Discursive news values analysis of English and Arabic science news stories

Abstract EN

The present study aimed at comparing the news values constructed to enhance newsworthiness in English and Arabic science news stories.

The study was based on two corpora of science news stories headlines and leads taken from the British Daily Telegraph and the Egyptian Al-Ahram.

Each corpus comprised 120 texts.

The rhetorical significance of the opening section (headline and lead) of the news story, especially in terms of establishing newsworthiness, has been consistently emphasized in the literature on news discourse.

The study employed the discursive news values analysis (DNVA) approach as presented in Bednarek and Caple (2017).

The findings of the analysis have indicated that newsworthiness in science news stories is established largely by means of the discursive construction of the following news values: Eliteness, Impact, Negativity, Newness, Positivity, Proximity, Superlativeness, and Unexpectedness.

The analysis has shown similarities as well as variation in the relative frequency of news values and the linguistic resources used in their construction.

The examined texts have also demonstrated that the combining of two or more than two of the news values is a predominant feature of the headline and lead section of the science news story in the two languages.

Positivity and Negativity, in particular, have appeared inseparably related to other values.

The identified variations in the two corpora have been explained in terms of the overarching concern of each group of journalists in their science coverage.