Chapter Fourteen
316
Stylistic devices in National Geographic Polska headlines 169 (January 2013 – December 2014)
novel
metaphorscompounds conventional
metaphorssimile intensifiers alliteration23 1 2 1 4 2Table 7. Stylistic devices used in National Geographic Polska headlines
that appear in the table of contents section (January 2013 – December
2014).
The analysis shows that there are more stylistic devices in the Polish
headlines that appear in the body of the magazine – there are twice as
many novel metaphors (56 compared to 23 used in the table of contents).
There are also 8 sayings and 4 instances of word play in the material given
above. It needs to be mentioned that there are no sayings or instances of
word play in the headlines from the table of contents. This is due to the
fact that the Polish headlines that appear in the table of context are short or
concise. In the majority of cases they are also informative rather than
expressive or appellative. The tendency to use more stylistic devices in the
headlines in question is connected with the fact that they are much longer
than the ones from the table of contents section.
If we compare the two kinds of headlines (categorized with respect to
their place in the magazine) in the two language versions respectively, we
will also discover some differences and will be able to formulate some
hypothesis with regard to some tendencies. The headlines that appear in
the body of the magazine in English and in Polish (Table 3 and 5) are
similar in terms of the number of stylistic devices used (this is especially
true with reference to novel metaphors, conventional metaphors, word
play and imperative structures). The major difference is that in English we
have more cases of alliteration (19 instances to 10 in the Polish material).
In contrast, we have more sayings in Polish than in English (8 to 5 cases).
In English we can also find some compounds, phrasal verbs and rhetorical
questions. These stylistic devices, especially compounds and phrasal
verbs, are specific to the syntactic nature of the English language which is
more analytical. Consequently, these devices are not present in the Polish
headlines. In sum, one can say that theses headlines in both language
versions are not only comparatively informative, but also more or less
equally expressive and appellative in character.
If we compare the headlines that appear in the table of contents in
English and in Polish (Tables 4 and 6), we will discover some major
differences. In English there are more novel metaphors (37 to 23 in
Polish), more conventional metaphors (9 to 2 in Polish), more compounds
(6 to 1 in Polish), twice as many intensifiers (4 to 2 in Polish) and a lot