Chapter Fourteen
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this is only in the case of the headlines appearing in the body of the
magazine. Finally, one can observe the tendency to use and preserve more
stylistic devices in the headlines from the body of the magazine and in
their translation which is often more literal or closer to the meaning of the
original version. This is not the case with the headlines from the table of
contents, which are less rich in stylistic devices, and this is even less true
in the case of their translation, which is most often free translation, in
which only few stylistic devices have been preserved. It is noteworthy that
this translation tendency, referred to as normalization, was also discussed
by Piccioni (2013) in the case of English – Spanish translation of
metaphorical language.
In addition, it needs to be mentioned that according to recent
psycholinguistic theory (Mashal and Faust 2009), conventional metaphors
may be understood and generated via categorization, whereas novel
metaphors are understood and generated via comparison processes.
Furthermore, behavioral evidence suggests that the process of
conventionalizing novel metaphors is accompanied by a shift from
comparison to categorization. The comparison processes which generate
novel metaphors, in turn, seem to involve various kinds of context: 1) the
immediate physical setting, 2) what we know about the major entities
participating in the discourse, 3) the immediate cultural context, 4) the
immediate social setting, and 5) the immediate linguistic context itself
(Kऺvecses 2010). In sum, it seems that the majority, if not all, novel
metaphors analyzed seem to be context induced or context based.
The stylistic analysis also demonstrates that metaphors have some
notable functions to fulfill in the headlines and that they bring about quite
a few cognitive, pragmatic and stylistic effects. They (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.
Finally, the technique of using different kinds of stylistic devices and
metaphors suits the social and cultural conventions of writing journalistic
headings whose main function nowadays is to attract the readers’ attention
to the content of the text. As a result, National Geographic headlines and
subheadlines have not only referential, but also poetic and emotive
functions (Jakobson 1960) since they are to encourage the receiver to read
the articles.