Investigating structural ambiguity in newspaper headlines: A case study of selected headlines in the Namibian newspaper between 1st February and 31st December 2020
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Date
2022
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Publisher
University of Namibia
Abstract
The purpose of the study was to investigate possible meanings of the structurally ambiguous headlines found in The Namibian newspaper and to illustrate the ambiguity by tree diagram. The study focused on structural ambiguity in the news headlines published between 1st February 2020 and 31st December 2020 covering political, social, and sports beats. The study also described the causes of structural ambiguity in these headlines. No fieldwork was carried out in this research as it was limited to desktop design due to the qualitative nature of the research. In addition, the data were analysed using Clare’s (2013) theory of ambiguity to demonstrate that the headlines are structurally ambiguous, Carnie’s (2013) syntactic theory to find possible explanations for each ambiguous phrase or sentence and Bornstain’s (1997) tree diagram theory to reveal the structural ambiguity. The study revealed that structural ambiguity occurs in the headlines of The Namibian newspaper because of modification scope, negation scope, active or passive meaning, present participle and mostly due to prepositional phrases. In addition, the study also revealed that not all structural ambiguous headlines can be exposed using the tree diagram, therefore making it a limiting tool to illustrate structural ambiguity. In the final analysis, the study recommended that the newspaper editors should include deck heads to further give meaning to the headlines and to clear any confusion that might be caused by ambiguity in the headline.
Description
A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts (English studies)
Keywords
Newspaper, Ambiguity, Headlines