272 Julia Lavid, Jorge Arús and Lara Moratón
This tendency can be considered a reflection of the different types of subject
matter characterising these two genres. News reports are more concerned with
individuals or groups of people and this tends to be reflected in a more frequent
selection of concrete nouns. Commentaries are more concerned with the expo-
sition and evaluation of ideas, and this favours the use of abstract nouns over
concrete ones.6.1.3 The internal complexity of the noun groups realizing the Thematic Heads
Commentaries presented a higher frequency in the use of longer and more com-
plex noun groups (17.20%) than news reports (5.36%), this difference being sta-
tistically-significant (p < 0.05). Example (30) illustrates a long and complex noun
group as Thematic Head (in bold) in one of the English commentaries:
(30) As a result, its ability to maintain services – and the military capacity to
respond to any maneuver by the Khartoum government aimed against the
peace agreement – is seriously compromised.
(The Bigger Issue in Sudan. Comment 1)
By contrast, the internal structure of noun groups as Thematic Heads in news
reports was simple. Long noun groups were only found in constructions of noun
group + apposition, which can be considered a strategy to identify a discourse
participant, as illustrated in (31):
(31) Dominique Strauss-Kam, the French head of the International Monetary
Fund, escaped dismissal for a one-night stand with a subordinate today,
but was denounced by board members for a “serious error of judgment.
(Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the IMF,
escapes dismissal over affair. Report 1)6.1.4 Textual and interpersonal Themes
With respect to the variation in the use of Textual Themes, it was observed that
Textual Themes were more frequently used in English commentaries (20%) than
in news reports (6%), these differences being statistically significant (p < 0.05).
Writers of commentaries relied much more on textual Themes as signals to orga-
nize the logico-semantic relations in the texts, probably due to the complexity of
the ideas and arguments that are presented to the readers. By contrast, information
in news reports can be presented in a more straightforward way with the help of
other textual devices such as paragraphing.
In commentaries we observed an even distribution of markers indicating lists
of reasons (first, second, etc.), concession (despite, although) and coordination
(and, but). Example (32) illustrates the use of the textual Themes first and second
indicating reasons: