What are the main differences in the language used by different newspaper articles?

 

Approximately 12 million of the 23 major national newspapers are sold throughout the UK every day. The population of Britain currently stands in the region of 60 million, therefore one in every five people are purchasing a newspaper daily. It is therefore no wonder that newspapers use various types of language to target different target audiences and try and out sell rival newspapers through different linguistic choices to make their articles have a different spin/angle in comparison to competing newspapers. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2010/dec/14/newspapers-abcs)

Differences in the use of language can categorise newspapers into whether they are a 'Tabloid' or 'Broadsheet' newspaper. Tabloids use more normative statements, taking an event and using opinions as well as subjective language to construct their article. Tabloids, in addition, use emotive language to stir up feeling to, in some circumstances, persuade the reader into a certain view point. http://www.zeepedia.com/read.php?  the _language _of_the_newspapers_ii_broadsheet_newspaper_journalistic_writing&b=79&c=33  For example, "Huge fires are burning out of control in Croydon, South London, with police struggling to maintain control." http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3740546/Cops-battle-new-riots-across-London.html#ixzz2XAqTUJXr The Sun demonstrates the viewpoint of Zeepedia, through choosing to use evaluative adjectives such as 'huge' and 'struggling' to express their viewpoint on  how weak the police dealt with the London riots. Likewise http://vle.stvincent.ac.uk/mod/book/tool/print/index.php?id=4512 states that tabloids often use subjective language, but also states Broadsheets tend to use objective language. Both subjective and objective language are a forms of declarative statements, however the facts and statistics used in objective language are used more in Broadsheet newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and as previously mentioned subjective language is used in Tabloids such as the Sun.

The reason for the difference in choice of language between objective and subjective may be due the variance in the target audiences of the newspapers. http://www.winchesterjournalism.co.uk/joomla_1.5_winol/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=237:the-daily-telegraph&catid=63:newspapers&Itemid=314 states that the language used in articles of newspapers may change due to numerous reasons such as; the political party that the different newspapers support and the various target audiences that are targeted when publishing an article.

However in recent years it seems the difference between the traditional divide of Tabloids and Broadsheets is becoming a lot more subtle. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3714293.stm With more subjective, informal and emotive language replacing objective facts and statistics as the declaratives in more and more Broadsheets, the once clear divide in target audience, political view point and difference in language is starting to merge the two different newspaper stereotypes closer together.  

With the recent launch of the 'I' newspaper back in October 2010, many have suggested this mix of tabloid and Broadsheet will be the newspaper of the future. A combination of both subjective opinions on objective facts and statistics has proven a hit with the British public. In fact, In October 2012 it had an average daily sale of 304,691, a great deal more than The Independent (the broadsheet in which it originated from).

Ieuan Evans