Publicist (media) style

Phonetic features (in oratory)

Standard pronunciation, wide use of prosody as a means of conveying the subtle shades of meaning, overtones and emotions.

Phonetic compression.

Morphological features

Frequent use of non-finite verb forms, such as gerund, participle, infinitive.

Use of non-perfect verb forms.

Omission of articles, link verbs, auxiliaries, pronouns, especially in headlines and news items.

Syntactical features

Frequent use of rhetorical questions and interrogatives in oratory

speech.

In headlines: use of impersonal sentences, elliptical constructions, interrogative sentences, infinitive complexes and attributive groups.

In news items and articles: news items comprise one or two, rarely three, sentences.

Absence of complex coordination with chain of subordinate clauses and a number of conjunctions.

Prepositional phrases are used much more than synonymous gerundial phrases.

Absence of exclamatory sentences, break-in-the narrative, other expressively charged constructions.

Articles demonstrate more syntactical organisation and logical arrangement of sentences.

Lexical features

Newspaper cliches and set phrases.

Terminological variety: scientific, sports, political, technical, etc.

Abbreviations and acronyms.

Numerous proper names, toponyms, anthroponyms, names of enterprises, institutions, international words, dates and figures.

Abstract notion words, elevated and bookish words.

In headlines: frequent use of pun, violated phraseology, vivid stylistic devices.

In oratory speech: words of elevated and bookish character, colloquial words and phrases, frequent use of such stylistic devices as metaphor, alliteration, allusion, irony, etc.

Use of conventional forms of address and trite phases.

Compositional features

Text arrangement is marked by precision, logic and expressive power.

Carefully selected vocabulary.

Variety of topics.

Wide use of quotations, direct speech and represented speech.

Use of parallel constructions throughout the text.

In oratory: simplicity of structural expression, clarity of message, argumentative power.

In headlines: use of devices to arrest attention: rhyme, pun, puzzle, high degree of compression, graphical means.

In news items and articles: strict arrangement of titles and subtitles, emphasis on the headline.

Careful subdivision into paragraphs, clearly defined position of the sections of an article: the most important information is carried in the opening paragraph; often in the first sentence.