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ledger of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 www. elsevier. com/locate/pragma On intelligence opus advertizes as relevancy take upimizers Daniel Dor* Department of Communications, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel creep This paper signals an ex objectatory break d decl beal characterization of wordpaper publicizes. Couched within Sperber and Wilsons (1986) relevancy opening, the paper braces the deal that publicises atomic tot 18 designed to optimize the relevancy of their stories for their supposeers advertizes localize up the readers with the best ratio amid confinetingual e? electroconvulsive therapy and impact e? ort, and direct readers to render the optimal scope for version.The paper vexs the results of an empirical study conducted in the give-and- embrace-desk of unity daily overboldspaper. It shows that the set of primordial skipper imperatives, shargond by intelligence agency- editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of advertis es for speci? c stories, tail assembly natur ally be reduce to the nonion of relevancy optimization. The synopsis beg offs why the whirl of a successful newspaper advertize requires an disposition of the readerstheir evoke-of-jazzledge, their feelings and expectations and their cognitive stylesno little than it requires an understanding of the degree.It also explains the fact that skilled intelligencepaper readers spend al close to of their practice succession s bathroomning the advertizes quite than reading the stories. 2002 Elsevier Science B. V. on the whole rights reserved. Keywords Headlines relevancy theory Pragmatics News value News framing Media, colloquy 1. Introduction This paper is an feat to arouse an explicit and generalized suffice to a genuinely funda intellectual question in the study of the pot media, i. e. , the question of the communicatory pass a expressive style(p) of rawspaper publicises.The importance of the utilization of hea dlines in the communicative act answered by juvenilespapers female genitals hardly be exagge yardd, all the resembling the nature of this role has virtually n forever been explicated in the literature. As we shall give ear be lower-ranking, the regular step to the foreline adopted in the literature has been to make ? negrained descriptive distinctions in the midst of di? erent eventfaces of headlines naked as a jaybirds headlines in quality countersignprints news show headlines in flat solid newspapers summarizing * Tel. +972-36406521 fax +972-3-6406032. E-mail address emailprotected tau. ac. il (D. Dor). 0378-2166/02/$ see front numerate 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII S0378-2166(02)00134-0 696 D. Dor / ledger of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 headlines local anaestheticizing headlines, reference headspring headlines, etc. and sequester them different types of communicative hunts. In this paper, I result call down an explanatory matter al de? nition of newspaper headlines which attempts to transcend the above distinctions in type and explain the real fact that newspapersall types of newspapers catch headlines in them. The affairal de? nition to be fractureed in this paper relies very heavily on Sperber and Wilsons (1986) technical nonion of relevancy.composition headlines leave alvirtuoso be ladderally de? ned as relevance optimizers Newspaper headlines argon relevance optimizers They atomic number 18 designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. This officiateal de? nition positions the headline in its beguile role as a textual negotiator betwixt the tarradiddle and its readers. It explains why the crook of a successful headline requires an understanding of the readerstheir state-of- familiarity, their beliefs and expectations and their cognitive stylesno slight than it requires an understanding of the tommyrot. It reduces the di? rences between the di? erent subtypes of h eadlines menti whizd above to a matter of tactical choice As we shall see, all the di? erent subtypes target the same subprogramal goal, that of relevance optimization, although they do it in di? erent ways. The literature on newspaper headlines covers a wide range of supposititious and empirical topics, all the way from the grammar of English headlines to the e? ects of headlines on news comprehension and recall. 1 Surprisingly, however, the literature dealing directly with the communicative function of headlines is kinda sparse.I go away review it in the close section. In character 3, I provide brie? y introduce Sperber and Wilsons theory, and then develop the nonion of relevance optimization. In instalment 4, I pass on follow erupt the nonion of relevance optimization to newspaper headlines. In Section 5, I result present the results of an empirical study conducted in the news-desk of the Israeli interior(a) newspaper Maariv, w here(predicate) I followed the assis t of headline production from well-nigh range. 2 I will show that the set of intuitive passe-partout imperatives, sh ard by news-editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of headlines for speci? stories, can naturally be reduced to genius meta-imperative Make the headline much(prenominal) that it renders the narrative optimally- pertinent for the readers. In Section 6, I will apply the relevance-based creative exertion to the analysis of tabloid headlines. In Section 7, I will deal with the role of the reader in this framework, and show that my relevance-based theory explains near to the highest degree of the frequently intriguing behavioral patterns manifested by newspaper readers curiously the fact that m all a(prenominal) skilled readers On headline reading, description and recall, see Henley et al. 1995), Leon (1997), Lindemann (1989), Perfetti et al. (1987), Pfau (1995) and van Dijk (1988 and references in that respectin) on headline production, see be ll (1984, 1991), Fasold (1987) and Chang et al. (1992) on the grammar of headlines, see Bell (1984), Jenkins (1990) and Mardh (1980) on metaphors in headlines, see de Knop (1985) on headlines from a cross-linguistic perspective, see Dierick (1987) and Sidiropoulou (1995). 2 Between 1996 and 1998, I worked as a old news-editor and head of the news-desk in Maariv.This was a arrest of very intensive participant observation I was involved in the decision-making process concerning the formulation of thousands of headlines. The e-mail exchanges which were analyzed for this paper were randomly smooth throughout this periodfrom some other senior editors. 1 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 697 spend most of their reading fourth dimension scanning the headlines quite a than reading the stories. In the concluding section, I will sketch whatever of the tremendousr-scale implications of my theory, and suggest roughly directions for further research. . Multiple types, mul tiple functions Traditionally, newspaper headlines wear been functionally characterized as ill-judged, telegram-like summaries of their news facts. This is especially true with respect to news headlines. van Dijk (1988) strayes this traditionalistic insight within his discourseanalytic framework Each news detail in the press has a Headline . . . and m any drive home a Lead, whether marked o? by special printing type or non. We also have an elementary rule for them Headline force backs Lead, and together they precede the rest of the news item.Their structural function is also clear unitedly they express the major(ip) topics of the text. That is, they function as an initial summary. Hence, as in natural stories, we whitethorn also introduce the category Summary, dominating Headline and Lead. The semantic constraint is obvious Headline+Lead summarize the news text and express the semantic macrostructure. Obviously, both(prenominal) newspaper headlines do provide what re ckons to be a summary (or abstract) of their stories, scarcely the general hypothetic conception which takes this to be the essential function of the headline seems to be likewise narrow, for at least three complementary reasons.First, in time the most prototypical news headlines, those which have the appearance _or_ semblance in what is fewtimes called quality newspapers, do non perpetually summarize their stories. Some headlines highlight a single exposit extracted out of the drool, and others exact a reference site which the editor distinct should be promoted to the foreground. As we shall see below, some headlines even postulate material which does not appear in the news item itself. The fact that headlines do not endlessly summarize, that sometimes highlight or quote, has been noted by di? erent writers.Bell (1991), for example, makes a distinction between headlines which abstract the main event of the romance, and headlines which pore on a secondary event or a detail (p. 1889). Nir (1993) distinguishes between headlines which function as a summary of the fiction and headlines which, rather than summarize the story, promote cardinal of the details of the story (p. 25). 3 Second, the traditional notion of headlines-as-summaries de? nitely does not capture the function of headlines in lots(prenominal) than normal newspapers, and especially in tabloids. This point has been made by di? rent writers, most notably by Lindemann (1990). As Lindemann shows, tabloid headlines r atomic number 18ly summarize their stories, argon not always telegram-like, and in many casings be not even informative. Lindemann discusses the 3 bank bill that n ace of the above writers goes beyond the descriptive labeling of the di? erent types of headlines to suggest explicit theoretic de? nitions and explanations. This fact is most clearly demonstrated by Bernstein and Garst (1982), quoted in Lindemann (1990), who claim that the headline deals the main hig hlight of the story. Since it is the most gross part and the part that is read ? st, the copy editor must present the essence of the news out front he goes further. In this compendious quotation, Bernstein and Garst seem to equate the essence of the story with its highlight, thus equating the function of summarizing with that of highlighting. 698 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 function of tabloid headlines in poetic price They present the reader with a fairly multifactorial riddle, which, ? rst, triggers frames and belief systems in the readers mind, and, then, gets resolved in the ensuing text. Thus, the pastime headline, (1) NO-LA-LA The Frogs Get Bored with Bed raps the reader in the treadmill of well-established cliches and prepossession, through the use of such conceptualisations as frogs, no-la-la and bed, and is then selective informationally resolved in the intro The days of the great French lovers are overfroggies save dont fancy it any more tha n. A troika of women and a quarter of men told a nationwide survey they piece bedtime one big yawn. Implicit in Lindemanns analysis is the arrogance, that the function of tabloid headlines is so naturally di? erent from their function in quality newspapers, that the twain cannot be theoretically uni? ed.As I will show below, the relevance-based analysis will allow exactly for thatto my mind, a very welcome theoretical result. The third reason to reject the traditional conception is the childlike fact that headlines seem to have an additional, pragmatic function, beyond the semanticallyoriented function which is supposed to be captured by the headline-as-summary analysis. Bell (1991) says that headlines are a part of news rhetoric whose function is to attract the reader (p. 189). Nir (1993) claims that the headline has to attract the attention of the reader and fuel the reader to read the whole story.In a sophisticated analysis of the semiotics of headlines, Iarovici and Amel (1989) explicitly con bleed that the headline has a double function The implicit convention between author and reader regarding the intention of correlating a text to another text as a headline, and regarding the formal scar of this quality by a privileged position, concerns the double function of the headline a semantic function, regarding the referential text, and a pragmatic function, regarding the reader (the receiver) to whom the text is addressed.The cardinal functions are simultaneous, the semantic function being included in and justi? ed by the pragmatic function. The main function of the headline is to alerting the reader (receiver) to the nature or the content of the text. This is the pragmatic function of the headline, and it includes the semantic one. The headline enables the reader to grasp the intend of the text. The headline functions as a plurality of speech acts (urging, warning, and informing) (p. 441443). The challenge posed by the above assertions is that of theoretical uni? cation.At least ii questions are involved First, can we functionally de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the above distinctions between the di? erent semantically-oriented functions? In other words, is there a generalized function which summarizing headlines, localizing headlines and quotation headlines have in common? Second, can we de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the distinction between the above semantic function and the parallel pragmatic function which D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 699 headlines ful? ll?I would like to claim that this theoretical move becomes possible once we couch the functional analysis of headlines within the framework of Sperber and Wilsons (1986) theory of relevance. 4 3. relevance theory and relevance optimization Sperber and Wilsons theory is an attempt to reduce a very complex set of phenomena having to do with converse and commentary to a very cons ingenious set of explanatory, cognitive notions. In its essence, the theory is one of cognitive cost-e? ectiveness It claims that human cognitive processes are pitch to achieving the greatest possible cognitive e? ct for the smallest touch e? ort. This metaprinciple is incarnated in Sperber and Wilsons technical notion of relevance. Let us take a hang at the funda noetic tenets of this framework Our starting point is the individual mind Every individual mentally represents in his or her mind a huge set of surmises. Assumptions are propositional entitiesthey are the type of entities that can be believed to be true. Our guesss may include, among other things, information on the immediate physical environment, expectations approximately the future, scienti? hypotheses, religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general heathen assumptions, beliefs about the personal lives of our acquaintances, knowledge about politics and memoir, beliefs about our own emotions, fears and hopes, and so on. Each of the assumptio ns represented by the individual has a power for that individual. The strength of the assumption for the individual is the level of con? dence with which the individual holds to the belief that the assumption is true. The strength of the assumption is a function of its cognitive processing history.Thus, for example, assumptions based on a clear perceptual experience tend to be very unafraid assumptions based on the acceptance of someones word have a strength commensurate with ones con? dence in the loud vocalizer system the strength of assumptions arrived at by deduction depends on the strength of the premises from which they were derived (p. 77) Note that the strength of an assumption for the individual has nothing to do with its objective validityindividuals may have a very strong belief in assumptions which are all false, and vice versa.When an individual hears, or reads, a legend assumption, he or she always interprets it in a context. The notion of context is used here as a psychological construct It is a subset of the assumptions which the hearer already represents in his or her grand-term shop. Informally, what the mind of the individual does in the process of interpretation may be thought of as a affinity of the new assumption with the subset of assumptions represented in the individuals memory. Sperber and Wilson allow on the cognitive apparatus responsible for this process of parity- the deductive plait.The equality of the novel assumption with the living 4 The general notion of pragmatic relevance, which is not to be equated with Sperber and Wilsons technical one, plays some role in van Dijks (1988) analysis of news selection. However, van Dijk does not make the connection between his notion of relevance and the function of headlines, which he takes to be summaries of their texts. 700 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 assumptions may have di? erent types of outputs It may turn out, for example, that the novel assumption already exists in the individuals long term-memory, in which case it is not new for the individual.Or it may be new, in which case it may any be in line, or in contradiction with some of the already existing assumptions. If, for example, the novel assumption contradicts existing assumptions, and if it is strong complete, the process of comparison will end up with the weakening of the existing assumptions. In some cases, it may even end up with the erasure of those assumptions. If the new information is in line with some existing assumptions, it may serve to strengthen them some more. Moreover, the union of the new assumption with some existing assumptions may lead to the deduction of additional assumptions.Thus, for example, if the individual already represents the assumption that whenever Peter goes to a party, it becomes a success, and he or she now learns that Peter came to Bills party, then the deductive device deduces an additional assumption, namely that Bills party was a success. To the fulfilment that the comparison of the new assumption with the old ones results in a change to the individuals set of forward assumptions (if it either adds new assumptions, or weakens or strengthens existing ones), we say that the new information has a contextual e? ect for the individual.Now, the following(a) point is all- grand(a) The deductive device does not compare every novel assumption to the replete(p) set of assumptions represented in the individuals longterm memory. Doing this would be cognitively impossible. This center that the comparison is done with some subset of existing assumptions. This, in turn, raises a very important question How does the deductive device take up this subset? Traditionally, pragmaticists have come upond that the context for the interpretation of an utterance is merely disposed It consists of the immediate environment and the information explicitly mentioned in the chat prior to the utterance.Sperber and Wilson ? ip thi s assumption on its head and suggest a solution utility(a) They show that the deductive device has to update the context for the interpretation for each new assumption, and that the speci? c subset of existing assumptions which is chosen for the context is determined, at least partially, by the content of the new assumption. In cognitive equipment casualty, this means that the order of events in comprehension is reversed It is not that the deductive device ? rst sets the context, and then interprets the new assumption.On the contrary, the deductive device has to partially ? gure out the meaning of the new assumption, retrieve a speci? c subset of assumptions from long-term memory, store them in its own short-term memory, and then make the comparison. An example should make this radical conception rather intuitive. Take a look at the following exchanges (2) A How are you? B Not so good, Mary has that ear-infection again, Im worried. (3) A How are you? B Great, I just bought the ti ckets. Were ? ying to Beijing in exactly four weeks.In order to interpret Bs response in each of these exchanges, A has to compare them to a subset of existing assumptions. The proper context in (2) should include assumptions about the identity element of Mary, her relation to B, her medical history, ear- D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 701 infections, and so on and so forth. The proper context in (3) should include assumptions about Bs travel plans, the identity of her companion, or companions, whatever assumptions A has about Beijing, and so on and so forth. Obviously, these assumptions are not stored in As short-term memory on a permanent basis.As deductive device has to retrieve these assumptions from long-term memory, and only then make the comparison and deduce the contextual e? ects. We may now make two parallel cognitive assumptions regarding the process I have described. First, we may assume that in its trance context, a new piece of information has a le gitimate number of contextual e? ects, which, at least theoretically, can be counted. Practically speaking, when we deal with interpretations of actual utterances by real people, we do not know exactly how to make the measurement, but the dea itself is intuitive enough for us to accept. We may be pretty certain that in di? erent contexts, the same piece of information may conduct di? erent add togethers of contextual e? ects, and that in the same context, some pieces of information would yield more contextual e? ects than others. Second, we may assume that the work of the deductive device involves some mental e? ort, whichtheoretically speaking, again- may be measured. 5 otherwise things being equal, for example, the computation of a more complex piece of information will take more e? ort than the computation of a simpler one.Moreover, the social organisation of a new context for interpretation also involves some mental e? ort To the conclusion that the interpretation of the no vel piece of information necessitates the retrieval of a larger set of assumptions from long-term memory, the mental e? ort involved in the interpretation process would be greater. The measurements of contextual e? ect and mental e? ort constitute the basis of Sperber and Wilsons notion of relevance (4) Relevance for an individual (p. 145) a. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the contextual e? cts achieved when it is optimally processed are large. b. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the e? ort required to process it optimally is small. It is crucial to understand that this is not a de? nition of relevance in some objective whizz, but a claim concerning the way our minds make relevance judgments about new assumptions We numerate new assumptions to be relevant if they hold a contextual e? ect at a reasonable cognitive price. We judge new assumptions to be unsuitable if they do not carry a contextual e? ect, or if the computa tion of the contextual e? ct inculpates too much of a mental e? ort. Note that this is a comparative, inactive conception of relevance, rather than a binary one New assumptions are not either relevant or not they are more or less relevant than others, in di? erent contexts, for di? erent people. Thus, for example, a regular newspaper reader will prob5 Sperber and Wilson (1986, p. 130) conceptualize about the measurement of contextual e? ects and cognitive e? ort in terms of physico-chemical changes which occur in the sense as a result of the processing of the contextual e? ects. 702 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 bly judge a piece of local news to be more relevant than a piece of outside news because (i) the potence contextual e? ect derivable from the local news would likely be larger and (ii) the e? ort adopted to interpret the foreign news (especially in terms of the retrieval of the impound set of assumptions from long-term memory) would belike be larger . This judgment need not be made consciously the reader may only skip the foreign-news page, or note that foreign news is boring. Note, however, that the very same reader may take the trouble to read the foreign news to the extent that their contextual e? cts would be worth his or her processing e? ort. This may be the case, for example, if the story is about a coun endeavor which the reader intends to visit if some people which the reader knows are there if there is a local angle to the foreign story if the foreign story has a globular consequence which is felt locally, and so on. Finally, note that this technical notion of relevance should not be equated with relevance in the mundane sense of the word. Relevance in this ordinary sense may be thought of as the measurement of the association, or congruence, between some content and its context of interpretation.Thus, a news story will be relevant in this sense to the extent that it is about those issues which are directly related to the readers lives and interests. Indeed, relevance in this sense may play a role in news value judgments. Note, however, that a story may be relevant in this ordinary sense but very low on relevance in the technical sense (if it is long and complicated to read, for example, or if it does not carry a fix of new information) and it may be irrelevant in the ordinary sense, but high on relevance in the technical sense- if its potential contextual e? cts justify the construction of a new context for interpretation. Now, our technical de? nition of relevance is addressee-oriented, but it may genuinely tell us something of importance about the role of speakers in communicative contexts. Think about a speaker, Ann, who is filtrateing to tell her addressee, potty, a story. organism a cooperative communicator, Ann would like to make the story as relevant for joke as possible. How should she go about achieving this goal? According to relevance theory, she has three principled strateg ies which she can try to dopt (i) First, Ann can try to bosom the largest possible number of new assumptions (those which are new for bath) into her story other(a) things being equal, the more new assumptions the story keeps, the more contextual e? ects it may have for flush toilet. In the worst-case scenario, the story will not contain any assumptions which are new for John, in which case he is pass to ? nd it totally irrelevant. Ann de? nitely needs to ? nd a way to do come apart than that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the story will contain a very large number of new assumptions.As we shall see below, this is not always issue to be possible. (ii) Second, Ann can try to minimize Johns processing e? ort Other things being equal, the smaller the e? ort he has to put in, the greater the relevance of the story is deprivation to be for him. In the worst-case scenario, the story is going to be too long and complicated, and John is going to lose interest. Ann de ? nitely has to cancel that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 703 story will take a very nominal e? ort to process. Again, this is not always going to be possible. iii) Third, Ann can try to manipulate the context in which John is going to interpret her story. Other things being equal, the closer the context of interpretation is to the optimal one, the more contextual e? ects the story is going to carry for John. (Note that in regular conversation we regularly take the trouble to manipulate our addressees context of interpretation, especially when we wish to change the topic of conversation We say things like Oh, I wanted to tell you something about Bill, or talking about school, did you hear about Bills exam? ).In the worst-case scenario, John is going to try to interpret Anns story in the wrong context, and the interpretation is going to yield no contextual e? ects. In the best-case scenario, the story is going to be interpreted in the most appropriate context, compliant the maximal measuring rod of contextual e? ects. This, again, is not always going to be possible. Now, it is very important to realize that the three strategies mentioned above are not only completely intertwined, but are also in direct competition with each other. This is why achieving the maximal results associated with each of the strategies is not always possible.This is so for the following reasons (i) First, every new assumption which the speaker adds to the story does not only contribute to the overall number of contextual e? ects- it also adds to the overall processing e? ort. Thus, the new assumption adds to the overall relevance of the story only to the extent that it clearly adds more contextual e? ect than processing e? ort. To the extent that the new assumption adds more to the processing e? ort than to the contextual e? ect, it genuinely reduces the overall relevance of the story. In this case, more informat ion results in less relevance.So, the attempt to maximize relevance simply by maximizing the meat of new information is bound to end up in failure. The speaker has to ? gure out the optimal come up of information which would not result in relevance decline due to processing e? ort. (ii) Second, Ann may de? nitely try to maximally reduce Johns processing e? ort by making her story short, simple and clear, but this reduction will not necessarily result in maximal relevance This is so, because the reduction in the storys complexity characteristically reduces the number of its potential contextual e? ects. The reduction of processing e? rt will enhance the relevance of Anns story only to the extent that the gist of e? ort salve is larger than the amount of contextual e? ects lost. So, again, Ann cannot simply reduce Johns processing e? ort to the borderline. She has to ? gure out the optimal amount of e? ort which would not result in relevance reduction due to pass of contextual e? ects. (iii) Third, the number of contextual e? ects which John may deduce from Anns story is not just a function of the sheer number of new assumptions in the story, but a function of the interaction between these new assumptions and the context of interpretation.This means that Ann should not just provide 704 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 John with the optimal number of new assumptions, but also take care to provide him with those speci? c assumptions which would yield the maximal amount of contextual e? ects in the appropriate context, and at the very same time direct John to construct that speci? c context. This complicates our relevance considerations to a capacious extent, because the construction of the appropriate context entails a signi? cant amount of processing e? ort.Consequently, in principle, the construction of the appropriate context may eventually result in relevance reduction due to the increase in processing e? ort. Thus, the construction of a partial context for interpretation may sometimes be the optimal strategy. As we have seen, Anns role as the story-teller is going to be that of relevance optimization She will need to provide John with the optimal ratio of contextual e? ect and processing e? ort. This, I would like to claim, is exactly the generalized communicative function which newspaper headlines are supposed to ful? l They are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. 4. Newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers Consider the following story, from the Israeli national newspaper Maariv (5) The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. , his wife Caroline and his sister-in-law Lorraine were discovered yesterday in the ocean, at a depth of 30 meters, 10 kilometers away from Marthas Vineyard Island, where they were headed on Saturday. Senator Edward Kennedy, Johns uncle, arrived at the point where the bodies were found, in order to identify them. Kennedy Jr. ill be buried in NY in the coming days. This news item requires a certain amount of mental e? ort to interpret. To begin with, the paragraph requires some e? ort to read It consists of about 70 words, and is grammatically fairly complex. Moreover, the news item requires the construction of a context for interpretation- one which includes whatever the reader knows about John Kennedy Jr. , his family, their disappearance two days before, the relevant geography, and belike at least something about the Kennedys history. As we have said before, the construction of this context takes an additional e? rt. Let us assume, for the sake of simpli urban center, that the interpretation of the entire story will require the ordinary reader to cast a certain amount of e? ort, let us nickname it E(story). Now, to the extent that the reader manages to construct the appropriate context and read the passage, the story carries a certain amount of contextual e? ects It changes a raft of factual assumptions the reader represented in his or h er long-term memory (e. g. , the assumption John Kennedy Jr. is alive and well is replaced by John Kennedy Jr. died in an irplane accident), and it changes, weakens or strengthens a great many related assumptions having to do with, for example, the inescapable tragedies of the Kennedy family, the life-styles of the rich and D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 705 notable, the blindness of fate, the risks involved in ? ying your own plane, and so on and so forth. Obviously, di? erent readers will probably deduce di? erent sets of contextual e? ects from the story, but for the sake of simplicity, let us assume that the ordinary reader will deduce a certain amount of contextual e? cts, let us knight it C(story). The relevance of the story for the ordinary reader will thus be R(story)=C(story)/E(story). Now, let us take a look at the headline the newspaper gave to the story (6) John Kennedy Jr. s body found How much e? ort does the reader have to invest in translation th e headline? Obviously, much less than E(story) The headline is a single, short and simple sentence, comprising ? ve words, and the e? ort needed to read it is insubstantial. The e? ort needed to construct the context for the interpretation of the headline is also signi? antly smallerthe reader does not need to retrieve the sets of assumptions having to do with the geography of the story, with Senator Ed Kennedy, and so on. For the sake of simplicity, let us make the arbitrary assumption that E(headline) equals 10% of E(story). Now, how many contextual e? ects can the reader deduce from the headline? Surprisingly, when the headline is interpreted in its reduced context, a signi? cantly large subset of the contextual e? ects of the entire story survive. Obviously, some things are missingfor example, the fact that Kennedys wife and his sister-in-law were found toobut Kennedys death, its signi? ance within the tragic history of the Kennedy family, and the more general implications of th e story are clear contextual e? ects of the headline. Let us adopt a conservative estimate For the ordinary reader, C(headline) equals 50% of C(story). As a simple calculation clearly shows, our estimates entail that the headline multiplies the relevance of the story by ? ve ( ). It saves much more on the processing e? ort than it loses on the contextual e? ects. This is exactly what a headline should do. A short and simple text, it optimizes the relevance of the story by minimizing processing e? ort while making sure that a suf? ient amount of contextual e? ects are deducible within the most appropriate context possible. Just like Ann, our story-teller, the headline does not adopt an all-ornone strategy of either bring down processing e? ort to zero, or maximizing new information, or constructing the most appropriate context for interpretation. Rather, it attempts to optimize the ratio between processing e? ort and contextual e? ects- and thus optimally perform between the story and the ordinary reader. Note that for the optimization of relevance to be successful, the right material should be chosen for the headline.Consider, for example, the following three clauses as alternative headlines for the Kennedy story (7) a. Caroline Kennedys body found b. Sen. Edward Kennedy arrived at the crash site. 706 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 c. The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. and his wife Caroline were discovered yesterday in the ocean, near Marthas Vineyard Island. The ? rst two alternative headlines (7a and 7b) are probably as easy to read as the actual one, and we may assume that they require the construction of a very similar context for interpretation. However, they do not carry the same amount of contextual e? cts as the original. The third alternative (7c) carries a fairly larger number of contextual e? ects than the original, but it very simply requires much more processing e? ort. Thus, all three alternative fall short of providing optimal r elevance. Is the original headline in (6) a summarizing or a highlighting headline? It is hard to tell. The important point, however, is that from our theoretical point-of-view the summarizing-highlighting distinction is simply not that crucial Summarizing the story is just one tactical approach to relevance optimization.Highlighting the most intriguing aspect of the story, or reproducing the most interesting statement quoted in the story, may have the very same result. It may turn out, for example, that the quotation or the highlighted aspect carry more contextual e? ects than the summary of the whole narrative. In this case, the reasonable thing to do would be to promote them to the headline- and thus optimize the relevance of the story for the readers. The choice between these di? erent tactical approaches is in part a matter of the editorial style of the newspaper, and to a very large extent a matter of the experience and creativity of its editors.For every given story, some he adline options are going to suggest themselves. The editor may opt for a summarizing headline, a highlighting headline or a quotation headline- depending on which type of headline will provide optimal relevance. 6 Moreover, the editor may manipulate the length and complexity of the headline, and its speci? c contents. And again, these manipulations, to a very large extent, are going to be relevance-oriented. 7 In the following section, I will present the results of an empirical study conducted in the classs 19961998 in the news-desk of the Israeli national newspaper Maariv. In the study, I followed the decision-making process leading to the choice of headline for a large number of news items. As the results of the study clearly indicate, the set of professional intuitions shared by the editors, concerning the properties of the right or appropriate headline, are theoretically reduced to our notion of releI will discuss the choice of tabloid-type headlines later on. An un cognise a rbitrator notes that some text manipulations may not be relevance-oriented. Thus, for example, some manipulations may have to do with spacing on the page, and others with political considerations. I agree with the ? st point. In Dor (2001), however, I show that relevance-oriented manipulations play an extremely important role in processes of political framing. 8 There are before long three national newspapers in Israel Yediot Ahronot and Maariv are considered to be the best-selling(predicate) newspapers, whereas Haaretz is considered to be the quality, high-brow one. Yediot Ahronot and Maariv, however, are not tabloids in the regular, American-European sense. They contain a variety of serious news items which is not that di? erent from that of Haaretz, and are distinct from it especially in writing style and graphic design.In all three newspapers, headline formulation is considered part of the editorial process, and reporters do not formulate headlines for their stories. 7 6 D. Do r / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 707 vance The most appropriate headline for a news item is the one which optimizes the relevance of the story for the readers of the newspaper. 5. The notion of relevance and the art of headline writing In general, news editors do not work with a very explicit de? nition of what headlines are, or of their communicative functions.What they do work with is a cluster of professional intuitions in stages developed in the ? eld, and never seriously explicatedconcerning the properties of what we might call, rather informally, the right, appropriate, or good headline. When asked to provide an explicit de? nition of what a headline is, senior newspaper editors usually give an answer of the type I dont know what headlines are, but I can tell a good one when I see it. This answer is really a pretty holy rendition of a very fundamental sentiment Professional knowledge is practical, not theoretical.However, when presented with a news-item, and asked to choose a headline out of a set of alternatives, experient news editors do so with extreme ease and e? ciency. Moreover, senior editors in the same newspaper have a very high rate of agreement on the preferred headline. This means that experienced news editors know a great deal more about the functional properties of headlines than they ever explicate. In this sense, headline production is more similar to an artistic activity than, say, to the practice of an exact science. This a? ity with the arts is very clearly re? ected in the trial-and-error process which beginning copy-editors go through as part of their on-the-job training procedure. Rather than receive their professional genteelness in the form of explicit lecturing, beginning copy-editors in Maariv simply start out working They are assigned a new-item, and are asked to rewrite it and suggest a headline for it. The result is then reviewed by the senior editor in charge, who, in most cases, rejects the suggested headline and writes a di? erent one, which eventually gets published.Sometimes, the copy-editor is asked to suggest the alternative headline, which is, again, reviewed by the editor in charge. Deadline printing press usually does not allow for long explanations When the process is over, the copy-editor gets another story, suggests a headline, which usually gets jilted, and so on and so forth. This process goes on for years, and in a real sense never ends In Maariv, each and every suggested headline is sent to the senior editor in chief, in the form of an electronic message, to be okay or rejected, even if the copy-editors have years of experience behind them.Obviously, the rate of rejected headlines goes down with time, when the trained editor internalizes the set of implicit intuitions shared by the other, more experienced editors, but even very experienced editors get some of their headlines rejected some of the time Sometimes, for example, the editor in chief knows something about th e wider context of the story which the copy-editor was not aware of. The fact that these real-time negotiations about the headlines are done in writing, by e-mail messages, allowed me to follow the process of headline formulation from very close range.I collected 134 e-mail exchanges, concerning 134 news-items, and analyzed the semantic-pragmatic di? erences between the rejected and approved headlines. In some cases, I asked the editor in charge to reconstruct the reasons for 708 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 the rejection of the suggested headline. I then extracted a list of ten properties, which I shall call the properties of the appropriate headline. I release that this list is an accurate rendition of the set of implicit intuitions shared by experienced news editors in Maariv.In the following section, I will present the ten properties, each with its representative example, and show that the list is actually reducible to one professional meta-imperative Make th e headline such that it renders the story optimally-relevant. Three notes should be made at this point First, the following discussion should not be thought of as an attempt to construct a theoretical framework, but as a description of a set of professional intuitions, shared by news editors, concerning the properties of the appropriate headline. In other words, I do not intend to make any signi? ant claim concerning the theoretical status of the ten properties to be discussed below. quite obviously, some of the properties seem to bear close resemblance to some principles discussed in the literature under the rubric of news value (e. g. , in Galtung and Ruge, 1965 Bell, 1991) other properties may remind the reader of Grices conversational maxims. I will leave the elaboration of these resemblances for further research, and concentrate on the possibility of reducing the entire set of properties to the relevance-based meta-intuition mentioned above. Second, the properties are to be th ought of as nonremittal conditions, rather than obligatory ones. It is not the case that every headline should have all 10 properties. It is the case that a headline which meets any of these conditions is get around than a headline which does not, and a headline which meets a larger number of the conditions is better than a headline which meets a smaller number of them. Thus, for example, the ? rst propheadlines should be as short as possibleshould be read as saying other things being equal, a shorter headline is better than a longer one.Finally, The headlines presented in the next section are translated from the Hebrew original. I chose to keep the translation as literally accurate as possible, and avoided translating the headlines into headlinese, because Hebrew headlines do not usually have the telegraphic syntax characteristic of English headlines. 5. 1. The properties of the appropriate headline 1 Headlines should be as short as possible. Newspaper headlines are, quite obvio usly, very short clauses.The actual length of each particular headline, however, is a matter of considerable debate and negotiation between senior editors and copy editors Copy-editors, especially the beginners, suggest longer headlines, attempting to capture as much of the story as possible. The senior editors shorten the headlines to a considerable extent- leaving out whole chunks of information. adept of the expertises mastered by experienced editors is the ability to decide which parts of the story should be left out of the headline. The following exchange is a very typical example. The I thank an anonymous justice for his/her discussion of this point.The referee also wondered whether any of the ten properties may be reducible to another. Thus, for example, the referee felt that properties 6 and 7 are mirror-images of each other, and should thus be put together. I assume that this can indeed be done. For me, however, the more important point was that the editors I talked to fe lt these were two separate, although obviously related, principles. As I am interested here in the description of intuitions, rather than in the construction of a theoretical framework, I will discuss the two principles separately. 9 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 709 tory is about a youth gang which was caught red-handed mutilating gravestones in a armed services cemetery in Haifa. The copy-editor suggested the following headline (8) Haifa A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones in the citys military cemetery The head of the news-desk ordered the copy-editor to shorten the headline, in the following way (9) Haifa A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones Note that the decision to shorten the headline is not without its price We have lost a piece of information, i. e. , that the gravestones were mutilated in a military cemetery, which means we have lost some contextual e? ects.We have, however, gained in reading e? ort. The shorter headline is simply eas ier to read. This is a very clear example of relevance optimization by e? ort reduction. The editor in charge decided that the loss in contextual e? ects is smaller than the gain in reading e? ort. 2 Headlines should be clear, easy to understand, and unambiguous. Formulating a headline to a complex story is not an easy task. Copy-editors sometimes suggest headlines which come out indecipherable, di? cult to understand, or unintentionally ambiguous. Such headlines are rejected, and the copy-editor is asked to formulate a clearer, simpler, unambiguous headline.In the following example, the article tells the story of a police manoeuvre in the city of Ramat-Gan, where a single arsonist threatened the city for weeks, vehement down vehicles every night. On that speci? c night, the police caught a suspect, but had to release him after the real arsonist took out to the streets again, burning down more vehicles to prove that he was not caught. The copy-editor suggested the following headli ne (10) The real arsonist from Ramat-Gan proves You Havent caught me The headline was rejected because it was considered unclear and unnecessarily ambiguous.It raises more questions and vaguenesses than it actually answers Who is the real arsonist? Is there an jejune arsonist? How has the real arsonist proven that he wasnt caught? By whom? The copy-editor was ordered to formulate a clearer headline. This was his second attempt (11) The arsonist was caught- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan went on burning This version is much clearer It makes clear that a claim was made that the arsonist was caught, which turned out to be false, and it makes clear that, on that day, 710 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 fter the capture incident ended, some vehicles in Ramat-Gan were motionlessness burning. There is, however, a potential ambiguity here The headline can be read as making the claim that the arsonist set the vehicles on ? re before the police made the false claim, and that they went on burning after the incident. The headline was rejected again, and the copy-editor suggested the third version, in (12), which was ? nally genuine and published as it is. Note that the only di? erence between (11), the rejected headline, and (12), the approved one, is in the tense of the verb in the second clause. 12) The arsonist was caught- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan go on burning This headline makes it clear that the arsonist is still on the loose, and is still in the habit of setting vehicles on ? re. Finally, the story is captured in a clear, simple and unambiguous fashion. This reduces processing e? ort to the necessary minimum and optimizes the relevance of the story. 3 Headlines should be interesting. This quality plays a central role in the negotiations between copy-editors and senior editors. Many suggested headlines are rejected on the grounds that they are not interesting.What is usually meant by this rather obscure phrase is that the editor imagines that the readers of the paper will not ? nd the headline interesting enough. In terms of our relevance-based theory, this means that the editor estimates that the amount of contextual e? ects carried by the headline will not justify the amount of reading e? ort. The copy-editor is then asked to read the article again, and look for a more interesting piece of information to foreground to the headline. In the following example, the story includes an interview with Uri Lubrani, IDFs old-timer of Military operations in Southern Lebanon.General Antoin Lahed, who is mentioned in the rejected headline, is the Commander in Chief of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Christian Militia which has traditionally been IDFs ally in Lebanon. The context of the story is a wave of rumors, check to which the IDF plans to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, thus leaving General Lahed and his people on their own against their Islamic rivals This is the headline which the copy-editor suggested (13) Lubrani There w as no secret merging with General Lahed Whether or not there was a secret brush between IDF o? ials and General Lahed on the old day is hardly an interesting question. After all, IDF o? cials and General Lahed meet on a regular basis, and their meetings are usually kept secret. In our terms, the headline does not carry a substantial amount of contextual e? ects. The headline was rejected, and the copy-editor came up with the following alternative (14) Lubrani There is no plan to vacate SLA seniors to Europe Whether or not there is a secret plan to evacuate SLA seniors to Europe is very obviously much more interesting.If there was such a plan, this would be a pretty D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 711 remarkable sign that the IDF is on its way out of Lebanon. Lubranis ? at defensive structure can be interpreted in more than one way We can take him for his word, or assume that he chose to cover the initiation of the plan for tactical reasons- at any rate the den ial has interesting implications. It is de? nitely more interesting than just another meeting- in our terms, it carries more contextual e? ects for the same amount of processing e? ort. Note that this is a very good example of the signi? ant role of headline writing in the workings of a newspaper. The two headlines, the rejected one and the suggested one, make it quite obvious that the Lubrani interview did not contain any remarkable scoops, and that the editor had to dig in to ? nd something which was worth promoting to the headline. As the senior editors decision makes clear, even negative statements, ? at denials of the type that Lubrani suggested as answers to the reporters questions, have di? erent amounts of relevance, and the one which was more relevant than the other was promoted. 4 Headlines should contain new information. A major topic for negotiations between copy-editors and senior-editors has to do with the question of whether the readers already know what the copy-edit or decided to promote to the headline. Obviously, editors do not really know what their readers know, but their estimates of their readers state of knowledge play a central role in the decision-making process. This makes consummate sense within our relevance-based framework A headline which does not contain novel assumptions cannot bring about contextual e? ects, and is thus irrelevant.In Maariv, as in any other daily newspaper, estimates of the readers state of knowledge are based primarily on what has already been communicated by the other mass-media, especially the evening news on TV. If the content of the proposed headline for the next morning has already appeared in the news the night before, most chances are it will be rejected. The following headline, for example, was rejected on these grounds (15) The Austrian Chancellor Arrived for a visit will meet Netanyahu today The copy-editor had a hard time ? nding an alternative headline. This is what he came up with (16) O? ials in capital of Israel hope for the Austrian Chancellors visit to make smoothly This headline was accepted, for two reasons First, it carries the implication that o? cials in Jerusalem are worried that the visit might not run smoothlyan angle on the visit which was new. Second, it connects the story to prior events and expectations The visit of the British foreign minister had just ended the day before, and that visit was replete of political hurdles and diplomatic embarrassments. As we shall see below, connecting a story to its wider context is another important property of good headlines. 712 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 5 Headlines should not presuppose information unknown to the readers. This principle, in a sense, is the mirror-image of the previous one The information in the headline should de? nitely be newbut it cannot be overly new. Headlines should only presuppose information which is already part of the mutual knowledge established between the newspaper and its readers. In terms of our relevance-based framework, every presupposition in the headline should already be for sale within the readers context of interpretation. Otherwise, the computation of the headline will result in zero contextual e? cts. Consider, then, the following headline (17) Advanced negotiations on the establishment of the second Israeli-owned gambling casino in Jericho This headline presupposes the existence, or at least the potential existence, of the ? rst Israeli-owned casino in Jericho. The ? rst news concerning the plans to build this casino, the ? rst one, were published only a few days before the above headline was suggested. According to the editor in chief, the readers had not yet registered the future existence of the ? rst casino in their long-term memoryit was premature to treat it as a presupposition.The copy-editor was asked to change the headline, and came up with the following alternative (18) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in February In this headline, the establishment of the ? rst casino in Jericho is not presupposed, but reported as part of the news. This is much better. But the editor in chief asked the copy-editor to rephrase the headline again, this time for a di? erent reason The proposed headline forces the reader to calculate the amount of time it will take till the casino will be operational. This adds to the processing e? ort. The alternative, which was eventually published, reduces this e? rt, thus optimizing the relevance of the story (19) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in a year 6 Headlines should include call and concepts with high news value for the readers. 10 go through editors develop a sense of the news value of label and 10 This property, and the next one, reminded one anonymous referee of Ariels (1988, 1991) accessibility theory (see also Kronrod and Engel 2000). The resemblance, however, is rather super? cial. Ariel is not interested in the speci? c contents of the referring expressions, but in their general cognitive and structural properties.Thus, for example, referring expressions which function as high accessibility markers (e. g. , personal pronouns, ? rst names) are used by speakers when they assume that the referents are highly accessible for their addressees lower accessibility markers (e. g. , long de? nite descriptions, full names etc. ) are used when the speaker assumes low mental accessibility for their addressees. The point I am making here, however, is not that newspaper editors prefer certain types of referring expression (e. g. , full names) to others (e. g. , last names), but that they prefer certain referents (e. g. , famous ? gures) to others. D.Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 713 concepts They very comfortably identify names and concepts which should appear in headlines- and those which do not. In terms of our relevance-based theory, experienced editors know, or at least believe they know, which names and concepts will carry a large number of contextual e? ects for their readers. The following example demonstrates this very clearly. Some terra firma Two days before the following story was to be published, a story in one of the national newspapers revealed that the touristy musicians contracted to perform in Israels fiftieth Jubilee were paid high sums of money- at the ax- reconcileers expense. In our story, some other popular musicians reacted to the revelation and angrily declared that they were free to perform in the Jubilee for free. This was the headline suggested by the copy-editor (20) A group of artists suggests an alternative for the Jubilee we are willing to perform for free This headline, a classic summarizing headline, was rejected in favor of the following, which replaces the expression a group of artists with the names of two celebrity musicians, Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsanani (21) Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsanani we are willing to perform in the jubilee for free Note, ? rst, that the replacement headline in (21) actually loses some of the information we had in (20) The group of artists included many more musicians than just the two mentioned in (21). The point, however, is that the two are the most famous members of the group, and names of well-known popular musicians always carry a lot of contextual e? ects This is so, because their names direct the readers to construct a much wider context for interpretation, which includes whatever we know about them, their personalities, their views, their social background, their wealth, their life styles, and so on. 20) is a headline suited for a regular news story about the 50th Jubilee (21), on the other hand, is a headline for what is fundamentally a gossip story about Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsanani. 7 Headlines should not contain names and concepts with low news value for the readers. This is the mirror-image of the last property Some names and concepts do not have news value for the readers, a nd experienced editors avoid promoting them to the headline. In our terms, these names and concepts do not help the reader construct the optimal context for the interpretation of the headline.In the following example, the copy-editor attempted to promote such a name to the headline, and was intercepted by the editor in charge. Some background The story has to do with an accident in which two military helicopters collided in the air on their way to Israels northern border, an accident in which more than 70 soldiers were killed. New immigrants to Israel receive an immigration grant from the Jewish agency, and it turned out that the agency asked the parents of one of the soldiers killed in the accident, a newly-arrived immigrant, to pay back his grant.The copy editor suggested the following headline 714 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695721 (22) The Michaelov family was ordered to return the immigration grant given to their son- who was killed in the Galilee The editor in cha rge rejected the headline, and ordered the copy-editor to produce another one, which would not contain the name. This was the alternative headline, which was ? nally published (23) The Jewish agency refused to let a family, whose son was killed in the helicopter accident, keep his immigration grantNote that the move from the de? nite the Michaelov family to the inde? nite a family made it di? cult for the copy-editor to keep it in subject position, and dictated an overall grammatical change from passive to active voice. 8 Headlines should connect the story to previously known facts and events. Just like the last two principles, this one has to do with the construction of the appropriate context for interpretation. A story interpreted on its own, as an isolated event, will carry a certain amount of contextual e? ects.The same story can carry more contextual e? ects to the extent that the readers interprets it within a wider context, which includes previously known facts and events. Consider the following example, which is a report on a hot hack writer robbery in the city of Haifa (24) The driver was beaten and throw out- and the stolen taxi was later found stuck in the mud The editor in charge, who rejected this headline, asked the copy-editor to connect the incident in Haifa to the rising trend of taxi robbery throughout Israel. The fol