English and Persian Sport Newspaper Headlines: A comparative study of linguistic means

Abstract Using rhetorical figures in specialized languages like the language of newspaper headlines is common. The present study attempted to conduct a contrastive analysis of the English and Persian sport newspaper headlines related to the ۲۰۱۴ FIFA World Cup. Toward this end, a corpus consisting of ۴۰۰ English and ۴۰۰ Persian headlines published during ۱۲th of June to ۱۳th of July, ۲۰۱۴ was collected. The framework developed by Lapsanska (۲۰۰۶), including phonological, lexical and morphological, syntactic, and semantic aspects, was employed. The frequencies of the use of sub-variables were calculated and chi-square tests were administered to determine whether the differences in the use of linguistic means between the two languages were statistically significant. The results showed that English and Persian sports newspaper headlines were similar in the use of rhythm and metaphor. However, they were generally different in four aspects particularly in the use of alliteration, foreign words, idiomatic constructions, formation of new words and phrases, hyperbole, phrase, and personification. The results can have pedagogical implications for journalism students, English for specific purposes (ESP) students, teachers, and translators.

Keywords:

Rhetorical figures , newspaper headlines , phonological , lexical , Morphological , syntactic , semantic aspects