1.4 Objectives
2.1.1 Narrative approach
2.1.1.1 Narratives in printed news
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2.1.1.1 Narratives in Printed News
Traditionally, news has been treated as one narrative genre because it shares some
structural properties with personal oral narratives. Bell (1991, 1995, and 1998) and
Schokkenbroek (1997), therefore, apply the framework introduced by Labov and
Waletzky (1967, 1972) to account for news in print, respectively. Both of them agree
that news in print and personal oral narratives are similar in the following aspects: 1)
they are concerned with a series of events and 2) they are told or reported for some
purposes.
However, the two differ from each other in context and purposes. News is
institutional language whose authors are multiple and the purpose is mainly to inform.
On the other hand, personal oral narratives belong to personal discourse and their aims
range from self-aggrandisement to social talk (Schokkenbroek, 1997). Accordingly, the
narrative form of news stories has been modified.
The structure of a news item, be it in newspaper or news bulletin, is composed of
an obligatory lead plus a subsidiary story proper1. The beginning paragraph of news
stories, i.e. the lead or the intro, not only summarizes the central actions of a news
story but also underlines its importance—why the reporters think it is worth reporting.
In other words, it is an abstract within which the news values are the most prominent.
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Bell (1991) illustrates this point by offering an example. He observes that intensifiers,
which function as stressing the importance of a news story, are used much more often
in the lead and the intensity, seriousness and importance are decreasing in the story
proper section.
In the section of story proper, the whole news event is reported in some detail.
Contrary to personal oral narrative, there is no separate section for orientation in news
in print because a news item usually covers more than one person, place and time,
orientation is usually embedded in events and disperses throughout the news stories.
With regard to complication, Labov and Waltezky (1967) have defined that the
chronological ordering of events is a required definition for a personal oral narrative.
However, according to Bell (1991), in journalistic writing, the presentation of events
seldom chimes in their logical order in the real world; instead, they are presented
non-chronologically. Normally, the latest development of a series of news events is
placed earlier in order to satisfy the principle of recency/timeliness. There is a set of
news values manipulating the placement of events in news behind2. The more valuable
the events are, the earlier they are placed. Both van Dijk (1985) and Bell (1991) argue
that in newspaper writing, events are organized contingent on their news values rather
2 These news values are journalism conventions. Galtung and Ruge (1965b) have made a commonly categorization. The following researchers (van Dijk, 1985; Bell, 1991, Montgomery, 2007 and the others) all follow the categorization more or less. According to Bell (1991), these news values include recency, proximity, consonance, unambiguity, unexpectedness, superlativeness, relevance,
personalization, eliteness, attribution and facticity.
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than their corresponding sequences in real world. That is, the most news-worthy parts
of a news story are reported first, then the background information may be
supplemented, and subsequently return to the details of the news. This kind of writing
results in the specific schemata of news writing—inverted-pyramid structure. However,
Duzak (1995) has pointed out that writing styles vary from culture to culture. She
compares news-texts in English, Polish and German, finding that the latter two show
the traces of everyday storytelling. In her data, a piece of news begins with possible
causes, then presenting the setting against which the news events occur. Subsequently
the main news events are organized chronologically.
Schokkenbroek (1997), though admitting that a news item starts with abstract
rather than settings, questions Bell’s argumentation of non-chronological order of
events. She asserts that in most of the cases she studies, the discourse structure
matches the event structure. If not, there must be some linguistic markers to indicate
their temporal relationship to prompt the readers/audiences in the process of
comprehension. The linguistic markers to indicate the temporal structures are divided
into anchors and temporal connectors by Schokkenbroek (1997). Anchors mainly
function as situating events in absolute calendar time, including deictics and adverbial
phrases. Temporal connectors are used to explicate the relative temporal order of two
events, such as relational adverbials.
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In terms of evaluation, Labov (1972) has mentioned that evaluation is as
important as complicating actions in personal oral narratives. It expresses the
narrators’ attitude toward the narrative. However, in the case of news story, due to the
principle of objectivity in journalism, the journalists’ personal comments are less
preferable in hard news (Schokkenbroek, 1997; Keeble, 2006). Instead, it is news
values that can account for why a news story is reported (Bell, 1991, 1994 and 1998;
Schokkenbroek, 2007). Journalists write their news stories based on the principles
established by their proprietor managers.
Though in principle the journalists’ personal comments are not welcomed,
Schokkenbroek (1997) discovers that the journalists can still evaluate the news event
by either semantic or formal means. Bell (1991) has roughly discussed the frequent
use of intensifiers in the lead, but he neither extends the concept into the story proper
section nor refers to form devices. Schokkenbroek (1997), on the other hand, asserts
that both evaluative devices can be found in the story proper section. In the semantic
level, the journalists can use intensifiers, comparators, correlatives and explicatives to
compare the scales of importance among events. In the formal level, they can
extensively quote a third person’s evaluative comments directly or indirectly3 serving
as their own evaluation. They are empowered to select which person’s speeches to
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quote and decide in which context the comment is placed. Accordingly, they can
evaluate the events covertly and meanwhile avoid directly expressing their own
evaluation, which is less preferable in news reports. However, nowadays, the direct
evaluative comment made by the journalists in broadcast news seems very common,
especially at the end of a news item.
With regard to resolution and coda, Bell (1991) mentions that these two are
optional in news items. News story, according to him, is more akin to a serial than a
short story. Most of the time, news is only concerned with the latest step rather than
the result when the news events have not ended at reporting time. Therefore, it seems
that resolution is not an obligatory element in news story. As to coda, Bell asserts there
seems no counterpart in news items to mark the finish or to return from the story world
to the real world as personal oral narrative does.
In summary, a news item contains a lead/intro (abstract) and a story proper
(complicating actions). In story proper, the events, which may be accompanied with
orientation, can be arranged depending on either their importance or their logical
orders in the world. In the former case, some linguistic markers will definitely occur to
indicate the temporal relationship. Evaluative expressions are exploited to reveal the
journalists’ attitudes toward the news events indirectly. As to resolution and coda,
neither of them is strictly required.