Stance and mediation in transediting news headlines as paratexts

Abstract

Abstract News headlines are a kind of paratexts which occupy a privileged place of pragmatics and strategy in news reports. They are expected to offer key information of the news events and to attract the target readers. This paper examines the stances and mediation indicated in the global news headlines of four international news events which happened between the years 2008–2010. It draws on the Appraisal Theory, which was developed by Martin and White (2005) upon Halliday's (1978, 1994) SFL, as the theoretical support for the analysis. The analysis shows that global news headlines involve working with discourse that is heavily mediated and recontextualized, in which the transeditors put their own knowledge and values into the transedited texts. It is argued that when value-loaded discourse is an indication of a stance adopted, an absence of such discourse in news headlines, or even an absence of reporting on a particular event, may also be an indication of a stance adopted by a news agency.