Predication in Editorial Language: The Example of the Daily Graphic
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Date
2019-03-28
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Abstract
This paper explores the language of Ghanaian newspaper editorials with a focus on the structure of predication within the sentence. Taking the predicate as the part of the sentence (beginning from the verb) which states, affirms or asserts something about the subject, this paper proposes to investigate, therefore, what syntactic structures occur after the Predicator in a typical sentence in an editorial. The interest in this area of study has been inspired by Frimpong’s Mellon-funded project on the nominal group. In one of his seminars, he has argued for the NG to be studied closely for its pervasive nature in the syntagm of the sentence. In his presentation, an important issue emerged which has served as the motivation for this study - that NGs in subject position are, strikingly, structurally simple, involving single pronouns or nouns and two or three-worded premodifying structures. Therefore, if, as has been pointed out in other studies, editorial language is complex, then the source of its complexity does not lie in the Subject but elsewhere in the sentence. For the purpose of this study, January 2016 editorials of the Daily Graphic will be analysed using the combined methods of quantitative and qualitative principles. This is a stylistic investigation of the grammar of newspaper editorials which, we hope, will provide insights about the use of English in specific domains of second language multilingual contexts
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Ghanaian newspaper, Editorial Language, Daily Graphic, stylistic investigation