Stylistic Devices and Creativity in Popular Science Headlines 305Finally, one can also say that metaphors (1) foreground a pragmatically
relevant aspect of the article to grab the reader’s attention and arouse the
reader’s interest, (2) guide pragmatic inferencing in text interpretation (by
making reference to the background knowledge, the immediate physical
setting and the social or cultural contexts), (3) describe the immediate
physical setting or the immediate entity of the text, (4) create referential
variety and enhance cohesion and coherence of popular science texts.
Stylistic devices in National Geographic and National
Geographic Polska headlines from the table of contents
(January 2013 – December 2014)
Headlines usually describe the article’s content in some way and are
written on the basis of an inverted pyramid style, which ensures that the
most important information is delivered at the very beginning of a press
article. The attractiveness of headlines in turn is ensured by the use of
metaphorical expressions and other stylistic devices. The corpus analyzed
in this section and other sections encompasses 160 English headlines and
169 Polish headlines that appear in the table of contents section and in the
body of National Geographic and National Geographic Polska articles in
the period from January 2013 to December 2014. The choice of the
material is motivated by the fact that this magazine, being published in
many language versions, is well known all round the world.
In the English headlines from the table of contents section, the
following conventional metaphors or idiomatic expressions have been
identified: Roof of the World (‘Roof of the World’ is a metaphoric
description of the highest region in the world, also known as ‘High Asia’,
the mountainous interior of Asia, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roof
_of_the_World), Citizen Science (‘Citizen science’, also known as crowd
science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, volunteer monitoring or
networked science, is scientific research conducted, in whole or in part, by
amateur or nonprofessional scientists. Formally, citizen science has been
defined as the systematic collection and analysis of data; development of
technology; testing of natural phenomena; and the dissemination of these
activities by researchers.), Brunelleschi’s Dome (used with reference to
Florence Cathedral), Yukon Gold Fever (or Yukon Gold Rush which refers
to the discovery of gold in the Yukon in 1896), Quicksilver Tuna (this
conventional metaphor refers to some species of tuna), Lowcountry Legacy
(‘lowcountry’ refers here to South Carolina), Life Beyond Earth, Rush for
Red Gold, and Sugar Love (this article is about the history of sugar).