TENSE SHIFT IN NEWS HEADLINES: A LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20663084Keywords:
tense shift, news headlines, newspaper language, historical present, media discourse, corpus linguisticsAbstract
News headlines are a distinctive genre of written language characterized by their brevity, informativeness, and unconventional grammatical structures. One of the most notable features is the strategic use of tense shifts deviations from standard temporal reference norms. This paper examines the phenomenon of tense shift in English-language news headlines, exploring how present simple, past simple, and future constructions are deployed to achieve rhetorical and cognitive effects. Drawing on a corpus of 200 headlines from major English-language newspapers, including The Guardian, The New York Times, and BBC News, this study identifies three primary tense patterns, analyzes their functional motivations, and discusses the implications for readers' temporal interpretation. The findings suggest that tense shift in headlines is not arbitrary but serves to heighten immediacy, attract reader attention, and frame events within specific narrative perspectives.References
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