had begun to take their job as guardians and advocates of moral standards and ethics more seriously. 2.4 Popular Profiles

Quality newspapers can be contrasted with popular profiles, which are represented in darker shades of grey in Table 3.2. Three newspapers can be found in the popular bracket, one in each year studied: the London Post (1701), the Champion (1741) and the MorningPost (1791).

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London Post (1701) The London Post showed a clear trend towards emphasis and a systematic lack of quality-enhancing editing. The London Post predominantly printed foreign news, although there was always a short home news section at the end of the paper that preceded advertisements. In the analysed editions, home news was normally headed by a dateline and the place name 'London' and contained a miscellany of reports such as shipping news, court news, crimes and accidents, public notices (deaths, weddings, births), business news, errata, and other, mostly unverified, home and foreign gossip. The sensational style of the London Post was the result of a combination of factors: emphasis on non-current affairs, sensational or dated news, poor textual and pragmatic coherence, strong emphasis on affect and feelings, as well as a tendency towards personalization. These factors must be seen as reinforcing one another in their effect. Despite its focus on foreign news, the London Post showed a marked tendency to print non-current affairs, both domestic and foreign, not only in its miscellaneous news section but also in the paper's hard news sections. The London Post went as far in its sensationalism as to print local events that had happened outside the kingdom. The Hamburg mail in 1701LPT00264, for example, reported the case of a murder lately committed in the city of Hamburg as the top story of the mail. Similarly, the paper printed news from New York reporting an incident involving drunk and disobedient Irish recruits (1701LPT99268). The combination of soft reports as above with occasional 'serious' news, together with the many rumours and gossip stories, reflects the lack of commitment and ambition of the paper to pursue serious journalism. This impression is underlined by mails sent in from lesser-known places of correspondence such as Schansterny, Wyburg (1701LPT00255), and reports of events that happened two months before the publication date (e.g. 1701LPT00270,1701LPT00434). Theming was used in the paper as a strategy to enhance the sensationalist effect, which can be seen in the fact that reports often varied significantly from a few words to long and elaborate accounts. The arrangement of mails in the editions depended on the news of the day. The paper displayed considerable flexibility in re-arranging the chronological order of news in order that (soft) news could be foregrounded. Apart from thematic arrangement, the paper was put together in an accidental and careless way. Thematic clashes occurred regularly (e.g. Amsterdam and Konigsberg mails in 1701LPT00255), as did many ill-placed references characteristic of the London Gazette. Coverage often seemed random, or to follow the most attention-grabbing news of the day. The style of the paper cannot be called consistent in any way as its sensational style was heavily intermixed with short hard news reports in the London Gazette manner. The miscellaneous section at the end of the paper, usually used to print speculative news and gossip, resembles other papers in the corpus; its content did not, however, differ from the more serious content sections of the paper.

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In terms of reinforcing strategies, the paper scored high in the categories of emphasis as well as personalization and categorization, while showing a low consistency in references to the truth value of the news. Stylistic reinforcement is unusually strong in the paper in soft news as well as hard news. The paper made use of many emphatic devices or colloquialisms, adding a casual note to the text. Typical examples are the following (in bold print): [...] but that the Nobility and Gentry of that great Dutchy continue to threaten, That they will serve the other 2 Sapiehaes, viz. the Great Field-Marshal, and the Great Treasurer of the said Dutchy, as they did the Master of the Horse of that Principality; that is to say, That they would cut them to pieces, if they should happen to fall into their Hands, if they do not throw up then* Imploys of FieldMarshal, and Great Treasurer. (1701LPT00256) There is a great Talk up and down Town, that the King of Spain has met with very cold Reception, in his New Kingdom: That the Mobb were up in Madrid, and were headed by some of the Grandees; and that Cardinal Portocarrero was gone aside, for fear of being cut to pieces by them. (1701LPT00264) [...] the Count de Avaux is beginning to speak very big.

(1701LPT00270) Personalization is evident in the many soft news reports emphasizing personal experience, as has been pointed out in some of the examples above. The effect of personalization, however, was reinforced when it was combined with categorization. This was the case when the paper wanted to expose the weakness or misdemeanour of England's enemies (France and Spain). When describing a small incident between the French vice-consul in Turkey and a local man, which resulted in that vice-consul's house being plundered (1701LPT00434), the paper reinforced anti-French sentiments by depicting the French as essentially weak and unable to deal with even small situations. Although such propaganda may not have been printed by the serious press, it represents the strategies of papers such as the London Post that were used to emphasize stereotypical conceptions. Champion (1741) The Champion was very similar to the London Post in its absence of current affairs and its focus on human interest. In format, however, the Champion resembled the 'highbrow' Country Journal, as it printed a long editorial at the beginning of each edition, which was followed by various foreign and domestic news sections. At the same time, the paper differed from the mid-century quality press due to its significant shortcomings in the parameters of relevance, coverage, thematic cohesion, argumentation and truth consistency. The Champion's stylistic profile was characterized by a wide range of popular categories. The paper not only printed a high number of human

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interest stories, but also copied whole sections from other newspapers (e.g. 'Daily Advertiser HAGUE-Intelligence' in CEA174100265). The paper further scored high in news items without perceivable relevance, which suggests that reports were often included merely for filling gaps or to draw the reader's attention. Gap-fillers appeared in hard news as well as soft news sections (e.g. 'Rumours', Tuffs') and normally did not include any references to the truth of the news. The Champion's style was marked by a casual tone signalling the writer's involvment in the news, and a consistent use of graphic vocabulary that often emphasized the personal dimension of the participants in a news event. It is in these personal reports that the paper perceived itself as an advocator of good moral standards, as can be seen in the editor's outrage at the report of a dead woman's body that was left lying in the street when she died on the border of two parishes (1741CEA00265). In another instance graphic vocabulary is used to express the editor's disgust at pirates taken prisoner: 'They appear to be a Pack of abandoned Wretches, ragged and dirty, and shew no Concern in their Confinement [...]' (1741CEA00265). The personal opinion of the editor was often printed inside hard news sections in ironic or sarcastic comments normally found in editorial columns. Two examples illustrate this custom: the first is a sideswipe at the rich, while the second expresses the editor's amazement at the appointment of five successors to one single person: [...] People in this Country having so much Money they really don't know what to do with it. ('Tis happy for them.). (1741CEA00179) So that ONE Orthodox-Stomach could digest the Appointments of FIVE. (1741CEA00179)

While the editor appeared in most places in the paper, many reports were probably printed in the exact way they arrived at the publishing house, thus lending the paper a slightly disparate note. This impression is confirmed by the many thematic overlaps in the paper where updates on news events were printed in different places of the edition (e.g. 'Advices' section in CEA174100179, or various entries from Brussels under 'Holland mail'). Morning Post (1791) The Morning Post from 1791 is the last paper to be discussed in the category of popular newspapers. Like the Champion, the Morning Post had a counterpart in the quality press. The profiles of the Champion and the Morning Post suggest that popular papers tended to orientate their format to a serious paper whose style they tried to copy. In the case of the Morning Post, the connections with the Morning Chronicle are obvious in many ways. Like the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post always printed an editorial section at the beginning of each edition. Its news sections equally focused on domestic affairs and contained ironic mock-sections or lists of short pointed comments. Political debates were further reproduced in the

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famous word-for-word format introduced by the Morning Chronicle. Like the Champion and the Country Journal above the Morning Post fell short in the areas of coverage and truth consistency, as well as in terms of pragmatic coherence. At the same time, the paper showed a more developed popular profile in the categories of human interest, emphasis, narrative and newscopying. Thus, while there were strong similarities to the Morning Chronicle in the overall thematic focus of the paper, the Morning Post was more anecdotal and informal, both with regard to the details provided and the language used to describe those details. This bent towards informal style sometimes resulted in jokes or funny stories which were printed alongside serious news: The complaint among the CATS, is in consequence of several of them having been bit by their mistresses. OLD MAIDS have long been considered as maniacs, and have been always notorious for snarling and biting!

(1791MOP05741) There is a clear personalization tendency in all editions in both soft and hard news reports, as can be seen in the many small details which particularly emphasize the emotional aspects of an event. One example is the detailed description of farewell gifts presented by a ship's crew to their Lieutenants after years of service, which even includes the exact words engraved on the gold plate (1791MOP05741). Another characteristic commonly found in the paper is its tendency to moralize and scandalize in questions of manners and ethics, as for example in the paper's critical remark about raging liberalism in contemporary society: Every fashionable Match, made in these days of free intercourse, must of course produce in some Quarter a disappointment. — Lady C. W suppresses her feelings but her altered looks are sufficient to arraign the Marquis of such a breach as — The maiden silence feels, but dares not tell.

(1791MOP05712) A similar moral or ethic commitment appeared in the sections commenting on false reports printed in other news publications, or generally in news contexts in which the publisher felt that the public was fooled or abused by authorities and the government. It was primarily the co-occurrence of popular features as outlined above that lent the paper its sensational character, which was clearly reinforced by poor coherence relations and the careless presentation of news in general. 2.5 Quality-Popular Hybrids Many profiles discussed in sections 2.3 and 2.4 could be attributed relatively clearly to either quality or popular categories. This section will be concerned with hybrid forms, i.e. newspapers whose profiles share key characteristics of both categories but tend towards one of the two sides. There are two

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papers that fit the description of quality-popular. They appear to be quality papers in their core with a strongly developed popular profile. These are the Post Boy (1701) and the Public Advertiser (1791). The London Chronicle (1791) exhibits the opposite profile - a popular core with a quality touch. Post Boy (1701) The Post Boy's counterpart was the Post Man, the foremost quality paper in the corpus. The Post Boy resembled the Post Man in most aspects relating to format, except that it was shorter and had a stronger domestic focus than its rival sister. As with the Post Man, foreign news that was not directly related to current affairs was rarely printed. The Post Boy, however, seems to have been less clearly organized and coherent than the Post Man, and its home news sections in particular tended to be a thematically unorganized collection of curiosities and miscellaneous news: home news, but also foreign news dispatches, often exceeded 500 words; sometimes long reports were even repeated in the same edition, leading to obvious thematic overlaps. Examples like these lend the paper a note of disorganization, which is further seen in conflicting perspectives that may have been printed in the same issue. While such blunders were rare and reduced the quality of the paper only marginally, they contrast with the meticulous organization of the Post Man. The Post Boy also exhibited a stronger tendency than the Post Man towards the printing of soft news. This is reflected in the fact that the longest accounts in the editions were funny and entertaining stories, or essentially harmless and soft news reports. Making use of similar reinforcement strategies as the Post Man, the Post Boy occasionally printed poorly edited mails in the London Gazette style. One popular characteristic that the Post Boy shared with the New State of Europe was its bent towards narrative story-telling. The editor of the Post Boy sometimes picked up on small events and expanded them so as to make them appear more important. All these 'soft' tendencies were reinforced by personalization strategies emphasizing the emotional state of the participants. Public Advertiser (1791) Compared to other late eighteenth-century newspapers, the Public Advertiser was characterized by a comparatively conservative profile. It contained letters to the editor or other editorial sections, and the proportion of its news content, which predominantly dealt with foreign affairs, was slightly higher than that of other papers (60 to 80 per cent). While the paper's core sections resembled late eighteenth-century quality prints, the Public Advertiser, despite its strong political focus, did not reach the sharpness or wit of the Morning Chronicle. Unlike the Morning Chronicle, whose political contributions were the source of incessant controversy, the Public Advertiser seemed more passive, responding to, rather than challenging, provocative activities of other papers. This passiveness resulted in a lack of political opinion consistency, despite the serious ambition the paper may have had.

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The contained voice of the Public Advertiser, together with its focus on foreign politics and the high number of human interest stories it printed, suggests that the paper did not pursue major political aims; the paper's strength lay in its less controversial, and hence less relevant, contributions, such as the reprint of a twenty-year-old Character of Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke (1791 PAD 17660) or its narrative, almost poetic, description of Hyde Park on a sunny afternoon (1791PAD17683). At the same time, the paper displayed a surprisingly religious, anti-Catholic fervour, which is seen in the many remarks against Roman Catholics. While soft news, combined with a personalization tendency, appeared in various places in the paper, scientific, geographical or historical accounts seem more characteristic of the Public Advertiser (e.g. description of Botany Bay in 1791 PAD 17683). It is this scientific focus, along with a narrative tendency, that the Public Advertisershared with the New State of Europe of 1701. London Chronicle (1791) The London Chronicle was very similar to the Public Advertiser except that it tended even further towards the popular end. It was characterized by a clear popular profile in most key areas associated with the early entertaining press, which is seen in the high degree of theming and linguistic reinforcement through emphasis. The London Chronicle's most distinctive characteristic was its narrative style, which permeated through all thematic areas of the paper. One example is the report of a 'truly melancholy accident' of a private boat which sank near the coast due to a sprung plank (1791LCR05378). The narrative opposes two scenes - the harmless spectacle watched by people from the shore, and the sudden and dramatic event which leads to the fatal accident. The author not only repeats himself when commenting on the victims but further uses a metaphorical picture, 'plunged into eternity', which illustrates the transition from one world to the next. In the London Chronicle, narrative techniques were utilized when other contemporary papers preferred mockery and ridicule to express criticism or disapproval. In terms of soft or human interest news, the London Chronicle also fits the popular profile, as it featured many unusual and extraordinary stories, such as an accident following a phaeton joyride (1791LCR05408, reported twice in the same paper), the report of a man in France rescuing others from drowning (1791LCR05378), the news of a 'terrible affray' between soldiers and townspeople of Killarney over cock-fighting (1791LCR05378), or the account of a man attacked by an eagle in Scotland (1791LCR05362). Apart from these personalized accounts, one reads about various curiosities such as sugar that is gained from maple trees, recent technological inventions, theatre reviews, anecdotes and others features. Despite its clear popular core, the London Chronicle included some of the relevant criteria of the quality press. In general, the editor was careful and conservative with regard to the application of entertaining or reinforcing strategies, and news was presented in a traditionally short, chronological

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and factual manner. Overall, the paper kept a touch of an old-style newspaper in the way news was presented in short lists. This is also reflected in the fact that domestic and foreign news often alternated or appeared together in the same mail. 2.6 Balanced Profiles

The Evening Mail from 1791 is the only paper in the corpus that does not fit into the triangle of conservative-quality-popular. Its profile constitutes the reverse of conservative newspapers discussed in sections 2.1 and 2.2. Unlike conservative papers, which were marked by an absence of stylistically relevant features, the Evening Mail showed very high results in both the quality and popular categories. Part of the reason for this phenomenon is that the paper had far more space to fill with news than any other paper in the corpus. Since the Evening Mail only printed news-related content (no advertisements) , the paper was able to cover a very wide range of topics and events. The Evening Mail offered a rich collection of news that covered all relevant aspects of contemporary life. Its editions stood out from contemporary publications due to their complex and modern textual structure and headlining system. The Evening Mail was a true treasure trove of different styles and registers, ranging from humoristic, ironic and comic stories, to technical, matter-of-fact descriptions, informal and casual commentaries, or engaged, vivid, sermonic and sensational accounts. Irony and sarcasm constituted the extreme of a humoristic and comic style which often appeared when the editor commented on curious incidents, as found on the front-page news story about a woman disguised as a man (1791EVM00327). Such a mocking tone existed together with graver and more passionate language when the editor held forth about atrocious, disastrous or very grave matters such as natural disasters or shocking crimes. Yet nowhere was passion more ardent than in reports about France in the aftermath of the Revolution. While humoristic and grave styles represented two extreme forms of stylistic reinforcement by the editor, matter-of-fact descriptions reflected the attempt to write with as little editorial intervention as possible. In the Evening Mail, this neutral and objective style appeared in technical or political reports where the involvement of the author was expected to be minimal (cf., for example, the discussion concerning a new constitution of France in 1791EVM00380, or the geographical analysis of Sweden in 1791EVM00327). 3 Conclusion The present chapter was intended to draw attention to the style of eighteenth-century news publications through the analysis of a representative cross-section of newspapers from three different points in time. In keeping with the design of the previous chapter, the analysis was based on the titles and digitalized holdings of ZEN in the years 1701, 1741 and 1791.

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In the course of this chapter, selected editions from ZEN were analysed for various forms of text editing and grouped into stylistic profiles. These profiles were based on the well-known continuum dividing quality and popular papers but were again adapted to the particular historical situation under scrutiny. In order to account for all types of publications present in the corpus, sub-categories were established that reflected different stages or shades on that continuum. At the beginning of the century the editing of incoming news correspondence was clearly optional. The detail of information available to editors and the capacities of newspapers were both restricted and limited. There were papers with very little editing at all (e.g. the London Gazette), while other papers showed more elaborate editing profiles tending towards either the popular (e.g. London Post) or quality side (e.g. Post Man). The credit attributed to news printed by a paper was seen to have largely depended on its reputation as a serious reporter and, more importantly, on its first-hand access to news stories. With regard to content, governmentsupported papers such as the London Gazette set the standard for many years. Although there was a range of stylistic devices at the disposal of editors, the stylistic repertoire of individual papers was - with exceptions (e.g. the Post Man) - still fairly limited. By the middle of the century, stylistic editing had become a constant factor in the production of newspapers. While in the early 1700s not all papers made use of the complete stylistic repertoire, the analysis for 1741 revealed a more consistent and balanced application of style in general. Newspapers seemed to have varied mainly by the specific situation in which editing was applied rather than in the selective use of particular editing strategies. Stylistic editing was increasingly added to give a paper a distinct profile - a political face - and a more controversial nature. Clearer editing profiles went hand in hand with greater specialization in newspaper content, leading to a widening of the gap between the popular (e.g. the Champion) and the serious press (e.g. the Country Journal). By 1791, individual publications had emerged with strong contours and even more pronounced opinions. There seems to have been a veritable competition in the late eighteenth-century press for readership attention through provocation and controversy. Provocation in 1791 was clearly divided into sensational grabbing for attention (e.g. the Morning Post) and deliberate attacks with a political motive (e.g. the Morning Chronicle). Yet, not all papers were found to orientate themselves between these extremes. There were papers in the corpus (e.g. the London Chronicle, the Evening Mail) that were more moderate in tone, suggesting that a third category of papers was emerging outside the continuum quality-popular. By the end of the century, this third dimension of semi-ambitious midmarket papers had established itself in the market, serving readers with a genuine interest in things local and foreign without commitment to either side of the extreme. Complex and balanced editing of news continued to be an important feature of the serious press in 1741 and in the mid-market

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press in 1791. The quality press in 1791, however, showed signs of a growing thematic and stylistic specialization, leading to particularly provocative and pungent statements reinforced by an entertaining style. At the sensational end, papers showed a similar tendency towards entertainment through an increasing focus on soft topics, and heightening through reinforcing strategies. Notes 1. One important angle on approaching the distinction between quality and popular papers is offered by media bias and propaganda studies (e.g. Eldridge 1993, 1995, 2000; Herman and Chomsky 1988) and, in particular, by the analysis of media behaviour in relation to the beliefs held by their readers (Mullainathan and Shleifer 2005). 2. For an overview of the popular press from a historical perspective see Williams (1978: 41-50) or, more recently, Conboy (2001, 2004). 3. Cf. also Fowler (1991: 68): 'I do not want to give the impression that critical linguistics is a mechanical procedure which automatically yields "objective" interpretations. Critical interpretation requires historical knowledge and sensitivity, which can be possessed by human beings but not by machines.' 4. Fairclough (1995a: 202-3) adds to the dimensions 'representations' and 'relations and identities' a third category, called 'image and text', which will not be looked at in this chapter. The interrelationship between text and image is analysed in greater detail in Chapter 5 of this book. 5. A comparative analysis of newspaper content is ideally based on simultaneous and parallel coverage of specific periods. This is, unfortunately not consistently the case with the editions available from ZEN. See section 3 of Chapter 1 for a discussion of corpus-linguistic constraints relevant to the analysis of early news media. 6. The abbreviations of newspaper editions follow the classification system of ZEN (2004) where the year appears first, followed by the short form of the publication (e.g. LGZ for London Gazette) and a five-digit serial number. 7. Examples of anti-French sentiments are found in the Vienna mail (1701PMN00943), the Hague mail (1701PMN00945) or the London mail (1701PMN00946) of the Post Man. 8. Edition No. 1 (1701NSE00001), for example, was split into news sections under different place headings (e.g. 'Italy' or 'Holland'), which were further divided into respective mails (e.g. 'Rome', 'Milan'). These sections were followed by editorial commentaries under separate headings (e.g. 'Reflexions on Spain'). 9. Shortly after the launch of the paper, however, this structure of reports was given up in favour of a simpler format, such as was used by most newspapers of the time. In 1701NSE00030, news reports already appear in chronological order with no further sorting by location.

4 Performance and Style: A Socio-Stylistic Profile

The previous two chapters have shown that early news discourse was governed by specific sociohistorical and stylistic constellations. This short and concluding chapter of Part I is concerned with the correlations that exist between these constellations. Thus, the chapter is intended to emphasize, in the form of a summary of results, the interrelationship and interdependency between performance and style. This perspective, which may be implicit in the previous discussion on stylistic profiles, merits some further reflection. It can be assumed that some editing practices were popular with contemporary readers, while others were considered dubious or unattractive. The positioning of a news publication within the stylistic spectrum of early news discourse was, among other factors, a matter of ability and choice on the part of the editor. Through the selective application of style newspaper editors could avail themselves of the opportunity to design the stylistic profile of their liking. Obviously, the choices that were made were inspired by current stylistic trends and fashions on the media market, and reflected the editors' efforts to try and gear the style of their publications towards the intended audiences. While this may have been a relatively simple procedure in the early 1700s, the results of Chapters 2 and 3 allow for the assumption that performance and style became increasingly complex parameters to assess as the media began to diversify in the course of the eighteenth century. The two sections below will summarize in detail how this process shaped and influenced the concept of style and performance with regard to early news discourse. 1 Towards Market Diversification The interrelationship between the newspaper market and stylistic performance is the result of an interplay of various factors. Chapter 3 showed that performance can be broadly related to the financial success and the public response a newspaper generated. Early newspaper style, as was seen in Chapter 3, can be analysed in terms of its approximation to known stylistic dimensions of media discourse, such as quality, popular or conservative

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style. In Table 4.1 below, the stylistic dimensions analysed in Chapter 3 have been combined with the performance profiles of Chapter 2. If we look at the high-performance bracket in Table 4.1 in more detail, we can immediately see a predominance of quality newspapers. Four publications - two in 1701 and one each in 1741 and 1791 - have been listed a high-performance as well as high-quality papers, along with one hybrid paper from 1701 (quality-popular). The popular and conservative newspapers are only represented with one publication each. A closer look at the table reveals trends and diachronic developments of the early press over the years. Two probably interconnected tendencies can be observed: in the first half of the century, only conservative and quality papers were associated with high performance, while newspapers with popular characteristics were generally rated poor to middling. The first popular paper in the highperformance bracket appears in 1791, suggesting that the popular press was more firmly established on the market by the end of the century. This finding ties in with the assumption that at the beginning of journalism popular publishing was seen as a defect, or deviation, from what was to be considered proper newswork. Popular papers were not only sensational and used attention-grabbing rhetoric, but they lacked critical elements of the serious press such as relevant coverage and a coherent presentation of news. By the end of the century, newspapers had emerged that might not have qualified for quality printing but which were respected nonetheless for their broad appeal or entertainment value. The high degree of thematic and stylistic specialization in late eighteenth-century newspapers shows that different newspaper formats had begun to be accepted by the public as representing different audiences and serving different markets.

Table 4.1 Profile types and performance categories Profile Type / Performance

High Performance

Medium Performance

Low Performance

Conservative Conservative-Popular Quality

LGZ (1701)

LGZ (1741) DPT (1741)

EPT (1701) LDP (1741) NSE (1701)

Popular Quality-Popular Popular-Quality Balanced

FPT,PMN(1701) CJL (1741) MCR(1791) MOP (1791) PBY(1701)

LPT (1701) CEA (1741) PAD (1791) LCR(1791) EVM (1791)

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In the light of the above comments it is not surprising that most papers classified as medium in performance were either popular, popular-quality or conservative in profile. Conservative profiles gradually disappeared and lost ground during the eighteenth century; popular profiles, on the other hand, secured their position and gradually gained a foothold on the market While low-performance papers reflect these tendencies to some extent, their profiles include special cases that need to be explained separately. Of the four low-performance papers in the corpus, one fits the description of a quality paper, two have conservative profiles, and one has a balanced profile. It may be surprising that one of the best known and best performing newspapers in history, the London Gazette, shows a conservative profile that is largely characterized by the absence of most stylistic features on the quality-popular continuum. Contemporaries must have found the London Gazette style barely sufficient for basic communicative purposes. The analysis of the Gazette does not even reveal any signs of 'laboured' simplicity, as was suggested in guidebooks on technical and scientific discourse of the seventeenth century. The style of the Gazette was poor; poor in the sense of minimal editing effort, mistakes, thematic overlaps, minimal structure, and lack of cohesion. It appears that factors such as textual quality or appeal simply did not play any role in the publication process of the Gazette. It was probably - andrightly- assumed that everybody who wanted to be informed had to consult the paper anyway. Thus, the success of the London Gazette must be linked to other merits the paper had, such as its authority in London as a reliable provider of 'true' news, its excellent news network, and its support from persons of high standing. Support, of course, extended to financial contributions from those political groups the paper represented. Financial support meant that the paper did not depend on sales as much as commercial newspapers did, while non-financial support is likely to have included access to privileged or classified news. The strong backing of the paper permitted a very conservative approach to publishing in which news appeal was reduced to the basic communication of facts. The analysis of the London Gazette from 1741 corroborates this impression. In comparison to other contemporary publications, the gap between the style of the London Gazette and commonly practised newspaper style even seems to have widened as the publication became more specialized. By 1791, the paper hardly printed any conventional news any more; its primary function was that of a public advertiser. While the London Gazette did seem to have influenced other papers in terms of what news was seen as fit to print (see the many headings 'From the London Gazette' in the corpus), the paper did not command the same attention at the level of style. The assumption that a conservative profile in the style of the London Gazette alone did not automatically guarantee a high performance is confirmed when one looks at the profiles of the English Post, the Daily Post and the London Daily Post. The English Post appears in the low-performance

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bracket, while the Daily Post and the London Daily Post, two papers from 1741, can only be considered middling. In terms of editing, the English Post comes nearest to the London Gazette style discussed above. The English Post had no consistent stylistic face that was underlined or highlighted by either quality or popular features, but seemed neutral in appearance and technical in tone. At the same time, the paper lacked the authoritative power of the London Gazette, which made it significantly weaker and less persuasive than its model paper. If the paper had been successful for some time, as is vaguely indicated in secondary sources, it must have been due to its closeness in format to the Gazette rather than due to its originality. The case is similar with the Daily Post and the London Daily Post. Neither paper seems to have had a consistent stylistic profile or approach to sourcing and presenting news. The Daily Post must have been slightly more successful than the London Daily Post, as subsidies allowed a higher intake of advertisements at a lower rate. But despite the Daily Posts ambition for accuracy and its moderate opposition to the government, it did not command public attention. Both the Daily Post and the London Daily Post leave the impression of being papers without a distinct voice. This is seen not so much in the lack of stylistic editing as in the inadequate and inconsistent use of editing strategies. Readers of the Daily Post and the London Daily Post may have found it difficult sometimes to follow the point of a remark or to understand the purpose of a reinforcing expression. It seems that contemporary readers of the Daily Post and the London Daily Post expected a successful paper to be more consistent in editing and clearer in its position. Successful papers were meant to choose between either a serious or an entertaining profile. All forms of stylistic editing were permitted, and editors needed to negotiate this choice. High-performing quality papers have to be considered separately for each year studied. The successful papers in 1701 were the Plying Post and the Post Man. The reported success of the flying Post can be understood if the editions from the corpus are looked at in detail. The style of the paper is marked by moderate application of style and reinforcement strategies. 'Soft' dimensions are included in the paper that address a local readership. Although stylistic reinforcement is an integral part of the paper, the flying Post did not make excessive use of any particular stylistic mode. The most striking feature of the paper was its controversial nature, The flying Post was reported to have been genuinely committed to its cause, and to have exposed itself to frequent criticism with its biting and controversial comments. While there is already a considerable difference between the London Gazette and the flying Post with regard to the use of stylistic strategies, the most successful paper in 1701 - the Post Man - appears to be far more complex than the flying Post. The Post Man, a loyal paper to the King, made comprehensive use of quality features in all editions of the corpus. This impression was shared by the public, who respected the paper for the thorough contributions it made. The Post Man is characterized by a refined and cultured style. Nowhere in the early eighteenth-century part of the corpus

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is news reportage more focused and balanced, or more appropriately suited to the particular text type and situation of use. Editing is used sparingly and thoughtfully, creating the impression of a carefully edited text. It seems that editing techniques were deliberately used by the Post Man to underline the editor's opinion and viewpoint on different occasions. The Post Boy, the only high-performing hybrid paper, was very similar to the Post Man in most aspects mentioned but displayed a less developed political profile and a more popular, entertaining, edge. In terms of performance, the principal quality paper of the middle of the century was undoubtedly the Country Journal The Country Journal was opposed to the government and considered extremely controversial. It had a reputation as a heavyweight political paper that wanted to be taken seriously at both national and international levels. The paper resembled in more pronounced form the Post Man of 1701 in its select and careful application of style and its balanced use of editing devices. At the same time, it shared the controversial nature of the Flying Post. The comparable success and profile of the Post Man and the Country Journal suggests that similar quality standards were considered relevant in the first half of the eighteenth century. Further research, however, might reveal that the Country Journalvf3& slightly more conservative in language, and more reluctant in its use of human interest and reinforcement strategies. The most successful quality paper in 1791 was the Morning Chronicle. The Morning Chronicle was regarded as the foremost political journal of all times, even matching the successful Times. The paper had a long history of controversy and was known for its short and pungent style. It had a clearly recognizable voice that was distinguishable in all the news it printed, with a focused, clear and often bitterly ironic and sarcastic style. Almost every sentence of the paper was written with a point and contained a hidden or direct comment. In comparison with high-performing quality papers from earlier years, the Morning Chronicle had the most developed thematic and stylistic focus, as it combined quality and popular features consistently. The paper's profile suggests that popular categories had become gradually accepted and absorbed by the quality press. The Morning Post represents the only popular profile in the corpus that can be classified as a high-performing publication. Its similarities to the Morning Chronicle may not come as a surprise. The degree of mockery so characteristic of the Morning Chronicle is only matched by the Morning Post, whose format was an exact copy of the Chronicle. Its controversial reputation, however, did not reach the height of its rival, which may have been due to its lack of essential quality features. Quite unlike the Morning Chronicle, the Morning Post had a somewhat chaotic touch and an anecdotal character. It seems, however, that the two papers met in their extreme nature - at the far end of the serious and cheap scale. The Morning Post was considered a shameless, sensational and extremely cheap paper with a 'female' character. The two other popular papers of the corpus, the London Post (1701) and

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the Champion (1741), can be located in the medium-performance category. While both papers can be called popular, the reputation of the Champion as a cheap, polemical, manipulative and sensational newspaper far exceeded that of the London Post At the same time, the Champion probably performed better in sales, whereas the absence of business information for the London Post implies poor to middling performance figures. The fact that a paper such as the Champion had the potential to be fairly successful despite or because of its sensational character suggests that, by the middle of the century, there was a growing demand and acceptance in the reading public regarding less serious news reportage in the regular press. This finding would tie in with the assumption that the press, by 1741, had started to diversify into two lines of accepted and successful newspaper styles, that of serious and sensational reportage respectively. Two of the three hybrid profiles appear in the medium-performance category. These are the Public Advertiser and the London Chronicle. If one analyses their profiles one gets the impression that their failure as highperformance papers was linked to their inability to confront their political enemies. The Public Advertiser is the only paper in 1791 that reportedly sold poorly at the time of publication. The style in the editions of the Public AdvertiserwAs marked by an angry, intense voice and a clear political undertone advocating a middle or neutral position. The paper must have considered itself serious and was, unlike the London Chronicle, competing with the Morning Chronicle. It seems, however, that extreme positions and statements were more in demand than compromises and diplomatic talk, both politically and linguistically. While the Public Advertiser had a clear opinion on all relevant issues and expressed it accordingly, it lacked the entertaining and light style of the Morning Chronicle. Having an opinion was one thing; how to represent it was another matter. The analysis for the year 1791 shows that the stylistic differentiation along the line soft-serious reportage was completed by the end of the century. The most successful papers, it was seen, were those with the sharpest tongue and the most pungent, entertaining style. Matter-of-fact reportage was not found as the predominant style in newspapers any longer but continued to exist in certain text types (scientific reports, explanations) or specialized publications not immediately depending on market performance (e.g. public advertisers such as the London Gazette in 1791). The London Chronicle did not directly compete with the Morning Chronicle, despite its relative success and serious reputation. The London Chronicle is an interesting case in point in that it was seen as a reasonably successful paper although it never had the ambition to be important This could be considered a paradigmatic move away from the assumption that newswork was only respectable if it dealt with politically charged matters. Unlike other successful serious papers, the London Chronicle tried to address all members of the community, not only those familiar with current parliamentary affairs. The London Chronicle combined a complex and varied style with a somewhat old-fashioned look. Its textual structure resembled that of a

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mid-century paper in appearance. At the same time, the paper printed miscellaneous local news of interest to the common people in the street strange local events, extraordinary achievements, accidents, and other occurrences. Although stylistic reinforcement was commonly found in the paper, no sensationalism was visible that was similar in sharpness to that of the Morning Post; the profile of the paper was somewhere in the middle between the extremes of the Morning Chronicle and the Morning Post. It is possible that the London Chronicle divided the newspaper market into the third segment of mid-market papers. The low-performance profiles of the New State of Europe (1701) and the Evening Mail (1791) should be discussed together as they represent special cases in their respective years. While the analysis revealed that stylistic editing contributed to or reflected the discourse of high-performing newspapers at the beginning of the eighteenth century, the profile of the New State of Europe shows that apparently not every paper using quality strategies was equally successful. The New State of Europe, for example, was not as highly regarded or successfully sold as other quality papers in the corpus, despite the paper's modern and complex text format and its distinct editorial voice. A comparison with other quality profiles of the same year suggests that the thematic scope of the publication may have been too narrow and its format too specialized for an early eighteenth-century readership. As implied by its title, the paper, which started publication in 1701, experimented with a new unconventional format which appears to have failed to reach a wide audience. The strong theming element and the printing of feature sections in the paper anticipated a development that would later become standard practice in newspaper publishing. A similar analysis may also apply to the Evening Mail, the only paper that has a balanced profile. From the evidence at hand, the paper was not considered particularly important, although it may have been moderately successful. The format of the Evening Mail is radically different from that of other papers in that it printed no advertisements at all. It contained a massive compilation of foreign and domestic news, including the widest range of topics found in the corpus. The style of the Evening Mail was varied and 'customized' to the particular situation of use and type of text, ranging from ironic commentaries, and technical and matter-of-fact style, to sensational reportage. The Evening Mail addressed a mixed audience interested in major foreign and political events as well as in small local news. Yet, the role of the Evening Mail was more that of a faithful and entertaining reporter of events than that of a biting commentator. In terms of the first purpose, the Evening Mail can be considered the most comprehensive and complete paper in the corpus. 2 Concluding Remarks This short chapter has shown that early newspaper style not only evolved in certain patterns, but that style equally reflected performance in a patterned

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way. High performance principally correlated with four stylistic dimensions: the overall amount of editing applied to news texts, the type of editing used, the period in which the newspaper was published, and the credit attributed to the news printed. At the beginning of the century, successful newspapers principally varied along the first dimension, the degree of editing applied to news texts. As editing became more firmly established in the press, stylistic differentiation between newspapers was achieved through the selective application of editing strategies. Thus, the early newspaper market expanded and gradually diversified into distinct publication categories that reflected a quality-popular continuum. The degree of stylistic differentiation obviously depended on the period in which a newspaper appeared; in the early 1700s, quality-popular had a slightly different connotation compared to later stages of the century. Success, however, was not only determined by style alone. Success, as was seen in the case of the London Gazette, was also influenced by the reputation and status of a newspaper as a provider of authoritative news. The London Gazette style, however, gradually disappeared in the course of the eighteenth century, giving way to more diversified stylistic patterns. The stylistic criteria against which publications were judged by the audience included not only the range and nature of news printed in a publication, but also its textual quality and appeal. At the beginning of the century, complex and balanced reportage was considered more convincing than sensational style; in the middle of the century, the sensational press had developed to the extent that it served its own audience without necessarily competing with the serious press. By the end of the century, a third dimension of semi-ambitious mid-market papers had emerged, serving readers with a genuine interest in things local and foreign without committing themselves to either side of the extreme. Complex and balanced editing of news continued to be important factors in the serious press in 1741 and in the mid-market press in 1791. The quality press in 1791, however, showed signs of a growing thematic and stylistic specialization, leading to particularly provocative and pungent statements reinforced by an entertaining style. At the sensational end, papers showed a similar tendency towards entertainment through an increasing focus on soft topics, and heightening through reinforcing strategies.

Part II Technologically Facilitated Innovation Early newspapers were influenced by a multitude of factors that contributed, directly and indirectly, to the stylistic development of the genre. These factors include current cultural/institutional as well as sociohistorical parameters relating to the composition and demands of the readership, the status of news and newspapers in society, or the financial situation of media organizations. The constellations of these factors were constandy changing over time and news writers, as well as editors, were forced to respond to these changes in a timely fashion. Some constellations had a determining effect on news discourse in that they facilitated stylistic changes on a global level. Major cultural/institutional and sociohistorical constellations were discussed at an earlier point in this book. This part of the study intends to illustrate the role of technology in the stylistic evolution of early news discourse, by looking at newspaper headlines as a case in point. The phenomenon will be described from a variety of angles, offering qualitative and quantitative insight into the complex development of early journalistic style. The development of new printing technologies was one constant factor in the early press that aimed to enhance newspaper production and printing quality. The combined force of technology and the gradual liberalization of the newspaper market led, among other things, to technologically facilitated changes that involved the organization of news discourse at large. In the course of this process, graphic aids were beginning to be utilized not only to indicate broad newspaper sections, but also to mark article boundaries or to highlight particularly important news. At the same time, these graphic aids created room for new text forms, notably the newspaper headline. The rudimentary text structuring devices previously used to mark off different sections in newspapers were gradually replaced by proper headlines that further underlined the graphic effect through the stylistic force of the highlighted words. Headline language was born. The two chapters in this part argue that visual and syntactic foregrounding constitute two separate but interconnected trends that arose from this functional transformation and textual reorganization process in eighteenth-century news media. The chapters intend to show that the two

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trends reinforced each other, creating the modern newspaper headline, and to offer a historical explanation of the evolution of headlines in news discourse. The chapters specifically argue that headlines evolved from the newspaper article as a result of syntactic foregrounding in the text to which the headline belonged. In this part of the book, the question of when and how the modern headline emerged in early news discourse, and which route it may have taken on its way to its present form, will be examined in detail. Chapter 5 will first look at the forms and pragmatic functions of visual foregrounding, before syntactic foregrounding will be addressed in Chapter 6.

5

Visual Foregrounding in Eighteenth-Century Headlines

Newspaper headlines have become an integral part of our multimedia world, addressing the masses through all available channels. News headlines show close parallels to advertisements, book-titles, or chapter headings, and generally to prose produced under demanding time or space constraints. All these short or abbreviated forms of communication share at least one common goal: they want to say much with as little reading and writing effort as possible. Along with advertisements in particular, news headlines may be said to combine both functional simplicity and textual appeal, which may be the reason why 'headlinese' has attracted the attention of media researchers both past and present (e.g. Straumann 1935; Sandig 1971; Maurer 1972; Mardh 1980; Simon-Vandenbergen 1981; more recently Gieszinger 2000 and Schneider 2000b). In this chapter, the topic will be revisited from a historical perspective. Most researchers in headlinese focus on the modern headline of the twentieth century. Of the studies cited here, only Sandig (1971), Gieszinger (2000) and Schneider (2000b) deal with the historical issue at some length; others mention the evolution of the headline in passing. None of them, however, provides a detailed analysis of the news headline of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Yet, confusion exists over the correct dating of the first headlines in England as well as over the definition most appropriately used to describe such text structuring devices. In their famous handbook for aspiring journalists, Garst and Bernstein (1982: 92), for example, separate proper headlines from captions or titles for articles, which are only set to mark off where the individual articles begin. Proper headlines, they argue (1982: 96), came into use during the late nineteenth century, which was the period when intense competition among newspapers 'ushered in the headline that said something'. The view that the headline which 'said something' emerged comparatively late is a common assumption shared by most researchers in newspaper language and history (cf., for example, Evans 1974: 1; Straumann 1935: 82; Radder 1924: 49). It will be the purpose of this chapter to go back to the time of the first dailies in eighteenth-century England to present a clearer and more detailed picture of the early headline. This chapter specifically addresses questions

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like the following: how were news texts of the early days physically organized and structured? Were the forms of headings used in these publications only labels concealing the story under an empty caption, or did they advertise and summarize the news? How can we classify headlines in a machine-readable corpus of newspapers? In response to these questions, two stylistically relevant factors will be considered here: layout and pragmatic function. The term layout in this chapter refers to the graphical realization of early headlines in particular, not to the newspaper as such. The analysis of the pragmatic function of headlines underlines the assumption that different realizations fulfilled different interactional functions in the communication between editor and reader. The two extra-linguistic factors will be defined first and then, in a second step, analysed and brought together to see how they interact in a sample corpus of early English newspapers from the eighteenth century. The analysis will be conducted in two parts. The first part of the analysis examines the forms and development of headlines in the first half of the eighteenth century. For this purpose, two of the thirteen sections available in ZEN have been selected, one at the beginning of the century, 1701, and one in the middle, 1741. The results from this first analysis are then compared to the very last section of the corpus, from the year 1791. 1 Corpus Details The corpus used for the analysis in the years 1701 and 1741 consists of 87 complete issues in total, or an equivalent of 300,000 words of running text The current listings, precise word counts, and serial numbers of the runs used for the analysis are summarized in Appendix II (in alphabetical order). The early year selected, 1701, marks the period of the thrice-weekly posts immediately before the publication of the first daily newspaper, the Daily Courant, in 1702, while the ZEN corpus of 1741 falls into the phase of the first stabilization of the eighteenth-century press. Major developments in the textual organization of newspapers would be expected to have taken place in the forty years between the two corpus sections. Following the model of the London Gazette, the various posts compiled for 1701 were generally issued as two-column single leaves printed on both sides. Depending on current events, they were occasionally enlarged by a second leaf or even supplemented by sheets that cost extra, containing the latest news after the official newspaper was printed.1 According to ZEN, a newspaper edition averaged approximately 2,850 words, including special issues but without supplements, in 1701. Between 1701 and 1741 a shift took place from the single-leaf, usually half-folio, publication to the fourpage three-column issue printed in full folio format. In terms of words, the average newspaper edition in 1741 came up to roughly double the figure of 1701, namely 4,750 words. But the most dramatic change happened between 1741 and the end of the century. By 1791, the average newspaper issue had jumped to 11,850

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words, which corresponds to more than twice the corpus average found in 1741. By the end of the eighteenth century, the press was consolidated and new steam technologies were waiting to be put to use. Most dailies were still printed on four large sheets, but unlike newspapers from the 1740s, they now had four columns and were printed in smaller type. 1.1 Graphic Types

Headlines signal major junctures in the text. In determining these junctures, however, we have to be aware of the peculiarities of eighteenthcentury news writing. Enlarged single- or multi-deck headlines followed by a lead, such as is common today, did not exist in clear-cut form in the early days of news publishing. Instead, we come across a confusing graphic layout in which various headline types interact and overlap with the running news text. News articles often begin with opening phrases that read like summary headlines but which do not stand out from the text graphically, while there are other instances highlighted and separated from the text which, apart from their peculiar typography, bear no resemblance whatsoever to present-day headlines. Thus the headline, especially at the beginning of news publishing, first and foremost served as a visual style marker which was employed for text structuring; only in the second place did it provide a summary of the news. For media researchers who work with computerized newspaper corpora, the illogical and seemingly undifferentiated textual organization of the early newspaper poses particular problems, because machine-readable texts require unambiguous criteria for the annotation of different text units. In her study on early advertisements in The Times, Gieszinger (2000: 86) resorts to typography as the separating criterion between headline and text body. She largely distinguishes between prototypical, graphic, thematic and quasi-headlines. While typography may indeed be considered the safest way of approaching the study of headlines in early newspapers, Gieszinger's classification presents difficulties for the present examination, as in her terminology typographical and functional criteria are mingled (e.g. thematic headlines which combine aspects of layout and topic). Werlich's (1983: 180-82) concept of three basic graphic forms of headlines helps avoid overlapping categories. The first and most obvious headline type in Werlich's classification are instances of clearly marked-off textual sequences which stand out from the immediate textual environment by spacing between the lines and larger, heavier type. They will be classified as major headlines (see Illustration 1). If visualization occurs within the first line of a news item, two sub-groups can be determined. In the first case, the textual sequence is a self-contained unit printed at the beginning of the opening line and separated from the following text by a full stop. Here we can speak of minor headlines (see Illustration 2). Emphasis in the commencing phrase of a news item, finally, will be referred to as an instance of a fully integrated headline (see Illustration 3).

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In addition to the three basic headline types, certain newspapers favour fancier layouts for their headings, which seem to have developed as variants from the base forms. Again two categories can be distinguished. Combined headlines (see Illustration 4) are those instances in which a major head is immediately followed by an integrated head (usually the first line of the text printed in bold and larger type). The two headings often syntactically form one sentence unit. The presence of an ornamental or bold-face initial, which was frequently used to signal the beginning of the main body of text, serves as a valid criterion to differentiate between major and integrated heads. There are cases of very long headlines preceding such bold-face capitalized initials (see Illustration 5). Typographically, they seem to consis of three elements: a major headline, the middle part, and an integrated headline. The middle part, which often looks (and reads) like an early form of a lead paragraph, will be regarded as an appendix to the major headline of a piece of news. The final category, embedded headlines (see Illustration 6), includes texts in which display lettering occurs to the extent that the distinction between the headline part and the main body of text is virtually impossible. These instances seem to anticipate the dawn of display advertising which was so popular in playbills of the later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (see Leech 1966: 165-74). Some of the embedded texts follow a perceptible pattern and seem to have evolved from the combined headline type (a major headline which is followed by the first line of the text highlighted). Usually the whole text item is centred, and what appears to be the integrated headline, introduced with a prominent initial, is followed by the text body interlarded with more bold-face phrases. Occasionally the heading part of a news item is furnished with additional visual devices. A divider line or horizontal rule may for example be inserted between two pieces of news, which has an impact on the function of the headline (see Schneider 2000a: 332). Where such a line occurs the head does not primarily serve as a caesura by which two text units are separated from each other, but leaves space for more textual appeal. Apart from rules, blocks are sometimes used which act as containers for text and picture. They originate in the tradition of baroque emblems, consisting of an icon and a lemma (i.e. the inscription of the icon). These headpieces again have an immediate effect upon the headline: where emphasis is placed on the visual aspect the textual appeal of the headline is often minimal (see Illustration 7). As an alternative to blocks some newspapers contain less ornate devices, here referred to as deictic symbols (e.g. pointing fingers, daggers, stars), which literally point to the commencing phrase of a piece of news (see Illustration 8). In addition to these drawings and engravings, emphasis may also occur in die form of imitated handwriting or script type, which, enlarged, has a pictorial effect (see Illustration 9). Table 5.1 summarizes in schematic form the typesetting criteria adopted for the classification of headlines. The criteria required by each headline type are marked widi (+), while the absence of features is represented by

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Dlustration 1 The New State of Europe, 13 to 20 June, 1701: 2/4. Illustration 2 T/^ Champion; Or, The Evening Advertiser, 3 January 1741: 3/4.

Illustration 3 The Post Man: And the Historical Account, 19 to 21 March 1701: 2/2.

Illustration 4 J1^ Champion; Or, The Evening Advertiser, 23 July 1741: 3/4.

Illustration 5 77i£ Country Journal: Or, The Craftsman, 10 January 1741: 4/4.

Illustration 7 Tlte London Daily Post, And General Advertiser, 30 May 1741: 2/2.

Illustration 6 The London Post, And General Advertiser, 8 January 1741:

1/2.

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Illustration 8 The London Gazette, 20 to 23 January 1701: 2/2.

Illustration 9 The London Daily Post, And General Advertiser, 8 January 1741: 2/2. Table 5.1 Typographic criteria for the classification of headlines Graphic type

Display lettering

Display layout

Line spacing

Single line Ending signal

Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded

+ + + + +

+

+ + +

+ + + -

+ + -

(-). One criterion which applies to all five forms of headlines is display lettering; the remaining criteria occur in some types but are missing in others. For example, display layout used for advertising purposes distinctly refers to the class of embedded headlines, which makes it a category safe from overlapping. Line spacing, on the other hand, does not appear in headlines that are part of the text body, as is the case with minor or integrated types. Single lines are headlines that consist of one coherent string of words uninterrupted by line spacing, which applies to the basic types of major, minor and integrated headlines. Finally, only major and minor headlines always require an ending signal such as a full stop, a (semi-)colon, or a comma; the other types are open, fragmented phrases which can end abruptly in the middle of a word or a sentence. 1.1.1 Distribution of Graphic Types Tables 5.2 and 5.3 below show the frequency and distribution of different headlines (h-units) in ZEN. This first retrieval confirms the assumption that

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mid-century newspapers tend to feature more headlines than earlier publications. Normalized to the number of instances in 100,000 words, the 1741 section of the corpus comes to 1.5 times the figure for 1701. In other words, the reader of an average 1,500-word news-sheet published in 1701 is likely to hit upon six headlines. Forty years later, the reader would read nine headlines in a news-sheet of the same size. The result now becomes more telling in connection with the different graphic headline types outlined above. Table 5.3 connects both counts, indicating that at the beginning of the eighteenth century only the three basic forms (i.e. major, minor, and integrated headings) are present, while in 1741 combined heads appear in second position, after major heads and embedded headlines and immediately before integrated headlines. This allows the conclusion that, in terms of typographical make-up, we are clearly moving on a scale from 'uniform' to 'more experimental'. Finally, Table 5.4 shows the frequency of visual devices in the different graphic headline types of the corpus. Factota, i.e. ornamental initials at the beginning of the newspaper, or blocks which may be regarded as an integral part of the newspaper tide (as, for example, in the London Post of 1741) have been excluded from the count. The most significant change over the years consists in the increasing use of the horizontal rule inserted between news sections. Blocks appear rarely in 1701 and occasionally in 1741, but no major development can be observed; a tendency which also applies to enlarged script type. The data confirm that costly special effects were still beyond early to mid-century printing techniques or, at least, beyond any efficient exploitability of such devices. Deictic symbols, on the other hand, were frequently used at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but they Table 5.2 Corpus size and frequency of headings Words

1701 1741 Total

h-units

173,756 123,910 297,666

723 758 1,481

h-units/100,000

416 612 -

Table 5.3 Graphic classification of headlines in ZEN Total

1701 1741 Total

723 758 1,481

Major

Minor

Integrated

Combined

Embedded

253

410 147 557

60 11 71

260 260

62 62

278 531

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Table 5.4 Visual devices accompanying headlines

1701

1741

Headline

Total

Major Minor Integrated

253 410 60

Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded

278 147 11 260 62

Rule

Script type

Block

Deictic symbol

3 -

_ -

_ _ 9

2 32

72 10 251 61

4 2

2 _„ 9 1

-

seem to have been replaced by the horizontal rule in 1741. It may be worth noting that in none of the cases are visual devices employed in connection with minor headlines. Also there is a slight tendency for script type and blocks to (co-) occur in the graphically more complex combined and embedded headlines. 2 Headline Functions A text classification naturally involves aspects of text-external features such as the communicative situation, textual function, and content, while textinternal features refer to the surface structure of the texts. Depending on the text type under consideration, however, certain aspects appear to be more important than others so that a difficulty exists in the selection of relevant criteria for the analysis (see Dimter 1981: 35). For the study of textual structures in early newspapers, the communicative situation of the individual headline and, closely related to it, the function and content of the texts appear to be of particular importance. Syntax and morphology, unless in immediate connection to text-external criteria, will be left aside in this analysis. The communicative situation of the individual headline, unfortunately, can hardly be traced back in sufficient detail. We may speculate that commercial advertisements, official statements and letters were placed by sources other than editorial, but even in these cases we do not know exactly to what extent editing constraints applied in the publication of a newspaper issue. Whilst the situational context thus poses difficulty to the analyst, textual function offers a more reliable approach to further classification of headlines. However, we also have to be aware that function, communicative situation and content invariably act in combination and that therefore any classification model founded on basic textual functions necessarily includes situational factors as well.

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In a functional classification, headlines are clustered together according to a shared set of features which signal extra-linguistic motivation or, in other words, indicate pragmatic selection by the writer (cf., for example, Enkvist 1964: 37; Dimter 1981: 52-93). I will call these clusters basic headline functions. A few such functions have been identified and described so far. Sandig (1971: 132-57) distinguishes between headlines which order news according to their source (place of correspondence) and thematic headlines (Themauberschrifteri), placed to announce briefly the topic of a news section. Schneider (2000b: 48-9) follows Sandig in differentiating between what she calls report and section headings. I will expand this model using five functional headline types.

2.1 Attributive Headlines Attributive headlines in this study owe their name to Bell's (1991: 171; 1998: 68) differentiation between three major elements in present-day news reports: attribution (news agency,journalist's byline, place and time), abstract (headline and lead), and story proper. In eighteenth-century newspapers the category of attributive forms includes all headlines which share the function of assigning a news item or news section to sender, addressee, and source of the news. They can again be split into three different sub-types: the report headline, the sender-determined headline, and the addressee-determined headline. Report headlines basically point to when and where the news was sent from; they minimally indicate what may be assumed to be the date or place of correspondence. Place and date of the news are detailed in varying degrees, as in (1) to (4): (1) Januarys, 1740. (1741LDP01938) (2) Paris,January 12. (1701FPT00884) (3) Custom-house, London, Jan. 8, 1740. (1741DPT06658) (4) From the Imperial Camp at St. Antonio, 4 Miles from Verona. (1701EPT00107) Apart from these general forms, there exist other report headlines which, in addition to time and place, provide information on the channel of communication between correspondent and newspaper editor. Whereas the examples given above are all verbless noun or prepositional phrases, the instances specifying the news channel can be either verbless, as in examples (5) and (6), or full sentences, as in (7) and (8): (5) (6) (7) (8)

From the London Gazette. (1741DPT06793) Extract of a Letter from Paris. (1741CEA00265) Tuesday arrived a Mail from Holland. (1741CEA00265) Last Night late we received a French Mail with the following Particulars. (1701EPT00037)

Ambiguity occurs when we are confronted with headlines such as:

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(9) London. (1741CJL00758) (10) London-Daily-Post Politics. (1741CJL00265) In (9) we cannot safely determine if we are dealing with an instance of a thematic heading (see definition below), or with a short form of the sentence: 'The following news was sent from London'. Example (10), taken from the Champion; or, the Evening Advertiser, similarly leaves open whether die section is about die politics of die London Daily Post or if it refers to die news being copied from die politics section of die same paper. Ambiguous cases like (9) and (10) can only be classified properly by looking at die wider context of die individual headline. Sender-determined headlines occur in issued statements and letters. A byline often supplied by die editor of die newspaper to mark die beginning of an official document, they minimally include a reference to die sender or author of die news. A signature line often follows die end of die document. Sender-determined headlines introduce a performative speech act such as in public announcements and proclamations (see Austin 1975: 63); die headline, however, provides only the reference line, not die act itself. Typical examples are: (11) George R. (1741LDP02034) (12) By the King, A PROCLAMATION, For Dissolving this present Parliament, and Declaring the Speedy Calling another. WILLIAM R. (1701LGZ03757) (13) Lambert, Mayor. A Common-council holden in die Chamber of die Guildhall of die City of London, on Wednesday, die 17th Day of June, 1741, And in die 15di Year of die Reign of Our Sovereign Lord George the Second, King of Great Britain, &c. (1741LDP02076) The address headline, finally, explicidy assigns a particular piece of news to an addressee or die target readership. It can be bodi formal and personal. (14) (15) (16) (17)

To die Publick. (1741LDP02060) To die Worthy Liverymen of London. (1741DPT06658) Madam, my Sister and Aunt! (1701LPT00264) High and mighty Lords, our most dear Friends, Allies and Confederates. (1701PMN00946)

Address headlines occasionally overlap with die two other categories, die report headlines and die sender-determined headlines. Official addresses of corporations to die king, as in example (18), include both addresser and addressee. Alternatively, address heads may be accompanied by a dateline to specify die origin of die statement, which is shown in (19). Also there are instances of statement imitations in commercial advertisements (20). They will equally be counted as addressee-determined headlines. (18) To His Most Excellent Majesty William III. by die Grace of God, of England, Scotiand, France, and Ireland, King, Defender of die Faidi,

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&c. The humble Address of the Corporation of Maryborough, in the County of Wilts. (1701LGZ03757) To the Burgesses of Bridgnorth. Bridgnorth, Jan. 3, 1740. (1741 CJL00758) To all such as are used (or hereafter may have occasion) to Take (DR. BATEMAN'S PECTORAL DROPS). (1741LDP02073)

2.2 Thematic Headlines The functional category of thematic headlines includes instances which generally announce a topic. They stand in close connection to performative headlines (see section 2.3) and comply with the model: 'Here follows information about x' or 'concerning x' (see Sandig 1971: 38ff.; SimonVandenbergen 1981: 103). Whereas thematic headlines indicate roughly what the news is all about, they do not point beyond the general announcement of the topic. In separating thematic headlines from other functional types, Simon-Vandenbergen (1981: 103) turns to the concept of theme and rheme. Where no rheme is present the headline carries the pragmatic value [—new], indicating that no new information is given in addition to the topic itself. Thematic headlines can assume the function of announcing whole newspaper sections. These section headlines provide information at the most general level. They often subsume several news items under their label, and may cover longer sections in a newspaper issue. Section headlines usually recur in runs of the same newspaper, or are traditionally known or accepted as a section headline in other newspapers. According to Sandig (1971: 138) section headlines or Rubrikuberschriftenin early German newspapers were an innovation of eighteenth-century news writing. In English newspapers, too, this type comes into use early in the century. In ZEN typical examples would be: (21) Home News; Foreign News; Advertisements; London; Bankrupts, etc. But thematic headlines can also more specifically introduce the theme of one particular piece of news. These instances may be called topical headlines. Topical headlines are usually longer than section headlines, supplying more specific information on the topic they announce. In terms of syntactic structure, topical headlines, like section headlines, often take the form of short or extended noun phrases. (22) is a typical example of such a post-modified noun phrase: (22) An Account of the Present Royal Line of England. (1701EPT00057) Further context has to be taken into consideration when classifying (23). An instance of an integrated headline, it is syntactically and semantically incomplete. Thus we do not know immediately if the news following the headline was written or sent by one Walter Loyd, or if the news item is about a person of this name. Example (24), on the other hand, can readily be

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identified as a topical headline which deals with inventions made by a person named BartleL (23) Walter Loyd, at the Ancient Fow- (1701EPT00055) (24) Bartlet's Inventions of Steel-Trus- (1701EPT00107) Ambiguity comes into play when looking at cases where a verb phrase combines with a noun phrase. While (25) and (26) clearly belong to the category of thematic headlines, example (27) seems to overlap with the group of performative headlines (see section 2.3). The headline in (27) advertises a novelty, namely that books were printed abroad, the novelty here being the fact that books are printed in countries outside the Kingdom. Seen in a wider context, though, the phrase can be understood as a reduced form of 'the following section is about books lately printed abroad' - a reading which, pragmatically, is more likely to apply. (25) Elop'd. (1741CEA00179) (26) Lately Printed in London. (1701NSE00005) (27) Books lately Printed Abroad. (1701NSE00001) Topical headlines can vary in length considerably. They range between a few words up to full and elaborate sentences. A particularly long example is (28): (28) The Country of Tyrol is so often mention'd in most of the News Papers, that we think our selves oblig'd, first of all, to give an account of it. (1701NSE00001) 2.3 Performative Headlines

The category of performative headlines comes nearest to what today is typically associated with a newspaper headline. The presence of modern headlines in early newspapers, however, has been subject to controversy. While some researchers (e.g. Evans 1974: 1; Garst and Bernstein 1982: 96) believe in the late emergence of proper headlines in newspapers, others (Williams 1908: 6; Straumann 1935: 87) find instances as early as the Civil War years of the seventeenth century. If one adopts a liberal interpretation of the concept of headlines, one realizes that there is a category in early newspapers which differs from thematic headlines in the underlying communicative function. Often stock phrases occurring in advertisements, performative headlines fulfil some basic criteria of the modern newspaper headline. They are a combination of lexemes which have two definite functions, namely to advertise the news and to bulletin or summarize it (see Radder 1924: 49). The pragmatic value of performative headlines can be abbreviated as [+new]. They form the pragmatic counterpart of 'here follows information about x', which is best paraphrased by the expression 'this is to announce that x performed y'. Thus, unlike thematic headlines, performative headlines not only announce

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the general topic of the news, but also provide further details of the theme. Like thematic headlines, they can only be annotated on the basis of contextual factors which do not systematically manifest in the surface structure of the text (see Sandig 1971: 37). As shown in the ambiguous case of (27) above, the demarcation line between the two types is not always easy to draw. However, performative headlines can never be section heads, because they specifically comment on one news item only. Common to all performative headlines is that they form part of an explicit performative speech act, which in principle can be reduced to the presence of an impersonal performative phrase (Austin 1975: 57) and remind us of law-enacting formulas in legal language (see, for example, Kurzon 1986). Sometimes only the explicit performatives are highlighted in the text, as in (29): (29)

This is to give notice, (1741LDP02060)

Alternatively, performatives combine with or are embedded in the beginning of the announcement text, as exemplified in headlines (30) and (31): (30) (31)

Brandy Warehouse Lombard Street, Notice Is Given, That there is in the Cellar and Vaults (1741CEA00265) This is to give Notice, To all Gentlemen and Others, that YOU may have good Druggets, Sagathie, and Duroy (1741CJL00758)

Similar to performative headlines as in the examples just given, there are instances which, though without explicit performative expressions, apparently fall into the same category. They follow the pattern 'this news item gives notice that [-(-headline]'. Early newspapers abound in these implicit performative headlines. Some examples are provided below: (32) (33)

On Monday, the 2nd of February, will begin A Course of Anatomy. (1741CEA00179) This Day is Publish'd, A Treatise of the REVENUE of the ROMANS. (1741CJL00758)

While (32) and (33) comply with the traditional sentence model in that they both have a subject and a tensed verb, examples (34) and (35) appear to be written in an abbreviated mode (cf., for example, Leech 1966: 90ff.). (34)

To be Lett, In Freeman's-court in Cornhill, A Large Warehouse, Compting-House and (1741DPT06658) (35) Stolen, From the House of Michael Gibbons in Grays-inn Lane, on Sunday Night last. THE Sign of the RED LION, painted (1741 LDP01967)

2.4 Structural Headlines This category of headlines is basically used as a structural device by which a hierarchy of news is established in a particular newspaper section. The

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informational value of structural headlines is very low. In our classification, headlines are counted with the group of structural headlines if they are part of enumerative sequence forms employed for listing text structuring. The signals used for listing text structuring may be ordinal or cardinal numbers, letters of the alphabet, enumerative adverbs, prepositional groups, or other formulaic collocations (see Werlich 1983:176,190ff.). Pragmatically, structural headlines are immediately dependent on the preceding text and often, therefore, are introduced by cohesive devices which refer backward. In the case of (36), single co-ordinating particles are set off from the running text, while in the examples of (37) and (38) ing-participles or subordinate clauses indicate the occurrence of a main clause earlier in the text. (36) And; Also, etc. (37) Containing; Describing, etc. (38) To which is added; Where may be had, etc. Whereas the headlines in examples (36) to (38) are sub-heads within one piece of news, enumerative text structuring can also occur by emphasizing (part of) the first line of the text, which may sometimes even be marked off and combine with an integrated headline without any obvious purpose. These headlines are empty in terms of their informational value, and seem only to indicate the beginning of a new text item or a new text form. (39) The True and Full (1701FPT00889) (40) Whereas Hugh Britton, a short thick Man (1701PMN00946) (41) On Monday next the 13th Instant, at 3 after- (1701LGZ03669) 3 Correlation of Graphic and Functional Patterns Tables 5.5 to 5.7 summarize and connect the results of the graphic and functional classification in the ZEN corpus of 1701 and 1741. Of course no classification based on text-external criteria is safe from overlapping categories. The tables below, therefore, have to be taken as trend indicators rather than mathematically exact figures. All headlines were assigned to one of the four main pragmatic functions as outlined in sections 2.1 to 2.4, and later sub-classified according to their subordinate function. As expected, a considerable shift in headline function can be observed in the course of the first forty years of the eighteenth century. The mid-century offers a much more varied picture of the headline, both in terms of typographic diversity and functional heterogeneity. Unlike at the beginning of the century, there is no predominant function in 1741. Attributive and performative headlines each take one third of the corpus, while every sixth or seventh headline is either thematic or structural. In 1701, on the other hand, attributive headlines clearly prevail (72 per cent), followed by static thematic headlines (25 per cent). Performative or structural headlines occur very rarely. Thus the major development in the first half of the century consists in the shift from attribution/theme to performance; a change which reflects the

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growing importance of the headline as an integral part of the newspaper, but which, at the same time, also signals a change in news content. Attributive headlines in both decades predominantly appear as minor headings, reporting place and date of correspondence in the first line of the article. In 1701 these datelines take up almost 80 per cent of all attributive instances, a figure which in 1741 drops to half of the total number. The remaining instances of attributive headlines can be, and in 1741 increasingly are, report headings set off from the running text. Report headlines which are set off from the main body of text frequently occur at the beginning of an important section in the newspaper. No noteworthy change affects the sub-categories of issued statements and addresses. Second to news attribution, the announcement of the general theme of the article plays an important part in the organization of the newspaper in 1701. Although usually major headline types preceding a newspaper section, they are regularly printed in the form of integrated headlines (c. 25 per cent), in which the first line of the running text contains a few words about the central topic of the news. The proportion of section headings remains fairly constant over the years, with an overall share of approximately one tenth of all headlines in the corpus, the only innovation being that they may be printed as minor headlines. Topical headlines, on the other hand, decrease considerably. The first line of the news text printed in bold - so typical of early eighteenth-century thematic headlines - occurs only rarely in 1741. Instead the new combined form is adopted, but this also happens only sporadically, which indicates that this traditional type does not quite fit into the new dress of the mid-century. The new dress seems to have been designed especially for the category of performative headlines, the forerunner of today's newspaper headline. Performative headlines in 1741 are almost always printed in the form of combined or embedded types. This appears to be due to their predominant structure, which lends itself particularly well to the new typography - a noun phrase followed by a participle construction. Explicit performatives are printed rarely, perhaps because their content may be taken for granted and, in addition, unnecessarily deflects from the central message of the headline. While most performative headlines appear in the combined layout, complete embedding is mainly restricted to commercial advertising of particularly competitive character as can, for instance, be found in playbills.2 Headlines employed for structural purposes increase notably in the course of the years. Whereas in 1701 only 1.7 per cent of all headlines are used for listing text structuring, the proportion in 1741 rises to more than 15 per cent. The most frequent type of enumerative structural headlines, none of which can be found in 1701, always refers back to a main headline in the text, thus belonging to the same news item as the preceding headline. Typographically, news items with two or more headlines take on an intermediate layout somewhere between the normal headline-text arrangement and the embedded type. The spread of subordinate headlines seems

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Table 5.5 Functional classification

1701

1741

Attributive Thematic Performative Structural

520 180 11 12

250 127 265 116

Total

723

758

Table 5.6 Functional and graphic classification in the sample of 1701 Function

Total Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded

Attributive > Report > Statement > Address

496 2 22

86 2 22

81 99

81 5

3 8

1 8

2

12 723

3

9

Thematic > Section > Topical Performative > Explicit > Implicit Structural > Enumerative > Empty Total

253

410

4

410

60

to anticipate future tendencies toward a fancier layout. Empty headlines, on the other hand, do not play an important part in the structure of the newspaper. 4 Late Eighteenth-Century Headlines So far, the analysis has concentrated on developments in headlines that were printed before 1750. The analysis showed that the headline changed significantly over the first half of the century in terms of its layout and the function it embodied in news discourse. At the same time, it was seen that there was no clear-cut paradigm shift in the evolution of the headline, but rather a gradual and continuous development over the years. The above analysis will be broadened on the following pages by extending its focus to

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Table 5.7 Functional and graphic classification in the sample of 1741 Function

Total Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded

Attributive

220 6 24

77 4 11

126

83 44

62 9

21

11 254

2 3

> Enumerative 111 5 > Empty

110

Total

278

> Report > Statement > Address

17 2 13

Thematic

> Section > Topical

8

27

Performative

> Explicit > Implicit

9 190

61

Structural

758

1 3

147

11

2 260

62

trends and developments in headlines published after 1750. In particular, the following analysis will concentrate on the year 1791, the final year included in ZEN. The analysis will be carried out along the same lines as th previous sections, focusing on graphic and functional criteria and their correlation patterns in the corpus. Table 5.8 compares the frequency of newspaper headlines in 1701 and 1741 to their frequency in die year 1791. There is no similar increase in text-structuring devices such as were observed in the first forty years of the century. The results seem to imply, instead, a much slower increase in headings than previously assumed, or a discontinuity with the trend found in the first half of the century. In terms of numbers, the count reveals only 474 headings per 100,000 words in 1791, which falls off against the corpus of 1741 by nearly one fourth. The possible causes for this discrepancy are varied and complex. It is likely that the nature of the samples, notably the samples of 1741 and 1791, account for some of the unexpected results. It can be assumed that the number of headlines in a newspaper fluctuated with the presence or absence of advertisements (both commercial and non-commerical). As wa observed before, advertisements almost always carried some sort of heading, while few news reports were normally announced with a heading. A look at the newspapers from 1741 shows that most papers had a strong advertisement section or were, in fact, advertisers. In 1791, however, newspapers were much more specialized to the extent that some did not contain any advertisements at all (e.g. the Evening Mail). If we divide newspapers

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from 1791 into news-sheets and advertisers, only six editions out of fifteen from two publications (the Morning Post, the Public Advertiser) can be regarded as advertisers in the proper sense of the word. Despite these differences, a constant rise in headline use would probably be observed if commercial and non-commercial advertisements were excluded from the count This can be seen if we compare, for example, two advertisers from the years 1741 and 1791, such as the Morning Post (1791) and the Champion (1741). The edited news sections in the Morning Post (1791MOP05600) amount to slightly over 3,000 words; in the Champion (1791CEA00179), the same sections are alittle longer (approximately 4,000 words). While the two editions are comparable in length, they differ in terms of headline use. In the Morning Post, nineteen news headings were printed; in the Champion, there are only nine. The count in the Morning Post yields approximately one heading every 158 words, which is practically the same proportion as is found in the two editions of the Evening Mail (1791EVM00327 and 1791EVM00380).3 In contrast, only one heading every 400 words was printed in the Champion in 1741. It is likely that this tendency would be corroborated across a larger sample. The problem of data consistency also appears if the results are broken down into different graphic and functional headline types. It is therefore important to contextualize the results before interpretation. It is expected that die headline types most popular in advertisements do not score as high in 1791 as they did in 1741. The first section in the corpus -1701 - does not play a significant role in this case, as there were practically no advertisements in the corpus of that year. A reading of the distribution of graphic types in the data (normalized per 1,000 headlines) confirms that the high turnout of combined and embedded forms in 1741 decreases by a third to little over 50 per cent in 1791. The proportion of combined and embedded forms makes up approximateh one third of all headlines in 1791, which ties in with the proportion of advertisements found in that year. At the same time, there seems to be an increase of nearly 100 per cent in major headlines. Part of this increase can be explained by the expected rise in news headlines discussed above. The rise in major news headlines is paralleled by a decrease in minor headlines by more than 200 per cent. It seems that the minor headline had Table 5.8 Corpus size and frequency of headings

1701 1741 1791 Total

Words

h-units

h-units/100,000

173,756 123,910 177,727 475,393

723 758 842 2323

416 612 474 -

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nearly disappeared by the end of the century. The integrated headline is a little stronger than in 1741, but still way behind the result of 1701. Everything points to the conclusion that there is a movement underway in 1791 towards the graphical form of major headlines in news reports. No such trend is visible in the first fifty years of the eighteenth century, which suggests that this movement set in during the course of the second half of the century. This result makes sense if we assume that the news headline was supposed to increasingly advertise the news and catch the attention of the readership. It is obvious that major headlines stand a better chance of doing so than minor or integrated forms. The other headline types - combined and embedded — were not suited for this purpose as they were exclusively used in advertisements. As can be seen in Table 5.9, there are two instances in the data that cannot be assigned to any of the five graphic categories defined earlier. These instances occur in advertisements and seem to derive from the combined and embedded forms, but include new elements unseen in the two previous years analysed. Both instances are found in the Morning Post (1791MOP05600 and 1791MOP05741). The first instance is a combined form with minor headings instead of integrated forms (Illustration 10). The combination of a major heading with a minor form is typically found in news reports but unlikely to occur in advertisements, lending a more 'serious' note to this particular example. The serious note may have been a desired effect, as the advertisement calls for subscribers to a tontine.4 It is further noteworthy that there are several decks of major and of minor sub-headings included in the headline, which is not commonly seen in advertisements of this type. The second example (Illustration 11) follows the first in that it also incorporates several major headings printed at the top of the advertisement, but differs in its use of an integrated heading which introduces the main text of the advertisement. Not only is this type unusual for its use of more than one major heading, but also for a kind of lead sentence printed in between major and integrated type. No instance of such a form is found elsewhere in the corpus. If the above classification into graphic types is further refined by including other visual devices such as rule, script type, blocks or deictic symbols, it can be seen that additional devices did not play a major role in 1791. Table 5.10 shows details of this analysis and compares the results with the two earlier years of the eighteenth century. The table confirms that script type - rarely found in 1741 - does not occur in the sample at all; blocks, which may have been expected to become more important over the years, have actually gone down a little, while deictic symbols - absent in 1741 - were used in a few instances in 1791. The main difference in 1791, however, appears to be the use of the rule as a device to separate texts or, in some cases, parts within the same text. Although the rule is nearly as perceptible as a visual device in 1741 as fifty years later (approximately 50 per cent), its appearance still seems to have

Table 5.9 Graphic classification

1701 h-units per 1741 h-units per 1791 h-units per Total

Minor

Integrated

Combined

Embedded

Other

1000

253 350 278 367 507 602

410 567 147 194 44 52

60 83 11 15 18 21

260 343 239 284

62 82 32 35

2 2

2323

1038

601

89

499

94

2

Total

Major

723 1000 758 WOO 842

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Illustration 10 The Morning Post, And Daily Advertiser, 17 September 1791: 1/4. Illustration 11 The Morning Post, And Daily Advertiser, 7 April 1791: 1/4. changed. By 1791, the small rule - a line shorter than column width - had been introduced, which was often used together with the normal rule in the same piece of text. In approximately one fourth of all instances in the corpus, the small rule was used as the sole type of line, while in slighdy over one third the combination of small and normal rule was preferred. Less than fifty per cent include the normal rule only. Table 5.10 Visual devices accompanying headlines Headline 1701

1741

1791

Major Minor Integrated Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded Other Total

Total

253 410 60 278 147 11 260 62 507 44 18 239 32 2 2323

Rule

Script Type

Block

3

2

2 2

72 10 251

61

4 2

189 2 18 236

32 2 876

Deictic symbol

6

32

9 1 6

2

2

4

22

40

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Let us now, in a final step, address the functional patterns found in late eighteenth-century headlines. Table 5.11 below shows the same breakdown of categories as used in the analysis of the years 1701 and 1741. The results shown in the table are given in absolute terms as well as in relative frequency per 1,000 headings. What immediately strikes the eye in Table 5.11 is the same tendency observed in the discussion of graphic forms above. Performative headlines, typically used in advertisements, figure considerably less than in 1741, which ties in with the result for combined and embedded types - i.e. the typical graphical forms used with performative headlines - obtained above. In the analysis of the results, therefore, it must be remembered that the corpus of 1791 consists of more hard news reports proportionally than the corpus of 1741, which, in turn, has an impact on the results. Despite the differences in the sample, there are diachronic trends visible that are not affected by these considerations. It can be seen in Table 5.11, for example, that attributive headlines, which normally occur in news reports, drop in the course of the fifty years between the last two samples, corroborating the trend found in the first half of the century. It is likely that there was a general trend away from sender/receiver attribution towards thematic or performative information in headlines. The results of the last sample in the corpus seem to imply that the thematic headline came into use in news reports more quickly than the performative type. In 1701, the proportion between thematic and attributive headlines is nearly 1:3; in 1741, this proportion falls to 1:2 and, at the end of the century, to slightly under 1:1. As the data suggest, the performative type was stronger in advertisements and did not find its way into the news headline in the eighteenth century. The decrease in structural headings is not surprising although the result of the analysis may be somewhat skewed due to the low number of advertisements. Still, it can be expected that newspaper headings became more informative and meaningful over time. The structural heading, which is mainly a visual device used for text-structuring, lacks precisely this quality. At the same time, a closer look at the data shows that the structural heading is still quite common in proper news sections at the end of the eighteenth century. In the corpus from 1791, structural headings can even be found to divide a whole newspaper edition into large sections. These sections are not themed, but organized by dates when the news occurred or was reported. Examples can be found in the Morning Post (e.g. 1791MOP05712) or the London Chwnicle (e.g. 1791LCR05378). Table 5.11 also shows that there was a large number of headlines in 1791 that could not be assigned to any of the four categories, but rather seemed to combine two or more categories in one headline. These instances are referred to as functional 'hybrids'. They reflect a growing trend towards textual complexity found in graphically highlighted text passages that is beyond the explanatory model found for the earlier years of the eighteenth centurv.

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Most of the instances corroborate the assumption that the information packed into graphic forms is both general and specific at the same time. This is achieved, for example, through stacking of themes, dividing the headline into what today would be called different decks. The lowest deck would often be meaningless without the presence of the preceding heading. Two examples of this type have been introduced above (Illustrations 10 and 11); other examples are the following: (42) (43)

OLD BAILEY. FRIDAY. MURDERS. (1791MOP05741) THEATRE, Covent Garden. The SUSPICIOUS HUSBAND (1791MOP05741)

-

with

TOM

THUMB.

An extreme case of the above examples would be the practice of omitting a headline deck that is needed for another to be meaningful. This means that headings like the lower deck in (43) might appear alone in a text without immediate thematic embedding. In the case of the above example, this scenario is only imaginable if the reader knows that the larger context of the heading refers to plays currently being performed. In the corpus, these headings occur in standard sales notices in which the general purpose sales - is presupposed. The result is a functional hybrid between a structural and a performative heading, as in the following example (44): (44)

By Mr. ALDRIDGE, On SATURDAY next, at Twelve o'Clock A Capital HUNTER, for a great weight, well (1791MOP05600)

Apart from these special cases, there are other mixed types in the corpus that combine different functions in their headings. For example, performative types combine with thematic headings, as shown in (45). The first heading in (45) is performative as defined in the previous sections; the second integrated heading contains thematic information specifying one particular aspect - the type of horse - of thefirstheading. Example (46), on the other hand, is a combination of an attributive and thematic heading, while example (47),finally,proceeds the opposite way, printing the general theme before the address line: (45) A HORSE WANTED. ANY Person having a BLOOD HORSE or (1791MOP05741) (46) To the CLERGY. A RESPECTABLE CLERGYMAN is (1791PAD17683) (47) NAVIGABLE CANALS. To the CONDUCTOR of the EVENING MAIL, OXFORD, March 22. (1791EVM00327) Table 5.12, finally, presents all findings again in tabular form, including correlation patterns between headline form and function found in 1791. As can be seen, most functional sub-types could be kept, except for a new type

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Table 5.11 Functional classification

1701 Attributive Thematic Performative Structural Hybrid Total

520 180 11 12 723

1741 per 1000 719

249 15 17 -

-

250 127 265 116 758

1791 per 1000 330

168 350 153 -

-

238 265 126 95 118 842

per 1000 283

315 150 113 140 -

of attributive heading, here referred to as 'mixed'. Only one example of a mixed attributive heading was found in the corpus in which both sender and receiver were specified in the same line: (48) Extract of a Letter from a Gentleman at Monreal, to his Friend at Glasgow, dated Nov. 8. (1791LCR05362) The most noticeable development shown in the table seems to be the introduction of a new functional hybrid which in most cases was printed as a combined heading. The existence of the hybrid type in this form in 1791 seems to corroborate the assumption that the trend towards greater textual complexity was paralleled by a trend towards a more appealing layout. Greater textual complexity is generally found to become more visible in performative and topical headlines across the sample. Although the functional classification used for the years 1701 and 1741 still applies to 1791 in principle, there are signs of new forms in the corpus that exceed this classification model. These new forms are qualitatively different from the types discussed in this study in that they involve the conscious application of stylistic markers beyond the functional purpose they predominantly have in earlier years of the corpus. They are designed and intended not only to highlight specific events or states of affairs, but also to capture the sentiments involved. The topic of such headlines becomes increasingly difficult to describe, as the following examples from the Public Advertiser (1791PAD17709) show: (49) RURAL JACK KETCH. (50) GERMAN MISCHIEF. (51) Dangerous Courtship. 5 Conclusion This corpus-based analysis of eighteenth-century headings has given insight into methods of visual foregrounding practised in early news discourse. The chapter has shown that visual foregrounding was mainly achieved

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Table 5.12 Functional and graphic classification in the sample of 1791 Function

Total Major Minor Integrated Combined Embedded Other

Attributive > Report > Statement > Address > Mixed

206 7

174 3

24 1

11 1

63 202

62 157

19 107

4

18

1

10 1

1 -

12 -

— 3

36

4

1 10

16 72

2 20

-

-

3 3

Thematic > Section > Topical

1 2

Performative > Explicit > Implicit

Structural > Enumerative 93 > Empty 2 Hybrid 118

25

842

507

Total

70

23

1

2 1

92 44

18

239

32

2

through the specific use of newspaper headings. Finding an appropriate classification model for the various newspaper headings in the corpus, however, proved to be a difficult task. Compared to present-day newspapers, the analysed texts were often found to be chaotically organized, with no sharp dividing line between individual news items or articles. Reading some of the editions revealed that no text-internal criteria could be used to safely separate headings from the main text, as could easily be done in present-day newspapers. The only common denominator of all headings was their typography - early headings were printed in larger, or capital, type, and were often marked off from the main text by spacing between the lines. The heading of the eighteenth century, therefore, was defined as an eye-catching phrase, consisting of a sequence of words occurring at the beginning of a section, a piece of news, or an article, which referred forward in the running text. Although many headlines served the double purpose of graphically marking a caesura in the flow of the text and giving information on the news sections they announced, they appeared to be structurally incomplete at times with little or no informational value. A model was then proposed that suggested differentiating between a set number of typographic criteria in headings that would allow preliminary grouping of the corpus. The headings in the corpus were found to match with three important types described by Werlich (1983), these being major, minor and integrated headings. The three types often occurred on their own in the text but also formed the basis for derived types that combined

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any two of the three types, resulting in what was defined as combined and embedded headings. This set of graphic types used to classify the corpus was found sufficient to cover the complete graphic repertoire of the eighteenth-century heading. However, not all types appeared throughout the period studied. None of the derived forms could be found in 1701, suggesting that they came into use in the course of the first half of the century. Furthermore, minor graphic changes could be observed in the second half of the century in that major headings were sometimes printed in clusters, creating forms with different decks, or combinations began to appear that were not used in preceding years. Yet, these changes were still modest compared to the typographic revolution expected to set in with steam technology in the nineteenth century. The chapter further demonstrated that functional criteria could be successfully applied to classify graphic headings into categories that reflected their textual function in terms of their informational content and value. The categories found ranged from the merely enumerative caption carrying little informational value to the performative heading, which contained the highest information density in the corpus. The results of such a classification pointed to various directions: co-occurrence patterns of both typographical and functional factors analysed gave evidence as to the degree of readership appeal intended by the individual headline type. As was seen, typography and function went hand in hand. The analysis revealed that detailed information was usually combined with extravagant layout, signalling a high degree of intended appeal. This was especially the case with performative headlines. Thematic or attributive headlines, on the other hand, were either typographically appealing or neutral. In terms of the information they provided, however, they occurred at the lower end of the scale. Structural headlines did not count in this ranking, as they were counted as sub-headings of one of the three main categories. In the analysis of the years 1701 and 1741, no systematic distinction was made between different text types in which headings occurred. However, it was seen that there was a consistent difference with regard to form and function in the major textual dimensions of early newspapers. Advertisements were typically printed in the more appealing format, providing more specific and detailed information than proper news headings. More specifically, the correlation patterns revealed that performative function and combined/embedded layout were especially used in commercial and non-commercial advertisements, while the more serious news was emphasized by one of the three main graphic categories (major, minor and integrated forms), fulfilling either an attributive or thematic function. Although it might have been expected that the news headline would have become fancier in layout towards the end of the century, the results suggested that by 1741 the graphic repertoire in news headings had frozen. At the same time, there was a significant increase, especially between 1741 and 1791, in the incidence of the major heading form used for news reports, which subsequently became the standard format for serious news.

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But although advertisements and news sections had both developed their own typographic system and standards in the course of the century, the analysis implies that they inspired one another in introducing new forms into their systems. There is evidence in the study that at the end of the century the traditional news heading had just started to become more 'performative', exceeding the broad attributive/thematic function it used to have. News headings started to become more specific, 'customized' and therefore more attractive, combining information with elements of linguistic appeal. Conversely, advertisements sometimes borrowed the 'grave' tone of news headings if it suited the context. The chapter offers the conclusion that newspaper headings played a more important role in pre-1800 news discourse than commonly assumed. They were selected, composed and laid out with care. Readership appeal seems to have become increasingly important during the first and, particularly, the second half of the eighteenth century, taking the form of performative or major headlines, which often summarized and advertised the news. Yet, not all text structuring devices included in the present working definition of headings can be called forerunners of the modern headline that 'says something'. All structural headings in the corpus, for example, fall short of this definition, as do many thematic or attributive forms. They may have survived in newspapers as section headings or as bylines in articles; most of them, however, have become obsolete by now. Notes 1. The London Gazette of 10 to 13 November 1701 provides an example of an extended issue. For details on the use of newspaper supplements see Andrews (1855a: 103). All newspapers of 1701 in the Zurich collection are printed on one leaf, with the exception of the New State of Europe, which was generally printed on two sheets. 2. See also Leech (1966: 171) who similarly finds in playbills between 1750 and 1850 first instances of headlines in which superfluous introductory linking passages were omitted. 3. There are 185 headings recorded in the 28,142-word corpus of the Evening Mail in 1791. 4. A tontine, according to the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2003), is '[a]n investment plan in which participants buy shares in a common fund and receive an annuity that increases every time a participant dies, with the entire fund going to the final survivor or to those who survive after a specified time'.

6 Syntactic Foregrounding in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century News Discourse

The previous analysis of visual foregrounding in early news discourse concentrated on typographic means of highlighting text passages and their function in the text. It was found that the early newspaper heading was not only a text-structuring device but a dynamic and complex construct specifically used to create emphasis in the text. The analysis in this second chapter of Part II is intended to conclude the discussion of the early newspaper heading by looking at the syntactic dimension of foregrounding and its role in early news discourse. It may be expected that the general change of news discourse at the level of typography and function motivated a similar development for the syntactic realization of early headlines. Bold print and other means for visual enhancement gave the editors the possibility of moving important sentence parts or portions of text to initial position for emphasis. The result may have been, for example, an inverted constituent order or elliptical sentences. While typographic emphasis and (syntactic and thematic) inversion are undisputed characteristics in news discourse today (see, for example, Bell 1991), little has been said for the early days of news publishing. It will be the purpose of this chapter to examine the linguistic effects of these textual constraints in London newspapers from the late eighteenth century. It was seen in the previous examination of visual emphasis that especially the last section analysed - the year 1791 - showed first signs of departure from the traditional forms established in the eighteenth century. This is not surprising since the late eighteenth century marks the end of the 'old' newspaper at the cusp of a new era. This era was characterized by rapid technological changes and increased market pressure. It can therefore be assumed that the final year of ZEN is the most dynamic section of the corpus in terms of syntactic foregrounding used in newspaper headings. When dealing with headlines at syntactic level, one easily finds that especially modern (i.e. twentieth-century) headlines are commonly referred to as having a distinctly verbal character. Headlines in earlier newspapers, however, are often characterized as nominal labels, captions or stock phrases. Thus, it appears that, if we are to understand the ways in which the

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headline evolved syntactically, particular importance must be attached to describing how the verb found its way into the early newspaper heading. This will be done in the following investigation which focuses on the forerunners of verbal headlines. 1 Corpus and Method The analysis is based on the same cross-section of late eighteenth-century newspapers as in Chapter 5.1 The aim of the analysis is to quantify in a systematic way the forms and use of verbal headlines in a corpus of newspaper headings from that year. The results of this analysis will be compared to a corpus of nineteenth-century headlines selected from the Rostock Corpus of Newspapers (RNC). In particular, the years 1830 and 1860 will be examined for syntactic patterns typical of late eighteenth-century news publications. The comparison is intended to illustrate the possible stages the (verbal) headline went through on its way to its present-day form. The research method adopted for this analysis may be called corpusassisted in that it is based on an intuitive approach to factoring and cluster analysis (see, for example, Gorsuch 1974: 4-8). This approach suggests grouping of stylistic features according to their degree of association. Association between two features can be measured empirically by the frequency of co-occurrence (i.e. joint presence and absence) of variables in a corpus. If several variables are consistently found to be associated, they can be regarded as a cluster or type. Hierarchical clustering schemes can then be established which will indicate varying degrees of popularity of individual headline types. Correlation patterns in computer-linguistic research are typically associated with statistical techniques such as multivariate cluster analysis or, in particular, factor analysis. Although factor analysis has proved to be a powerful tool in the exploitation of some language corpora (see, for example, Biber 1988), no statistical research tool is used in the present study for technical reasons. Factor analysis depends on the availability of a reliable parser to a large extent. However, no such tool is available to date that is capable of tackling eighteenth-century spelling (see Schneider 2002b; Barnbrook 1992). The analysis will be carried out in three steps. Firstly, headlines will be extracted from the ZEN corpus and stored in a database. The processing procedure is similar to that described in Chapters 2 and 3 in that all textinternal headline features are entered as binary factors (i.e. yes-no questions) . This procedure allows a finely-grained characterization of headline types. Identifying co-occurring factors (and exact opposites) will allow the collation of factors into labels without overlapping features. In addition to the text-internal binary factors, a number of interpretative features will be added. Secondly, the resulting sub-corpus of verbal headlines will be broken into constituent parts manually. To these parts, major functional categories are assigned (i.e. subject, object, complement, etc.). In order to

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define headline clusters, only the functional categories will be considered. In a last step, the headlines will be further annotated with a set of dependent variables which indicate specific modes of syntactic foregrounding. Headline clusters are then retrieved in an automated process in which a computer program combines functional categories and, if applicable, foregrounding patterns in a profile. The program proceeds by automatically sorting the results according to frequency and co-occurrences of features. The resulting clusters will be interpreted and, if appropriate, broken into more refined sub-categories. 2 Verbal Headlines One major innovation in newspaper discourse that was underway in modern England was a new type of headline that not only announced a section in the paper, but also effectively summarized the news content of that section. Today, we know these forms as summary headlines with verbal character, as these recent examples from the London Times Online (5 June, 2004) illustrate: Hopes turned to dust, New Europeans drift home. While the beginnings of labels or captions may date back to the Middle Ages, summary headlines with a distinct verbal momentum were a novelty that emerged during the nineteenth century. Although the headline of the late eighteenth century may lack the level of sophistication of its nineteenthcentury pendant, one can distinguish one large headline category in the corpus that does not fit into the bracket of captions or labels. This category does have verbal character and provides more information than mere reference to section. The present corpus-linguistic investigation will concentrate on these forerunners because they are likely to reveal syntactic and stylistic mechanisms which prepared the way for the modern headline. There are a few relevant studies that address contemporary headline language in detail (Mardh 1980:49-58; Simon-Vandenbergen 1981:201-45; Maurer 1972: 80-86). These studies devote a full chapter each to the verbal headline, which is discussed as one of several headline categories, such as nominal, adverbial, and mixed headlines. While headlines can easily be classified as verbal if they contain a finite verb in their main clause, difficulties arise with finite verbs in subordinate position as well as with the many cases of non-finite, abbreviated, or elliptical phrase structures.2 Simon-Vandenbergen (1981: 201ff.) distinguishes between different functions of the verb in the headline (main clause vs subordinate clause) as well as between finite and non-finite forms. The category of non-finite verbal headlines includes all instances for which it can be proved that the auxiliary 'be' was omitted, as in the following example: a) Talks to begin tomorrow While her definition accepts relative clauses as a determining factor for the classification into verbal headlines (b), Simon-Vandenbergen (1981: 117) excludes cases of ellipted copula, which she counts as nominal forms (c).

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b) Body that was found yesterday c) Prime Minister in Rome That these decisions are completely arbitrary becomes clear if we look at Mardh's definition of verbal headlines, which accepts copula ellipsis as a criterion for verbal headlines (1980: 55ff.) but rejects relative clause structures (1980: 49). Maurer (1972: 88) adds to the confusion when he argues that headlines such as (b) should figure under a section called mixed forms, while permitting copula ellipsis in verbal headlines (1972: 82-3). There are, undoubtedly, valid arguments in favour of all of these definitions. However, one gets the impression that the differences between them arise from an intuitive preconception of the authors to see the verbal headline as a stylistic entity or a specific text type that they try to capture and rewrite in structural terms.3 Thus, it seems to become a matter of pure interpretation to include one parameter or to exclude another. The problem of definition was solved here by taking formal criteria (i.e. presence or absence of verbs in headlines) as indicative of the category. For the present analysis, early summary headlines have been classified as follows. Every typographically marked passage in the corpus in which (finite or non-finite) verb forms occurred was first marked as a verbal headline. This also included elliptical or incomplete headlines in which tensed verbs had to be added by the reader to complete the sentence, as for example in Pope in Rome or Pope visiting England. The corpus which resulted from this preliminary classification was then searched for predicative forms (headlines with a main verb) which in the main clause or in the independent subordinate clause contained a verb phrase that was not immediately governed by a noun phrase. These verb phrases were coded as headline predicators.4 Headline predicators are assumed to behave like normal predicators in a sentence, requiring subjects and complements. Isolated predicators or predicators that include only part of the required constituents were regarded as fragmentary variants of complete predicative headlines. It is, however, often not enough to look at syntactic features in isolation. Especially with abbreviated forms, further context is needed to determine the function of individual constituents in the sentence. Difficulty of analysis occurs with -mgand -«/participle forms that appear in pre- or post-nominal position. Consider the following two headlines (d) and (e): d) The Royal Beautifying Fluid. (1741CEA00179) e) Commission of Bankruptcy superseded. (1791LCR05408) Whereas the first example (d) seems unambiguous in that the headline appears to be about a beautifying fluid, (e) might be the short form of a commission of bankruptcy was superseded or a commission of bankruptcy that was superseded. In the latter case, the headline receives a thematic touch (the following is about + theme), while a commission of bankruptcy was superseded seems to reveal the actual news of the article (see performative headlines

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discussed in Chapter 5). Only context can disambiguate the reading in this case. Context is understood as the immediate textual environment of the headline (i.e. the respective news context) as well as the pragmatic context of the headline in the corpus (i.e. its usage in other texts or newspapers). As Simon-Vandenbergen (1981: 209) points out, most difficult cases can be safely identified through contextualization. A first retrieval shows that 300 of the total of 898 headlines recorded for the year 1791 tally with the definition of verbal headlines; 223 headlines of these 300 fall into the category of predicative headlines. The remaining 77 instances which could not be classified as predicative headlines either include verb phrases that are governed by a noun phrase (1), verb phrases that reveal themselves as noun phrases (2), or verb phrases in subordinate clauses (3). (1) (2) (3)

POOLE CONTESTED ELECTION. (1791LCR05378) List of the Killed and Wounded in the Action near Sattimungullum, at the River Bowanni, the 13th and 14th of September. (1791LCR05408) Where also may be had, By Authority of His Majesty's Royal Letter Patent, In Bottles at Is. 6d. and 2s. 9d. (1791MOP05600)

Table 6.1 shows the preliminary distribution of verbal headlines in tabular form. The headline totals have been normalized to the average newspaper size of 12,000 words per issue. While, across the whole corpus, nominal headlines seem to be the predominant type (c. 70 per cent), the proportion of nominal and verbal headlines varies internally from publication to publication. The internal analysis of the newspapers shows that in the London Chronicle and the Morning Post verbal headlines account for nearly 50 per cent of all their headings. This result decreases to one third in the Public Advertiser, one sixth in the Evening Mail, and a tiny 3 per cent in the London Gazette. There may be several explanations for the unbalanced distribution of verbal headlines in the corpus. The results seem to support the idea that verbal headlines constituted a mode or register which was accepted by some editors and rejected by others. It is possible that the use of verbal headlines can be linked to the performance and stylistic profile of a publication (see Part I of this book). The London Gazette, for example, was regarded as a conservative paper which only reluctantly recognized the importance of an appealing layout and style. The strong presence of predicative headlines in the Morning Post, on the other hand, ties in with its reputation as a popular newspaper. Similar explanations may be found for the London Chronicle or the Public Advertiser. 3 Modes of Syntactic Foregrounding The distribution of headlines in Table 6.1 indicates first trends of headline usage in the corpus. It will be the purpose of this and the following section to go into detail and see how verbal headlines varied internally with regard

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Table 6.1 Distribution of headline totals by publication Headlines (HL)

HL/Issue Verbal HL VHL/ (12,000 words) (VHL) Issue

EVM LCR LGZ MOP PAD

185 210 108 236 159

52.6 64.3 42.4 62.6 55.2

114 53

Total

898

-

300

30 99 4

Predicative PHL/Issue HL (PHL)

8.5 30.3 1.5 30.2 18.4

17 66 107 33

4.8 20.2 28.4 11.5

-

223

-

to a predefined set of syntactic features. The following features have been selected for further analysis: (1) functional constituents such as subject, object, indirect object, subject complement, adjunct, predicator; (2) strategies of constituent or phrasal movement, in particular fronting, inversion, discontinuity, dislocation; (3) features indicating syntactic contraction or reduction, below referred to as reduction. I will not comment on the functional categories and elliptical forms any further. Strategies of phrasal or constituent movement, however, require explanation. Fronting, inversion and discontinuity in this context will be understood as forms of topicalization which in news headlines occur at both thematic and structural level. While the headline itself may be seen as the top of the underlying semantic macrostructure of the news (see, for example, van Dijk 1988:188), fronting is used here to refer to the widespread editing practice of marking important text elements within a headline by leftward movement (e.g. Fast Food, the Venetian Way as opposed to The Venetian Way of Fast Food). Basically, all sentence elements can be shifted leftward. Some forms of movement have been found to specifically occur in contemporary headlines, such as name fronting (see van Dijk 1998: 48) .5 One special case of fronting is subject-verb inversion, which appears in various contexts in English (e.g. in conversation, see Quirk et al 1985: 1379ff. and Ferguson 1983: 160). In early news discourse, inversion was particularly frequent in sentences introduced by past participles (e.g. Lost was a Wallet yesterday). Another variant of topicalization in eighteenthcentury newspapers is discontinuity, which Quirk et al. (1985: 1397-1402) classify as forms of postponement. Discontinuous forms are headlines in which the logical adjacency of subject and predicator is broken by an interpolated adjunct (e.g. Lost was yesterday at 5pm a Wallet as opposed to Lost was a wallet yesterday at 5 pm). Left dislocation (e.g. Peter, I saw him today) may not play an important part in contemporary headline style; it is, however, a frequent feature of eighteenth-century news discourse which must be included in the coding schedule. Left dislocation here refers to a closed set of techniques concisely summarized in Gundel (1977: 46-118) .6 In order to apply Gundel's model

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to early newspapers, we need to expand it slightly by allowing instances of lexical and semantic repetition into the definition. This means that forms like Peter, I saw Peter today (full lexical repetition), Peter, I saw a man like Peter today (partial repetition) or A man, I saw Peter today (semantic repetition) have to be accepted as variants of standard dislocation. Finally, the syntactic interdependence of the headlines arid the news text has to be taken into account in the analysis. News headlines today can be seen as entirely independent and meaningful text forms which follow their own stylistic rules and grammar. As was already shown in the analysis of visual foregrounding, this is often not the case with the early headline. The corpus reveals that nine out of ten headlines follow a particular pattern in which the headlines (i.e. the bold-printed elements) form an integral part of the news text. The high frequency with which this type occurs suggests that it is the standard variant of verbal headlines at the end of the eighteenth century. The following death notice from the Morning Post serves for illustration: (4) DIED, Sunday, at his house in the Minories, Robert Harding, Esq. Deputy of Portsoken Ward. (1791MOP05600) As can be seen in example (4), the information structure of the headline must be seen in relation to the sentence or text passage of which it forms part This means for the bold-printed headline above that it is incomplete without further context. However, if one adds the sentence that follows to the headline, one can see that Died and Robert Hardinghave been inverted. Moreover, time and place adjuncts have been inserted between verb and subject to render the sentence discontinuous. Proper headlines, in contrast, show a higher degree of abstraction in that they combine various separate pieces of information from the main news text in the heading, thus providing a quintessential summary of the news in short form. The existence of these forms has already been discussed in section 2.3 of Chapter 5. These forms were found to exceed the common stylistic repertoire used in eighteenth-century headings in their graphic appearance and their assumed textual function. In the corpus of verbal forms discussed here, proper headlines depart from the standard eighteenth-century heading through their syntactic independence from the news text, often including a verbal momentum in the headline. Consider the following example in which the subject in the headline (a horse) combines with a predicative element (wanted). (5)

A HORSE WANTED. ANY Person having a BLOOD HORSE or GELDING to dispose of, about 14 hands and a half, that is perfectly sound, and steadv and safe

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goer, and is able to carry 12 stone, may hear of a Purchaser by enquiring of Mr. Kendall, at the George Inn, Long-acre, This Day, any time before one o'clock. A Gelding will be preferred to a Horse. - A Mare will not suit. (1791MOP05741) Table 6.2 shows the result of the automatic analysis of headlines into clusters sharing syntactic features. These sub-groups will be called syntactic combinations. The letters in the top row of Table 6.2 are given for ease of reference in the text (e.g. combination A) and represent one sub-group each. The combinations appear from left to right in increasing syntactic complexity. The bottom row indicates the frequency of each combination in the corpus. A total of 171 of 223 headlines have been grouped into 21 different combinations or clusters with more than one occurrence in the corpus. Single occurrences or instances which could not be assigned to any combination (52 headlines) do not figure in the table below. 4 Stylistic Dimensions With the results of Table 6.2, one can now proceed by grouping those combinations into categories which carry similar characteristics of style. The relevant criteria for grouping in this type of discourse are cues which enable us to differentiate stress and emphasis in the headline. There are three general stylistic dimensions or headline types that seem to emerge as distinct categories in the corpus. They will tentatively be called unstressed forms, topicalized forms and dislocated forms. The category of unstressed forms will be used to group those headlines which follow the common constituent order in English. Instances in which the S-V-C-A (subject, verb, complement, adjunct) pattern was modified have been classified as either topicalized or dislocated forms. Topicalization, as shown above, basically involves change in the linearity of information. Dislocation, on the other hand, refers to a process in which information is not only moved within a sentence but also added for further emphasis. The three dimensions thus represent successive stages of complexity in structuring information. They will be discussed in detail in sections 4.1 to 4.4 below. In the quotations that follow below, the headline parts will be rendered bold as in the newspaper, if shown with the main body of text; all other quotations will be left in standard type. 4.1 Unstressed Forms

The first group of unstressed forms includes those headlines which follow the common sentence pattern without additional emphasis. Four syntactic combinations satisfy this criterion (A, B, D, G), but they do not occur in large numbers in the corpus (A, D, G are recorded twice; B three times). The following example from combination A was published in the Public Advertiser in the issue of Friday, 11 February, 1791. It begins with an

Table 6.2 Syntactic combinations A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

2

2

7

3

2

3

2

2

4

6

6

45

2

3

6

9

2

6

47

4

8

Subject

Object Indobject SubjComp Adjuncts Predicator REduction

Fronting Inversio Discontin Dislocation

Frequency Total =171

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149

existential subject and a copula, which is followed by a post-modified subject complement. This headline can be seen as a forerunner of the modern referential byline in news articles. (6)

The Following is an Extract of a Letter this Day received by Messrs Shetgold and Co. Trowbridge, Feb. 4,1791. (1791 PAD 17660)

The same word order seems to be maintained in combinations B, D, G. However, constituency is reduced to a minimum, which is achieved either through copula omission, or, in the case of (7), through deletion of the subject: (7) (8) (9)

Cleared outwards. (1791 PAD 17660) Dividends to be made. (1791LCR05362) CERTIFICATES to be granted on or before August 23. (1791EVM00380)

The interpretation of these forms can sometimes be problematic because they seem to allow more than one reading. Often, the larger context of the headline helps disambiguate the reading. Example (7), although a little awkward, might be the abbreviated version of cleared outwards have/are + names of ships, in which case the implicit subject would follow in the body of the text. Contextual analysis, however, reveals that (7) is usually preceded by headline (10), which suggests that in our example the implied subject preceded the headline. (10) PORT of LONDON, FEBRUARY 7,1791. COASTING SHIPS and VESSELS. ENTERED INWARDS. (1791PAD17660) Examples (8) and (9) pose difficulty in that they can be rewritten with a relative clause which are to bemadeorviith the copula only. Again, reading the full announcement shows that copula ellipsis seems to apply in these cases, since the headlines are immediately followed by a list of names. The most plausible reading then would be dividends are to be made to + names. 4.2 Topicalized Forms Unlike unstressed forms that appear in a few scattered examples only, topicalization is very common in the corpus. Every second headline shows fronting, inversion or discontinuity. This large dimension can be further divided into smaller sub-groups which show similar stress patterns. Table 6.3 lists the seven sub-groups found in the corpus. The first four groups include headlines with complete verb forms; the last three groups refer to abbreviated or elliptical headlines. The largest group in Table 6.3 consists of headlines which combine fronting, inversion and discontinuity. All instances from this group belong to the text class of book advertisements, therefore being highly repetitive in their lexical structure. They typically include the following sentence constituents

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Table 6.3 Sub-groups of topicalized forms Freq. Combination +fronting+mversion+discontinuity

46

7 +inversion+discontinuity 9 +fronting+inversion +fronting 2 +reduction+inversion+discontinuity 15 +reduction-l-fronting+inversion +reduction+inversion Total

6 6

Text Type

book advertisements death notices (C) playbills (K), (N) playbills (H) (I), (M), (0), notices (various) (Q) sales notices (R) notices (various)

(S)

(j)

91

(in the order in which they appear): time adjunct, predicator, sentence adjuncts, and subjectExample (11) from the London Chronicle of 1791 represents such a headline. The comments in square brackets refer to the syntactic processes at work. As can be seen in the example - as in most examples that follow below - the bold printed headline ends abruptly in the middle of the sentence: (11) This Day [adjunctfronting] was published [subject-verb inversion], Elegantly printed in One Volume Quarto, Price One Guinea in boards, And a few Copies on a fine Paper, Price 11. 5s. in boards, Dedicated to his Royal Highness GEORGE Prince of WALES [subject-verb discontinuity]. THE PHILOSOPHY of NATURAL HISTORIY. (1791LCR05378) The alternative form to the headline above is example (12), which involves double movement of a prepositional adjunct, 'For the USE of CHILDREN', and a predicative adjunct, 'This Day', to the beginning of the sentence. (12) For the USE of CHILDREN. This Day was published, VOLUME I. Illustrated with Sixteen Copper plates, Price Three Shillings and Sixpence bound, ELEMENTS OF MORTALITY: With an Introductory Address to Parents. From the German of The Rev. C. SALZMANN. (1791LCR05378) Less frequent forms are combinations (C), (K) and (N). While (K) and (N) are only simplified variants of the types discussed above, (C) may be noted for the fact that it consists of the predicator 'Died' only. Although much shorter than other topicalized forms, (C) still resembles the previous examples because of subject—predicator inversion and shifting of the

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sentence subject to end position. Example (5) above can be seen as a representative instance of this type. Rarer still, (H) represents the only combination in which a place adjunct was moved to initial position without any further modification of the constituent order. Only two headlines follow this pattern. They can be classified as notices in the wider sense, since they introduce an explicit performative speech act. (13) HANOVER-SQUARE. Mr. SALOMON respectfully acquaints the Nobility and Gentry, that his CONCERTS will open without any further delay, To-morrow the llth of March, and continue every succeeding Friday. (1791PAD17683) So far, we have looked at complete sentences only. There are, however, instances in which the predicator is partly or completely omitted. There are six combinations which match this definition: (I), (M), (J), (O), (Q), (R). Together they account for slightly more than 10 per cent of all predicative headlines of the corpus. With the exception of (O), these combinations can be discussed in one paragraph, as they seem to be minor variants of the same standard form. They are similar in that primary emphasis is placed on the complement to the ellipted copula. The subject, if present in the headline, occurs in immediate adjacency or has been shifted to the right by an inserted place adjunct. In some instances, as in (16) below, a sentence adjunct is moved to the beginning of the sentence. Like topicalized forms introduced above, they appear in notices or advertisements and vary in their text class from lost and found to wedding announcements or sales notices: (14) LOST, a POCKET-BOOK, in which the Name of the Earl of BARRYMORE is stampt. (1791MOP05600) (15) MARRIED. A few days ago, Arthur Henry Dally, Esq. of Galway in the kingdom of Ireland, nephew to the Earl of Arran, and cousin to the Marquis of Clamickard, to Miss Ogle, second daughter of General Ogle, late of Cawsey Park, Northumberland. (1791EVM00327) (16) BY PRIVATE CONTRACT. TO be Sold, a Pair of BLACK CURRICLE MARES, 15 hands, match remarkably well, are fast trotters, and have been drove constantly by a lady; with a CURRICLE and HARNESS compleat. (1791MOP05600) Unlike the forms in which the copula only is deleted, the predicator has been left out completely in the following example from combination (O). Since predicator deletion seems to co-occur more prominently with dislocated forms, it will suffice here to give an example for illustration. In (17), it is up to the reader to fill in the missing pieces of information: (17) By Mr. Langhorn, At the City Repository, in Barbican, On Tuesday, April 12, Punctually at Twelve o'Clock, TWENTY Seasoned MACHINE GELDINGS; comprising a Stock superior to most that have ever been offered for Public Sale. (1791MOP05600)

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Example (17) is one of a number of auction notices which are headed by the introductory phrase 'SALES BY AUCTION' printed at the top of the advertisement column. Possible rewrite rules for example 17 might be +[adjuncts] is/are sold+[subjeci\ or, alternatively, for sale is/are +[adjuncts]+[subjecf\. Both variants also occur regularly in earlier years of ZEN. In either reading, adjuncts come before the subject, which indicates that, in addition to inversion, non-obligatory information has been moved leftward to be given more weight in the sentence.

4.3 Dislocated Forms

Dislocation may be regarded as a progression from topicalization because it implies not only twisting of information within a sentence but also shifting with resumption in the text (i.e. filling of the gap left by the displaced element).7 Usually, the 'hanging topic' is resumed and replaced by a much shorter preform that functions as a cohesive device and refers back to the sentence beginning. But the resumptive elements found in newspapers are of varying degrees and forms - from simple preforms to elaborate and complex phrases, which makes it necessary to break the groups into more refined categories that further distinguish between different realization patterns in dislocated elements of the heading. Nearly every third predicative headline begins with a dislocated sentence element, which makes dislocated forms the second largest dimension in the corpus. Table 6.4 summarizes the correlation patterns found for this dimension in tabular form and offers a tentative suggestion for grouping. The four groups, (1) to (4), refer to different stress patterns in dislocated headlines. Again, we distinguish between full verb forms (groups 1 and 2) and abbreviated headlines (groups 3 and 4). Table 6.5 shows the breakdown of the results into different types of dislocation found in the corpus. The tentative criteria used to analyse the internal structure of dislocation are associated category (sentence element in the main text associated with the headline), substitution (indicating if dislocated elements are replaced by a cohesive device), match (applies if part or whole of associated sentence element has been copied and pasted to sentence initial position), and no match (if dislocated element is no exact copy of associated sentence element). In instances where the category no match applies, further characteristics may be added to describe the dislocated element, such as contraction, synonymy or hyponymy. Contraction refers to the specific case where bits of information from one or more constituents are pasted together and added to the sentence beginning. Synonymy and the special case of hyponymy come into play if the dislocated parts do not match their counterparts in the text but may be considered semantically identical with or more general than the associated sentence elements. The bracket Info may be ticked to indicate whether new information is added to the dislocated element which

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is not resumed later in the text; other comprises odd cases to which none of the characteristics apply. The first group of various notices, which in Table 6.4 is marked no addiitional features, shows no stress by movement except that one sentence element is dislocated and shifted to the beginning of the headline. While this general pattern is fixed, the dislocated elements vary greatly internally. Example (18) illustrates the case where the subject, 'BEAUFORT's ANTIPUTRID WATER', is dislocated and later resumed in the main sentence by a proform-like construction. Example (19) is comparable to (18) in that die displaced noun phrase is a practically identical copy of a part of the associated text element. Example (20), on the other hand, is slightly more removed from proform dislocation as it contains an element of paraphrasing in it ('MILITARYFORCE' vs 'military establishment'). Moreover, information is added and fronted ('EAST INDIES'), which is not resumed in the text. (18) BEAUFORT's ANTI-PUTRID WATER. THIS famous Water is a combination of mineral and vegetable Acids, and of various salts. (1791PAD17709) (19) To the GOVERNORS of the MAGDALEN HOSPITAL. MR. ANDREWS presents his respects to those Governors of the MAGDALEN HOSPITAL whom he could not have the honour of addressing by letter from the omission of their residences in the books [...]. (1791PAD17709) (20) EAST INDIES. TIPOO'S MILITARY FORCE. TTPPOO's military establishment is very great; being no less than 72,800 regulars, including 740 Europeans, under the command of French officers [...]. (1791LCR05378) The above examples reflect very basic types of dislocation. They occur rarely and come nearest to what is understood as classical proform substitution; all other forms of dislocation show a much freer structure. Examples Table 6.4 Sub-groups of dislocated forms Dislocation+

Freq. Combination Content

(1) no additional features

14

(2) +fronting+inversion+ discontinuity (3) +reduction+inversion

8

(U)

45

(L)

4

(T)

(4) +reduction+fronting+inversion+ discontinuity Total

71

(E), (F), (P)

notices (various) book advertisements auction notices sales notices

Table 6.5 Internal structure of dislocated elements Group

F

Associated Category

1 (E) (E) (F) (F) (F) (P) (P) (P) (P) 2 (U) (U) (U) 3 (L) (L) (L) (L) (L) (L) (10 (L)

1 1 1 1 1 3 3

Subject Subject Object Object Subject lObject lObject lObject lObject Subject Subject Subject Adjunct Adjunct Subject Subject Adjunct Subject Adjunct Sub/Adj Various Subject Adjunct Adjunct

2 1 4 3 1 8

7

4 (T) (T) (T)

6 5 4 4 3 3 5 2 1 1

Total

71

(10

Substitution

Match No Match

> Contraction > Hyponymy > Synonymy > Info > Other

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(21) and (22) below may be seen as cases in point. The dislocated elements 'MACKLIN's BIBLE AND EXHIBITION' and 'DANCING, PRIVATE TUITION' form a blend of different constituents from the text. It was already seen in example (5) above that forms which extract separate information from the main text can be seen as forerunners of the modern summary headline. While (21) is a straightforward combination of two head noun phrases joined by and, a new headline was coined in (22) that gives a general summary of the whole thateentence. (21) MACKLIN's BIBLE AND EXHIBITION. MR. MACKLIN respectfully acquaints his Subscribers, that the THIRD NUMBER of his BIBLE is ready for Delivery at Poets' Gallery, Heat-street; and his EXHIBITION is now open at his Gallery in Pall-Mall; at which Place the Subscribers to his Poets and Bible are requested to apply for their Tickets of Admission. (1791MOP05600) (22) DANCING, PRIVATE TUITION. MR. BURGHALL respectfully informs his Friends, and the Public, that his ACADEMY is established at No. 21, MAIDEN-LANE, near Bedford-street, Covent-garden, where LADIES and GENTLEMEN may acquire, in the most FASHIONABLE STYLE, at their own hours, in perfect PRIVACY, with ACCURACY and EXPEDITION, and on moderate terms, the Minute, Country Dances, Cotillions, and Hornpipes, Minuet de la Cour, Gavot, Princess Royal's Minuet; Devonshire Minuet, Allemande, &c. (1791MOPO5741) The second group of dislocated forms, marked +fronting}-inversion+discontinuity in Table 6.4, contains book advertisements only. The book advertisements that fall into this category resemble the most frequent topicalized headline type discussed above (see example 11). In addition to topicalization, parts of the subject noun phrase have been copied and shifted to sentence-initial position. Thus, the subject in example (23) is not fronted but actually dislocated from its original position in the sentence. (23) MISS GUNNING. This Day is published, price 2s. 6d. A LETTER to the MARQUIS of LORN; in which is SOME EXPLANATION of the GUNNING MISTERY. (1791MOP05712) The example of the Gunning case, however, adds a pragmatic note to the analysis. The dislocated element gathers a momentum which is beyond simple adding, cutting, pasting and paraphrasing; it draws on circumstantial knowledge of the reader who is or should be well familiar with the general topic introduced in the text. Hence, its function is not primarily to repeat or anticipate the message but to evoke a desired reaction in the reader. In (23), therefore, the introductory phrase 'Miss Gunning' does not refer to the fact that there is a new publication in print; this fact is taken for granted from the co-text of the notice. Rather, the phrase 'Miss Gunning' seems to evoke certain memories associated with earlier reports of the case. The same interpretation may apply to the next example:

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(24) DEATH OF KOTSWARRA, And MEMOIRS and TRIALS of SUSANNAH HILL. This day is published, Price IS. Embellished with a Print, representing a Scene previous to the decease of the unfortunate KOTSWARRA, MODERN PROPENSITIES; or, an Essay on the ART of STRANGULATION, and other Fashionable Modes, Physically and Morally investigated, in a variety of Instances and Anecdotes. To which is added, MEMOIRS of SUSANNAH HILL; and a Summary of her Trial yesterday at the Old Bailey, before Judge GOULD, for being accessary to the Death of FRANCIS KOTSWARRA, at her Lodgings, on the 2d of September, in Vine-street (1791MOP05741) The new publication advertised in (24) has no direct connection to the death of a certain Mr Kotswarra except that the publication deals with the issue of death due to strangulation. A recent murder through strangulation then serves as the perfect occasion to grab the reader's attention. The two abbreviated groups, finally, can both be counted to the text classes of auction and sales notices. They, too, bear resemblance to topicalized forms above (see example (17)). The large number of instances in group 3 (Table 6.5) suggests that there must be considerable variation in the internal structure of dislocated elements. This is not the case; rather, these combinations appear to be highly stereotyped stock phrases which allow for very little stylistic freedom. Frequently, the displaced parts stand in a part-whole relationship to their corresponding elements in the text, as in property notices where it may be useful for the reader to know the general location of the property that is on offer. (25) is a case in point: (25) NORTHAMPTONSHIRE. To be SOLD by PRIVATE CONTRACT By Messrs. SKINNER and DYKE, A CAPITAL and TRULY DESIRABLE FREEHOLD ESTATE, is both ROYAL PARK and FREE WARREN, situate within two Miles of the Town of NORTHAMPTON, and Half a Mile of the HIGH ROAD to LEICESTER, consisting of a MANSION HOUSE, with OFFICES, COACH-HOUSE, and STABLES, and FOUR HUNDRED and FIFTY-TWO ACRES of RICH Pasture, Arable, and Upland MEADOW, beautifully interspersed with WOOD and WATER, an EXCELLENT FARM HOUSE and OUT-BUILDINGS, in substantial Repair. (1791MOP05741) Alternatively, the displaced elements sometimes consist of different adjuncts from the text that are drawn together and pasted to sentence-initial position: (26) SLOANE-STREET, CHELSEA. By Messrs. SKINNER and DYKE, On TUESDAY the 12th of April, at Twelve o'clock, at Garraway's Coffeehouse, Change-Alley, Cornhill, In Two Lots, by Order of the Executors, TWO REMARKABLE WELL BUILT and Completely Finished BRICK DWELLING HOUSES, OFFICES and GARDENS, No. 127, and 128, in SLOANE-STREET, leading from CHELSEA to KNIGHTSBRIDGE, the property of the late Mr. JOHN WEST, deceased. (1791MOP05600)

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Example (27) differs yet again in that, instead of adjunct dislocation, parts of the sentence subject have been displaced. Example (28), lastly, is the most complex variant of this group as it conjoins place adjunct and subject Moreover, some details of the subject (list of wines and liquors) are replaced by a more generic term ('WINES'): (27) PICTURES, MINIATURES, &c. By Mr. CHRISTIE, At his Great Room in Pall-mall, TO-MORROW, the 8th of April and following Day, at Twelve o'Clock, THE GENUINE and VALUABLE COLLECTION of PICTURES of the ITALIAN, FRENCH, FLEMISH, and DUTCH SCHOOLS, highly finished MINIATURES, MARBLE BUSTOS, Capital BRONZES, Curious CARVINGS in IVORY, MODELS in TERRA GOTTA, ROMAN WARE, &c. (1791MOP05600) (28) FURNITURE, WINES, &c. CROWN and ROLLS, TAVERN, CHANCERY-LANE. By Messrs. SKINNER and DYKE, On MONDAY, the 26th instant, and two following days, at Eleven o'Clock, on the Premises, by Order of the Executors of Mr. WILLIAM GREENLY, deceased; ALL the HOUSEHOLD FURNITURE, VALUABLE FIXTURES, ONE THOUSAND OUNCES of PLATE, LINEN, CHINA, GLASS, THREE HUNDRED DOZEN of excellent PORT, CLARET, and SHERRY, TWO HUNDRED GALLONS of BRANDY and RUM, empty BOTTLES, CASKS, and other Effects of The CROWN and ROLLS TAVERN [...] (1791MOP05741) 4.4 Complex Forms

So far, predicative headlines have been discussed which can be reformulated with the help of systematic rewriting techniques. The analysis has revealed that they form the largest body of verbal headlines in the corpus. In this section, I will briefly address instances to which these rewriting rules do not apply. There is one small group of headlines (c. 9 per cent) where these rules appear to be unsuccessful. In layout, they seem to be imitations of the various notices in which the first and the integrated part of the headline together form one coherent string of words. Here, the two strings are syntactically and pragmatically distinct messages. They are counted to the group of predicative headlines only because one (or both) headline parts include a main verb. Some instances of this group include isolated constituents which cannot immediately be assigned to one or more associated elements in the text. Rather, the main text seems to be part of the introductory headline. In examples (29) and (30), the processes involved in the rewriting of the headlines would lead to the insertion of an additional predicator other than the predicator of the main text 'A Card' might be rewritten by something like 'this is to give notice that', while (30), in which the first part of the headline refers to the agency releasing the news, could be paraphrased by 'the Public Office gives notice that'. But there being no internal evidence

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for either version, classification of these headlines cannot be substantiated on the basis of rewriting rules. (29) A CARD. THE Rev. T. Priestley begs Leave most respectfully to inform the PUBLIC, that PROPOSALS for Publishing his [...] Are now delivering Gratis by the following Booksellers [...]. (1791MOP05600) (30) PUBLIC OFFICE, BOW-STREET, Feb 10,1791. BROKE open, a House in Wardour-street, Yesterday Morning, and stolen therein about Eighteen of Twenty Yards of Apron Check, rather a light pattern. Whoever will give such Information to Sir Sampson Wright, at the above Office [...] shall receive a Reward of TEN GUINEAS from the Owner. (1791PAD17660) Similar problems of interpretation occur with instances where the highlighted passage and the actual text body almost form two entirely separate advertisements, the headline being too long to be regarded as introductory to the text. There are only very few examples in the corpus, such as the following: (31) None are Genuine unless signed by W. Bacon on the Stamp. PECTORAL BALSAM of HONEY, Invented by the late Sir JOHN HILL, M.D. And now faithfully prepared from his MS. Recipes, by his Relict and Executrix, the Hon. Lady HILL, at her house Curzon-street, Berkeley-square, London. MORE than 30 years experience has con-firmed the unequalled efficacy and safety of this elegant medicine in the immediate relief, and gradual [...]. (1791LCR05362)

5 Outlook to the Nineteenth Century In the previous sections, I analysed the verbal behaviour in a sample of late eighteenth-century newspaper headings. The analysis not only described different stages in the development of newspaper headings but also offered a historical explanation of the linguistic behaviour found in contemporary news headlines. In this final section, I shall contextualize the results further by looking beyond the year 1800. In particular, I shall highlight some trends found in news headlines of the nineteenth century. This part of the analysis is based on two time samples from the Rostock Newspaper Corpus (RNC): 1830 and 1860. Bearing in mind the reservations previously mentioned regarding the representativeness of this sample,8 the analysis is not intended as a definitive survey but to provide an impression of trends in news headlines of the nineteenth century. The corpus consists of 120,000 running words for the years 1830 and 1860 together,

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which is divided into samples of 10,000 words for each newspaper in the corpus.9 The headings found in RNC were fed into the same database used for the previous analysis and searched for verbal (i.e. predicative) headlines. A first count returns only thirty predicative headlines in the two years together in a total of 596 headings recorded in the sample (5 per cent). This drop in number is not surprising, since advertisements are not included in the corpus. Advertisements, as shown above, account for practically all predicative headings in 1791. In 1830, the predicative news headline appears in approximately 3.6 per cent of all instances in the corpus. Between 1830 and 1860, predicative news headlines show a further increase of 3 per cent, rising to a total of 6.7 per cent. This result suggests that the predicative headline in edited news appeared some time around the turn of the century but seemed to increase only slowly during the first decades of the nineteenth century. A look at the syntactic build-up and organization in more detail reveals different sub-categories of predicative headlines. The largest category (10 headlines) consists of elliptic constructions in which subject and tensed verb were omitted. The verb forms in these examples are all single -ing or, in one case, -ed participles. The shortest form occurs in 'FLOGGING' (1830BLL00452) and 'Sailed' (1830STD00001) where the information in the headline was reduced to the meaning of the verb only. No further context is given. While the first example can stand on its own or even function as a nominal or a subject in the headline, the second heading reflects a practice widely applied in listing news reports of the eighteenth century such as shipping news or death notices, whereby an action verb precedes the list of subjects involved. This type further exhibits subject-verb inversion as discussed above, as also found, for example, in 'Received this Morning' (1830STD00001), where a time adjunct is added to the verb. The subject is missing and expected to follow the headline. All examples above are similar to the group of headlines consisting of an elliptical verb phrase that is followed by its corresponding objects. This common form shows varying degrees of complexity, the simplest being a verb followed by a single object: (32) FRANKING LETTERS (1830GRD00153) (33) BREAKING A MAN'S ARM (1860EST00012) (34) CLERKENWELL - ROBBING FURNISHED LODGINGS (1860DTG01408) (35) ILLUSINGALAD(1830GRD00153) This form can be extended by adding various adjuncts that specify place, manner or action. In some cases, place adjuncts are further moved to initial position. Compare examples (36) to (38):

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(36) DISTURBING A CONGREGATION IN A PALACE OF WORSHIP (1830NOW00001) (37) ETON. - Illegally Demanding Toll for Soldiers' Baggage (1830NOW00001) (38) TEACHING THE BLIND TO READ (1860EST00012) While most of the above examples are unambiguous in that the verb forms function as predicators in the headline, there are two groups of headlines in the corpus that can be read either way as nominal or verbal constructions. They were included in the analysis as they seem to bear resemblance to the widespread topicalized forms of the eighteenth century in which subject and predicator in a passive construction were inverted (e.g. lost, a green book). It can reasonably be argued that the examples below can be read with a pause after the verb phrase, assuming that the verb contains news value itself. It is possible that this particular form was borrowed from topicalized advertisements in which the verb is fronted to draw the attention of the reader. The headline function would be performative rather than thematic. (39) ATTEMPTED SUICIDE (1830GRD00153) (40) ATTEMPTED MURDER BY A MARINE (1860DTG01408) (41) PROPOSED REMOVAL OF THE YORKSHIRE ASSIZES (1860EST00012) (42) PROPOSED CONSTITUTION FOR NAPLES (1860EST00012) (43) PETTED MURDERERS (1860LWN00908) It is quite possible that even headlines in which the verb syntactically reveals itself as a nominal might sometimes have been understood in their predicative sense by the nineteenth-century reader. (44) might have had the connotation of Convict Annois Condemned, while (45) could have been understood as Papal Demonstration in Dublin Approaching. Only further context can disambiguate the reading. It can be assumed, though, that disambiguation is not always possible. (44) THE CONDEMNED CONVICT ANNOIS (1860DTG01408) (45) THE APPROACHING PAPAL DEMONSTRATION IN DUBLIN (1860MOP26849) Far less ambiguous than examples (39) to (45) is the (small) group of predicative headlines that contain both verb and subject They are unstressed and syntactically complete, except for the copula that has been omitted. Consider examples (46) to (48): (46) DEAD BODY FOUND (1830GRD00153) (47) A MADMAN ADMIRED BY THE LADIES! (1830GRD00153) (48) ANOTHER CHILD BURNT TO DEATH (1860GRD JANUARY 2) There is one final example of a news headline which includes neither predicator nor subject. Instead, a lone time adverbial is printed in bold, as shown in (49):

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(49) BETTER LATE THAN NEVER (1830NOW00001) In sum, the analysis of predicative news headlines seems to confirm the trend observed in eighteenth-century newspapers. Predicative headlines show close similarities in structure to eighteenth-century commercial and non-commercial advertisements in which verbal action is foregrounded through various linguistic strategies. In particular, topicalization through subject-verb inversion and subject ellipsis seems to have gained popularity in edited news. At the same time, the analysis shows dial the repertoire of predicative forms was still limited. Most headlines followed one of die strategies illustrated above. However, readership attention was not attained through the introduction of verbal headline forms alone. The corpus shows that non-verbal headlines became more spectacular too. It seems that the effect of nonverbal headlines was primarily achieved through choice of vocabulary rather than their syntactic construction. It can be assumed that a more detailed examination would reveal an increase in qualifying adjectives and superlatives as well as in amusing or abstract word combinations, or fashionable words. Consider, finally, examples (50) to (54): (50) MOST EXTENSIVE ROBBERY (1830BLL00452) (51) BARBAROUS MURDER OF A WIFE BY HER HUSBAND (1830BLL00452) (52) CRUELTY TO LOBSTERS (1830BLL00452) (53) THE POPE AND THE IRISH (1860EST00012) (54) Paris Chit Chat (1830NOW00001)

6 Conclusion The present chapter has given insight into aspects of information structuring in late eighteendi- and nineteenth-century newspaper headlines. The chapter has laid particular emphasis on verbal (i.e. predicative) headline forms and the various ways in which they were realized in a group of newspapers from 1791. While initial counts suggest that predicative headlines occurred frequently in early newspapers, a detailed look at the results shows that they tended to be used in some publications more regularly than in others. The selective use of verbal headlines may have been due to the stylistic effect they produced - they enhanced readership appeal. This effect was achieved through a number of syntactic processes which interacted simultaneously and created emphasis in the text. As die analysis has shown, predicative headlines were syntactically interwoven with the news text. Thus, if a reader chose to read a headline, s/he automatically read part of the news. This does not seem extraordinary to the modern reader, since we expect the headline itself to provide a summary of the news. However, to an eighteenth-century audience used to section

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headings such as 'home news', 'foreign news', or 'advertisements', this device allowed for considerable emphasis within the narrative. The examples discussed in this chapter have also shown that predicative headlines were more than merely bold printed sentence beginnings. Typography and information structure went hand in hand and created room for constructions which combined both visual enhancement and thematic foregrounding. It may be assumed that modern headlines evolved directly from such constructions. Thematic foregrounding was achieved through various syntactic processes: frequently, important sentence elements were fronted or dislocated, i.e. copied and pasted to text-initial position. Dislocated forms, in particular, may be seen as forerunners of modern summary headlines; they exhibit the highest degree of self-sufficiency, with both dislocated parts and textual body being grammatically and pragmatically self-contained. Besides thematic foregrounding, syntactic reduction could regularly be found in the corpus. Usually, the copula only was omitted; in some instances, the main verb was left out completely. Reduction usually occurred in places where the verb or the action denoted by the verb could be taken for granted (e.g. sales notices). The study gives grounds for believing that at the end of the eighteenth century the conscious use of an appealing headline style was still reserved for texts which per se held an advertising function. Thus, they predominated in inserted newspaper text such as commercial advertisements (sales and auction notices, theatre playbills, lost and found, personals) or in public notices deemed important by the newspaper editor, as typically in death, wedding and birth announcements. The analysis further shows that, by 1830, predicative headlines had entered edited news sections in small numbers. Predicative news headlines took similar forms to their forerunners found in late-eighteenth-century advertisements, especially topicalized forms with an inverted subject. It is plausible to assume that news editors consciously borrowed from advertisements in their effort to make the news headline catchier and more interesting. In doing so, they adopted the advertisement format familiar to their readership. The same trend was found thirty years later, in 1860. Although the predicative news headline was slightly better established than in 1830, it still occurred relatively rarely compared to the wealth of nominal forms found at the same time. But it was seen that change was underway in all categories of headlines - both nominal and verbal - and it was only a matter of time until the news headline would be equal to the sales notice in its advertising function. Notes 1. The corpus used for this analysis is identical with the 1791 section in Appendix II, except for one edition of the Evening Mail (1791EVM00334) that was added to the sample.

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2. It is not the place here to discuss the notion of disjunctive or abbreviated language in detail. An introduction to the topic is given in Quirk et al. (1985). Abbreviation is mentioned in connection with (early) newspaper advertisements by Leech (1966). Lobeck (1995) offers an excellent syntactic study on ellipsis as a general language phenomenon in English based on Government and Binding Theory. 3. Straumann (1935), though the first and one of the most ambitious studies in 'headlinese', cannot be used as a classification model for this chapter, as he does not accept verbal headlines as a distinct category. Instead, Straumann proposes an entirely new grammar of headlines (1935: see Table of Contents), grouping headlines according to certain morphological phenomena. According to Straumann, headlines that include a nominal ending in final -s (i.e. plural forms) would occur in the same category along with third person singular verbs (e.g. puts, has). 4. This definition comes nearest to what Mardh (1980) understands by the category of verbal headlines. Mardh (1980: 49) defines verbal headlines as text elements 'which in the main (i.e. superordinate) clause, in the dependent clause functioning independently or in the comment clause in complex headlines contains a verb phrase or part of a verb phrase that is not dominated by a noun phrase [...]'. 5. Compare 'Gadhafi: Sinister Posturing' with 'Sinister posturing of Gadhafi' in van Dijk (1998: 48). 6. For a more recent discussion of left dislocation as a linguistic phenomenon of information ordering in language see, for example, Grohmann (2000). 7. In the case of newspaper headlines, it can be assumed that topicalization occurs prior to dislocation in the process of editing, because adding of information always requires additional space. Space and time will be considered important factors to editors. That this assumption can be problematic is discussed in Grohmann (2000). 8. See Chapter 1 section 3 for details. 9. Details of the corpus used for this part of the analysis are found in Appendix III. The corpus is approximately one third smaller than the sample from the ZEN corpus of 1791. It consists of randomly selected passages from edited news sections in newspaper editions. For details on the set-up of RNC see Schneider (2002a: 48-58).

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Part III Situational Aspects: News Context and Early Media Change The preceding chapters dealt with culturally, socially and technologically facilitated stylistic changes in early media. In Chapter 1,1 marked out the stylistic terrain of early news discourse by embedding it in its generic framework. Chapters 2 to 4 concentrated on correlational patterns between newspaper style, sociohistorical background and performance. Chapters 5 and 6 were concerned with the complexity and change of news media with regard to their global organization and structure by examining the combined impact of graphic-syntactic strategies that facilitated foregrounding in discourse. The two final chapters of this study continue the perspectives taken in the previous chapters but pursue a slightly different course. While the preceding chapters analysed the ways in which culture, technology or sociohistorical conditions facilitated stylistic changes over the course of time, this part of the book is dedicated to correlations between news context - the news event itself- and stylistic innovation, in particular stylistic foregrounding as introduced in relation to headline structures above. In other words, this part is concerned with 'situational motives' (Hickey 2003: 3) potentially involved in the use of foregrounding in early news discourse. By situational motives I refer to news contexts other than social or technological that were likely to have influenced linguistic behaviour in early news discourse. As with the analysis of headlines in Part II, the behaviour studied in the following two chapters encompasses linguistic strategies that are well accepted in news discourse today. The aim of this part is to study possible trajectories of stylistic change. Chapters 1 to 6 have shown that stylistic innovation and change was largely motivated by sociohistorical constellations, while cultural/institutional and technological conditions provided the framework - the 'favorable undercurrent' (Labov 2001: 499) - of stylistic change. Chapters 2 to 4 in particular confirmed that the study of social pressures, which are traditionally put forward as a major force behind language change, provides a satisfactory explanation for the occurrence of stylistic innovation. The actuation of stylistic change in early news discourse was, however, not only determined by social constellations but was complemented by other triggering experiences

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such as the immediate news context (the news event taken as the occasion for a report) and the immediate production context (who wrote which type of article under which circumstances). While the production process is difficult to reconstruct in historical newspapers, the immediate news context can be studied systematically. The news context constitutes one of several dimensions that together form the 'local causes' involved in language change. The concept of 'local causes' goes back to Lightfoot (1999: 41-8; 2003: 119) who uses it as an explanatory model for grammatical change.1 Lightfoot (2003:119) assumes that language as a system is essentially unpredictable but follows 'courses prescribed by deterministic principles'. However, the interpretation of these principles as strictly deterministic and directional in a nineteenthcentury sense would be wrong and misleading. What is meant by Lightfoot is that principles of change are essentially sensitive and subject to initial conditions under which change occurs. These conditions may be, and most often are, accidental and unpredictable. The following two chapters are concerned with such accidental constellations that result in 'individual human action' (Elster 1993: 8, qtd. in Lightfoot 1999: 43) and that may ultimately trigger stylistic change. While the changes induced by these constellations may be principled in a general sense, they are not strictly predictable. They are, in Lightfoot's (1999: 46) terms, similar to laws governing weather formation where 'miniscule changes at one location may percolate through the system to cause major effects elsewhere'. Thus, Lightfoot's understanding of 'local causes' can be linked to the notion of Sapir's (1921: 120—40) drift in historical explanation of language change. In his analysis of the usage of 'whom' in contemporary English, Sapir (1921: 132) concludes that the determinants motivating the hesitation to use 'whom' are not 'equally powerful in all cases' but their values are 'variable, rising and falling according to the individual and locution'. Stylistic innovation in early newspapers may have been principled in a similar way. The use and form of stylistic foregrounding, for example, can be expected to rise and fall according to the individual news context. The foregrounding effects were realized by macro- and microtextual strategies that were used to emphasize specific news events. Macrotextual foregrounding manifested itself in deviations from the linear and chronological organization of news in the text and the extent of coverage of specific topics, as well as the type of events chosen for publication. At microtextual level, foregrounding took the form of editorial stance adding emphasis through the editor's comments on the events. Both levels encompass strategies that express modality in a broad sense of the word.2 In linguistics, modality is commonly understood as referring to linguistic strategies that express non-fact or, minimally, a modification of fact. The concept of modality is traditionally used in formal semantics (e.g. Lyons 1977) but has been extended to include broader stylistic dimensions (e.g. Crystal and Davy 1969). In formal semantics modality appears as the grammatical object of studv in a decontextualized language system (Lyons 1977:

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787-849; on decontextualization see 588ff.).3 Crystal and Davy (1969: 74-6) use modality in an extended meaning as one of several dimensions of situational constraint in stylistic analysis. The core meaning of modality, however, applies to both formal and stylistic usage of the term equally. Palmer (1986: 16) observes that subjectivity plays a crucial part in the definition of modality as what he calls 'the grammaticalization of speakers' (subjective) attitudes and opinions'. Attitudes and opinions, as similarly noted by Palmer (1986: 17-18), may occur in both factual and non-factual utterances (i.e. in assertive statements as well as utterances expressing desires, wishes or fears). Crystal and Davy (1969: 74) relate this idea to stylistic choices made by the text user in general: In it [dimension of modality] we describe those linguistic features correlatable with the specific purpose of an utterance which has led the user to adopt one feature or set of features rather than another, and ultimately to produce an overall, conventionalised spoken or written format for his language, which may be given a descriptive label.

The two chapters in this part of the study are concerned with modality in the latter - extended - sense in that they study stylistic patterns in early news discourse that reflect innovative behaviour. The patterns under examination transfer the grammatical categories of modality and subjectification to stylistic level, using the same analytic distinctions established in formal discussions of the concept. Grammatical subjectification in connection with language change has received widespread attention in historical linguistics, especially by Traugott (1989, 1995, 1996; Traugott and Dasher 2002; Nordlinger and Traugott 1997) and Langacker (1990, 1995, 1999a, 1999b). It can be assumed that the analysis of modality at stylistic level gives a similar account of the processes involved in stylistic changes underway in early news discourse. Changes in patterns of stylistic modality over time reflect different stages in expressions of attitudes and opinions. It is likely that the patterns of usage tie in with two well-documented developments in British journalism towards specialization and diversification (see, for example, Jackson 2001). If the same principles apply to modality at stylistic level, stylistic changes will be characterized by increasing specialization in the usage of modality depending on text type and news format, as well as by a general broadening of modality categories available to express opinion and attitude. Basing the analysis on these considerations, I shall be looking at correlations between news context and the above foregrounding strategies in detail, using the same sample corpus as in Parts I and II, which allows for synchronic as well as diachronic conclusions.4 I will analyse macrotextual structures first before I turn to sentence level and below. In Chapter 7, the correlation between event focus, position and importance will be addressed. One question that will be asked in this context is whether event focus automatically and systematically signals importance and, conversely, whether importance is necessarily reflected in the extent of news coverage.

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The second question is concerned with if, when or where foregrounding was achieved through thematic movement and whether specific patterns or trends emerge in the sample corpus over time. Chapter 8 addresses microtextual stylistic strategies which were used to emphasize news events. As was seen in Chapter 1, the foregrounding of news events was achieved by the strategic employment of stylistic factors relating to commenting and evaluation. In Chapter 8, the concept of commenting and evaluating will be reviewed again in detail before clusters of strategies from various contexts and times are analysed. In a final step, discourse profiles facilitating stylistic innovation, as well as profiles that have proved unfavourable to innovation in news discourse, will be suggested. Notes 1. Lightfoot is a formal linguist but his concept of 'local causes' reconciles some of the fundamental differences between formal and functional approaches to language change (cf., for example, Newmeyer 2003: 25). I prefer Lightfoot's concept to more deterministic theories as it adequately reflects my own understanding of 'principled' unpredictability of stylistic change. 2. The reference to macro- and microtextual processes has been made to distinguish between broad textgrammatical categories that pertain to the entire text unit studied (e.g. structure, thematic organization between larger parts of a newspaper edition) and small categories that pertain to specific parts of the text (e.g. structure, thematic organization inside one part of a newspaper edition). The use of the word 'text' instead of 'discourse' is to emphasize the focus of this part of the study on classical textlinguistic and textgrammatical analytic categories rather than on broader discourse analytic dimensions (e.g. the interrelationship between specific 'text material' and societal or cultural discourses). At the same time, the distinction between macro- and microtext in this study is to be understood primarily in an operational sense, which has been introduced for ease of presentation. 3. See Palmer (1986: 65), who comments on the shortcomings of decontextualization in semantics. 4. The sample corpus is identical to the one used in Part II, except for the extensive review of the year 1790 printed in the Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730). This review basically consists of a numbered list of remarkable events that had occurred in the year 1790 (111 sentences), which has been classified as editorial content.

7 Macrotextual Foregrounding Strategies in Eighteenth-Century News Discourse

This chapter is concerned with the macrotextual organization of the eighteenth-century newspaper in detail. On the following pages, I will examine the role of news context as a motivating factor influencing the structure and extent of news coverage in early newspapers. I will search the corpus for occurrences of textual 'anomalies' with regard to textual coherence and theming, i.e. for the extensive focus on events and macrotextual strategies used for the foregrounding of sections. The first phenomenon will be called event focusing (see section 1). The second phenomenon will be referred to as textual emphasis as it relates to structural principles of text arrangement (see section 2). Event focusing will be determined primarily through text length and is understood to comprise news items or contributions that fall outside the normal bandwidth of reporting due to their extensive length. Event focusing may combine with textual emphasis in cases where the event described is moved to a more prominent position in the text 1 Event Focusing If we look at the larger political and historical context of newspapers published in the years 1701, 1741 and 1791, we can see similarities in the global conditions that determined the news agenda. All three years reflect times of major international crisis. The newspaper editions from the year 1701, for example, appear to show the country on the brink of one of the most critical European conflicts of the eighteenth century, the war of the Spanish succession. The newspapers document the state of affairs immediately following the decease of Charles II of Habsburg and the accession of Philip V. All the major European powers were involved in the subsequent struggle for hegemony on the continent, with England aiding Austria and Germany in their cause against France and Spain. In 1741, the world was plunged into a similar war situation. Again, the death of a king, Charles VI of Austria, led to a conglomeration of related wars. This time, however, it was Prussia, allied with France, that started the war with an invasion of the Austrian province of Silesia. The year 1791, finally, takes us back to the aftermath of the French Revolution which, similarly, began with the end of

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the reign of a monarch, that of Louis XVI. In the years following the French Revolution, England found itself in the role of defending its monarchy against republican influences from France. Looking at the editions of the ZEN corpus from the year 1701, one can see a variety of topics ranging from war camp reports, parliamentary intelligence (papers delivered in parliament), death notices (King William III), foreign politics (conflict between Poland and Sweden) as well as feature articles relating to current affairs (e.g. the New State of Europe). The majority of contributions in the corpus deal with current affairs (especially war and foreign politics), reporting straightforward events. The most significant event in the period covered by the corpus is undoubtedly the death of King William III. The king passed away after a short and unexpected illness on Thursday, March 5, 1701. Of course, his death was immediately reported in all the newspapers that came out afterwards. In the corpus, we have four editions that were published within one or two days of the monarch's death: the English Post, 1701EPT00210 (Friday, 6 March); the flying Post, 1701FPT01067 (Saturday, 7 March); the London Post, 1701LPT00434 (Friday, 6 March) and the Post Man, 1701PMN00943 (Saturday, 7 March). While the King's death appears in all these editions, the extent of coverage by individual papers is highly variable. Three of the four newspapers dedicated long articles to the topic (more than 300 words). The longest contribution by far appears in the flying Post (1701FPT01067), practically filling the complete edition. The article begins with a sentence summarizing the sad event and continues with details of the circumstances of the death, the king's illness, a short passage in which his achievements are praised, a chronology of his life, the proclamation of Queen Anne and, finally, an announcement of publications (proclamations) by the new Queen. The article was further printed at the top of the first page although it should have appeared at the end of the paper, in keeping with the chronological ordering of events. Such radical foregrounding, both by length and movement, must have been perceived as rather uncommon, and may account for the fact that the editor added his apology at the end of the edition: This remarkable Turn of Domestick Affairs hath taken up so much of our Thoughts and Room, that it's hop'd we may be excus'd as to Foreign. William's death is addressed very differently in the three other papers that were published in the same week after 5 March. Although the item is shifted to the top of the page in the Post Man (1701PMN00940), it does not fill more than one sixth or seventh of the whole edition. In the English Post (1701EPT00210), the news is not even moved to the front page but, instead, attached to the bottom of the edition where all the latest news is normally printed. And the London Post (1701LPT00434) neither foregrounds the topic by movement nor deals with it at any length; news of William's death is a relatively short paragraph in between other news printed in chronological order:

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Yesterday morning His Most Sacred Majesty of Great Brittain departed this Life, much Lamented by his Subjects, and all that wish well to the Protestant Interest, and the Liberty and Property of the Subject. It is remarkable, that during His merciful and clement Reign, all the Plots of Rome's Assassinators against His Sacred Person, were by God Almighty miraculously defeated, Popery wholly extirpated, Ireland subdued, Peace restor'd, our Money Recoin'd, and a Protestant Succession by Act of Parliament settled; according to which Settlement, Her Royal Highness Ann, Princess of Denmark, was the same Day Proclaimed Queen of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. Whom God long Preserve. His Majesty left this earthly Crown in the Fourteenth Year of His Reign, and in the Fifty First Year, Fourth Month and Fourth Day of His Age, being Born November the Fourth, 1650, about Nine a Clock at Night.

The example of King William's death nicely illustrates the scope early news media had in responding to breaking news at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Important events were given immediate attention in all papers, but the degree to which this happened varied considerably. Although event focusing was an efficient way of highlighting an event, it was not consistently exploited by all papers. In the context of the death of a monarch, this result may be even more surprising as it would be expected that such an event affected all newspapers in equal measure. If we try to relate coverage of King William's death to the stylistic and sociohistorical profiles established in Part I, it seems that the causes for the discrepancies in event focusing are to be sought in the overall political orientations of newspapers, as well as in their political commitment in general. The London Post was known for its lack of political ambition, whereas the Flying Post was strongly opposed to Queen Anne as successor to William III. The opposition in the Post Man and Post Boy, two politically ambitious papers, was much milder, which is reflected in their factual treatment of the event. The death of William III was certainly an event of national importance. Yet, not all news events treated extensively in 1701 were of such importance. News coverage was also determined by the specialization of a publication. This is seen, for example, in war camp reports printed in the London Gazette between June and August of the same year. Although the political climate did worsen suddenly during the summer of 1701 in Italy, the London Gazettevtas the only paper that paid particular attention to war camp reports. The extensive coverage of camp news in the Gazette reflects the fact that the paper had exclusive rights and access to foreign correspondence, and access to restricted news provided an important way of distinguishing itself from other publications. A similar case was the Flying Post which, published by a Scotsman, was one of the few London-based papers at the time that printed local news from Scotland. Soft news, science and learning, and political analyses were given extra space in the London Post, Flying Post, Post Man and New State of Europe. The London Post and Flying Post, for example, described in rich detail an extravagant funeral in Paris and an incident involving Irish recruits in New York, while the New State of Europe and the

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Post Man printed feature articles on the geography of Tyrol and the political situation in Sweden. The above analysis, however, may mislead us into thinking that event focusing occurred frequently in the early eighteenth-century press. The opposite was true: in the whole corpus of 1701 only seventeen instances of event focusing are found, in six of the seven newspapers. This is a small number if we take into consideration that the sample corpus from 1701 consists of more than 150,000 words and sixty complete newspaper editions. Thus, it appears that while event focusing was an accepted practice in most publications of the corpus, it did not occur regularly. By 1741 the situation had changed in that editorials arid letters to the editor had emerged and become set components of newspapers. These text types were part of the newly established feature sections which were printed on the front page before the news. Feature sections were often more interesting than the actual news pages themselves, as they printed highly polemical and political content. Editors utilized their publication as a medium to attack or criticize their fellow editors, or indeed anything and anybody that crossed their path. Feature sections were undoubtedly highlighted and foregrounded both by length and movement, and their existence alone serves as proof of the changing demands of the newspaper audience. Apart from this new feature, the overall organization of proper news had changed little. Although the individual news report was slightly longer on average than in 1701, the difference was less obvious than might be assumed. Considering that the corpus from 1741 contains only 26 issues in five publications (compared to 62 issues in 1701), the rate of long contributions rose disproportionately to the sample size: in 1741 there are 21 articles (17 in 1701) which cover events extensively. The rise in number, however, does not seem to correlate with a rise in length. Many of the articles listed in 1741 are in fact shorter than the articles from 1701. It thus seems that in 1741 event focusing was still used to a moderate degree, and the tendency towards shortness and conciseness persisted through the first half of the eighteenth century. But although newspaper articles in 1741 barely reached the length of their counterparts in 1701, it was quite common in the middle of the century for papers to print more than one extended article in the same edition. At the same time, publications began to diversify. The Daily Post and the Champion tended to emphasize events more consistently than, for example, the Country Journal and the London Daily Post. There is no comparable event to King William's death in the newspaper corpus from 1741 that can be studied in several editions at the same time. The editions from 1741, however, seem to follow different principles of event focusing from what can be observed in 1701. Important topics often did not appear as current affairs but were used as essay topics in commentary sections. Current affairs were normally kept short and concise. Thus, long reports printed as current affairs were often not breaking news stories at all. This is seen, for example, in the edition from the London Gazette

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(1741LGZ07977) which emphasizes a congratulatory note on the birth of a new princess (not the news of the birth itself). This note, which was quoted in the paper from an unknown source, was first printed in the London Gazette on 3 January and quoted again verbatim one week later, on 10 January, by the Country Journal. Such examples, as well as others, suggest that gaps in newspapers were sometimes filled with unimportant notices and stories if no breaking news was available. While this practice may not be surprising in present-day journalism, the degree of awareness of the issue by eighteenth-century media organizations is noteworthy. The Champion (1741CEA00265) nicely illustrates the dilemma in which early newspaper editors often found themeselves: Our Paris Correspondent having unexpectedly fail'd us this last Post, and it being standing Water with our own Resolutions, a Kind of Suspence whether they shall ebb or flow, we must be oblig'd for once to encroach on the Province of our Brethren, and fill up this Part of our Paper at least, with what Occurrences we have been able to glean up from the Records of the Day.

The increase in extensive coverage over the first half of the eighteenth century, however, cannot be solely attributed to gap-filling practices. It seems that textual focusing had adopted a new communicative function altogether by the middle of the century. Some of the longest contributions found in 1741 (400 words and more) were verbatim renderings of declarations, letters, memorials, speeches or summaries of speeches. Such long quotations, which may have been inserted for proof of evidence, would have been considered unusual in 1701. Yet, although quotations in general may have gained importance during the first half of the century, it appears that the use of quotations was not popular in all mid-century newspapers included in this analysis. It was the traditional papers such as the Daily Post and the London Gazette that exploited this device more successfully than the less conventional, forward oriented papers (the Champion and the Country Journal). More data would reveal whether this particular mode of writing was already becoming out of fashion towards the middle of the century. While the years 1701 and 1741 differ in their use of direct speech, they match in that event focusing tended to occur in foreign news sections rather than home news. The two years further match in their irregular use of event focusing in all newspapers analysed. Fronting of long contributions can be found in both traditional and unconventional papers, and does not seem to coincide with any particular newspaper profile. The inconsistency with which long contributions were moved within newspapers can be illustrated by the two issues of the Champion, one of the most controversial papers in 1741. In 1741, neither case of event focusing appeared as the top front story. An extensive commentary on the finances of the republic was printed after foreign news, while the discussion surrounding the building of a new hospital was simply squeezed between other domestic news items. News about the rebellion in Persia in 1741CEA00265, on the other hand, was printed as the leading article of the paper, and

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the travel diary of a French correspondent was still considered important enough to be set apart and printed under a separate heading. While macrotextual foregrounding by length and movement appears in isolated cases in 1741, it does not form an integral part of mid-eighteenthcentury news discourse. The cases analysed in the corpus suggest that movement combined successfully with length if journalists did not make extensive use of quoted text material. Quotations or otherwise copied and inserted material tended to be printed in chronological order. It seems that attention had returned to the individual piece of news at the end of the century. Newspapers had grown in volume considerably, and far more news topics and events were covered in a multitude of small and large sections. But although articles appeared to be longer on average, it seems that individual contributions did not grow proportionately with the publication volume. A normal news report on a specific event or topic spanned between 200 and 300 words, which was only some 100 words more than in 1741. For the present analysis, therefore, articles with 300 and more words were considered sufficiently long to count as instances of macrotextual emphasis. In the corpus from 1791 there are in total 54 articles in 13 issues that qualify for macrotextual emphasis (compare this figure with 17 articles in 62 issues for 1701, and 21 articles in 27 issues for 1741). Less than one third of the instances (17/54) deal with foreign affairs, while more than two-thirds (37/54) are related to domestic news. This result ties in with the overall distribution of topics in late eighteenth-century newspapers. The large majority of topics found in newspapers from that period deals with domestic affairs. If we analyse the position of the above instances of macrotextual emphasis in the newspaper, we can see that only a few of them were actually moved to the front page, as for example in the two editions of the Evening Mail and the Public Advertiser. It still seems that foregrounding by movement followed no specific rules but appeared rather inconsistently. In fact, if we compare the results with the two previous years, we may even get the impression that front-page movement occurred less frequently at the end of the century than before. There were many more newspaper sections in general and long articles, if at all, were moved to the top of their respective sections rather than to the news front page. If something important happened in London, for example, all news reports relating to this event were printed in the Home News section. Many editions, however, had no foregrounded news within their sections at all. In these cases, the order of news in the paper followed other rules. Indeed, the very assumption that only the latest news on current affairs was foregrounded by movement seems hard to maintain in 1791. There is more than one instance in the corpus in which a moved item did not report any recent event. One example is an impressionistic travel diary in the Morning Post (1791MOP05712) containing the account of a French correspondent who journeyed through the country after the French Revolution. Another example is the life-story of a man whose death dates back to 1771,

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twenty years before the date of its publication in the Public Advertiser (1791PAD17660). Thus, it is not uncommon to find that outsider topics were given special attention in the papers. If one tries to classify the results in 1791, one can see that one fifth of all long articles (11/54) did not relate to current affairs in any way; in fact, their primary aim was to entertain the audience through witty or thought-provoking remarks and themes. One example in the corpus is the description of Hyde Park on a sunny weekend, published in the Public Advertiser (1791PAD17683), which has previously been analysed in relation to its narrative characteristics. The majority of the longest domestic news reports in the corpus, however, are parliamentary proceedings that give concise details of the verbal exchanges and debates in parliament. These parliamentary debates are present in all papers, but there are clear preferences in some publications of the corpus. For example, the Morning Chronicle, especially under William Woodfall, became one of the leading journals in London because of its accurate and reliable parliamentary reporting. It was the sharp and fast pen of Woodfall that won the Morning Chronicle the attention and respect of the public and brought the paper financial success. Thus it seems that, with the exception of parliamentary affairs, event focusing through extensive coverage of individual topics was not generally associated with good journalism in the minds of the late eighteenth-century news audience. The trend-setting and most successful papers (i.e. the Morning Chronicle, Morning Post, Evening Mail) tended to be short, ironic and concise. The London Chronicle, which shows the highest degree of thematic focus in the corpus, did not rank among the most successful papers in 1791. And the Public Advertiser, which also made extensive use of that mode, was forced to close down before the end of the century. 2 Textual Emphasis In the previous section, I looked at the extent to which newspapers focused on specific news events and emphasized them by textual movement. I showed that correlations between news event and thematic focus already existed in the early sections of the corpus. At the same time, it was seen that thematic emphasis depended to a considerable extent on the type of newspaper, its political and stylistic profile, as well as the period of publication. This section continues the above analysis but broadens its focus a little. It addresses patterns of thematic structure in general, and looks specifically at possibilities for textual emphasis through inversion of the chronological news order. 2.1 Early Forms of Textual Emphasis I showed at an earlier point in this study that news discourse underwent changes in relation to the arrangement of news items in publications. In

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1701, newspaper editions were organized by mails in chronological order from top to bottom. The latest news always appeared at the bottom of the paper. There was usually no further thematic editing or grouping of related topics or mails into sections. The smallest unit within the mail was the news report, which typically centred on one particular event Editorial comments existed, but they tended to be very short. They took the form of a few words, phrases or, in rare cases, sentences. Most papers followed these general macrostructural rules. There was, however, some variation in the papers with regard to the arrangement of mails and their contents. This is seen if we compare newspapers published on the same day. Table 7.1 reproduces the list of mails as they appeared in newspapers printed between 2 and 7 January 1701. The bottom row of the table indicates the total number of words in each edition, including advertisements. The table suggests that there were no substantial differences in the total lengths of the editions. The newspapers consisted of four to eight different mails and were, apart from the sections on domestic affairs (i.e. London and other local news), printed in chronological order. While there was a perceivable overlap in the origin of the mails, the order of place names still varied considerably. A closer look at these newspapers reveals finer thematic differences. Table 7.2 summarizes in tabular form the contents of four of the six newspaper editions recorded in early January 1701: the Flying Post, the London Gazette, the London Post and the Post Boy. The topics are listed in their original print order. Looking at the editions in detail, one notices considerable discrepancies with regard to the timeline covered by them. The London Gazette and the Table 7.1 Editions, January 2-7, 1701 Paper EPT No. 37 Jan 3—6 Matt

Stockholm Warsaw Dresden Versailles Paris London

Words 2,381

FPT 884 Jan 4-7

LGZ 3668 Jan 2—6

LPT PBY PMN 897 248 851 Jan 3-6 Jan 4-7 Jan 2-4

Paris Venice Vienna Schaffhausen Hague Edinburgh London

Rome Madrid Vienna Hamburg Brussels Paris Paris

Rome Madrid Paris London

Milan Warsaw Mittau Vienna Paris Hague Dublin London

Madrid Rome Paris London

2,754

1,961

2,821

2,538

2,257

Table 7.2 News topics January 2-7, 1701 FPT 884, Jan 4-7

LGZ 3668, Jan 2-6

LPT 248, Jan 3-6

PBY 897, Jan 4-7

Paris: King of Spain visiting Bordeaux; arrival of Spanish Colonel at Cour; Sweden declaring solidarity with England; appointments; deaths

Rome: Pope's coronation; appointments; solemn mass

Rome: coronation arid audiences of the Pope

Milan: arrival; letter from the French King to Governor of Milan; France pressing Duke of Savoy to declare for or against Spain

Venice: Venetian Councils

Madrid: condolences for death of Spanish King; preparations for arrival of new King; restoration of payments after King's death; troop movements; ship news

Madrid: preparations for reception of new King, condolences to Queen Dowager, Queen's plans, confusion over death of Spanish King and further condolences

Warsaw: differences in Lithuania

Vienna: preparations for march into Italy, negotiations with Salzburg, speculations/ rumours; victory over Muscovites

Vienna: Imperial regiments marching from Hungary to Tyrol; appointments

Paris: festivities and reception of new King of Spain in France; death notice

Mittau: grenadiers arriving in Riga arid more Swedish troops expected (Continued Overleaf)

Table 7.2 contd. FPT 884Jan 4-7

LGZ 3668, Jan 2-6

LPT 248Jan 3-6

PBY

Schaffhausen: Swabia raising troops; Swiss Cantons on succession of Spain; speculations regarding route of Imperial troops

Hamburg: Sweden's victory over Muscovites; list of short news (Dresden recruits forces for Poland, diplomatic visits)

London: list of short news (ship news, coin stamping, Majesty indisposed, elections for members of parliament, attempted break-in, captain deprived of duties, hereditary matters)

Vienna: short news (Imperial regiments breaking up, rumours about Duke of Savoy and Venetian opposition)

Hague: victory over Muscovites; list of short comments (Duke of Savoy, peace in north, France and Succession); arrival; printing of pamphlet against new King of Spain

Brussels: list of short news (Flanders sending deputies to Bavaria, repairing fortifications of Antwerp, Spanish officers repairing to their quarters, French augmenting their forces)

Paris: King of Spain's arrival at Blay; Spanish Colonel speaks about SpanishAustrian conflict; short news (King of Sweden testifying fidelity to King of France, appointments; death notice, rumour)

Edinburgh: Act for total prohibition of French wine and liquors; price of corn fallen; recovery of I -ord Kinnaird

Paris: arrival of King of Spain at Bordeaux; list of short news (regents of Spain expressing loyalty to new King; Duke de Harcourt appointed, audiences, King visiting Marly, French cardinals sent home, troop movements, death notices)

Hague: illness; Muscovites laying down arms; list of short news (Pope prepared for deal with Duke of Anjou, arrival)

897Jan 4-7

London: arrival of coffee from West Indies; scandalous libel; account of members of parliament chosen

Paris: list of short news (appointments, Spanish troop movements, audience of Portuguese Envoy with King)

Dublin: Christmas ceremony; ladies stripped; mob attacking Quakers; dinner at Lord Dunganan's London: poll demanded at election for Southwark; ship arrivals; poll demanded for elections for Westminster; false report

2,754 (words)

1,961

2,821

2,538

180

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

London Post printed the most dated news in the corpus. The oldest reports found in the London Gazette and the London Post date back to December 1700, which is one month before the publications came out. In these December reports, the two papers announce the coronation of the Pope, which was old news by the time it appeared in January 1701. The printing of dated news persists throughout the London Gazette: the latest news in 1701LGZ03668 - the mail from Paris - correlates with the oldest report in the Flying Post, which was published around the same time, In other words, the flying Post started news coverage where the London Gazette had finished, although the two publications appeared practically simultaneously. The top news story in all papers was the new King of Spain's visit to France with details of his reception and festivities (Paris mail). The Paris mail, incidentally, constitutes one of the longest mails in all the papers (261 words in the Flying Post; 253 words in the London Post; 395 words in the London Gazette; 483 words in the Post Boy). Only the Flying Post inverted the chronological order by moving the King's visit to front position in the paper, while printing news from Edinburgh, which should have appeared first, at the end, just before the London mail. Even the Post Boy, otherwise so similar to the Flying Post, preferred chronological order in this case. Apart from these differences, however, the comparison of the four editions shows a fairly homogeneous appearance for the early eighteenthcentury press. Publications did not seem to differ much in terms of topics chosen for publication or the way these topics were arranged. There was a small tendency in all papers towards the printing of house topics (e.g. Scotland in the Flying Post or foreign war reports in the London Gazette), but the main issues were addressed by all newspapers simultaneously. It may be noticeable that the differences found reflect stylistic patterns derived from the analysis of newspaper performance in Part I. If we were to analyse issues over a period of months, we would probably see that the incoming news letters and the respective mail headings changed depending on the nature of breaking news at specific points in time. At the same time, we might find that some mail headings gradually froze and developed into standard section headings. Typical examples of frozen mail headings in the London Gazette were 'The Hague' for continental news or 'Deale', 'Portsmouth', 'Plymouth' for ship news. These or similar developments were found in other newspapers, although the place references may have varied from publication to publication. 2.2 First Phase of Consolidation In 1741, the section heading appeared as a set feature of news discourse. Editions were organized into thematic sections that grouped mails with similar topics under the same heading. The thematic connection between mails of one section, however, could have been very loose. The most common distinction was between foreign news and home news. Foreign news normally preceded domestic affairs. Mails from 1741 differed from earlier

MACROTEXTUAL FOREGROUNDING

181

publications in that they often consisted of only one long article or report, instead of the lists of short news found in 1701. While some papers had proper thematic section headings, others still used place names which by then had received a thematic connotation, like the frozen datelines mentioned above (e.g. 'Holland' for foreign news in the Daily Post, 'Gravesend' for shipping news in the London Daily Post). In the London Daily Post, foreign and home news was merged into one section (foreign news was printed under 'London'), which confirms the impression that news editors occasionally confused the meanings of section headings themselves. Editors sometimes interpreted the place name referring to a section as the place where the news was sent to instead of the place where it was sent from. The Champion presents the most refined and elaborate headline system in the corpus. The paper contains flexible thematic section headings that reflect current events (e.g. 'Journal of the War' or more general sections such as 'Rumours', 'Advices', 'Advices of Importance'). These headlines contrast with the basic headings used in most other publications, which refer to the origin of the mail or the place where an event happened. Table 7.3 shows that in the example of the London Daily Post there was little macro thematic variation in editions from the same publication. The section headings as well as the order in which they were printed in the edition were fixed. The strict adherence to structure in the middle of the century suggests that the press was in a phase during which text-structuring devices were being experimented with. Section headings were a new device that marked a breakaway from traditional printing of news. It seems that structure was considered more important than the actual news report itself. For example, shipping news from Deal always preceded news from England and abroad in the London Daily Post, regardless of the actual events reported in them. The homogeneous picture changes slightly when we look beyond the section heading, i.e. at the news presented within individual sections. Table 7.4 Table 7.3 Sections in the London Daily PosZofJune 1741 Paper No.

LDP 2073

2074

2075

2076

Section Deal London >Holland* From the LGZ Misc.

Deal London Country news Ireland Misc.

Deal/Gravesend London >Holland From the LGZ Misc.

Deal/Gravesend London >France Misc.

Words

5,187

5,215

5,432

5,198

*Arrorw indicates a sub-heading.

Table 7.4 News topics, 11 February, 1741 Paper DPT No. 6687 (11 February, 1741)

LDP 1967 (11 February, 1741)

Topic Constantinople: preparations for defence on Asian and European side of the Empire Cadiz: fleet fl* for service; new expected from America Petersburg: Court warning Prussia of precipitate action in a letter; death notice Vienna: preparations in Bohemia to secure Kingdom against invasion; Maria Theresa sending troops into Silesia Schaffhausen: King of Sardinia to oppose disturbance of tranquility in Europe Paris: commercial ship departure

Cadiz: Spaniards making fleet ready Madrid: negotiation regarding expedition into Italy Nantes: ship departure

Petersburg: Court warning Prussia of precipitate action in a letter

Brussels : French filing off towards Austrian Netherlands

Ratisbon; summary of circular letter written by the Prussian King to Empire Vienna: augmentation of Hungarian Dublin: reprieve to murderer troops in Silesia Cork: commercial ships putting Turin: Sardinia not to accept disturbance of tranquility in at Cork due to heavy sea Ship news: news of recovery Limerick: commercial ship seized with woollen goods from mission unknown origin Spanish ship taken in Lisbon Death notice Naples: artillery getting ready in Advanced pregnancy Sicily Committals Ratisbon: King of Prussia addressing letter to states of Empire Brussels : French troops arriving in Motion for effectual law against Frewnch Flanders illegal importation of wool Elections Elections Dublin: money coined for Ireland; wedding report; reported robberies in Tyrone; wedding report

MACROTEXTUAL FOREGROUNDING

183

compares in detail the contents of the Daily Post (1741DPT06687) and the London Daily Post (1741LDP01967), the only two papers in that time sample published on the same day (11 February 1741). The matching parts in the two editions have been highlighted with corresponding text effects (italics, underline, bold, greyscale). In the Daily Post edition, only foreign news was printed in chronological order. The first mail from Constantinople reaches back to 20 December 1740, more than one and a half months before the publication date. Mails from Cadiz (10 January) and Petersburg (28 January) were printed next in the issue. The longest and undoubtedly most controversial mail in the edition was sent from Ratisbon carrying no date ('they write from ...'). It essentially contains a summary of a circular letter written by the King of Prussia, in which he justifies his entrance into Silesia. The London Daily Post, as mentioned earlier, printed all news under domestic affairs, and the mails in the paper were only headed by place names without indication when the events took place. Since the news order of the London Daily Post in Table 7.4 is practically identical with the chronological arrangement of the Daily Post from the same day, it is likely that the London Daily Post printed its mails chronologically too. It seems that the London Daily Post was slightly more up-to-date with regard to current affairs. The first mail in the London Daily Post was sent from Cadiz probably in mid-January, one month after the first mail printed in the Daily Post The longest contribution in the London Daily Post is the mail from Ratisbon which contains the same justification of the Prussian King concerning his actions in Silesia. In both papers, the letter of the Prussian King is approximately 400 words in length. The Silesian conflict dominates the agenda of 11 February 1741. This can be seen in the Petersburg mails printed in both papers that warn Prussia of precipitate action. In terms of space attributed to the topic, the Russian warning appears to be the second most important piece of news in the Daily Post (344 words) but is given comparatively little attention in the Londo Daily Post (131 words). The Silesian conflict is given further consideratio in the Schaffhausen mail (Daily Post) as well as in the Turin mail (London Daily Post), addressing the King of Sardinia's opposition to any disturbance in Europe. And the topic finally appears in the Vienna mail in both papers which announce the augmentation of Imperial troops in Silesia. The Silesian conflict serves as a good example to illustrate the rigidity in the organization of news discourse in 1741. In both editions, the 'hottest' news of the day - the circular letter of Prussia - was printed in a highl disadvantageous position. The London Daily Post, although printing the letter correctly under foreign news, stuck with the chronological order of mails, thus moving the letter to the end of that section. The Daily Post even copied the letter to the end of the home news section, which appeared at the bottom of the edition. The reason why the Daily Post printed the letter in the wrong place is unclear. The publisher may have printed all news in the order it came into the printing office. Alternatively, the

184

H I S T O R I C A L CORPUS STYLISTICS

editor did not know how to rank this report and may have doubted the credibility of the source. Dubious reports were often printed under domestic affairs, together with other gossip. Table 7.4 confirms that both papers favoured a chronological arrangement of news with little or no foregrounding through movement, suggesting that, although current affairs obviously did influence the news agenda, they did not necessarily affect the organization of the paper. 2.3 Towards Event-Related Thematic Structures

In the second half of the eighteenth century news discourse became increasingly complex, which led to changes in conventions relating to layout and textual organization. By 1791 it was customary for newspapers to print advertisements on the front page before breaking news. At the same time, the increasing complexity also affected the structure of news sections. News was either printed in core sections that were found in all or most papers, or in variable sections which differed from newspaper to newspaper or even from edition to edition. Core sections included frozen datelines or place names that had adopted a thematic meaning. One typical example was the heading 'London', which referred to domestic news in general. In some papers, the distinction London/Country was made by the heading 'Country News' (the Evening Mail). Foreign news was advertised more specifically by the place where the news happened (e.g. 'France', often in combination with 'National Assembly', or 'Vienna', 'Calcutta', 'America'). Occasionally, one can find thematic headings such as 'foreign intelligence' (the London Chronicle) or 'continental intelligence' (the Evening Mail). Apart from these core elements, there were new structuring devices that emerged in the course of the years. In 1791, it had become increasingly important for publishers to highlight and emphasize intelligence that was printed exclusively for their own newspaper. This signalled to the readers that what they were going to read came directly from the newspaper's own sources. The sections were set off from the text and usually contained a reference to the paper itself: 'For the London Chronicle', 'For the Public Advertiser', or simply 'Morning Chronicle' or 'Morning Post'. In the case of the Public Advertiser (Table 7.5), this particular section appeared on the front page. In addition to the printing of exclusive sections for individual newspapers, editors increasingly specified their sources if they originated from other newspapers. The corpus of the London Chronicle, for example, includes sections such as 'From die London Gazette' and 'From the Calcutta Recorder'; the Evening Mail referred to American newspapers ('From the New York Daily Gazette'). Table 7.6 lists all the newspaper sections and subsections in the London Chronicle of 4-6 January 1791. The first heading in the edition reads 'From the London Gazette' and contains the sub-heading 'Bankrupts', specifying the topic of the copied section.

MACROTEXTUAL F O R E G R O U N D I N G

185

Table 7.5 Public Advertiser, 11 February, 1791 Paper No.

PAD 17660 (11 February, 1791)

Section

For the Public Advertiser >Character of Lord Bolingbroke To Correspondents London Parliamentary Proceedings »House of Lords »House of Commons »Poole Contested Election »The Committee The Stage Calcutta >Triple Alliance France >National Assembly »Sittings [. . .] Ireland >House of Commons »Thursday >Earldom of Dunbar Misc.* Ship News Misc. 11,753

Words

* Misc. refers to an unspecified group of news without proper heading

Another late development was the introduction of collective datelines that grouped the news of the day into separate sections. This happened especially when parliamentary news was covered over a period of several days. Thus, if a newspaper came out three times per week, the individual days covered in every edition were highlighted with separate headings. The days were arranged chronologically in ascending order, in keeping with the traditional chronological arrangement of news. Thus, the most recent events in parliament were printed at the end of the paper, as in the example from the London Chronicle in Table 7.7 below. Table 7.7 also shows that some papers used to print so-called postscripts (here in the corpus only the London Chronicle but common in other papers too). These postscripts contained miscellaneous news with the most recent developments in current affairs. Postscripts were added at the end of the

186

H I S T O R I C A L C O R P U S STYLISTICS

Table 7.6 London Chronicle, 4-6 January, 1791 Paper No.

LCR 5362, 4-6 January, 1791

Section

From the London Gazette >Bankrupts America London >King's Bench Ship News London Postscript London Postscript Continued >Public Office, Bow Street

Words

13,026

'official' part of an edition, thus following the top-down structure of news adopted in most newspapers. Apart from these basic text structural elements, and a rough division of the news content into foreign and home news, there were further headings that sorted the news by topics. News stories relating to cultural activities in London, especially stage performances, were often collected and printed under separate headings, such as 'Theatrical Intelligence' (the Public Advertiser}, 'The Stage' (the Public Advertiser), 'Haymarket Theatre' (the Morning Post) or 'Covent Garden' (the London Chronicle). Sports sections, though less frequent, were either introduced with a generic expression ('Sporting Intelligence' in the Morning Post) or with a reference to the respective sports event ('Boxing' in the London Chronicle). Moreover, there were special sections that appeared regularly in some papers but not in others, as for example the mock-sections in the Morning Chronicle and MorningPost (the PosJ probably copied the style of the Chronicle but without section headings). These mock-sections were called 'The Morning Mirror - The Glass of Fashion' in the Morning Chronicle and contained witty and provocative commentaries on recent events. Similarly, one could find weekly political reviews, typically referred to as 'Weekly Remarks on Polities' (the Evening Mail). Since these sections frequently changed depending on the season, the day of publication or the current news agenda, it is obvious that the above examples represent only a fraction of possible section headings used by the editors. Still, they reflect the broad range of news sections available at the end of the century. Headlines in the proper sense of the word were still rare and appeared only occasionally. In comparison to earlier years, newspapers from 1791 showed a much

MACROTEXTUAL FOREGROUNDING

187

Table 7.7 London Chronicle, 10-12January, 1791 Paper No.

LCR 5378, 10-12 February, 1791

Section

Friday, 11 February >London »Business at Court of [...] »Lord Hawkesbury's Act »The King versus Harris »Pantheon General Rehearsal Saturday, 12 February >Ship News >London >Covent Garden >House of Lords >House of Commons Postscript >London Postscript Continued >Masquerade

Words

12,470

stronger focus on parliamentary affairs in general. Parliamentary news was indicated by the headings 'Parliamentary Proceedings', followed by business in the 'House of Lords' and 'House of Commons'. Under the latter headings, individual bills were discussed in detail. Twice- and thrice-weekly publications often provided continuous updates on individual bills during the days covered in one edition, as can be seen in the repeated headings 'House of Lords/Commons' in Table 7.8. These continuous updates, although often repetitive, reproduced political debates in real time as they took place, thus involving the reader in the complicated process of political dispute and decision-making. Ongoing coverage of parliamentary business probably had considerable entertainment value as it let the reader take part as a secret eye-witness in the sometimes heated debates during the run-up to political resolutions. But newspapers had also changed in terms of their individual thematic focus. While there was 'one' world and one 'ideal' representation of that world during most of the eighteenth century, news became a more relative matter towards the end of the century, reflecting the particular interests and stakes of individual newspapers. This process also affected the serious press reviewed here. In some cases, specialization had occurred to the extent that thematic overlaps in two publications from the same day were insignificantly small. This trend can be illustrated with the editions of the

188

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

Table 7.8 Evening Mail, 30 March, 1791 Paper No.

EVM 327, 30 March, 1791

Section

Weights and Measures Assassination at Chantilly The Chevalier d'Eon English Parliament >House of Lords >House of Commons London Continental Intelligence Parliamentary Intelligence >House of Lords >House of Commons East India House Country News France >National Assembly Friday Afternoon Business in Parliament for this Day >House of Lords >House of Commons Irish Parliament >House of Commons State Paper Portsmouth Plymouth Ship News Misc.

Words

13,886

Morning Chronicle and Public Advertiser from 9 April, 1791. Table 7.9 summarizes the broad news categories in the two editions, including the word total for each category. The table reveals that there were indeed few overlaps between the two papers. One can see that the Morning Chronicle consisted mainly of parliamentary news (5,300/6,500 words), while the Public Advertiser showed much greater thematic variation. The Chronicle neither had an editorial section, nor did it print arts or foreign news. Editorial commentaries and proper news were blended into one section (a mock-section) that reported news and gossip in an ironic fashion. Only court news was covered more comprehensively in the Chronicle than in the Advertiser.

MACROTEXTUAL FOREGROUNDING

189

Table 7.9 Morning Chronicle and Public Advertiser, 9 April, 1791 MCR 6814, 9 April

PAD, 17709, 9 April Editorial (673 words)

-

Art (theatrical intelligence) (469 words)

Parliamentary news (5,365 words)

Parliamentary news (1,855 words)

Court news (411 words)

Court news (112 words)

Miscellaneous news / mock-section Miscellaneous news (2,685 words) (568 words) -

Foreign news (734 words)

-

Miscellaneous news (598 words)

-

London (820 words)

Total 6,509 (without advertisements)

Total 7,273 (without advertisements)

The example shows that it becomes increasingly difficult to compare the thematic structure of different newspapers from 1791 without first taking appropriate account of their respective areas of specialization. This means that late eighteenth-century newspapers first need to be classified by their general thematic focus before they can be analysed. In the case of the Chronicle and the Advertiser, one needs to know that the first was an acclaimed parliamentary reporter, while the latter was known for its advertisement and arts sections. A more detailed analysis involving more primary material might reveal that the Chronicle probably reached a wider audience, not only because of its area of specialization but also because of its straightforward structure and long and in-depth style of reporting. Change also occurred at the level of foregrounding of news on the front page. It can be observed that breaking news was increasingly flagged up with customized headlines to attract the attention of the intended readership. This process, however, did not advance as quickly as specialization. A look at the news front pages in all editions published between January and August 1791 (Table 7.10) reveals that news was generally printed under one of the broad section headings introduced above, in particular structural headings announcing either the source of the news or the place and date of the mail/report. Yet, first signs of individual headlining began to show up in most papers of the corpus. Individual headlines, however, were not used as systematically as section headings. Headlines may have been present in one edition but absent in another, depending on the nature and suitability of the topic.1

190

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

As can be seen in Table 7.10, politics played a prominent role on the London news front page at the end of the eighteenth century. This is reflected not only in the proper headlines found in the corpus, but also in the normal section headings used by the editors. If section headings are included in the analysis, it can be seen that every second edition started with parliamentary news on the first page. Only one headline announced a shocking event ('Assassination at Chantilly'). No other sensational news headline appeared on the front page during the period studied. This result, however, does not imply that there is no other sensational news on the front page at all. Sensational news was printed under section headings such as 'From the Calcutta Recorder', 'American Intelligence', or 'France'. Although one might think that the organization of the front page would have changed depending on current affairs, it is likely that the picture shown in Table 7.10 below would prove relatively stable over time. One reason why parliamentary affairs received consistent attention in the papers was that all types of foreign and domestic affairs were immediately addressed in parliament. Knowing what was going on in parliament meant knowing what happened in the world. 3 Conclusion The analysis of macrotextual foregrounding in early newspapers suggests that eighteenth-century newspaper editors were caught in the dilemma of obeying rules or breaking them. There was stiff competition among news publications in their struggle for public attention and attraction. In this struggle, there were at all times market leaders and copycats; there were innovative and experimental papers alongside conservative ones. Some of them were successful in their endeavours, while others failed. Obeying the rules had different meanings in different times. In 1701, the tendency was to write short reports, to print them in the larger context of the correspondence sent to the publishing house, and to arrange the correspondence in chronological order (the latest news appearing at the end of the paper). By the middle of the century, the structure became slightly more complex. Thematic headings grouped mails into sections according to specific topics. Within individual sections, though, the chronological order was kept. Concise reporting remained the standard, as it still did fifty years later, in 1791. By 1791, sections had increased in number considerably, and many of the headings previously used to mark off individual news reports had frozen into standard section headings. While some of these section headings were found in more than one newspaper, most editors often created exclusive sections that did not appear elsewhere. The order of the sections was usually fixed and there was still an element of top-down chronology in the papers, as the discussion of the postscripts or continuously updated parliamentary affairs has shown. Breaking the rules in 1701 meant focusing on news events by either text movement or extensive coverage, or both. By 1741, the need for additional

Table 7.10 Front-Page News, January to August 1791 January

February

Paper No.

LCR 5362, Jan 4-6

MCR 6730, Jan I

Section

From the LGZ

Additional Taxes Friday, 11 February St. James' s >London

>Bankrupts America

House of Commons

LCR 5375, Feb 10

>Business at Court of [. . .]

March PAD 17660, Feb 11

EVM 327, March 30

PAD 17683, March 10

For the Public Advertiser >Character of Lord Bolingbroke To Correspondents

Weights and Measures Assassination at Chantilly

London >Parliameiitary Proceedings

The Chevalier d'Eori

»House of Commons

April

August

Paper No.

LCR 5408, April 21-23

MCR 6814, April 9

MOP 5600, April 7

PAD 17709, April 9

EVM

Section

[. . .} From Calcutta Recorder intelligence from the West of India London

House of Lords

Parliamentary Proceedings >House of Lords

For the Public Advertiser >On the Death of M, Mirabeau

American Intelligence >From the NY Daily Gazette

»Wednesday

>To Correspondents

Country News

House of Commons >Hemp

380, Aug 1-3

MOP 57/2, Aug 15

France >ANew Correspondent Berlin

192

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

structuring devices such as section headings had become a stronger factor in the organization of news than movement or length, although both techniques were used simultaneously by newspaper editors. While textual movement still performed the same function in die middle of the century, event focusing had lost some of its innovative character, as it was mostly used by traditional and conservative papers. The situation changed again towards the end of the century, when more textual strategies were at the disposal of newspaper editors in general. Foregrounding by movement, however, still appeared irregularly and sporadically. Event focusing had become fashionable again but seems to have been restricted to parliamentary news only. Outside this particular context, event focusing was not considered a criterion of good journalism. Headlines appeared for the first time to emphasize specific news by advertising it in a title. If one looks at the results from a general perspective, it seems that at the beginning of the century it was mainly the importance attributed to news diat motivated editors to focus on certain events. In other words, it seems that there existed a direct correspondence between foregrounding and the ranking of the news by the editor. By the middle of the century, the situation had changed in that the tight structural frame of publications made foregrounding a more difficult strategy to apply. Movement still correlated with importance in some cases. More often, however, textual emphasis functioned as a somewhat old-fashioned authenticating device. No alternative macrotextual foregrounding strategies can be found in 1741. The results from the year 1791 offer an even more complex picture. Newspapers had clear preferences regarding news content, and did not follow a universal agenda. Thus, importance depended on the actual focus of a newspaper. Moreover, foregrounding strategies that were used sporadically in the first half of the century had evolved into regular editing techniques that could be found in every newspaper edition. Judging from the material analysed, one is tempted to see a shift in the global function of foregrounding strategies. The analysis suggests that variation in the organization of news was used for stylistic purposes just as often as for other reasons. Foregrounding, it seems, had become a kind of I'art pour I'art technique which added spice to the otherwise rather dull news layout. This might have applied to entertaining stories as much as to important breaking news. The obvious lack of a coherent system in the use of foregrounding indicates that news editors had only begun to become aware of the power of news presentation, but were not ready yet to systematically exploit this device. While there is no coherent pattern in the samples to indicate when foregrounding was likely to occur in early news discourse, there seems to be some consistency in the general profile of newspapers that accepted innovation in the corpus. They were all successful papers that were repeatedly criticized for their controversial and sharp tongue. Many of them had to face repercussions and legal charges. In 1701, the part of the rebel was played by the flying Post and, to a lesser degree, by the Post Boy and the Post

MACROTEXTUAL FOREGROUNDING

193

Man. In 1741, the rebellious role was taken by the Champion and the Country Journal At the end of the century, it was mainly the Morning Chronicle that tried to break free from traditions and conventions. Innovation, however, remained unpredictable to a certain extent. Even if the results suggest that situation and external conditions facilitated change at macrotextual level or, at least, correlated in a fair number of instances, innovation still appeared spontaneously and suddenly rather than systematically. Foregrounding strategies may have been successful in one edition of the Flying Post but unsuccessful in another. The causes for these sudden changes can probably not be reconstructed. Yet, the cases presented in this section are sufficient to indicate definite trends of general macrotextual development underway in early newspapers. Future research might con centrate on individual points raised in the analysis by adducing more primary sources. A systematic collection of editions published on the same day, for example, would allow for a comparison on a much wider scale than has been possible with the small corpus used for this study. One might focus on one or more specific events (e.g. the French Revolution), and compare the way news is presented there with the findings from the presen corpus. Note 1. In the Evening Mail (1791EVM00327), for example, we find three headlines printed successively in the edition: 'Weights and Measures', 'Assas sination at Chantilly', The Chevalier d'Eon'. In the Evening Mail (1791EVM00380), by contrast, there is no front-page headline at all. The Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730 and 1791MCR06814), similarly, features one headline in the first edition but none in the second. Headlines that deal with domestic politics are found in both the Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730) and the Evening Mail (1791EVM00327). Other headline topics occur in either the Morning Chronicle or the Evening Mail.

8 Microtextual Foregrounding: Comment and News Context

In Chapter 7, innovation was analysed from a macrotextual perspective. The second chapter of this part of the study is intended to draw attention to microtextual dimensions of discourse that are known to have played a key role in the evolution of news discourse. Some of these dimensions are easily identified if present-day news discourse is compared with seventeenth- or eighteenth-century newspapers. For example, one of the main differences between early and modern newspaper style lies in the way news editors make themselves appear in their articles or, in other words, in the way their editorial stance or standpoint is effected in the news. There is a variety of techniques available to the writer to effect stance in news discourse, and their main function is to stress the weight and importance of news by dramatizing or substantiating the claims of the reports. Before I present the analysis of such features, some terminological conventions are worth making in order to avoid misunderstandings. It was mentioned in the introduction to Part III that modality had several meanings in linguistics. The concept of modality includes the classical area of grammar but can be extended to refer to textual and stylistic dimensions in language. Since this chapter will not be concerned with grammatical modality, I will limit the discussion of linguistic conventions to those areas relevant to the present stylistic focus. In the following two sections I will give a brief outline of the relevant grammatical conventions and extended stylistic realizations of modality in news discourse. These conventions and realizations will be applied to a text sample in order to analyse in detail how modality distributes over a larger corpus, and how it fits into different situations of use. The results will enable us to draw detailed discourse profiles of stance in early newspapers. 1 Modality in Early News Discourse The grammatical concept of modality has been the subject of a range of studies in recent years. Palmer (2001) provides an up-to-date account of the various strands of research into the topic. Greenbaum and Quirk (1990: 60) interpret the meanings of modals principally along the lines of intrinsic

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versus extrinsic modality, the former involving 'some intrinsic human control over events' (permission, obligation, volition), while the latter is supposed to refer to 'human judgment of what is or is not likely to happen' (possibility, necessity, prediction). This dichotomy is reflected to some extent in the fundamental distinction made by various other scholars between epistemic and deontic modality, as for example expressed in Steele et al. (qtd. in Palmer 1986: 18): 'Elements of modality will mark any of the following: Possibility or the related notion of permission, probability or the related notion of obligation, certainty or the related notion of requirement' This two-fold distinction has been expanded into systems of up to eight parallel categories, such as Rescher's (1968: 24ff.) division into alethic, epistemic, temporal, boulomaic, deontic, evaluative, causal and likelihood modalities. Considering Rescher's model, however, Perkins (1983:10) notes that 'the number of modalities one decides upon is to some extent a matter of slicing the same cake'. Perkins (1983: 10-12) in turn suggests 'three general sets of principles' which he calls epistemic, deontic and causal modalities. The third category created by Perkins, causal modalities, represents instances which, in traditional modal logic, would fall under extrinsic modality as they establish relationships between circumstances, or states of affairs, and the states of affairs following from them. Epistemic modality, in Perkins' system, thus refers to knowledge or lack of knowledge, while deontic modality is defined in terms of social or institutional law. Causal modality, finally, is concerned with the disposition towards the occurrence of unactualized events. In the following analysis, I shall rely on Perkins' distinction as a rough guideline to indicate the broad directions in which stylistic innovation took place in early news discourse. I shall use his model of the three large categories, epistemic-deontic-causal, but will be including a fourth dimension of what may tentatively be called evaluative modality. Evaluative modality was excluded by Perkins (1983: 12) on the grounds that it was essentially factive, presupposing the tmth of a proposition (e.g. it's wonderful that+p). Evalution, however, plays an important part in the development of news discourse and should therefore be taken into consideration as a distinctive category. Table 8.1 below summarizes again the broad characteristics of the dimensions used in this study. All four types of modality can be realized by a variety of linguistic forms covering the complete rhetorical repertoire available to news writers and editors at the time. While the forms of modality thus vary substantially, there seem to be some recurrent interactional functions that modality markers tend to enact in early news discourse. It therefore makes sense to work with sub-categories that best represent these functions. I will briefly introduce the relevant sub-categories in the order of their expected importance in early news discourse. A detailed analysis of all categories in each year analysed will be given in the sections below. In relation to epistemic modality, Chafe (1986: 262-5) offers the

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Table 8.1 Types of modality in early news discourse Modality

Characteristics

Epistemic

Disposition towards truth of event/state of affairs (knowledge, belief, assumption, etc.) Disposition towards event/state of affairs in terms of social/ institutional law (obligation, permission, etc.) Disposition towards occurrence of non-actualized events (causal chains, effect, hope, desire, etc.) Disposition towards event/state of affairs that is believed to be true (reinforcement, intensification, evaluation, etc.)

Deontic Causal Evaluative

distinction between two dimensions of knowing: reliability and modes of knowing, or ways in which knowledge is acquired. Reliability refers to the degree of reliability credited to knowledge, while the second dimension falls into four types: belief (source of information is unknown), hearsay evidence (source of information is language), induction (source of knowledge is evidence) and deduction (source of knowledge is a hypothesis).1 For the study of early news discourse, one is tempted to count the two forms reliability and belief as one, as they both seem to fit into Palmer's (1986:64) concept of 'confidence markers' ('it is assumed', 'it is certain', 'uncertain', etc.). Induction and deduction, on the other hand, are not expected to be strongly present in the corpus, especially in the early years of news publishing, since both forms invite or require (long) argumentation. Argumentation, however, is practically absent from news sections in periodical publications before 1800. This leaves us with two important epistemic categories in early news discourse that emerged or underwent changes in the context of linguistic innovation and that are likely to occur in all years of the corpus: hearsay evidentials, and confidence markers. Evaluative modality involves techniques that negotiate a value judgement to the reader regarding the news that is being reported. This means that evaluative modality reflects the editors' intention in reinforcing the values of their audience or in communicating their attachment to certain values. The truth of the matter is not debated but, as mentioned earlier, presupposed. In classical rhetoric, evaluative modality would fall into the domain of Aristotle's epideictic oratory (On Rhetoric 1.9, 14-27)., which likewise 'strengthens the disposition toward action by increasing adherence to the values it lauds' (Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca 1969: 50).2 Martin (2000) suggests a three-fold model to describe the concept of evaluation in spoken and written English: affect (emotive response, feelings), judgement (affect institutionalized in terms of ethic and moral law) and appreciation (affect institutionalized in terms of aesthetics or value). As for early news discourse, one might suggest creating one large sub-category of affect as

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opposed to judgement and appreciation, which seems to include subcategories of deontic modality. Under affect, one finds stylistic techniques which were mainly used for the rhetorical purposes of heightening (reinforcing) and softening (attenuating) a message, or for the purpose of producing a humorous effect. I shall try and adhere to this distinction in the following analysis. With regard to sub-categories of causal modalities, I will be using the term in accordance with Perkins' (1983: 11) model, which includes two main domains of causality: cause/effect and subjective disposition. While cause/effect is linked to the common causal relations, laws of nature or counterfactual conditionals, subjective disposition more specifically involves what is generally referred to as boulomaic modality (cf. Rescher 1968:24-6; also Simpson 1993: 47-8); the modality relating to desire. It makes sense to distinguish between these two kinds of causality in a detailed classification of news texts, as they both refer to fundamentally different approaches to the representation of states of affairs or events. It is needless to stress that only causal inferences made by the editors or writers are of interest here, since quoted or indirect logic (e.g. my father said that there is always sunshine after rain) does not necessarily reflect the logic of the speaker. Deontic modality in the present study will not be used in the broad meaning of the term expressing speakers' commitment as well as volition towards the actualization of an event or state of affairs (Chung and Timberlake 1985; Palmer 1986). Instead, it will be seen in close connection to Searle's (1969, 1979, 1983) commissive illocutionary point and Palmer's (1986: 115-16) concept of commissive modality. Within this conceptual domain, one might create sub-categories that reflect different degrees or kinds of commitment (e.g. threat, advice, promise, etc.). Following Martin's (2000) classification proposal, one might divide deontic modality into judgement or appreciation modals. While such a distinction is generally desirable, the frequency of this type of modality in the corpus is expected to be so low that further categorization will probably be unnecessary. Table 8.2 below summarizes again the sub-categories established in this section, including their main characteristics. These conceptual considerations will serve as a starting-point for the analysis of contextual influences on the formation of early news discourse. All microtextual dimensions introduced above are relevant parameters for the study of innovation in early news discourse. They primarily function as stylistic markers of editorial stance and viewpoint. The routinization of stance in early news discourse reflects the growing awareness and self-confidence of a medium as it gradually shaped and defined its character. 2 Stylistic Realizations of Modality In order to visualize and contextualize the use of modality in early news discourse, I will briefly address the realization patterns of the various types

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Table 8.2 Sub-categories of modality in early news discourse Modality

Sub-category

Characteristics

Epistemic

Hearsay Confidence

Evaluative

Heightening

Causal

Softening Humour Cause/Effect

Reference to source of information Reference to reliability of news, belief in truth of news/proposition Reinforcement, intensification through language Attenuation, euphemism Irony, jokes Editorial inference (conditions, circumstances) Editorial desires Permission, obligation

Disposition Deontic

of modality represented in Table 8.2. I will introduce every category individually and give examples of typical forms found in the ZEN corpus. Epistemic modality in early newspapers may be associated with a set of language techniques which are realized in a variety of forms. One common text strategy, for example, is a combination of hearsay evidentials followed by deduction modals (e.g. should, could, would, [supposed to] be to). Sometimes, evidence markers are further modified, resulting in quite complex expressions in which various sources are embedded in one another. Embedded epistemic marking may lead to complicated and awkward-sounding phrases such as the following example from the Champion (1741CEA00179): Letters from the Leeward Islands to the 31st of Octob. inform us, that the Saltash Sloop of War having been sent to learn Intelligence, was returned with Advice, that [...]. Less frequently seen are hearsay evidentials combining with cataphoric references in pre-modifying position, as in in the following speech; in the following account, etc. Hearsay evidentials combining with induction modals occurred occasionally in connection with expressions of belief, as in the example of it is thought that. . . + will (see confidence markers, below). There are at least two large groups of hearsay evidentials in the corpus which differ in the way evidence was tackled by the writer. The first group contains modal expressions that stress that somebody, usually the writer himself, received or heard about the news through some medium, often a letter (we hear that or by letters from X we hear that, etc.). In these examples, the author acts as mediator between the source of the news and the reader. The second group of evidentials differs from the first in that the source of the news, personal or impersonal, is foregrounded, acting as the agent of the sentence. Examples from the corpus are they write from X that or letters

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from X intimate/advise/say that. Most hearsay evidentials can be classified as belonging to either group. Confidence markers, on the other hand, contain direct references to the reliability of what is reported or to the writer's commitment to the truth of what is said. The easiest way to do so in a sentence involves the writer as agent followed by a modal expression such as believe, think, etc. Good examples in the corpus are the political comments in the Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730). Here, we find expressions such as the following: 'We can only suppose that Mr. PITT means to settle the peace of Europe in detail [...]'. Alternatively, direct references may be assertive statements, as found in the same edition: 'The truth is, he attended during the whole debate [...]'. Such expressions, however, are extremely rare in the sample and only found in editions from 1791. Previous to 1791, the most common way of relativizing or asserting a report would be by using impersonal expressions in the third person singular ('tis thought/assured/conjectured) or other indirect hints (the report ofX is augmenting every day, the opinion of X is positive that, etc.). Examples of confidence markers found in all years are expressions using to be or the verbs seem/appear. Combinations of hearsay and confidence markers also occur in the corpus. There are many possible combinations of the two modalities in one expression, some stressing the vagueness of the news (e.g. 'Some of our Almanac-Prophets have favoured us with certain intelligence that ...' [1741CEA00179]), while others emphasize the certainty/uncertainty of the writer towards the truth of a report or the sources ('It does not appear that ...' [1741DPT06847]; 'Advices from very good hands give us room to believe that...' [1741CJL00758]). While epistemic modality can usually be recognized by a set of welldefined linguistic cues, evaluative modality is a more elusive concept when it comes to analysing it in an early modern English text. Although there are potentially infinite possibilities for expressing evaluative modality in rhetoric, only a few isolated phenomena have so far received scholarly attention (e.g. metaphors in Averill 1990). The interactional functions of evaluative modality can be summarized as dramatizing/intensifying or softening/ euphemizing. This also includes humour and irony, which may be regarded as a special form of dramatizing. Unlike epistemic modality, which can usually be tied down to individual words or shorter phrases, evaluative modality involves linguistic or rhetorical strategies at textual level, including the meaning of a whole sentence or paragraph. In complex cases, the broader context of one particular example helps in defining what types of evaluative modality we may be dealing with in the corpus. Basically, all instances of evaluative modality whether short or long - follow a simple model. As regards heightening/ dramatizing, the underlying semantic meaning of the text passage studied can be translated as it is amazing or it is dreadful that+p; it is admirable that+p, it is sad/surprising that +p, etc. With regard to softening/euphemizing, one would expect the opposite of the above, carrying the meaning of +p is not as bad/dramatic as we thought/one might think.

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Common examples of evaluative modality involve any kind of qualifying expressions made by the writer that reflect appreciation or depreciation of the event described. This includes, first of all, attributive expressions such as quantifiers and comparatives (much, many, more, most, as high as) as well as intensifying and qualifying adjectives and modifiers in preand postposed position (very, highly, great, severe, dismal, dreadful, etc.). Attribution also occurs in the form of other adverbials attached to the sentence (e.g. 'with the utmost severity' [1741CEA00179]; 'Majesty had a Levee, which [. ..] being very thin of company closed in half an hour' [1791MCR06730]). Intensification is further achieved through the use of colloquialisms (e.g. politicians referred to as 'ignorant boobies' (1791MCR06730), or unusually strong visual images conveyed by certain expressions (e.g. 'a vast Quantity of Cattle have perished' [1741CEA00179]; 'Spanish Fleet [...] greatly shatter'd in the last Hurricance' [1741CEA00179]; 'a Pack of abandoned Wretches, ragged and dirty' [1741CEA00265]). Evaluation through syntactic variation, though infrequent, is found occasionally in the corpus (e.g. 'have not had one vessel taken' instead of 'have not lost one vessel' [1741CEA00179]). Apart from these standard techniques, there are more difficult cases in the corpus which sometimes involve complex rhetorical figures of speech. These figures of speech, though frequent in 1791, are practically absent in the first half of the century and therefore do not play a major role in the whole corpus sample. One can group rhetorical figures into two larger categories. The first category includes instances that basically form a continuation of the types of evaluation mentioned above. This may be reinforcement through semantic repetition (e.g. the above-mentioned example, 'a Pack of abandoned Wretches, ragged and dirty', in which the author stresses the desolate condition of the prisoners more than once), or lengthy accounts of the conditions or circumstances brought about by an event. One of the few examples that can be found in 1741 was printed in the Champion (1741CEA00179). The following sentence reinforces the news of a heavy snowstorm that has swept across the country: It is impossible to express the general Consternation of the Inhabitants, some of them being so imprisoned in their own Houses, that they could not get out either for Fire or any other Necessaries, others made their own way thro' the Chimneys and assisted in digging out their Neighbours.

Other forms of figurative expansion include, for example, metaphors extended by means of comparisons. This type is more likely to occur in late eighteenth-century editions. A typical example would be the following comparison from the Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730) in which Mr Pitt is compared to a trickster: The promises of Mr. PUT resemble the trick of a showman, who went about the country, and after having collected some money, and performed a few feats of legerdemain in the view of the gaping rustics, said that he would exhibit still

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greater wonders, provided they would shut their eyes, and trust to the description which he should give them. The second category refers to humorous and ironic contributions or comments that are either embedded in a longer news article or stand alone, as is often the case with the Morning Chronicle (e.g. 1791MCR06730). The category of humour and irony applies if the intended effect or illocutionary point of an utterance is to produce a smile on the readers' lips rather than engage them in analytic thinking or genuine compassion. The witty comments made by the writers make us laugh as they foreground contradictory, impossible or funny aspects of a state of affairs or a person. Irony in particular reinforces a point by stating the opposite (e.g. Mr Xgave a very able speech actually meaning Mr X gave a very bad speech). The power of such indirect stance can be as strong as, or even stronger than, to-the-point argumentation and evaluation. Humour as understood in this context does not include, for example, the above comment on Mr Pitt which, sharp as it may be, is intended to convey the writer's genuine dislike of Pitt's manners. It must be stated, though, that the change between reports using strong imagery like the one above and humorous reports is one of degrees rather than of absolute terms. In the analysis of the ZEN corpus, instances were only classified as humorous if there was a clear element of ridicule in them. The following examples from the Morning Chronicle (1791MCR06730) may illustrate the kind of comments matching the definition of humour in the corpus: Sir ELIJAH IMPEY is at present busily employed in quest of precedents, to prove - that after conviction Judges should not proceed to sentence. The town is threatened with a TRAGEDY by Mr. MERRY, and a HISTORICAL DRAMA by somebody who has shone in the newspapers under the title of LAURA MARIA. The PATHOS of both pieces will be amazingly heightened by most lamentable murders of the King's English. The characteristic of modern poetry is sublimity, but it is that species of sublimity, which consists in soaring above common sense, and setting all meaning at defiance. It might aptly be termed the unintelligibly sublime. Mr. PUT, said a friend of Administration, conducts his measures with much secrecy; yes, replied a Gentleman, and he might derive some merit from the secrecy of his measures, if he could likewise prevent their consequences from being known. Men of genius, like the worthy Alderman, acquire a wonderful knowledge of any subject from a very little experience.

Unlike evaluative modality which does not question the truth of a state of affairs or an event, causal modality is used in connection with justification, persuasion or argumentation. By definiton, causality refers to the future, to unactualized states of affairs or events, thus presupposing analytic thinking which provides a link, a causal chain, between the actual state and the desired or expected state. Alternatively, causality contains references to

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how writers feel towards an unactualized event In the case of causal modality, as with all forms of modality discussed in this study, only the writers' own inferences are counted. Instances such as the following news from the PostMan cannot be included as they represent someone else's point of view: Letters from France say, that the Spaniards have written to the French King, that if his most Christian Majesty would be pleased to go into Spain to govern them, they would gladly obey his Commands. (1701PMN00882) Apart from such special cases, both types of causality can easily be identified in the corpus. The latter form, first of all, is realized by explicit references to the editor's disposition towards an unactualized event (hope, desire, wish). Most commonly, a defined agent (I/we hope/fear) is present in the text; alternatively, an undefined agent is used by the news writer (e.g. it is to be hoped). The stylistic difference between die two reflects varying degrees of involvement intended by the writer. In general, the presence of personal pronouns / or we is consistently low in all samples, while impersonal constructions appear even less regularly. Other modes of causality are far more frequent in the corpus, such as conditional sentences in all possible forms of realization, or consecutive constructions (e.g. so/such ... that), concessive patterns (e.g. although, however, notwithstanding, -ing) and causal constructions (as, since, because, -ing). The following four sentences represent examples of these different types. The first and fourth examples are identical and show that disposition and cause-effect modalities (causal and conditional) may also occur together in the same sentence. (All added italics are mine.) Conditional 'Some advices say, that the Swedish Majesty having received information that the Czar was retired into Amogorod, was marched that way, and had caused the place to be invested, and as it is not able to make any long resistance, we hope to take that Prince Prisoner, if the information the King has received proves true'. (1701PMN00852) Consecutive: "The Swiss Cantons have no formal Notice as yet given them; of the Duke of Anjou's Accession to the Throne of Spain, 50 that they have time enough to bethink themselves concerning the Compliment of Congratulation'. (1701FPT00884) Concessive: 'Notwithstanding that Negotiation, our Court persists in their resolution of having the Dutch Troops out of the Spanish Frontiers, and it will prove a difficult matter to find out a medium to the satisfaction of all Parties'. (1701PBY00851) Causal/Conditional: 'Some advices say, that the Swedish Majesty having received information that the Czar was retired into Amogorod, was marched that way, and had caused the place to be invested, and as it is not able to make any long resistance, we hope to take that Prince Prisoner, if the information the King has received proves true'. (1701PMN00852)

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Deontic modality occurred so infrequently that it will not need much comment here. There are basically two types of deontic modality in the corpus. They contain expressions referring to the appropriateness or inappropriatenss of a state of affairs or an event in terms of moral or institutional values. Two typical examples are provided below: Institutional values: 'The above melancholy circumstance points out, in the strongest manner, the necessity of every vessel being provided with materials for making signals of distress, in cases of danger; for had this vessel had a swivel gun and powder on board, in all probability the whole of the people had been saved, as several vessels were within a few miles, and no doubt viewed their situation; but not seeing or hearing any signals of distress, had no intimation of their danger'. (1791EVM00327) Moral values: 'Last Week a miserable Wretch perish'd in the Street in Goodman's Yard in the Minories; and her Body lying accidentally at the extreme Boundaries of two Parishes, part in one, and part in the other Parish, thro' the Disagreement among the Officers, whose Business it was to bury her, was suffer'd to remain there a most dismal Spectacle for a Day, to the Offence of all Passengers of Humanity, and Scandal of such People who would be call'd Christians'. (1741CEA00265)

3 Distributional Patterns In this section, I shall analyse in detail how the various types of modality were distributed in the ZEN corpus. The corpus sample selected for this close study of modality is represented in Table 8.3. Since all newspapers and editions have been introduced at various stages in this book, it will suffice to comment only briefly on the composition of this particular sample. The reason why the specific editions below have been chosen for close study is, firstly, because of the stylistic factors they have in common. All newspapers selected for the present analysis were successful in their time and were considered innovative and controversial. They all contributed actively to establishing new stylistic standards in journalism and to setting stylistic trends for future generations of newspapers. It can be expected that stance and modality played a more active part in these papers than in conservative publications. Secondly, the individual samples were not to exceed 10,000 words per year so that the database could be kept to a manageable size for the word screening process. In total, ten editions have been selected: five in 1701, four in 1741 and one in 1791. The imbalance in numbers is unavoidable if one decides to work with complete editions. But although the samples may not take account of the diversity of publications available in the three years, they are large enough to indicate major trends. Counting the actual instances of modality in the above corpus proved to be more difficult than expected. The meaning of every modal marker in the text had to be determined contextually on a case-by-case basis. In

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Table 8.3 Sample Corpus Year

Newspaper

1701

flying Post Flying Post PostBof Post Man Post Man

884 888 897 851 852

2,754 2,588 2,538 2,257 2,567

1,879 2,008 1,650 1,789 1,809

1741

Champion Champion Country Journal Country Journal

179 265 758 769

6,801 7,193 4,476 11,561

2,596 3,499 1,855 1,544

1791

Morn. Chronicle

6,730

11,412

7,493

54,147

26,122

Total

Edition

Total Words

Words of Edited News

1

1701PBY1066 is not suitable for this kind of analysis as it is a special issue that mainly deals with one topic (the death of King William III). deciding whether or not to count a modal marker, it was important to distinguish between the knowledge, opinion or desire of the editor in relation to the news reported and the reported knowledge, opinion or desire of the persons involved in an event. For the purpose of the present analysis, particular emphasis was placed on the first type of modality, i.e. references to the feelings, standpoints and impressions of the persons writing about events, not those immediately involved in them. It is equally clear, however, that in some cases this distinction could not be made in absolute terms and that the line between news reporter and involved or affected parties was often a virtual one. The problem of allocating stance, for example, became particularly apparent when direct speech was involved and even more so if a text seemed to be an unedited translation or direct quotation from foreign correspondence or newspapers. The problem was solved here in that it was assumed that where no reference was made by the editor to the existence of quotations, the editor generally agreed with the opinion expressed in the text. In these cases, expressions of stance, if present, were taken to reflect the viewpoint of the newspaper. In cases where quotations were explicitly used by the editor to reinforce the news, the reference to direct speech was counted as an instance of modality, but not the modal expressions in the direct speech that followed. This rule, of course, also extended to reported speech.3 On the whole, ambiguity occurred mostly in the earliest sample from 1701; the role of editor was more clearly visible in later samples. Another problem that needed to be addressed in this context was the notion of contextual relevance of modal expressions. A number of expressions that one would normally count to the category of modals revealed

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themselves as language routines or language formulae which were routinely employed in correspondence. Typical examples would be address forms such as Your Most Christian Majesty or other reverential expressions of politeness. Tables 8.4 to 8.6 show results of the initial count of modal markers in the corpus sample. The first two rows represent absolute figures and the proportion of modal sentences and reports by year and newspaper; the bottom rows refer to average length of modal and other reports.4 I will briefly comment on the three years in turn. The first table suggests that on average around two-thirds of all sentences and reports in the sample carried one or more modality markers in 1701. Modal sentences are quite evenly distributed over the sample, ranging from 53 per cent in the Flying Post (1701FPT00888) to 74 per cent in the Post Man (1701PMN00851), while the percentage of modal reports may vary internally from 58 per cent in the Flying Post (1701FPT00888) to 79 per cent in the Flying Post (1701FPT00884). There are minor differences between individual issues with regard to length of reports and length of modal reports, but all results seem to indicate that the presence of modality in a report correlates with a slight increase in length. The findings for 1741 are strikingly similar to those for 1701. Table 8.5 shows that in 1741 modality markers on average also occur in approximately two-thirds of all sentences (61 per cent) and reports (68 per cent). However, there also seem to be minor differences among newspapers with regard to the individual usage of these markers. The Champion'm both editions scores a percentage in the mid- to late sixties, while the Country Journal comes slightly under this result. There are further differences in 1741 with regard to the ratio modal/non-modal occurrences in sentences and reports. The average (modal) report in the Country Journal seems to be considerably longer than its counterpart from the Champion. Reports in the Champion are only insignificantly above the corpus average of 1701. But, as in 1701, modal reports are generally longer than non-modal reports in all editions from 1741. It is not surprising that the Morning Chronicle from. 1791 printed the longest reports by far in all three samples. From 1701 to 1791, there is an increase of approximately 1.6 sentences for non-modal and almost 2.2 sentences for modal reports. Although this trend might look a little different if more data were analysed, one is not surprised at the overall increase in length over the century. While the initial impression is confirmed that the presence of modality markers makes reports longer in all samples, the mean proportion of modality in the corpus seems to remain fairly constant through the years. Thus, we can assume that differences or developments in the use of modality were not primarily of quantitative, but of qualitative nature. Tables 8.7 to 8.9 below split the results into more refined categories that distinguish between sentences carrying epistemic, evaluative, causal or deontic modality. The procedure for this count was as follows: all sentences

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Table 8.4 Modality in number and percentage of occurrence in 1701 Modality

FPT 884

FPT 888

Modal / Total sentences Modal / Total reports Sentences / Report Sentences / Modal report

40/62 .65 30/38 .79 1.63 1.66

26/49 16/27 .53 .59 21/36 16/24 .67 .58 1.13 1.32 1.13 1.42

PBY 897

PMN 851

PMN 852

Total/ Average

31/42 .74 23/32 .72 1.31 1.39

36/52 .69 26/40 .65 1.3 1.38

149/232 .64 116/170 .68 1.34 1.4

Table 8.5 Modality in number and percentage of occurrence in 1741 Modality

CEA 179

CEA 265

CJL 758

CJL 759

Total/ Average

Modal / Total sentences Modal / Total reports Sentences / Report Sentences / Modal report

42/63 .67 28/43 .65 1.47 1.61

61/90 .68 49/69 .71 1.30 1.35

30/56 .54 18/24 .75 2.34 2.67

23/47 .49 16/27 .59 1.74 2.25

156/256 .61 111/163 .68 1.71 1.97

Table 8.6 Modality in number and percentage of occurrence in 1791 Modality Modal / Total sentences

MCR 105/169

.62 Modal / Total reports

43/58

Sentences / Report Sentences / Modal report

.74 2.91 3.58

were classified on the basis of presence or absence of modality markers. If one type of modality (i.e. the main categories - epistemic, evaluative, causal and deontic - as well as the different sub-types) was present once or more often in a sentence, the sentence was ticked in the respective category in die table. If several types of modality co-occurred in one sentence, the

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Table 8.7 Types of modality in number and percentage of occurrence (1701) Types of Modality

FPT 884

FPT 888

PBY 897

PMN 851

PMN 852

Total

Epistemic >Hearsay >Confidence >Confidence/Hearsay Evaluative >Heightening >Softening >Humour Causal >Cause/Effect >Disposition Deontic Total Modality Markers/ Sentence

29/40 17 6 6 18/40 16 2 8/40 6 2 55 1.38

16/26 11 4 1 11/26 11 2/26 2 29 1.12

12/16 8 3 1 8/16 8 2/16 2 2/16 22 1.38

21/31 16 4 1 12/31 12 5/31 2 3 1/31 39 1.26

28/36 19 3 6 18/36

106/149 71 20 15 67/149 64 3 23/149 16

17 1 -

7/36 5 2 53 1.47

7 3/149 1.33

Table 8.8 Types of modality in number and percentage of occurrence (1741) Types of Modality

CEA 179

CEA 265

CJL 758

CJL 759

Total

Epistemic >Hearsay >Confidence >Confidence/Hearsay Evaluative >Heightening >Softening >Irony Causal >Cause/Effect >Disposition Deontic Total Modality Markers/ Sentence

31/42 26 4 2 22/42 18 2 3 7/42 5 2 2/42 62 1.48

43/61 27 11 5 28/61 24 2 2 6/61 5 1/61 78 1.28

15/3 9 4 2 20/30 19 1 2/30 2 37 1.23

15/23 10 4 1 10/23 10 2/23 2 1/23 28 1.22

104/156 72 23 10 80/156 71 5 5 17/156 10 6 4/156 205 1.31

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Table 8.9 Types of modality in number and percentage of occurrence (1791) Types of Modality

EVM

Evaluative >Heightening >Softening >Humour

82/43 36 1 45

Epistemic >Confidence >Hearsay >Confidence/Hearsay

26/43 12 10 4

Causal >Cause/Effect >Disposition

23/43 17 6

Deontic

3/43

Total

134

Modality Markers/Sentence

1.28

sentence was ticked once for every category it contained. As a result, there may be more instances of modality than actual sentences, which reflects the tendency that modality markers were often combined in sentences (the bottom row in the tables shows the average number of modality markers per sentence in the samples). The tables, however, do not offer any information as to which types of modality combined in a sentence. The various modality combinations are analysed in section 8.5 below. Looking at the average number of modality markers per sentence in the bottom row of the tables, one is surprised not to see any significant changes or differences over the period studied. Modality markers per sentence do not seem to have increased over the years at all. In fact, there is even a slight downturn movement from 1.32 to 1.28 markers per sentence from 1701 to 1791. Although this result may not be so telling considering the size of the time sample from the year 1791, one would nevertheless have expected an increase in editorial intervention in the course of the eighteenth century. One explanation for this result may be that modality gradually changed in the context of a global specialization process of the eighteenth-century press. In the course of this process newspaper editors began to adapt their style to the specific situation of use, which resulted in different types of reports and texts. It seems only plausible to assume that this trend was accompanied by a decrease in sentences which reported, commented, evaluated and moralized at the same time. By the end of the

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century, newspapers tended to print separate sentences for every one of these activities. In addition to this stylistic specialization, there were further changes in the use of modality over the course of the century. The most striking result may be the marked decrease in epistemic modality in the second half of the century. By far the strongest modality in the first forty years (71 per cent of all modal instances in 1701 and 68 per cent in 1741), epistemic modality drops to approximately one quarter of instances in 1791. The drop in the Morning Chronicle seems to correlate with a gradual rise of evaluative modality between 1701 and 1741 (from 34 to 39 per cent) and the more dramatic rise in 1791 (61 per cent). The increase in evaluative modality in 1791 is paralleled by an increase in causal modality. Causal modality plays a minor role in the early years (1701: 11 per cent; 1741: 8 per cent) but appears in every fourth sentence by 1791. Deontic modality is insignificant in all years. The results suggest two trends. Firstly, it seems that the major changes in usage of modality occurred in the second half of the century rather than in the first. The differences between 1701 and 1741 are minimal and may be due to the nature of the sample. Secondly, the changes in usage seem to have been the result or the effect of a changing attitude towards news reporting. References to the source or truth value of the news had become less relevant; the truth of the matter was either presupposed or considered less important. At the same time, far more evaluative comments were used to heighten the dramatic impact of news, or logical argumentation was introduced to provide analytical answers to pertinent questions raised by current affairs. Except for 1791, the interpretation of the data above is based on mean averages obtained by analysing different editions. It will be worthwhile to see how these averages break down in the corpus and whether there is internal variation among the publications used for the analysis. Epistemic modality relating to source or truth value of news is the dominant factor in all five newspapers from 1701 and in all but one in 1741 (the Country Journal, 1741CJL00758). In both years, the share of epistemic instances including references to the origin of the news (hearsay evidentials) amounts to nearly 50 per cent; in approximately one quarter (1701) and one fifth (1741) of the sentences, we find either confidence markers or a mix of confidence markers and hearsay evidentials. A difference in terms of overall share of epistemic markers exists between the Champion and the Country Journal in 1741. While in the Champion epistemicity reaches a percentage of nearly 50 in both editions analysed, the figure in the Country Journal drops to under one third. One edition of the Country Journal (1741CJL00758), in addition to scoring low in the overall use of modality, even shows an inverted pattern to all other papers by featuring more evaluative than epistemic markers. Thus, the Champion makes more ample use of a larger set of modality markers than the Country Journal This result may be due either to situational influences or a general qualitative difference between the two papers. No such difference exists in 1701.

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With the exception of the Country Journal (1741CJL00758), evaluative modality is distributed fairly evenly in 1701 and 1741. Comparing the three sub-categories of evaluative modality (i.e. heightening, softening, humour), however, it is without doubt heightening modality that occurs with the highest frequency and regularity in the corpus. Evaluative modality, whose function is to soften and euphemize a message or to amuse the reader, occurs rarely in 1701 (three instances only) and irregularly in 1741. The stylistic discrepancy between the Champion and the Country Journal identified above seems to corroborate this if we look at evaluative modalit in more detail. While in the Champion every sub-type of evaluation is represented at least once, humour and softening expressions are practically absent in the Country Journal. The results obtained for epistemic and evaluative modality in these two papers point to the existence of specific newspaper styles in 1741. More material, however, would be needed to confirm this impression. No internal differences between papers can be found in 1701, but it is worth noting that the category of humour does not appear at all in this year. When the absolute figures drop below a certain value, it is difficult to speak of tendencies in the data. This is the case with causal modality in 1701 and 1741. It seems, though, that causality relating to cause and effect plays a prominent role both in 1701 (in terms of absolute and relative occurrence) and in 1741 (in terms of absolute occurrence). It further seems that in 1701, papers with a small proportion of modality markers overall tend to drop disposition causals altogether. In 1741, on the other hand, a similar breakdown of data can be seen, as in epistemicity and evaluation above. Causals seem to be distributed a little more consistently in the Champion than in the Country Journal Moreover, there is further evidence of internal stylistic differences between the two papers in 1741: causals referring to cause and effect, which are frequent in most newspapers, are completely absent in the Country Journal, while disposition causals, which appear irregularly in the Champion, are present in the Country Journal. In sum, the data suggest that there is a strong overlap in modality patterns in individual newspaper editions from 1701. In 1741, we seem to see first signs of consistent stylistic differences between newspapers. It is not possible, on the basis of the present corpus, to decide whether these differences reflect editorial preferences or if they were situationally motivated. In comparison to 1791, however, the results from the years 1701 and 1741 are strikingly similar in overall results and breakdown of data. The ranking scale in 1791 differs fundamentally from the other years in that, first of all, evaluative modality and, within this category, the sub-type of humour tops the table, followed by heightening evaluation. With regard to epistemicity hearsay evidentials - the top category in 1701 and 1741 - are superseded by confidence markers, which take third position. Causals and deontic modals remain relatively stable throughout the century.

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4 Contextual Domains The analysis in the previous section yielded first insights into how modality tended to distribute in newspaper editions at different points in time. The results, however, do not show how the use of modality was interconnected with and influenced by current affairs. This will be the topic of the following pages. In order to measure how the situational contexts influenced editorial intervention, I will assign every report in the corpus carrying modality to one broad contextual domain that dominated the attention of news media during the period under investigation. I will then analyse in detail the ways in which modality responded to each domain, highlighting specific news situations that may have facilitated modality in early newspapers. Finding contextual domains, however, proves to be a difficult task. On the one hand, contextual domains have to be general enough to be present in all editions and years. On the other hand, the domains should not be too general if the results are still to be meaningful. Moreover, one has to be aware that the more general a domain is, the greater will be the risk of overlapping with other domains. The domains, therefore, have to be clearcut enough to highlight broad thematic trends in early newspapers, without offering too much room for overlaps. Unfortunately, the text classification model used in ZEN does not offer a good starting point for this undertaking, for reasons already discussed at an earlier point in this study. For the present analysis, I shall rely on the following contextual distinctions: War, Commerce & Trade, Accidents & Disasters, Crimes, Social Life, Announcements, Politics, Entertainment & Features, Other. I will comment on these domains in more detail below by first analysing the distribution patterns in all editions and years, before correlating these results with the modality patterns they exhibit. Table 8.10 shows the distribution of reports by topic in all three samples and years taken together. The results have been sorted by total frequency of occurrence in the corpus. What immediately strikes the eye in the first column of the table is the high turnout of the domain War in a count including modal and non-modal reports. War occurs more than three times as often as Politics and Social Life, the second most frequent domain in the corpus. Politics and Social Life, in turn, are only some dozen reports ahead of Commerce & Trade, which comes next on the list. The domains following Commerce drop to between 26 (Entertainment & Features) and 18 occurrences (Announcements). Three reports cannot be assigned to any domain. This ranking, however, changes considerably if we look at the modality rate in all domains. In relative terms, the domain War falls back to third position, following Entertainment & Features (92 per cent) and Accidents & Disasters (88 per cent), which show a higher turnout of modal reports in total. Taken together, these three domains are the only domains to score higher than the average 69 per cent found for the whole sample. All other domains are either equal to or lower than the sample average. Three of the nine domains even fall under the 60 per cent mark, including Announcements (56 per cent), Politics (51 per cent) and Commerce 8c Trade (37 per

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cent). The sample thus seems to corroborate the assumption that there were specific contexts that favoured the use of modality, while other contexts may have been less suited for modal expressions. Tables 8.11 to 8.13 summarize a more detailed distribution pattern for each year, newspaper and edition. As in Table 8.10, the findings have been presented in terms of absolute occurrence. There are two values shown in every bracket, separated by a slash. The first value indicates the total number of modal reports, while the second value represents the overall number of reports found in that bracket. If one looks at absolute occurrence of reports in 1701, War appears to be Table 8.10 Absolute and relative occurrence of modality by contextual domain (1701-1791) Domain

Total Reports

Modal Reports

%

War Politics Social Life Commerce & Trade Entertainment & Features Accidents & Disasters Crimes Announcements Other Total

156 51 51 38 26 24 24 18 3 391

124 26 35 14 24 21 15 10 2 271

79 51 69 37 92 88 63 56 66 69

Table 8.11 Modal news reports by absolute and relative occurrence and sorted by topic (1701) PMN 852

Total

Thematic Context

FPT 884

FPT 888

PBY 897

PMN 851

War Politics Social Life Commerce & Trade Accidents & Disasters Crimes Announcements Entertainment & Features Other Total

21/22 3/7 4/5 1/2 1/1 -/I -

10/10 7/9 3/10 3/5 4/5 6/8

9/12

20/28 67/81

1/2 1/2 -/I -

3/7 5/6 5/6 1/1 -

2/7 3/4 1/1 _

-

-

16/24

23/32

-/2 2/4 -/I

-/I 30/38 21/36

_ 26/40

14/36 22/28 8/13 2/4 2/3 1/3 -/I -/I

116/170

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Table 8.12 Modal news reports by absolute and relative occurrence and sorted by topic (1741) Thematic Context

CEA179 CEA265 CJL 758 CJL 759 Total Januarys July 23 January 10 March 28

War Commerce & Trade Accidents & Disasters Crimes Social Life Announcements Politics Entertainment & Features Other Total

14/15 1/6 4/4

32/44 4/9 4/5

4/6 - /3 8/8

4/7 1/1 -

54/72 6/19 16/17

-/2 3/8 2/4 3/3 -

5/5 1/2 2/3 -

1/1 2/3 3/3 -

5/10 2/2 2/2 -/3 2/2

10/17 7/13 8/12 6/9 2/2

1/1 28/43

1/1 49/69

18/24

16/27

2/2 111/163

Table 8.13 Modal news reports by absolute and relative occurrence and sorted by topic (1791) Thematic Context

EVM

Entertainment & Features Social Life Commerce & Trade Politics Crimes Accidents & Disasters Announcements War Other Total

22/23 6/10 -/6 6/6 2/4 3/3 1/3 3/3 43/58

the largest domain in most editions. Some domains are consistently high in all or most editions, such as Commerce, Social Life and Politics; others occur in small numbers in single editions only (Accidents, Crimes, Entertainment & Features). The total figures in the last column imply a clear predominance of the domains War, Politics, Social Life and Commerce & Trade, thus reflecting the exact trend found for the whole sample corpus. In relative terms, War still occurs at the top with 82 per cent, followed by Social Life (79 per cent) and Commerce & Trade (39 per cent). All other domains do not occur regularly enough to be considered in the count. The

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figures in 1701, therefore, suggest that only two domains can be regarded as favouring modality, namely War and Social Life. Of these two, only War figures among the first three top categories in the corpus. In 1741, one can equally see clear thematic preferences in every issue as regards overall attention given to a domain. Unlike the previous sample, War shows significant peaks only in two of four editions (the Champion, 1741CEA00179 and 1741CEA00265), while in the Country Journal we find more Crimes (1741CJL00759) and Accidents & Disasters (1741CJL00758). Not all domains are found in all editions, although news reports seem to be more regularly distributed in 1741 than forty years before. The only domain that is consistently low is Entertainment & Features. The stable distribution in 1741 makes it more difficult to speak of thematic trends apart from the expected high outcome of war-related news. The picture changes drastically if we look at the proportion of modal reports in the sample. Here, we find two domains which figure significantly higher than the corpus average of 69 per cent. These are Accidents & Disasters (94 per cent) and War (75 per cent). While most other categories range between 54 and 67 per cent, only commercial news falls significantly below the 50 per cent mark (32 per cent). Entertainment & Features cannot be rated in this context as its occurrence is too low. In 1741, therefore, two domains seem to clearly advance modality in their reports: War and Accidents & Disasters whereas the domain C & T seems to inhibit modality (Commerce & Trade). It is more difficult to find significant results in 1791. In terms of absolute numbers, Entertainment & Features supersedes every other category by more than twice their occurrence. All other domains show figures of 10 or less reports. If one considers modal reports only, one notices a high turnout in Entertainment & Features (96 per cent). One may conclude from this result that Entertainment & Features naturally correlates with a high use of modality. Trends are more difficult to detect in the other categories, but it seems noteworthy that none of the six commercial reports contain any modality at all, while all other categories include at least the odd modal report in their sample. 5 Modality Patterns In the previous section, I analysed the distribution of modality in major contextual domains of the eighteenth century. In this final section, I will refine these results by looking at the detailed modality patterns that appear in every contextual domain. Reports often do not only contain one type of modality but consist of a combination of types. If combinations are used regularly in certain contexts, we can speak of modality patterns. The present section will investigate whether reports from the same domain show such patterns, and whether some patterns and constellations were particularly productive in early news discourse. The detailed results of the analysis are attached in Tables 8.14 to 8.16 at the end of the section.

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The total number of modality combinations differs from sample to sample. There are 19 combinations in the sample from 1741, 15 in 1701, but only 13 at the end of the century. Between 1701 and 1741, the favoured types of modality are hearsay evidentials and evaluative heightening and softening. These two forms occur alone in more than 50 per cent of all reports, and combine in another 10 per cent of the instances. The situation is quite different in 1791, where evaluative heightening comes only second after ironic modality. Epistemic modality plays a less prominent role in the sample. Despite the range of different types of modality available to news editors, it seems that one type of modality per report was generally preferred over complex combinations. This trend is evident in all samples and ranges, from 54 per cent in 1701 to 65 per cent in 1741 and 71 per cent in 1791. It is possible that this trend was increasing in the course of the century. In 1701 and 1741, epistemic modality appears as the predominant type of modality in the corpus. Epistemicity occurs either alone in hearsay and confidence markers or in various combinations in conjunction with evaluative, causal and deontic modality. In both years, epistemic modality is present in more than 70 per cent of all instances and in most combinations found. This picture changes when we look at the year 1791. Although most combinations still involve epistemicity, the total share of instances including epistemic markers drops to under 30 per cent in the corpus. This drop, in turn, correlates with an increase in evaluative modality, which will be addressed in detail below (section 5.5). 5.1 War The domain of War is by far the largest group of reports in the years 1701 to 1741, and will therefore be looked at first. War, as understood here, comprises all reports that relate in some way to ongoing conflicts between countries. If one tries to group war-related reports according to their core meaning, one can see that they centre around either military action or the political process running up to or following from such action. Under the first type, one finds news that offers insight into the military engagement between armies, ground movements of troops and ships, sensitive intelligence or espionage relating to enemy or befriended states, and preparatory/precautionary measures taken by the military (e.g. fortifications, erection of camps, military appointments and strategic deployments, victualling). The second type stresses the planning or strategic dimension of war and the political process involved in it. In this category, one finds news about important state visits, meetings, resolutions and orders as well as more in-depth analyses of the general situations and conditions brought about by a specific war or conflict. The data from 1701 and 1741 imply that the domain of War seems essentially connected to an epistemic news discourse. Epistemic modality is present in between eight and nine out of ten reports in 1701 and 1741.

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Although epistemic modality often combines with other types in the samples, the standard report prompted by war-related news typically contained single hearsay evidentials or confidence markers, or a combination of the two epistemic forms. While this trend emerges in both years, it is more strongly evident in 1741. In 1701, evaluative modality plays a far more prominent role in war reports, either alone or in combination with hearsay and confidence markers. This is a striking difference from 1741, which might suggest a growing importance of epistemicity in war-related contexts. The sample from 1791 is not suitable for comparison because of insufficient data, as there are only three reports in this category. The following examples illustrate the most important combinations relevant to the context of war. Hearsay evidentials: 'We have Advice from Paris, that a Grand Council has been lately held at Versailles about the King of Prussia's entering the Dutchy of Silesia, and another relating to the Court of Spain's Pretensions to certain Territories belonging to the House of Austria in Italy.' (1741CEA00179) Confidence markers: 'They confirm that the Czar went two days before the Fight towards Plescow, with design to bring to his Camp a reinforcement of 25,000 men, and a Train of Artillery.' (1701PMN00852) Hearsay evidentials/confidence markers: 'We talk likewise dubiously of the arrival of Prince Louis of Baden, because, we hear, he insists upon Security for a Compensation [...].' (1701FPT00884) Epistemic markers/evaluative heightening. 'From New-York they write, that the Spaniards had got a great many Privateers at Sea, particularly in the Windward Passage, the Way of the Ships from the Continent to Jamaica.' (1741CEA00179) Evaluative heightening, 'His Majesty is fully resolved to make Peace with Sweden.' (1701PMN00852)

But the context of war does not only facilitate epistemicity. The overall proportion of modal reports in war-related news suggests further that this context facilitated the use of modality in general. In both 1701 and 1741, the percentage of modal reports in news assigned to the category of war is significantly higher than the average result in the samples. Modality, epistemicity and war, one can conclude, are inseparably linked with one another in the first half of the eighteenth century. Where the context of war is missing, one can expect modality markers to be absent too, or at least to be less frequent than in news published in times of high alert 5.2 Politics Politics and Social Life constitutes the second largest domains in the corpus with regard to absolute occurrences of modal reports. I shall look at Politics

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first. As previously discussed, the contextual domain of Politics is not evenl distributed over the years. Political topics occur in nearly every fourth report found in 1701, but drop down to a tenth or below in the years 1741 and 1791. Even if the nature of political reporting may have changed during the century, one may assume that the differences found in the three samples are due to the selected editions rather than to general trends in the eighteenth-century press. One might even argue that the interest in domestic political issues was stronger at the end of the century than in the early years, not least because of censorship regulations in place over the century. There are several trends that we can read from the data in Tables 8.14 to 8.16. Firstly, the proportion of modal reports increased in the course of the century. In 1701 less than 50 per cent of all political and social reports qualified as modal reports. By 1741, already two-thirds carried one or more types of modality, while in 1791 every report in the corpus can be classified as modal. This result seems to correlate with the increase in evaluative and causal modality over the years. While in 1701 most political reports only include epistemic markers, the distribution of epistemic and evaluative reports is already balanced in 1741. By 1791, reports from political contexts tend to feature both evaluative and causal modality, alongside epistemic markers. Furthermore, we can see a general trend towards greater complexity of political reports. This result becomes more significant if we take into account the marked rise in report length to over nine sentences per political report in 1791 (compared to a general average of less than four sentences in that year). These findings seem to indicate that political reporting became an entirely new line of writing in the course of the century. The press was no longer a second-hand reporter of ongoing events in parliament, but became a first-hand source that tried to take part in the political process actively. In such discursive contexts, one can expect argumentative, causal and evaluative structures to become especially prominent in political news that discusses or comments on political issues. Epistemic modality, and more specifically hearsay evidentials, are not expected to be of high importance. Examples of this trend are found in the Morning Chronicle of 1791 (1791MCR06730). The following excerpts show causal structures, evaluative modality and a combination of causal, evaluative and confidence markers: Departing from a system so long practised, at a time when the load of Taxes is beyond all precedent, and a neighbouring kingdom is making exertions to reduce the burthens of the people many millions per annum, proves that there are hidden circumstances, which the Minister thinks necessary to conceal from the public eye, and which the Representatives of the People dare not inquire into. Nothing can more strongly evince the Ministerial dread or Mr. SHERIDAN'S abilities, than the incessant abuse directed against him by the Treasury Papers.

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If the addition to the black (and, in many instances, impolitic) Roll of Taxes, arises from an intention of providing better security to the Public Creditors, the means will, in all probability, defeat the end. Hearsay evidentials may be thought appropriate in political contexts which refer to national and international relations. These reports are likely to be more descriptive in nature and their credibility may, to some extent, be assumed to depend on the reliability of the sources. The following translation of a Petition delivered lately to the Prince Bishop of Munster, in Westphalia (who is also Elector of Cologn), cannot but be acceptable to every friend to lawful liberty [...]. (1791MCR06730) It is possible that an analysis conducted on a larger scale would reveal that the domain of Politics did not facilitate modality much before the second half of the century and did not, like War, function as one of the main motors in the evolution of editorial stance. By the time it did, it may probably have been causal modality that benefited most from the change. 5.3 Social Life With just over two-thirds of modal reports in the three samples, the category Social Life reaches a higher turnout of modality than Politics. This result is mainly due to the sample from 1701 whose share of modal reports lies near the 80 per cent mark. This is significantly higher than in 1741 (54 per cent) and 1791 (60 per cent), but ties in with the overall importance of the category in that particular year. On the whole, modality in social reports corresponds exactly to the corpus average of 69 per cent. Thus, Social Life cannot be said to have facilitated the use of modality in early news discourse, although the results for 1701 show that modality can occur with high frequency locally. Further analysis would be needed to determine whether there were specific local causes that warranted such a difference. A further breakdown of results by year and type of modality reveals that Social Life tends to be predominantly evaluative and limited in complexity. This result is clearly evident in two of the three time samples (1701 and 1791). In 1701, evaluative heightening occurs in practically all modal reports. Half of these instances contain single evaluative markers, while in the other half they combine with only one type of modality, preferably hearsay evidentials or confidence markers. Hearsay evidentials alone occur infrequently, as do confidence and causal markers. In 1791, the picture is equally unambiguous: evaluative modality occurs in all cases and only one instance combines with hearsay evidentials. The results for 1741 are less conclusive, although they confirm the importance of both evaluative and epistemic modality in this domain. Social news from 1741 either contains single epistemic markers or forms of evaluative heightening, or combinations of the two. The examples below show the most typical forms of social reports found in the corpus:

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Evaluative heightening: "The Duke of LEEDS is much recovered from his indisposition with a severe cold; his Grace yesterday transacted business at his Office for the Foreign Department, Whitehall'.

(1791MCR06730) Evaluative heightening/hearsay evidentials: 'We hear that according to the Application of the Government of Scodand, Harris a Surgeon, the Author of a false, scandalous and blasphemous Libel, call'd, A Defence of the Scots abdicating Darien, is forbid to be imploy'd in any Post in his Majesty's Service'. (1701FPT00884) Evaluative heightening/confidence markers: The new King has been proclaimed throughout this Kingdom, with unusual solemnities, and that Prince is expected here with all the impatience imaginable, the People being generally perswaded, that our Crown will recover under the Reign of his Majesty, its former splendour'. (1701PMN00851)

Not least because of the poor variation of modality in this domain, it is difficult to find more refined patterns. The few types of modality occur in all the sub-topics of the sample (e.g. charitable events, appointments, burials, celebrity news, illness, etc.). One might imagine that a larger sample would reveal a low turnout of combinations including hearsay evidentials in which a strong evaluative point is desired. This is because hearsay evidentials can have the effect of diminishing the sensational impact of the news. The momentum in the following report would be capped if it started with 'We hear that...' or 'Letters from Spain say that...': A pleasant Adventure happened at Cordoua, upon the King's being proclaimed there: The Inquisitor of the Place would needs have a Canopy over him during the Ceremony, which the Magistracy would not allow and so went and proclaimed the King in another part of the Town, leaving the Inquisitor and his Canopy alone. (1701FPT00888)

5.4 Commerce & Trade

Commerce & Trade, although the fourth largest domain in terms of total occurrences, contains the lowest number of modal reports in all nine domains analysed here. With its 39 per cent of modal reports, Commerce & Trade clearly pulls the overall average of modality in the corpus down. One can further see a constant decline in modality over the years. At the beginning of the century, more than every second commercial report included expressions of modality. By the middle of the century, the proportion fell to approximately one third. In 1791, none of the reports classified as commercial showed any modal behaviour. Modality, if present at all, tends to be simple and epistemic. Most modal reports in this domain contain either hearsay evidentials or confidence markers. Hearsay evidentials may further combine with evaluative heightening, but this occurs so infrequently in both years that we cannot speak of a proper trend. Nor can we infer any trend from the lone instances of

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evaluative or causal modality in 1701. The following examples illustrate the different types found in the corpus: Hearsay evidentials: 'They tell us from Brussels of the 27th instant, that the 12000 Sacks of Flour and Rye [...].' (1741CEA00265) Confidence markers: 'As the Neptune and Tygress [...] have taken in their silver [...] 'tis now believ'd [...].' (1741CEA00265) Evaluative heightening: The Price of Corn is much fallen all over this Kingdom, and what is brought in from abroad is quickly bought up.' (1701FPT00884)

The results confirm the impression that commercial contexts primarily inspire informative reports which, if at all, include authenticity devices in the form of hearsay evidentials. These contexts do not encourage further evaluation or commentary but become increasingly factual over the years. 5.5 Entertainment & Features Entertaining commentaries and feature stories refer to contextual domains or situations that are intended to interest and entertain, rather than inform, the audience. Thus, feature stories do not have to relate to current events but can pick on any subject that appeals to the humour and general interests of readers. Typical examples of feature stories in the corpus are articles relating to science, experiments, geographical information, theology or philosophy. While feature stories may deal with basically any topic, entertaining commentaries deal with current affairs but emphasize a comical, humorous aspect of the news. Entertainment & Features is practically absent in the first two years of the corpus. There are only three reports found between 1701 and 1741. This trend changes radically in 1791, when entertaining news suddenly tops the list in both modal and non-modal categories. The change, it seems, has to do with the rise of non-factual style, which emerged as a result of a more liberal approach to news publishing. In the early days of news publishing, all reports not strictly factual or informative were automatically excluded from print. News media were not meant to satisfy the reading interests of the public but to faithfully inform them about current affairs. Hence, entertainment was not deemed an appropriate purpose of a news text. Entertainment and feature articles are clearly distinguishable in the corpus for their lack of hard news content. At the end of the century, these articles were often grouped into specific newspaper sections as, for example, in the case of the 'Glass of Fashion' in the Morning Chronicle. The results in the three samples suggest that non-factual coverage in the daily press probably emerged some time in the second half of the eighteenth century and quickly became established as a regular feature. The results further imply that non-factual news content facilitated the use of modality.

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In fact, the category Entertainment & Features includes the highest proportion of modal reports in the entire sample (more than 90 per cent). This result is not surprising since it can be presumed that the very nature of entertainment invites or prompts editorial feedback. The majority of entertaining news reports have a twisted sense, which in most cases is achieved by irony (implied oppositeness or hidden meaning). Irony can take different shapes and forms and is either traditionally semantic or involves other syntactic and textual means, including various modal strategies. In ironic news or entertaining news in general, all forms of modality contribute directly to enhancing an ironic point. One frequent strategy found in the corpus is rhetorical intensification through an explicit, exaggerated or figurative use of language, often followed by a comical point. This particular strategy produces the effect of ridiculing a state of affairs or a person. The examples below summarize the different forms of irony and mockery found in the corpus: Irony. 'Mr. MERRY is perhaps the most universal genius of the present age; his abilities shine equally in Ode, Pantomime, and Tragedy.'

(1791MCR06730) Irony including hearsay euidentials and confidence markers:. 'The Duke of MONTROSE, we are told, is a constant attendant on his Majesty. No man will dispute the disinterestedness of his Grace's loyalty, who knows that he enjoys places and patronage to the amount of only 20,0001. a year as the price of his attendance.' (1791MCR06730) Pointed comment 'Mr. BOSWELL'S appetite for fame is so little subject to any caprices, that whether the public laughs with him or at him, it is equally gratified.'

(1791MCR06730) Pointed comment including explicit vocabulary. 'Why not allow the miserable authors of the present age to enjoy their own puffing without interruption? Selfapprobation has always been allowed as a consolation for the world's neglect.' (1791MCR06730) Pointed comment including figurative language. 'Mr. Alderman LE MESURIER is convinced, that the present Ministers, as well as the public in general, have long been in a state of intoxication, therefore strongly recommends a beverage of thirty-six gallons made from one bushel of malt, as the only remedy to bring them to their sober senses.'

(1791MCR06730) There are also a few instances in this category that involve neither humour nor irony, but they are extremely rare. Examples can only be found in the first two time samples, and they all deal with scientific matters. One such example is the announcement of a 'travelling machine' running without horses: We hear that on Wednesday next the travelling Machine, which goes without Horses, is to go from London to St. Alban and back again, in four Hours and a

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Half, for a considerable Sum of Money. Many Wagers are laid that the Machine does not get up Highgate Hill, without any visible Assistance. (1741CJL00759) 5.6 Accidents & Disasters

Accidents & Disasters show the second highest proportion of modal reports in the corpus, preceded only by Entertainment & Features. With a total of nearly 90 per cent of modal reports in the three samples, news relating to accidents or disasters lies significantly above the corpus average and thus can be said to be a productive context for modality in news discourse. Accidents & Disasters show a peak in the sample of 1741. This peak has natural causes, as there were severe weather conditions in England and on the continent at the turn of that year. In the other samples, Accidents & Disasters do not seem to play a major role. There are only four reports in 1701 and three in 1791, respectively. This low result makes it difficult to speak of a diachronic trend. The data imply, however, that there was a strong presence of modality in Accidents & Disasters at least from 1741 onward. In the sample of 1701, only two of four reports can be counted as modal reports. One would not be surprised if more data revealed a gradual rise over the century. The results show that the modal character of Accidents & Disasters tends to be primarily evaluative. Evaluative modality - usually for heightening purposes - is present in 17 of 21 modal reports, either alone or together with epistemic modality. Scattered examples of single epistemic reports, evaluative-deontic combinations and more complex forms are also found, although they do not occur regularly enough to indicate a trend. In terms of diachronic evolution, one might imagine a general trend away from hearsay evidentials towards evaluative heightening. There seem to be signs of such a trend in the data, with both reports in 1701 being epistemic and all three examples in 1791 evaluative. But this claim would again need further research to be corroborated. Below are two examples that illustrate the two important forms: Evaluative heightening: 'YORK Saturday se'nnight in the morning the Harvey Cook, of London, a fine West Indiaman, in endeavouring to make the port of Newcastle, mistook the lights, and was, by the violence of the wind and a very high sea, driven upon the rocks under the Spanish battery. The Captain and the crew, with very great difficulties saved their lives. The vessel is since gone to pieces.' (1791MCR06730) Evaluative heightening and hearsay evidentials: 'All our Advices from Holland, Flanders, and the Part of Germany bordering on those Counties, are filled with dismal Accounts of the dreadful Ravages made by the overflowing of the Rivers; at Bois-le-due in particular, the Waterfront as high as the Roofs of the Houses the 24th of last Month N. S. and a great many People with Abundance of Cattle were drowned.' (1741CEA00179)

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As can be seen in the data, the conditions that facilitated evaluation in Accidents & Disasters were events - local or foreign - that caused fear, consternation, shock or disgust. Under such conditions, the question of the truth value of the news was often left unconsidered. Instead, the emotional impact it had on the writer comes to the fore. Examples from 1741 are fires, overflowing rivers, earthquakes or tragic accidents. The consistently high frequency of evaluative modality in these situational contexts suggests that Accidents & Disasters seem to almost always prompt an emotional response in the writer. It can be assumed that the presence of evaluation markers in this context is determined by the degree of involvement felt by the writer. It does not appear from the data that the presence of such heightening expressions is linked to more specific situations of use. 5.7 Crimes With a total of fifteen occurrences, it becomes difficult to see trends in the data. It is surprising, though, that modality in news related to crime only occurs in a little over 60 per cent of all instances, falling below the corpus average. Thus, the results in the three samples do not corroborate the idea that Crimes facilitated the use of modality perceptively. As with Accidents & Disasters above, Crimes show a peak in 1741 but occur on an average to low basis before and after that date. There is no evidence in the data that points to possible causes of such a peak in 1741. Nor is there any specific type of modality that would crystallize as the dominant form. Crimes show a fairly balanced pattern in all three years. They are normally epistemic, evaluative or mixed epistemic-evaluative. There is no diachronic trend visible in the data, although we would have expected a rise in evaluative heightening over the years. A closer look at the data reveals that the low turnout overall seems to depend partly on the nature of some of the crime reports. Lists of convictions with brief details of the crime, for example, do not lend themselves to modal stance, since their function is primarily to inform the readers about basic facts, not to break the news to them. But even in serious crime reports, modality is not always present. Crime reports distinguish themselves through their precise and chronological description of events, rather than through emotional reaction to them or discussion of their truth value. The examples below illustrate the main combinations found in the samples: Hearsay evidentials: Yesterday came Advice from Hertford, that the Felons under Sentence of Death attempted on Tuesday Morning early to make their Escape; one having got his Irons off, knock'd down the Turnkey, on which an Alarm was given, and Assistance coming with Arms, one of the Felons was shot to the Ground: The Felon with his Irons off, who attack'd the Turnkey, was hang'd up immediately at a Sign-Post near the Prison, and the others were carried to the Gallows and executed to prevent farther Mischief. (1741CEA00265)

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Evaluative heightening. 'A Discovery has been made to the Carolina Merchants of a large Gang of Fellows, that for some time past have robb'd them of surprising Quantities of Rice; against one of whom, particularly a Victualler by the Water-side, there is a Charge in the Information of no less than three Tons in a very short time.' (1741CEA00265) Hearsay evidential and evaluative heightening. ' 'tis said that a Box, which weighs very heavy, is, with other things directed to the French Ambassador here, seised and carried to the Custom-house.' (1701FPT00884) Confidence markers and evaluative heightening. 'Last Night a young Woman was found dead, with her Throat cut from Ear to Ear, at a House facing Lincoln's Inn back Gate; but whether it was her own Act, or any other Person's is not yet known.' (1741CJL00759)

5.8 Announcements Announcements present a similar picture to Crimes. Slightly over half of the instances can be counted to the category of modal reports. Thus, Announcements can be said neither to have facilitated nor impeded the development of modality in news discourse. There is no diachronic trend visible in the samples, except for another peak in the year 1741, suggesting that this year shows the most balanced distribution of domains in the corpus. Unlike Crimes, above, Announcements clearly favour evaluation. Practically all announcements carrying modality include expressions of evaluative heightening; the two instances which involve causal modality make a cornmissive point, as shown in the second example below. Epistemicity, on the other hand, is completely absent in the corpus. This is not a surprising result, since the truth value is naturally presupposed in the speech act of announcing. Announcements in the sample typically include classical birth, wedding and death notices. In these notices, evaluation may occur in praising a person's achievements and life. Particularly unusual deaths or births may lead to evaluative elaboration, as the first example illustrates: Evaluative heightening. Testerday about Noon died Mr. Thomas Rivers, an ingenious Chaser, one of the Court Assistants of the Cutlers Company, and Colonel of the Lumber Troop: This unhappy Gentleman had the Misfortune to fall into Fleet-Ditch about three Weeks ago, which occasion'd his Death.' (1741CEA00265) Causal modality and evaluative heightening. 'We are unavoidably obliged to postpone PICTURES of HIGH LIFE, No. IV. till Monday.' (1791MCR06730)

6 Conclusion In Chapter 8,1 analysed the use and development of editorial intervention as an example of microtextual innovation in early news discourse. For this

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Table 8.14 Combinations of modality markers by frequency of occurrence and thematic context (1701)* Thematic Context

Total

epistemic hearsay

War Politics Commerce Social Accidents/Disasters

18 7 5 2 1 33

evaluative heightening / softening

Social War Announcements Commerce Politics

9 7

1

1 1

19 6 6 1 1 1 1 16 10 1 11 3 3 1 7

epistemic hearsay + evaluative softening / heightening

Social War Accidents/Disasters Commerce Crimes Politics

epistemic hearsay + confidence + evaluative heightening

War Politics

epistemic confidence

Politics War Social

epistemic confidence + evaluative heightening

Social Politics

epistemic hearsay + confidence

War

3 1 4 4

epistemic hearsay + causal

War

4

epistemic hearsay + confidence + causal

War

4

evaluative heightening + causal

War Commerce

2 1 3

causal

War Social

2 1 3

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epistemic confidence + causal

War

2

evaluative heightening + deontic

Crimes

1

epistemic hearsay + deontic

War

1

epistemic hearsay + evaluative heightening + deontic

War

1

Total

114

* The left column in the table refers to the combination pattern found in the modal report, while the columns on the right show the contextual domains in which the pattern was found, along with the frequency with which it occurred. The different combinations are listed by descending frequency in the table.

purpose, the concept of stance and modality was introduced first and various examples of modal stance in news discourse were given. Then, text samples from the period 1701 to 1791 were searched for the presence of modality markers and the modality markers were further examined for their linguistic behaviour in news texts. The distributional patterns that emerged from this analysis provided quantitative evidence about the importance of specific modality markers and their occurrence in early news discourse. The results were later correlated with various news contexts relevant to the period studied. This was done by assigning all modal news reports to major contextual categories found in the corpus. The resulting modality patterns were to provide detailed information about when, where and in which combinations specific modality markers were used in early news discourse, and which situations may have had a facilitating or inhibiting influence on the spread and development of modal stance. The results confirm the initial assumption that the study of modal stance can be meaningful, and offer suggestions for a number of trends underway in early news discourse. Firstly, the analysis corroborates quantitatively that modality was likely to occur in specific news contexts. It was found that modality favourably correlated with situations that broke suddenly and unexpectedly, often leaving the writers in shock and awe at the dramatic course of events. Modality also scored highly in news contexts that were politically or socially controversial and that encouraged news writers to persuade or entertain their readership. While modality was found to occur in all contextual domains analysed in the chapter, there were some that matched the above criteria better than others. A high rate of modality, for example, was found in reports dealing with accidents/disasters or war. Modality, similarly, peaked in categories such as social/political gossip or humour. In other words, modality was likely to be used in news that was either inspired by critical states of affairs or reflected a high degree of human interest One domain which seemed to

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Table 8.15 Combinations of modality markers by frequency of occurrence and thematic context (1*741) Thematic Context

Total

epistemic hearsay

War Commercial Crimes Accidents/Disasters Social Other

27 4 3 2 2 1 39

evaluative heightening / softening

Announcements Accidents/Disasters Crimes War Social Politics Entertainment

7 5 3 3 2 1 1 22

epistemic hearsay + evaluative softening / heightening

War Accidents/Disasters Crimes Politics Commercial

5 4 2 1 1 13

epistemic hearsay + confidence

War Politics Accidents/Disasters

3 9 1

6 epistemic confidence

War Commercial

5 1 6

epistemic confidence + evaluative heightening

War Accidents/Disasters Social Crimes

1 1 1 1 4

epistemic hearsay + confidence + evaluative heightening

War Entertainment Social

2 1 1 4

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epistemic confidence + evaluative heightening + causal

War

2

evaluative heightening + causal + deontic

War Politics

1 1 2

epistemic hearsay + evaluative heightening War + causal

1

epistemic hearsay + evaluative ironic

Social

1

epistemic hearsay + causal

War

1

epistemic hearsay + confidence + causal

War

1

evaluative heightening + causal

Other

1

evaluative heightening + deontic

Accidents/Disasters

1

Causal

Announcements

1

Deontic

Crimes

1

Total

106

involve neither factor was commercial news. Commercial news showed the lowest incidence of modality in the corpus. The analysis further revealed the types and combinations of modal markers that tended to occur in news contexts. It was shown that specific contexts motivated different forms of modal stance, such as evaluation, references to source, commitment to the truth of news, or causal and deontic logic. The data revealed a predominance of epistemic and evaluative markers in the corpus, which might reflect two important functions of the press in the eighteenth century - to truthfully relate facts and/or to sensationalize events. There was, in general, less room for argumentation and practically none for moral conclusions. This broad distribution is apparent in the results through all years, although differences may exist between the samples as well as in individual newspapers. The data implied that sensational and causal commenting grew more important over the years, while epistemic references decreased gradually. While some differences in the data are probably due to the corpus selection, it is possible that stylistic trends or house styles in specific newspapers would affect the results if larger samples were considered. For example, consistent stylistic differences were found to exist between the Champion and the Country Journal through most domains in the year 1741. It is likely that similar trends would manifest across other publications of that year. Despite some content specialization in the newspapers from 1701, no such differences could be found in the early 1700s, suggesting that the concept of house styles was probably beginning to emerge some time between 1701 and 1741.

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Table 8.16 Combinations of modality markers by frequency of occurrence and thematic context (1791) Thematic Context

Total

evaluative ironic

Entertainment & Features

20

evaluative heightening / softening

Social Accidents & Disasters

5 3 8

epistemic hearsay + confidence

Crimes Politics

1 1 2

evaluative heightening + causal

Announcements Politics

1 1 2

epistemic hearsay + evaluative softening / heightening

Social

1

epistemic hearsay + evaluative ironic

Entertainment & Features

1

epistemic confidence

Crimes

1

epistemic hearsay + confidence + evaluative heightening

War

1

epistemic confidence + evaluative heightening + causal

Politics

1

epistemic hearsay + evaluative heightening + causal

War

1

epistemic hearsay + causal

Politics

1

epistemic confidence + causal

Entertainment & Features

1

epistemic hearsay + deontic

Politics

1

Total

41

Although a measurable impact of current affairs on the use of modality was found to exist in all samples, it is likely that unexpected discrepancies contradicting the above trends would emerge if press reports of specific events were studied individually. The reasons for such differences must probably be left unaccounted for - they may range from the current mood of the writer, the printing conditions and the staffing situation, to the time available to compile the paper.

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Notes 1. For a recent discussion of epistemicity in English conversation see also Karkkainen (2003). Karkkainen (2003:53) in fact expands Chafe's model by including further categories such as 'mental construct' and 'sensory evidence'. It seems to me, however, that Perkins' (1983:10) comment on 'slicing the same cake' applies as much to Karkkainen as to the larger categories of modality introduced in Table 8.1. 2. For an extensive treatment of epideictic rhetoric see Lockwood (1996). 3. The indirect use of modality can be seen in the following example from the Flying Post (1701FPT00884) in which the author quotes what the people of Spain said: 'The Colonel adds, That the People were all so well inform'd of the Prudence and Capacity of the King of France, Grandfather to their own King, that they say if his Majesty would be pleased to come and govern them for sometime they would willingly submit to him, being perswaded that by his good Government their Affairs would speedily be re-established.' 4. The sample corpus was first stored in a filemaker database for further annotation. The text was then divided into sentences using the original annotations from the corpus. Adjustments had to be made in various places where automatic annotation of sentence boundaries by the computer software had failed. Moreover, headlines or datelines, which counted as independent sentence units in ZEN, were excluded from the present count, as were text categories that fell outside the scope of news reporting, such as commercial advertisements and essays. Reports were determined on the basis of completeness in terms of coherence and cohesion.

Conclusion

The aim of this study was to examine the historical concept of style and procedures of stylistic analysis in early news discourse, by applying relevant perspectives to news texts published in London during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Style in news discourse, it was shown, cannot be seen as a fixed parameter but rather as the result of a complex interplay of factors that generate different stylistic realizations and effects. The factors, realizations and effects that have been analysed in this study are only small fragments - pieces of a puzzle - of the entire process at work. At the same time, they offer a glimpse into the fundamental mechanisms of news discourse and the principles by which this discourse is organized. It was the purpose of this study to reveal some of these mechanisms and principles that were involved in the production of early news, and to study the patterns of their development over time. The study was intended to show that the genre was essentially governed by a set of universal parameters, or constraints, which influenced or reinforced the perception and use of style. These were believed to be four principal dimensions: the cultural/institutional dimension, the technological dimension, the social dimension and the situational dimension. These dimensions were assumed to have shaped the contemporary understanding of style and trajectories of stylistic change. Of course the constellations of these dimensions varied at different times, but they were understood to channel the concept of style into specific directions. The study was further based on the assumption that style in early news discourse not only reflected motivated choice by the writer, but was fundamentally rooted in the dialectics between language conventions and deviations from these conventions. The notion of style that emerged from this image is that of a mental activity reflecting the endeavour to innovate or change conventionalized patterns of discourse within the boundaries of acceptability or marketability. Thus, style revealed itself as an underlying state of mind, a striving for improvement and an exploration of new dimensions. The study of innovation in news discourse, therefore, was believed to play a key role in the diffusion of stylistic trends. While the external conditions that influenced style may have changed in the course of time, the

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underlying concept - the motor that kept the genre developing - did not. This differentiated concept of style, which defines it both as a state of mind and as motivated language-externally, reflects universal characteristics of the discourse. The study was divided into parts and chapters devoted to key areas of analysis of historical news discourse. Chapter 1 marked out the stylistic terrain of historical news discourse by outlining three areas of considerations which form the backdrop to the historical stylistic analysis of early mass-produced texts. These areas were methodological implications, questions relating to genre-specificity, and the corpus-linguistic dimension. In the first part of the chapter, a methodology was proposed that takes account of the specific problems of historical stylistic research. The approach is to be understood as an additional perspective to current linguistic disciplines, highlighting in particular the potential of stylistic foregrounding as an explanatory principle in the study of stylistic change. The second part of the chapter examined cultural and institutional parameters in news discourse of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The analysis showed that news discourse was a highly standardized form of discourse that was subjected to rigorous linguistic policies inhibiting the creative flow and free development of the press. As journalists' output was constantly monitored and checked against rules and regulations, the stylistic development of news discourse was marked fundamentally by standardization or harmonization endeavours rather than by diversity and 'custom-made' solutions for individual speech situations. In other words, style was appreciated (also politically) if it was applicable or relevant to news discourse in general. The second part of the chapter conveyed the conclusion that the study of style in early news discourse was ideally pursued along the lines of conformity to the rules and standards in which the genre was embedded. Based on these introductory considerations, Part I addressed the social dimension involved in stylistic innovation, analysing sociohistorical factors and their patterns of correlation with stylistic factors in a defined body of texts. Chapter 2 specifically addressed the degree of stylistic identity and variation that existed in early news publications and provided explanations for the success or failure of certain sociohistorical and stylistic constellations. The analysis of sociohistorical patterns corroborated the assumptions put forward in Chapter 1 that stylistic innovation reflected the degree of non-conformity to the stylistic code. Success was often associated with provocation, linguistically as well as thematically. At the same time, the concept of innovation changed as the factors that were associated with innovative style became routinized in the press; this change, however, was not a sudden movement but the result of a slow and gradual process over years. Part I implicitly suggested that the role of controversy should be regarded as a key factor in the diffusion of stylistic innovation, and might be the subject of future research in the area. Future research might corroborate the assumption put forward in this study that stylistic innovation

CONCLUSION

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correlates with social constellations arising from situations of conflict and confrontation. Part I further showed that, from early on, a distinct stylistic profile was positively appreciated by the audience, and preferred to a mere compilation of news. Maintaining a stylistic profile required constant editing of incoming reports to make them stylistically consistent with one another. This included avoiding thematic clashes, sorting of news and mails, and embedding them in editorial comments. The tendency towards stylistic identity became more pronounced in the course of the years and finally led to increasingly specialized papers (e.g. political journals) and markets (e.g. popular and quality press). At the same time, Part I suggested that in all years a middle course was often considered more persuasive than a radical change or a new stylistic appearance. The most successful style in early news discourse proved to consist of moderate deviation from the common code of practice. Radical or experimental publishers, on the other hand, were often seen to fail in the market. Parts II and III were concerned with foregrounding methods associated with the technological and situational dimensions of style. Part II addressed technologically facilitated stylistic innovation in a range of text forms, covering a period of more than two hundred years of early news publishing. The two chapters of Part II explained how textual structures were introduced, and how they addressed the need for increasing visual and syntactic foregrounding in early news discourse. The textual structure of a newspaper was a novelty in news discourse, much as interlinked online websites were regarded as new at the end of the twentieth century. Both visual and syntactic trends were facilitated by technological advances that become commercially available and accessible to publishing enterprises. Part II showed that the introduction of textual structures was no sudden change, but took place in stages. It started with visual foregrounding, which was later combined with syntactic foregrounding, ultimately leading to early forms of headlines. These headlines emerged as the result of syntactic foregrounding by which emphasized parts of the news were moved into visually foregrounded areas. Thus, headlines were not additions to the news text but formed an integral part of it. This close relationship between headline and text was reinforced by graphic strategies used for visual emphasis. Part II corroborated the assumption that technologically facilitated innovation in early news discourse followed the line of least resistance and minimal effort. Innovation was introduced slowly and conservatively, and the headline grew directly and organically out of the texture of the news. More aggressive and conspicuous forms of headlines were first found in advertisements, from where they were later copied and introduced into the edited news sections. This functional split must have occurred somewhere in the first half of the eighteenth century. However, the headline combining functional information with textual appeal, as known today, did not appear before the end of the eighteenth century.

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Part III addressed the role which stylistic foregrounding played at macrotextual and microtextual levels, and examined the degree to which style may have been motivated by the actual news situation in which it occurred. In particular, Chapter 7 investigated the general organization principles of early news publications, and presented situations in which publishers did not adhere to the chronological organization of news generally practised in the eighteenth century. It further analysed the amount of attention that was paid to individual news topics and whether any patterns or regularities emerged from the data. The analysis confirmed the assumption that stylistic foregrounding, by macro-thematic movement and focus, often correlated with the importance of an event. The patterns that emerged from the analysis are likely to reflect wider trends in early news discourse which are worth pursuing in future research. At the same time, the analysis showed that the exact prediction or reconstruction of linguistic behaviour in newspapers of the time is difficult, as there were too many situational implications that influenced the process of publishing news. Chapter 8 extended the analysis to microtextual areas of stylistic foregrounding, i.e. forms of news editing at micro-level. Editing was understood to reflect the degree of modality that was present in news discourse. Different patterns of modality were first examined and then correlated with general situational domains. It was found that the distinction made between epistemic, evaluative, causal and deontic modality could be applied successfully to the corpus sample. The behaviour of these types of modality in the sample suggested that textual emphasis changed its appearance and character depending on the situation of use, the publication, and the point in time when it occurred. The results indicated that specific domains, particularly if related to shocking or controversial news with national impact, facilitated a greater use of editorial intervention than less sensational news reports. While this result is consistent throughout the years, it was also shown that there was a growing tendency towards foregrounding of entertaining information in the course of the century. At macrotextual level, this trend could be seen in the editorial sections and letters to the editor that were moved to the beginning of the newspaper or news sections, respectively; at microtextual level, the trend was reflected in the introduction of an entertaining news style. The study of style in early news publications was finally guided by methodological considerations of historical corpus-based approaches to style, addressing problem areas and constraints for such an undertaking and offering suggestions for future research in the area. The approach, or preferably approaches, taken to the object of this study leave scope for improvement in various areas. One conclusion of this study is that machinereadable corpora providing data for textlinguistic or stylistic research must take more account of the different factors that govern this genre. More comprehensive corpora would be desirable that contain a balanced amount of historical data covering the width and length of the genre under investi-

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235

gation. Highlighting such factors, the study has shown that corpus-based stylistic research can be meaningful with the corpora currently available, and is sufficient to suggest broad stylistic trends. With its interdisciplinary focus, the study has opened a new window in the analysis of early news discourse, operating at the intersection of stylistics, historical pragmatics, sociolinguistics and textlinguistics. The study has sought to combine digitalized corpus data, stylistic trends, and historical factors relevant to the evolution of news discourse. In doing so, the study has conducted two analyses simultaneously: it has described, in quantitative and qualitative terms, stylistic trends in early newspapers while, at the same time, trying to find the underlying causes for the emerging trends at every stage analysed. It is hoped that this interdisciplinary focus will stand as a challenge for future investigations into the topic.

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Taavitsainen, I. and Pahta, P. (1997), 'The Corpus of Early English Medical Writing', ICAME (International Computer Archive of Modern and Medieval English) Journal, 21, 71—8. Toolan, M. J. (2001), Narrative: a Critical Linguistic Introduction (2nd edition). London, New York: Routledge. Toolan, M. J. (ed.) (2002), Critical Discourse Analysis: Critical Concepts in Linguistics (4 vols). London, New York: Routledge. Traugott, E. C. (1989), 'On the rise of epistemic meanings in English: an example of subjectincation in semantic change'. Language, 57, 33-65. Traugott, E. C. (1995), 'Subjectincation in grammaticalization', in D. Stein and S. Wright (eds), Subjectivity and Subjectivization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 31-54. Traugott, E. C. (1996), 'Subjectification and the development of epistemic meaning: the case of promise and threaten', in T. Swan and O. J. Westvik (eds), Modality in Germanic Languages. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. pp. 185-210. Traugott, E. C. and Dasher, R. (2002), Regularity in Semantic Change. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Trimpi, W. (1962), Benjonson's Poems: A Study of the Plain Style. Stanford: University Press. van Dijk, T. A. (1988), News Analysis. Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. van Dijk, T. A. (ed.) (1997), Discourse Studies (2 vols). London: Sage. van Dijk, T. A. (1998), 'Opinions and ideologies in the press', in A. Bell and P. Garrett (eds), Approaches to Media Discourse. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 21-63. van Peer, W. (1980), 'The stylistic theory of foregrounding. A theoretical and empirical investigation'. PhD dissertation, University of Lancaster. van Peer, W. (1986), Stylistics and Psychology. Investigations of Foregrounding. London: Groom Helm.

Wales, K. (2001), A Dictionary of Stylistics (2nd edition). London: Longman. Werkmeister, L. (1963), The London Daily Press, 1772-1792. Lincoln: Uni versity of Nebraska. Werkmeister, L. (1967), A Newspaper History of England 1792-1793. Lincoln: University of Nebraska. Werlich, E. (1983), A Text Grammar of English (2nd edition). Heidelberg: Quelle und Meyer. Williams, J. B. (1908), A History of English Journalism to the Foundation of the Gazette. London: Longmans, Green. Williams, K. (1977), The English Newspaper: an Illustrated History to 1900. London: Springwood Books. Williams, R. (1961), The Long Revolution. London: Chatto and Windus. Williams, R. (1978), 'The press and popular culture: an historical perspective', in G. Boyce, J. Curran and P. Wingate (eds), Newspaper History from the Seventeenth Century to the Present Day. London: Constable, pp. 41-50.

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Williamson, G. (1960), Seventeenth-Century Contexts. London: Faber and Faber. Wodak, R. and Meyer, M. (eds) (2001), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis. London: Sage.

List of Abbreviations

Newspaper Corpora ZEN EEN RNC LC

Zurich English Newspaper Corpus Early English Newspaper Microfilms Collection Rostock Newspaper Corpus Lampeter Corpus

Abbreviations of newspaper tides from die ZEN corpus used in die study CEA CJL DPT EPT EVM FPT LCR LDP LGZ LPT MCR MOP NSE PAD PBY PMN

Champion or Evening Advertiser Country Journal Daily Post English Post Evening Mail flying Post London Chronicle London Daily Post London Gazette London Post Morning Chronicle Morning Post New State of Europe Public Advertiser Post Boy Post Man

Abbreviations of newspaper tides from RNC used in die study BLL EST DTG GRD LWN

Bell's Life in London Evening Standard Daily Telegraph Manchester Guardian Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper

250

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

MPT Morning Post NOW News of the World STD Standard TMS Times

Appendix I

The following appendix contains tides, serial numbers and dates of the newspaper editions used in this study in alphabetical and chronological order. The corpus is based on the CD-Rom edition of the ZEN (Zurich English Newspaper) Corpus, Version 1.0 (2004), except for edition No. 769 of the Country Journal (1741) and No. 334 of the Evening Mail, which have been added separately. Publications (1701): Title 1 The English Post. WITH NEWS Foreign and Domestick 2 The Flying Post: or, The POSTMASTER 3 The London Gazette 4 The London Post, And General Advertiser 5 The New State of Europe 6 The Post Boy 7 The Post Man: And the Historical Account &c.

Ref.

Serial Nos.

EPT

37,51, 55, 57,59, 62,72,83,

FPT

107, 210, 221 884, 888, 889, 890, 909,

LGZ

1067,1068 3668, 3669, 3673, 3674 3713,3715,3719,3721, 3732, 3733, 3742, 3746, 375

LPT

248, 255, 256, 264, 268, 2 319, 434

NSE PBY PMN

1,5,30 897,1066,1067,1068,1069 851,852,856,859,917,918,

919, 920, 940, 943, 944, 94 946

252

HISTORICAL CORPUS STYLISTICS

Publications (1741): Title

Ref.

8 The Champion; or, the Evening Advertiser CEA 9 The Country Journal: or, the Craftsman CJL 10 The Daily Post DPT 11 The London Daily Post, and General Advertiser 12 The London Gazette

LDP LGZ

Serial Nos.

179, 265 758, 769 6658, 6687, 6780, 6793, 6807, 6847, 6888 1938,1967, 2034, 2060, 2073, 2074, 2075, 2076 7977, 7978, 7988, 8018 8024, 8029, 8030, 8077

Publications (1791): Tide

Ref.

13 Evening Mail 14 The London Chronicle 15 The London Gazette

EVM LCR LGZ

1 6 The Morning Chronicle 1 7 The Morning Post, and Daily Advertiser 1 8 The Public Advertiser

Serial Nos.

327, 334, 380 5362, 5378, 5408 13272, 13281, 13283, 13335 MCR 6730, 6814 MOP 5600, 5712, 5714 PAD 17660, 17683, 17709

Appendix II

The following appendix contains titles, serial numbers and word counts of the corpus sections used for Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, 7 and 8 in alphabetical and chronological order. The corpus is based on the CD-Rom edition of the ZEN (Zurich English Newspaper) Corpus, Version 1.0 (2004). In Chapter 6, a third edition of the Evening Mail (1791) was added to the sample (No. 334). Newspaper Corpus (1701)

Tide and Serial Number The English Post. WITH NEWS Foreign and Domestick (EPT) (Serial Nos. 51, 55, 57, 59, 62, 72, 83,107, 210, 221) The Flying Post: or, The POST-MASTER (FPT) (Serial Nos. 884, 888, 889, 890, 909, 954,1067,1068) The London Gazette. Published by Authority (LGZ) (Serial Nos. 3668, 3669, 3673, 3674, 3713, 3715, 3719, 3721, 3732, 3733, 3742, 3746, 3757) The London Post, And General Advertiser (LPT) (Serial Nos. 248, 255, 256, 264, 268, 270, 319, 434) The New State of Europe (NSE) (Serial Nos. 1,5,30) The Post Boy (PBY) (Serial Nos. 897,1066,1067,1068,1069) The Post Man: And the Historical Account &c. (PMN) (Serial Nos. 851, 852, 856, 859, 917, 918, 919, 920, 940, 943, 944, 945, 946) Total

Word Count 27,205 22,405 40,698

23,388 11,119 13,003 35,938 173,756

254

H I S T O R I C A L CORPUS S T Y L I S T I C S

Newspaper Corpus (1741) Tide and Serial Number

Word Count

The Champion; or, the Evening Advertiser (CEA) (Serial No. 265) The Country Journal: or, the Craftsman (CJL) (Serial No. 758)

11,946

The Daily Post (DPT) (Serial Nos. 6658, 6687, 6780, 6793, 6807, 6847, 6888)

30,964

The London Daily Post, and General Advertiser (LDP) (Serial Nos. 1938,1967, 2034, 2060, 2073, 2074, 2075,2076)

42,494

The London Gazette (LGZ) (Serial Nos. 7977, 7978, 7988, 8018, 8024,8029,8030,8077)

23,920

Total

14,586

123,910

Newspaper Corpus (1791) Tide and Serial Number Evening Mail (EVM) (Serial Nos. 327, 380) The London Chronicle (LCR) (Serial Nos. 5362, 5378, 5408) The London Gazette (LGZ) (Serial Nos. 13272,13281,13283,13335) The Morning Post, and Daily Advertiser (MOP) (Serial Nos. 5600, 5712, 5741) The Public Advertiser (PAD) (Serial Nos. 17660,17683,17709) Total

Word Count 28,142 39,205 30,551 45,262 34,567 177,727

Appendix III

This appendix contains titles, serial numbers and abbreviations of newspapers included in the Rostock Newspaper Corpus in alphabetical and chronological order. The corpus is based on Schneider (2002a). Rostock Newspaper Corpus (1830-1860) Year

Newspaper

Edition No.

Abbreviation

1830

Bell's Life in London The Manchester Guardian The Morning Post News of the World The Standard The Times

452-455 453 18574; 18576 1-2 1 14113-14115

BLL GRD MPT NOW STD TMS

1860

The Daily Telegraph The Evening Standard Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper The Manchester Guardian The Morning Post The Times

1408 11180 908 Jan. 2 26849 23505

DTG EST LWN GRD MPT TMS

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Index

abbreviated language 163 abbreviated phrase structures 142 Accidents and Disasters domain 212-15, 223-6, 228-30 Account of the Physical Development of Journals 16 accuracy 86,106 addressee-determined headlines 121 address headlines 122 adjuncts 146-8,150-2,154,156-7,159 Advancement of Learning 23 adverbials 201 advertisements 3,10, 40, 76, 77, 82, 85-6,91,106,109,113,120,124, 129,131,134,138,139,159,160,184, 189 affect 94, 197,198 aktualisace 8 alethic modality 196 allegories 21, 49 Andrews, Alexander 16 anecdotes 99 annotation 45, 46, 76, 115, 231 announcements 40,122, 151, 162 Announcements domain 212-14, 225, 228, 229 annual reports 32 anomalies 169 anonymous publications 38, 44 Aphorisms on the Composition of Histories 24 appointments 216, 220 appreciation 197,198, 201 argumentation 26,92, 95,197, 210, 229 argument consistency 78, 80, 83 article length 93,175 arts sections 189 Ashmole, Elias 30

associated category 152,154 association 141 attribution 121,126,127,134, 201 attributive headlines 121-3, 126-28, 134-9 authenticating devices 92,192, 221 Bacon, Francis 23-6, 49 balanced profile 66, 81, 84,100,104,105, 109 banning 18, 57, 61,92, Bates, Henry 68 binary application steps 58 births 42, 78, 94, 225 blocks 116,119,120,131,133 Blundeville, Thomas 22, 23 Bodleian Library 28, 29, 30 bold type 95,116,127,140,146,147,150, 160, 162, 183, 187 book reviews 89; see also reviews boring/dullness criterion 60, 62 boulomaic modality 196,198 breaking news 85, 171, 173,180, 184,189, 192 British Chronicle 70 British Gazette and Sunday Monitor 17 British Library 27, 28, 29, 50 British Museum 29 broadsheet papers 74, 75 burials 220 Burney, Charles 29 Burney Collection 29, 30, 50 Burney-Nichols Collection 28, 29, 30 Burney-Nichols libraries 28 business news 94 bylines 121, 122,139,149 camp reports 170, 171 captions 113,114,138,140,142

258

INDEX

carelessness criterion 60, 62 Catalogue of Early News Periodicals 29 cataphoric references 199 categorization 28, 78, 79, 81, 83, 85, 95, 198; see also classification causality 198,199, 202, 203, 208, 211 causal markers 219 causal modality 196-7,199, 206-11, 225 Caxtonian style 87 CDA, see critical discourse analysis celebrity news 220 censorship 3, 15, 17-20, 46, 60, 61, 65, 218 Champion 64, 65, 69,81,84,92-7,108,122, 130,172,173,181,193,199, 201, 205, 206,210,211,215,229 charitable events 220 chronicles 21, 23, 70 circulation 37, 56, 58, 59, 61, 65, 67, 75 class bias 57 classification 9,14, 21, 27-33, 38-47, 56, 58, 64, 74, 75, 77, 81, 84,102,115-23, 126,128,129,131,132,136-8,142-5, 147,158,163,189,194,198, 200,202, 212, 218, 220; see also categorization coding 45, 74, 76,145 coherence relations 76, 77, 79, 82, 89, 97 cohesion 77, 78, 80, 83, 86, 91, 95, 105 collective datelines 185 colloquialisms 95, 201 combined forms 127, 130-4 combined headlines 116, 118-20, 127-9, 136, 137 comment 195-213 commentaries 19, 26, 39, 91,100, 102,109, 186, 188, 221 Commerce and Trade domain 212-15, 220, 226, 228 commercial constraints 8 commissive illocutory point 198 commissive modality 198 communicative situations 120 comparative analysis 34 comparatives 201 competition 8,19, 25, 26, 47, 68,101,113, 190 compilation methods 32, 43 complaints 61 complex headlines 157, 163 computer-aided research 2 concessive patterns 203 conditional sentences 203 confidence markers 197-200, 210, 211, 216, 217, 219-22, 225

conservative-popular profile 81, 84-6, 104 conservative profile 81-5,103,104, 105 consistent coverage 77, 78, 80, 83 constitutive parameters, see genre-specific parameters constraints 2, 4, 6, 8,15, 25, 26, 32, 33, 38, 46, 47,102,113,120,140, 167, 233 constructivist perspective 13 content analysis 76 contextual domains 212-15 contextualization 34, 78, 80,130,144 contraction 145, 152, 154 Contributions towards a History of Newspapers 16 contributors 60, 62 controversy 61, 70,101, 106,107, 227, 234, 236 conventional theory of history 22 conventions 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 33, 39, 42, 43, 45, 74,92,184,193,195, 233 copulas 142,143,149,151,160,162 copycatism 60, 61; see also news copying and text copying Copyright Act (1709) 19, 20 corantos 18, 20, 30, 34, 49 core sections 98,184 corpora balanced 43 classification of headlines in 114 compilation and design 3, 32, 43, 47 dimensions 35-7 machine-readable 1, 32, 38, 42, 47, 114, 115,236 one-genre 39, 43, 45 principled 38 sources 37-43 suitability for research 35 timelines 35-8 usefulness 32, 45 corpus linguistics 5, 6, 12, 32-6, 41, 43, 45, 46,234 correlational perspective 13 correlational sociolinguistics 12 correlations 4,10, 12,13, 51, 52, 103,126, 129,135,138,141,152,165,167,175, 234 Country Journal 64, 65, 66-9, 81, 84, 86. 91-2,95, 97,101,107, 172,173,193, 205,206,210,211,215,229 court news 94, 188, 189 Craftsman 50, 117 credibility 85,184, 219

INDEX crimes 94,100 Crimes domain 212-15, 224-30 critical discourse analysis (CDA) 49, 52, 55 critical linguistics 52, 102 cross-cultural perspective 15 cultural activities 186 cultural embedding 60, 61, 62, 68 cultural/institutional dimension 233 cultural parameters 111 cultural relativism 52 curiosities 78,99 current affairs 79, 90, 95, 170, 172, 212, 230 customized headlines 189 daggers 116 Dahl, Folke 49 Daily Courant 17, 20, 69, 72,114 Daily Post 64, 65, 69, 84-6,105,106,172, 173,181,183 data availability of primary 2 consistency 130 databases 6, 41 dated news 180 datelines 76,127, 184,185, 231 Davis, Howard 51 death notices 3, 40, 42, 94,146, 170 declarations 173 decontextualization 167, 193 deduction 197 modals 199 deeds 22, 74 Defoe, Daniel 69,171 deictic symbols 116, 119, 131 deontic logic 229 deontic modality 196-9, 204, 206-9, 211 deviation 8-11, 21, 47-9, 235 diachronic evolution 223 diachronic perspective 2 diachronic pragmatics 11-12 diachronic study 3 diachronic trends 134, 224, 225 diachrony 44 diaries 174 Dictionary of National Biography 29 digression 26 dimensions 14-27, 46, 75, 233 direct speech 92, 173, 205 discontinuity 36, 129, 145, 148-50, 153, 155

259

discourse analysis 6, 9, 10, 45, 49, 52, 55, 75 choice of strategies 74 distribution of linguistic factors in 4 functional 10 genre-specific 20 history writing as 21 ideal 74 in intertextual studies 75 mechanisms of 233 media 55, 103 official 74 orders of 73 refreshing 10 trends in 3 disjunctive language 163 dislocation 145,147,148,151-7,162,163 display layout 118 display lettering 118-20 disposition 199, 208 distribution systems 58 diversification 19, 103, 167, 172 divider lines 116 domains 6, 38, 39, 41, 46, 198, 212, 214, 215,217, 220, 221, 225, 227,229 domestic news 46, 70, 85, 86, 90,109,174, 184 domestic politics 80, 83 domestic reporting 20 down-market publications 40 dramatization 91, 200 dubious reports 174 Early English Newspapers (EEN) 29, 30 editing 26, 78, 82, 85, 87, 90, 91, 94, 101. 103, 105-7, 110, 120, 176, 192, 196. 235, 236; see also editorial intervention stylistic 78, 87, 101,106, 109 thematic 82, 176 editorial commentaries 176, 188, 235 editorial intervention 209, 212, 225; see also editing editorial mediation 74; see also stylistic mediation editorials 19, 47, 76,92, 98,172, 236 editors 25, 31, 75,103, 111, 144,172,181, 184,195 EEN, see Early English Newspapers effectiveness 58, 59, 64 effects dimension 61 efficiency 58, 59, 61 electronic information transfer 15 ellipted copulas 142 elliptic constructions 159

260

INDEX

elliptical headlines 143 elliptical phrase structures 142 elocutio7 embedded epistemic marking 199 embedded forms 130-4 embedded headlines 116-20,127-9,137 embellishment 74 emphasis 74, 78-80, 83, 95, 97, 99,116, 140,174,192, 235 textual 169,174-90,192 ending signal 118 English Post 64, 65, 70, 72,81,82,84,85,90, 105, 106,170 English Revolution Society 67 enlarged script 119 entertainment 78,110,175, 221, 227, 236 Entertainment and Features domain 212-15, 221-2, 228, 230 enumerative text structuring 126 epideictic oratory 197 epistemic markers 210, 216-19 epistemic modality 196-200, 206-10, 216-18 epistemic references 78, 229 epistemic reports 223 epistemicity 210, 211, 216, 217, 225, 231 errata 94 essays 50, 76, 77, 92,172, 231 ethic commitment 97 ethics 58-61, 67, 74, 93, 97 ethnography of speaking 12 euphemizing 200 evaluation 26,197, 229 markers 219, 224 models 56 evaluative comments 210 evaluative markers, see evaluation evaluative modality 196, 197,199-202, 206-11,217,223,224 evaluative reports 218 Evening Advertiser 122 Evening Mail 64, 65, 71, 82, 84,100,109, 129,130,139,144,162,175,184,186, 188.194 event focusing 169-75,192 event-related thematic structures 184-90 exaggeration 26, 88 experiments 190, 221, 235 explicit vocabulary 222 expressions of politeness 206 external conditions 233 external deviation 9, 49 external perspective 57 extra-linguistic constellations 8, 49

extrinsic modality 195—6 eye-witness reports 84, 86 factor analysis 141 factota 119 fashions 103 'favourable undercurrents' 165 features 80, 83,91,109, 221 sections 77,170,172 FEEN, see Florence Early English Newspapers field 57, 58, 71 figurative language 222 financial support 105 finite verbs 142 Florence Early English Newspapers (FEEN) 3 Flying Post 64, 65, 66, 72, 81, 84, 86, 89-91, 106,107,170,171,176,192, 205,206, 231 foregrounding 7-11, 47, 48,111-70, 174, 192,195-213, 235, 236 by movement 174,192 macrotextual 166-94, 236 microtextual 166, 195-213, 236 stylistic 3, 7-11, 47, 48,165,166, 236 syntactic 10, 111, 112,140-67, 235 thematic 162 visual 4,111,112-39,146,235 foreign coverage 46, 70, 78, 80, 83, 86, 89, 90,94,98,109,110,170,174,180, 183,186 forgery 66 form-to-function mapping 12 Fortescue Catalogue 28 Fortescue, G.K. 28 Foudrinier machine 17 Fox Bourne, Richard 16 fronting 145,148-50, 153,155,162, 173 frozen datelines 184 frozen headings 180, 181,184, 190 FSP, see functional science perspective full-folio format 114 functional approach 193 functional classification 120,137 functional discourse 10 functional headlines 121,130 functional heterogeneity 126 functional hybrids 134,135 functional patterns 126-8 functional perspective 8 functional science perspective (FSP) 48 functional stylistics 8 functional types 39

INDEX function-to-form mapping 9, 12 funding 58, 69 funny stories 97, 98 gap-fillers 96 gatekeepers 49, 87 genre consistency 42 definition 43 early media 1, 3 early newspaper as 21 evolution 9 genealogy 21 historical 27 knowledge of 44 perception 27 genre-specific parameters 14-47, 234 geographical information 221 Glasgow Media Group 55 gossip 94,184, 227 government funding 69 grammar 21, 195 grammatical change 166 grammatical subjectification 167 grammaticalization of speakers 167 Grant, James 16 graphic aids 111 graphic classification 132,137 graphic forms 115, 134,135 graphic headlines 115,119,130,138 graphic patterns 126-8 graphic types 115-20 Hague letter 67 half-folio format 114 half-printed, half-written method 66 harmonization 234 headings 19, 22, 76, 77, 90,105, 113, 114, 116,119,121, 127-31,134-42,146, 148, 155, 158, 159, 162, 180, 181, 184-92; see also headlines section 76, 77, 121,123, 127, 139, 180, 181,186,189,190,192 headline predicators 143 headlines 111-62, 186,192, 231, 235; see also headings address 122 addressee-determined 121 attributive 121-3,126-8,134-6,138, 139 combined 116,118-20,127-9,136,137 complex 157, 163 customized 189 distribution by publication 145

261

elliptical 143 embedded 116-20, 127-9, 137 functional 121, 130 hybrid 136 incomplete 143 integrated 115,118-20,127-33,137 late eighteenth-century 128-36 major 115,118-20,127-33,137,139 minor 115, 118-20, 127-33, 137 nineteenth century 158 performative 124-8, 134-9 predicative 157, 159, 161, 161, 162 prototypical 115 report 121 sender-determined 121, 122 summary 142, 162 thematic 115,120,121,123-4,126,128, 135,136,138,139,181,184,190 topical 127,136 headlinesellS, 163 headlining 71,100, 189 headpieces 116 hearsay evidentials 197, 199, 210, 211, 216-25 heightening 198,199, 208, 211, 216, 217, 219,220-5 Helsinki Carpus 33, 44, 45 high-performance profiles 64-8, 104, 106, 107, 110 historiae21 historical-cultural dimension 46 historical dimension 14-19 historical linguistics 2, 6, 7, 41, 45, 56, 167 historical pragmatics 11 historical sociolinguistics 5,11, 12, 13, 52 historiography 21, 23, 47 History of the Royal Society 24 history parameter 62 history writing 21, 47, 49 home news 94, 98, 180, 186 homogenization 74 Hope, John Thomas 30 Hope, Revd E.W. 30 house styles 229 house topics 180 human interest 75, 78, 80, 83, 87, 89,95, 97 humour 78, 81, 83,93,100,199, 200, 202, 208,211,221,227 hybrid headlines 136 hybrid profiles 81,107,108 hyponymy 152, 154

262

INDEX

icons 116 ideational functions 76 ideology 49, 55, 57, 74, 78 illness 78, 220 illustrations 26, 77 imitated handwriting 116 impartiality 86 impersonal constructions 203 important events 74 imprisonment 57, 61, 65 incomplete headlines 143 independence 68 indexing 31 induction 197 informal events 78 information sequencing/structuring 77, 161 infrastructure 58, 59 innovation 3, 6,10,13,14, 60, 62, 70,165, 166,168,190,193,196, 233, 234, 235 institutional factors 3,111 institutional values 204 integrated headings 118-20,127-33,137 intelligence sources 85 intensification 201 internal criteria 75, 76 internal deviation 9, 49 internal perspective 57 international crises 169 interpersonal functions 76 interpersonal parameters 77 intertextual analysis 73 intrinsic modality 195-6 inversion 140, 145,148, 149,153, 155, 161 irony 88, 93,100, 107, 200, 202, 216, 222 issued statements 122 Johnson, Ben 23 Johnson, Dr (Samuel) 70 jokes 97 Jucker, Andreas 11 Junius 70 Knight Hunt, Frederick 15, 16 knowledge 10, 23, 24, 44, 45, 52,197, 205 labels 43,114,140, 141, 142 Lampeter Corpus 2, 32-41 language change 165 conventions 233 schemata 10 structures 10 language-schema relationships 10

late eighteenth-century headlines 128-36 law-enacting formulas 125 lead sentences 131 lean style 24 left dislocation 145,163 legal language 125 legislation 19, 46 lemmas 116 length of articles 87, 172 letters 39, 98,120, 122, 172, 173, 236 lexemes 124 lexical studies 45 libel 57 liberalization 111 licensing 16, 18, 20, 33 Licensing Act (1662) 16 Licensing Act (1695) 18 life-cycles of organizations 62, 63 likelihood modality 196 line spacing 118 linguistic change 3 linguistic inventory 12 linguistic realization 49 linguistic reinforcement 99 linguistic representations 77 linguistics 2, 3, 5, 6, 7,11, 46,166,195 corpus 5, 6, 12, 32-6, 41, 43, 45, 46, 234 critical 52, 102 historical 2, 6, 7, 41, 45, 56, 167 Lloyds Evening Post 70 local causes 13,14, 166, 193 local news 109, 110 London Chronicled, 65, 69-70, 82, 84, 98. 99, 109, 134, 144, 150, 175, 184,185. 186, 187 London Daily Post 64, 65, 70-1, 81, 84. 85, 105,106,172,181,183 London Gazette 17,18, 20, 33, 39, 41, 53, 64, 65, 68, 72, 73, 79, 81-7, 90, 98,101, 105,106,108,110,114,139,144, 171-3,176,180 London Post 64, 65, 68, 81, 84,93, 94,95, 101,107,119,122,170,171,176,180 London Times Online 142 low-performance profiles 70-1,105,109 macrolinguistic phenomena 3 macrostructural rules 176 macrotextual development 193 macrotextual editing 77 macrotextual foregrounding 166-94, 236 macrothematic variation 181

INDEX Madan, Florence 28 Mail, Thell major headlines 115, 118-20, 127-33, 137, 139 mapping of reality 49 market diversification 103-9 market pressure 26,140 Marxism 72 Marxist-critical approach 56, 57 mastheads 31 match 152, 154 matter-of-fact reportage 108 media bias 102 media change 1, 2, 165-8 media cultural studies approach 56 media discourse 103 media effect model 56, 57 media ethics 56, 57 media history 16 media organizations 62-71 medium-performance profiles 68-70,105, 108 memorials 173 metaphors 200, 201 methodology 5, 6, 47, 51, 52, 55-6, 234, 236 microlinguistics 3, 76 microtextual foregrounding 166,195-213, 236 microtextual processes 193 microtextual strategies 77, 92, 166, 168 mid-market papers 101 mimesis 11 minor headlines 115, 118-20, 127-33, 137 minutes 32 miscellaneous section 94 mission/ethics dimension 58, 59, 61 mistakes 26,105 Mist's 50 mockery 93, 96, 99, 197 mock sections 96, 186 modal markers 204, 207 modal reports 206 modality 76, 78,166, 195-213, 236 markers 206, 209-11,225 moralizing 78, 79, 81, 83, 93, 97 Morning Chronicle 64, 65, 67-8, 81, 84, 86, 92-3,96, 97, 98,107,108,188, 189, 193,194, 200, 201, 205, 210, 218 Morning Post 44, 64, 65, 67-8, 81, 84, 93, 96-7,107,109, 130,134,146,174, 175,186 morphology 45. 120

263

motivated choice 7, 8, 73, 74, 233 multivariate cluster analysis 141 narrative 78, 79, 81, 83, 97, 99 neo-marxist theory 55 networks 56, 105 news analysis 87 newsbooks 20, 34 Newsbooks at Lancaster 3

news context 165-8 news copying 78-80, 83, 97; see also copycatism and text copying news culture 55 news focus 77, 80, 83 Newspaper Library (Colindale) 30 Newspaper Press, The 16 newspaper size 73 news parameters 47 news sections 76,139 news-sheets 130 New State of Europe 64, 65, 70, 81, 84, 86, 90, 91,98,99,109,139,170,171 Nichols Collection 29 Nichols, John 30, 50 Nichols-Hope Collection 30 nineteenth-century headlines 158 nominalizations 74 non-current affairs 94 non-factual style 221 non-financial support 105 non-finite phrase structures 142 non-modal reports 206 norm-external perspective 9 norms 6 objectivity 47, 56 Observator 72 official discourse 74 official statements 120 one-genre corpora 27, 33 opinion consistency 78, 80, 83 opinions 77 opposition 59, 61 orders of discourse 73 organization dimension 58, 59 organizational efficiency 56 organizational structure 67 organization-external perspective 61, 71 organization-internal perspective 56, 71 originality 68 ornamental initials 116 ornamentation 26

264

INDEX

Other domain 212 overlapping categories 126 Oxford Gazette 16 pamphlets 38, 39, 47 parables 21 parallelism 11 parameters 33-5 parenthetic comments 88 parliamentary affairs 20, 92, 93,170, 175, 185,187,192 parsers 141 partial repetition 146 partisanship 59, 61, 64 Patricio, Francisco 22 performance 51,103-10 correlation with style 165 dimension 58, 59, 61 interrelationship with context 73 variables 57-63 performative headlines 124-8,134-9 performative speech acts 122 periodicals 30, 31 period of publication 110 personalization 78, 79, 81, 83, 95, 97, 98, 99 personal pronouns 203 personal reports 96 perspectives 6-14,13,14, 56, 57, 61, 71, 98,165 persuasion 26, 227 philology 2 physical dimension 14, 15, 27-32 playbills 127 pointing fingers 116 political analysis 171 political comment 200 political criticism 70 political debates 96 political orientation 57 Politics domain 212-14, 217-19, 226, 228-30 popular press 3, 75, 81, 83, 92,93,101-5, 107 popular-quality profile 81, 84, 104, 105 Post Bay 64, 65, 72, 81, 84,98,107,171, 176,192, 205 Post Man 64-6, 72, 81, 84, 86-91,98,106, 107,170,171,172,192-3, 205,206 postscripts 66,185 pragmaphilology 11 pragmatic coherence 77, 78, 80, 83, 97 pragmatic dimension 13

pragmatics 7, 11,12, 13, 46 Prague School 8, 48 predicative forms 143 predicative headlines 157,159,161,161, 162 predicators 148 deletion 151 press freedom 3, 15,19, 20, 25, 47, 67, 74, presses 17 techniques 17 technology 15, 111 presuppositions 77 primary deviation 8 principled corpora 38 Principles of Linguistic Change 52 printing conditions 230 proceedings 47 production context 166 professionalization 19 profiles balanced 100,104 conservative 82-5,103-5 conservative-popular 85-6,104 high-performance 64-8 low-performance 70-1 media organizations 64-71 medium-performance 68-70 popular 93,104, 105 popular-quality 104, 105 quality 86-93, 104 quality-popular 104 stylistic 79-101 propaganda 72,95,102 prosecution 60, 61, 65 prototypical headlines 115 Public Advertiser 64, 65, 69-70, 81, 84, 98-9, 130,136,144,147,174,175,184-6, 188,189 publication-internal criteria 43 public notices 94 public reaction 60, 61 public response 103 puffs 96 punctuation 26 qualifying expressions 201 qualitative research 3,13 quality-popular dimension 84,97-100, 110 quality-popular profile 81,104 quality press 75, 77, 79,92,99,101-4,106, 107; see also up-market press

INDEX quality profiles 81, 83, 86-93, 104 quality variables 80 quantitative research 3,13 quasi-headlines 115 quotations 19, 92, 93,173, 174, 205 readership demands 111 reference count 64 referencing 92 refreshing discourse 10 reinforcement 76, 77, 80, 81, 85, 87, 92, 95,98,102,110,201 relative age variable 62 relevance 60, 62, 85 consistency 77, 80, 83, 90 reliability 197 repetition 146 report headlines 121 reportage 110 representations 76,102 research consolidated account 5 constraints 6 corpus-based 1, 6, 35, 42 diachronic 41 experimental 23 future 193, 234, 236 media performance 56 qualitative 13 quantitative 13 stylistic 42, 55-6 traditional methods 2, 5 revenue 58, 59, 61 Review72 reviews 42, 78, 89 rewriting techniques 157 rhetoric 21, 22, 23, 26, 88, 104,197, 198, 201,222 ridicule 99 Robert, Nicholas-Louis 18 Rostock Newspaper Corpus 2, 3, 32-7, 39-40, 141, 158, 159 Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge 23-4 Rubrikuberschriften 123 rules 116,119,131, 133 rumours 94, 96 St Augustine 44 sales 60, 61,105 salmonella scare 74 sample size 43, 44, 48 sampling 35-9, 43-5, 48 sarcasm 93,100,107

265

satire 60, 62, 67 scandals 60, 62, 68, 97 schema-disruptive behaviour 11 schema-language relationships 10 schema refreshment 10, 11 schema theory 10, 49 scientific experiments 78 scientific reports 108, 171, 221 scope 22 script type 131 scripture 49 secondary deviation 8, 9 section headings 76, 77,121,123,127,139. 180,181,186,189,190, 192 sedition 57, 61 Seditious Societies Act (1799) 17,18, 20 selection 44 self-monitoring 13 semantic repetition 146, 201 sender-determined headlines 121, 122 sensational accounts 100 sensationalism 60, 62, 66, 69, 94,108-10 sensory evidence 231 sensus historicus 21 sequencing 76 serial numbers 31 serials 31 serious reportage 108 shipping news 94 signature lines 122 single-leaf format 114 situational aspects 3,165-8, 212, 233, 236 small rules 133 social cost-benefit analysis 56 Social Life domain 212, 213, 214, 219-20, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230,233 social pressures 165 social reports 219 sociohistorical factors 111, 234 sociolinguistics 7,12, 13, 46 correlational 12 historical 5,11-13, 52 relationship with stylistics 51 traditional 55 softening 198-200, 208, 211, 216 softness/lightness variable 60, 62 sourcing 31, 38, 42, 43 special sections 186 specialist publications 108 specialization 101,187,189, 229, 235 speeches 173 sports 79,186 Sprat, Thomas 23 staffing 230

266

INDEX

stage performances 186 stamp duty 17,19, 20, 46, 49 stance 26,195, 205, 225, 227 standardization 234 Star and Evening Advertiser 17 Star Chambers 20 statements 127 steam-driven hand press 20 steam technologies 115,138 stereotypes 77, 85 stratification 43, 44, 50 structural headlines 125-8,136-9 structuring devices 192 style as interplay of factors 233 as literary concept 7 as motivated choice 73, 74 as motivated language 234 as state of mind 233 conventional dimension 13 correlation with performance 165 developments 21 interface with linguistic change 3 meaning of 1, 7 pragmatic function 8 principles 51 selective application 103 stylistic change 10,165, 234 stylistic coding 45 stylistic consistency 77, 80, 83 stylistic contours 93 stylistic differentiation 110 stylistic dimensions 14,19-27, 147-58 stylistic editing 78, 87,101,106, 109 stylistic expectations 14 stylistic foregrounding 3, 7-11, 47, 48,165, 166, 236 stylistic identity 235 stylistic labels 43 stylistic mediation 75; see also editorial mediation stylistic performance 103-10 stylistic profiles 52, 75, 79-101,103, 235 stylistic reinforcement 95,106,109 stylistic repertoire 74 stylistic specialization 104, 110, 210 sub-headings 131; see also headings and headlines subject ellipsis 161 subjective disposition 198 subject-predicator inversion 150 subject-verb inversion 145,161 subordinate headlines 127

subsidies 58, 59,106 subsidization 46 substitution 152, 154 summary headlines 142,162 surface structure 120,125 synonymy 152,154 syntactic combinations 148 syntactic completeness 40 syntactic contraction 145 syntactic foregrounding 10, 111, 112, 140-67, 235 syntactic interdependence 146 syntactic studies 45 syntactic variation 201 tabloid papers 74, 75 taxation 17,19,120 technology 3, 6,15,18,99, 111, 138,140, 233, 235 temporal distance 48 temporal modality 196 tenor 57, 58, 61, 71 tertiary deviation 8-9 text classes 42 text-external features 13, 120,126 text-internal features 41, 42, 120, 137 textlinguistic perspective 13,14, 46, 193 text pragmatic criteria 43 text re-use 19; see also copycatism and news copying text schemata 10 text structuring devices 111, 113, 129, 181 textual analysis 73,149 textual emphasis 169,174-92 textual function 120 textual movement 175,192 textual organization 114 textual quality 105 textual structures 235 theatre reviews 99 thematic clashes 94, 235 thematic cohesion 77, 78, 80, 83, 91 thematic consistency 82 thematic editing 82, 176 thematic focus 189 thematic foregrounding 162 thematic headlines 115. 120,121,123-4, 126,128,135,136,138,139,181,184, 190 thematic movement 168 thematic organization 82

INDEX thematic overlaps 105, 187 thematic specialization 91, 104,110 thematic structures 184-90 thematic trends 212, 215 Themauberschriften 121 theming 78-80, 83, 94, 99 Thomason Tracts 28, 30; see also tracts Thomason, George 28 time parameters 33-5 time samples 36 Times, The 18, 20, 39, 68,107, 115 Times Weekly Edition, The 71 titles 31, 74,113 tontines 131, 139 topical headlines 127,136 topicalization 145,147,149,150,155,160, 161 topics 177-83 tracts 38, 39; see also Thomason Tracts transitivity 76 translations 82 trends 3,15, 19, 25, 27, 34, 43, 46, 91, 103-4, 111, 112,129,134,168,193, 144,158,204, 210,212, 215, 218, 224, 227,229,230, 237 True Order of Wry ting and Reading Hy stories 22 truth 47, 75, 78, 86, 91, 95, 96,105, 210, 223, 229 truth consistency 78, 80, 83, 92, 97 typography 115, 116, 126,127,137, 140

267

understatements 88 unstressed forms 147,149 unusual stories 99 up-market press 40, 74; see also quality press variants 74 verbal headlines 141,142,144,157,159, 161 visual devices 90,119,133 visual foregrounding 4, 111, 112-39,146, 235 Walters, John 71 War domain 212-17, 226-30 war reports 180,217 weddings 78, 94 weight 60, 65,195 Westminster Journal 50 wit 24, 26 Wood, Anthony 30 Woodfall, Henry 70 world schemata 10 writers 111 yearbooks 47 ZEN, see Zurich English Newspaper Corpus zero style 24 Zurich English Newspaper Corpus (ZEN) 1-3, 32-7,40,41,44,52,64, 73, 76, 79, 100-2,114,118,170,212