Chapter Fourteen
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The use of phrasal verbs (which can be treated as idiomatic expressions)
can also be observed in headlines. Consider the following National
Geographic headlines: Caving in (sudden collapse), Close-up on Mars,
Meltdown, Comeback Croc and Drones Take Off. In addition, compounds
(which can be treated as idiomatic expressions) are also frequent in
headlines, for example: Mindsuckers (used with reference to body-
snatched zombie ladybugs), Wasteland, The Next Breadbasket (used with
reference to agricultural surplus), Star-Eater (used with reference to a
black hole in the Universe), The Ship-Breakers (used with reference to
people who unload ships in Bangladesh) or Well-Traveled Fruit.
Apart from the use of conventional metaphors and idiomatic expressions,
the presence of novel, unconventional or creative metaphors is also
frequent, consider, for example, the following headlines: Sultans of Streams^1
(used with reference to otters in British rivers), King Cretaceous (this
headline refers to pterosaurs and the adjective cretaceous refers to a period
with a relatively warm climate, resulting in high sea levels and creating
numerous shallow inland seas. These oceans and seas were populated with
now-extinct marine reptiles, ammonites and rudists, while dinosaurs
continued to dominate on land. At the same time, new groups of mammals
and birds, as well as flowering plants, appeared. The Cretaceous ended
with a large mass extinction, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event,
in which many groups, including non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs and
large marine reptiles, died out.), Carnivore’s Dilemma (this is also the case
of personification), The Next Green Revolution, Chasing Longevity,
Midnight Gardens, Ghost Cat^2 (used with reference to puma), The Wells of
Memory, Zimbabwe’s Voice (this is also the case of personification –
ascribing human qualities to objects, countries, etc.), Rebirth of a Park,
Pulse of the Congo, Feeding Nine Billion, Restless Genes (these are also
the instances of personification), Rethinking Nero, Karma of the Crowd,
(^1) This is also an example of personification – a metaphorization process in which
human qualities or abilities are ascribed to inanimate objects, physical phenomena
or abstract notions.
(^2) This might be an allusion to a 2003 Animal Planet television film. It is
noteworthy that this figure of speech can be identified when the headline, either
with its structure or some linguistic element, refers to titles of well-known books,
films, songs or common sayings frequently derived from colloquial language
(Starzec 1999:175). Another example of the allusion is the headline Failure is an
Option (this might be an allusion to Failure Is Not an Option which is a
presentation on the History Channel documenting the United States' space program
with insights from the flight engineers, project managers, flight controllers,
astronauts, and others involved inside the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration or to the title of an autobiographical book written by Gene Kranz).