Topicality as War News Value: A Pragma – Linguistic Study

This paper discusses one of the criteria of war news values in printed media. The current study concerns itself with only Topicality as the target of scrutiny. It explores this value through the application of a model of analysis based on a pragmalinguistic approach. The analysis is intended to achieve the following aims: first, bringing topicality as one criterion of news values to the attention of pragmatists; second, introducing an analytical framework which is hoped to be useful for pragmatists to analyze news values, and to be available in their hands for further development. This framework aims at explicitly revealing the linguistic as well as the pragmatic properties of the war news texts as far as topicality is concerned. In relation to the aims of the study and owing to the fact that people are eager to understand what is going on, it is hypothesized that topicality comes into viewable interaction between grammar and pragmatics. The findings of the data analysis indicate how topicality is transferred to the receiver of the message and how it shapes news reporting.