Communicative Purposes of Guardian Newspaper Headlines: The Case of Covid-19

Abstract

The study focuses on the investigation and analysis of Guardian newspaper headlines related to Covid- 19, the pandemic disease, and they are collected from the Guardian newspaper from the 1st of January, 2020 up to the 31st of December, 2020. The study aims to identify how the editor succeeds to grab the reader's attention towards the seriousness of this pandemic on all human's life fields. Additionally, its aim is to reveal the most utilization of discourse modes that the editor depends on for paying the reader's attention to the content of online headlines. To this end, Brooks and Warren's discourse modes (1950) adopted to be the model. The result shows that merely two types of discourse modes are significantly utilized, they are exposition and argument. Exposition is frequently used to inform the reader all the news. Then, the argument mode occupies the second place to show how the editor discuss certain facts related to Covid-19 with his readers to convince them about specific topic.