Pragmatic functions of interrogatives in media texts
A number of approaches to media texts tend to apply an interactive model to communication, and the texts are seen are intrinsically dialogic, relying on the receivers’ subjective interpretation of meaning and activation of intertextual relations. In addition, media texts are increasingly used as material for linguistic analysis with the aim to reveal how their linguistic potential is utilized by journalists to convey messages and ideas, and influence the audience. The paper discusses the pragmatic functions of interrogatives and the way they are realized in media text, more specifically in newspaper articles’ headlines, leads and bodies excerpted from British and American online media over a period of two months. The analysis is mapped against previous research of interrogatives in the field of pragmatics and medialinguistics. The main findings show that interrogatives in headlines realize a range of pragmatic roles when used on their own or as part of paratactic or hypotactic complex...