Tense in News Headlines

الملخص

 Tense in News Headlines

 One of the main components in news discourse , is news headlines, which has become an interest of linguistics(Chin&Tsou,1997), this is because news headlines are considered to have their own characteristics and status in news discourse (Vandijke,1986;Bell,1991).Newspaper  headlines are written  in a special kind of language with its own vocabulary and grammar .Headlines have a special grammar which differs from that of ordinary sentences (Yoneoka, 2002) .One feature of this  grammar is a special tense system. This paper will examine the tense system of English news headlines. What tenses are used and how they are used specially the present simple  tense. The aim of the present paper is to explore the ways the present tense is used in newspaper headlines and explain what functions this tense fulfils. It reports the results of a small study undertaken in order to reveal the general tendencies and patterns of some of the more frequent sentence types used as headlines. The canonical use of the present tense to report past actions is noted and explained with reference to standard grammar. The material under investigation has also indicated a tendency to use the present simple tense in headlines made up of complex sentences, where it occurs in subordinate clauses introducing the circumstances for a more important event expressed non-verbally. The reference of the present tense to past time is explained in view of its universal reference within the system of English tenses, its role as an ‘internal evaluation device’ in narrative and the support it lends to the interpersonal function of headlines.