“It is imperative to …”: Importance markers and the construction of newspaper discourse

Authors

  • Jonathan Ngai The Open University of Hong Kong

Keywords:

evaluation, evaluative meaning, importance markers, discourse functions, textual colligation

Abstract

Evaluation is concerned with the expression of opinion and can be expressed along different dimensions. Yet while evaluations marking certainty/doubt have attracted much linguistic interest, “importance-marking in relation to evaluation does not appear to have received very much attention” (Partington, 2014, p. 147). Evaluations of importance are central to the nature of academic discourse (Bondi, 2015). They are equally, if not more, essential to newspaper discourse, where they are used not only to express opinion, maintain writer-reader relations and structure the discourse but also to construct newsworthiness. Drawing on a 600,000-word specialized corpus of Hong Kong newspaper texts, this paper looks at the ways in which importance markers are used to construct two major newspaper genres: editorials and feature articles. The study has implications for future research as well as the teaching of reading and writing.

Author Biography

  • Jonathan Ngai, The Open University of Hong Kong
    Jonathan Ngai is an assistant professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Open University of Hong Kong. His research interests are in the fields of evaluation/stance, stylistics, academic writing and journalistic writing.
The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics. Volume 5, Issue 1. March 2018

Downloads

Published

2018-04-05

Issue

Vol. 5 No. 1 (2018)

Section

Articles

License

Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication.
  2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.

Note: Authors are encouraged to post copies of their AJAL published papers to their own institutional or personal/professional websites along with a link to the original paper at the AJAL website. This will assist in diseminating their work as well as raising awareness of the journal. 

 

How to Cite

“It is imperative to …”: Importance markers and the construction of newspaper discourse. (2018). The Asian Journal of Applied Linguistics, 5(1), 156-169. https://caes.hku.hk/ajal/index.php/ajal/article/view/519