In the headlines CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN USE ADVANCED

CAMBRIDGE ENGLISH VOCABULARY IN USE ADVANCED

UNIT 100

In the headlines

A	Features of headline language If a story hits the headlines it suddenly receives a lot of attention in the news. Here are two typical examples of headlines from tabloid newspapers with comments on their use of language. [popular papers with small pages and short simple reports] EXPERT REVEALS NEW CLOUD DANGERS • Articles, prepositions and auxiliary verbs are oft en omitted from headlines. • This use of the present simple instead of the past tense makes the story sound more immediate. • The use of language is oft en ambiguous. It is not entirely clear, for example, what cloud refers to here. It is actually about the dangers of storing electronic information on a ‘cloud’ [hosted services on the internet for storing personal data], but it could have referred to dangers relating to the weather. Readers have to look at the story in order to find out. • Words with dramatic associations such as danger are oft en used. TV STAR TRAGIC TARGET FOR CRAZED GUNMAN This story is about how a well-known television actor was shot by a mentally unstable killer. • In order to attract readers’ attention, tabloid newspapers oft en feature celebrities, e.g. film/pop stars and sports personalities. • Alliteration such as TV Star Tragic Target is oft en used to attract the eye in headlines and to make them sound more memorable. • Newspapers tend to use strong, simple words such as ‘gunman’ in order to express an idea or image as briefly and as vividly as possible. • Strongly emotional words like crazed are oft en used to attract attention. [behaving in a wild or strange way, especially because of strong emotion]
B	Violent words Violent and militaristic words are oft en used in headlines, especially in tabloid newspapers, in order to make stories seem more dramatic. For example, people who cause trouble may be referred to as thugs, yobs or louts.
C	Playing with words Many newspaper headlines attract readers’ attention by playing on words in an entertaining way. For example, a story about a very heavy rainstorm which caused a landslide on a narrow mountain road was headlined Rain of terror. This headline was a play on words based on the expression reign of terror, an expression used about a period in which a country’s ruler controls people in a particularly cruel way. Another example is the use of the headline Moon becomes shooting star to describe a football match where a player called John Moon shot [scored] the winning goal. Shooting star is an informal expression for a meteor. Here it is used to play on the expression shoot a goal, and also to link to the player’s name, Moon (another astronomical body). The headline is particularly effective because of the association between star and moon in the sky.

EXERCISES

100.1	Read these headlines. What do you think the stories might be about? 1 BLAST TERROR IN CAPITAL                      4 CRACKDOWN ON DISSENT 2 PM TO REVEAL SOCCER LOUT PLANS   5 THUGS BESIEGE TEEN STAR 3 TOP PLAYERS DEFEND COACH                6 COPS TARGET YOBS
100.2	Look at these headlines from a fictitious tabloid newspaper about Ancient Greece. Match them with the subjects of their stories and comment on the features of headline language they contain.   a Four members of the royal family die in mysterious circumstances. b Philip of Macedonia wins a battle against the city states of Athens and Thebes. c Archimedes discovers the law governing the displacement of water. d The city of Corinth is burnt to the ground by the Romans. e A long-distance runner brings news of a battle victory to Athens and then dies.
100.3	Match the headline to its story and explain the play on words in each case. 1 Bad blood 2 Happy days? 3 Shell-shocked 4 False impressions 5 Happy haunting 6 Hopping mad 7 Flushed with success 8 Highly embarrassed 9 Round-up a A grandfather’s breathing problems were solved when doctors found four false teeth at the entrance to his lungs. They had been forced down his windpipe in a car crash eight years before. b A 25-year-old terrapin is being treated for a fractured shell after surviving a 200-foot drop. c A Shetland teacher has suggested sheepdogs could be used to control pupils in playgrounds. d A ghost society has been told not to scare off a friendly female apparition at a hotel. e An unusual travel company is offering adults the chance to experience going back to school again – they will spend a week wearing school uniform, sitting through lessons and eating school dinners. f An ex-public loo in Hackney, East London, is to be sold for £276,000. g A Whitby vicar has attacked the resort’s attempts to profit on its connections with Dracula: ‘a palefaced man with a bad sense of fashion, severe dental problems and an eating disorder’. h A toad triggered a police alert when it set off a new hi-tech alarm system. i Firefighters had to scale a 30-foot tree to rescue a man who was trying to capture his pet iguana.

ANSWER KEY

100.1 Suggested answers: 1 A bomb explosion in a capital city terrorises the population there. 2 The Prime Minister is going to announce plans for dealing with football hooligans. 3 Some highly successful footballers are speaking up for their coach after he has been criticised. 4 A strong campaign against people who disagree with a government has been launched. 5 Violent men surround a teenage star. 6 The police decide to focus on dealing with badly behaved and offensive young men. 100.2 1 c It uses nudity and the dramatic word ‘scandal’ to attract attention. 2 b It uses a familiar name for the King, which shows either lack of respect or friendly familiarity, and the dramatic word ‘massacre’ for battle, with alliteration on ‘Macedonian’ and ‘massacre’. 3 e It uses alliteration in ‘Marathon man’ and ‘drop-dead dash’, with a dramatic image and words. 4 a It is about royalty and scandal, which are favourite topics for tabloids. 5 d It uses the informal expression ‘It’s curtains for …’ [It’s the end for …], and alliteration in ‘curtains’ and ‘Corinth’. 100.3 1 g Dracula was a blood-drinking vampire in a famous 19th-century novel of the same name, who comes to Whitby in north-east England from Transylvania. ‘Bad blood’ is also an expression used to mean bad feelings between people. There will probably be bad blood between the vicar of Whitby and the people who are making a profit from the Dracula connections of the town. 2 e School days are often referred to as the ‘happiest days of your life’. 3 b ‘Shell-shocked’ means traumatised or in a state of great shock. It describes how soldiers in the trenches in World War I felt after they had been subjected to shells or bombs for a long time. Terrapins and tortoises have shells and they would certainly be shocked (in the medical sense) by falling from such a height. 4 a Dentists make impressions of teeth and ‘false impressions’ is a common collocation used to mean incorrect impressions created by a person. 5 d This is meant to recall the phrase ‘happy hunting’. ‘Haunting’, however, is what a ghost does. An ‘apparition’ is a kind of ghost. 6 h ‘Hopping mad’ is a collocation meaning extremely cross. It is appropriate here as toads and frogs hop along the ground. Hopping mad is also no doubt how the police felt when they discovered they had been called out by a toad. 7 f Toilets ‘flush’ [water passes through them]. ‘Flushed’ also means to be red in the face. It collocates strongly with the phrase ‘with success’; the people who have sold the toilet for such a large sum of money are likely to feel successful. 8 i ‘Highly embarrassed’ means extremely embarrassed. It is doubly appropriate here as the man is so high up the tree that he has to be rescued by the fire brigade – certainly an embarrassing situation. 9 c Sheepdogs ‘round up’ sheep. They are a kind of dog and it is suggested that they should round up the children.