32
6. Effects of Determiner Deletion in Newspaper Writing
Related to the determiner deletion in appositional naming expressions, according to Hewings and Hewings 2005: 32, there is an effect related to new
phenomenon found in newspaper writing style. “Determiner deletion has the effect of giving the person more news value, providing the naming expression
with a status similar that of title such as ‘President Bush..” Hewings and Hewings, 2005: 32. Furthermore, they also explain that this style is a more
popular style and it is more typical of the North American media. In America, determiner deletion is usual in the ‘prestige’ media though it is less formal. This
phenomenon even copied by the British mass press. The common omission of determiner in a text is categorized as structural
ellipsis which often occurs in personal letters, in lecture notes, diaries, and telegrams Mugair and Abbas, 2012. Furthermore, Mugair and Abbas give
example as in US heading for new slump. Mugair and Abbas argue that the sentence misses the determiner the and a. Therefore, the original sentence should
be the US is heading for new slump. This kind of ellipsis which depends on knowledge of grammatical structure as shown in the example is defined as
structural ellipsis. Quirk et al 1985: 900 also give explanation to structural ellipsis. They say that such structural ellipsis is restricted to written style and it
functions as devices of economy through the ellipsis of items that have a low information style, in this case is determiner.
7. Review of Related Studies
33 Some experts in linguistics have done some studies on determiner
deletion in newspaper. Ryden 1975 investigates the use of noun phrase name appositions in newspaper language. It focuses particularly on the deletion of the
determiner which can create apposition phrase without a preceding determiner. Further, Allan Bell has conducted this kind of study as well. Allan Bell
has conducted a study on determiner deletion in 1974. His study was conducted based on the conversation of the radio announcers of Auckland radio stations in
1974. There were four radio stations which became his object of the study. In his study, he focuses on determiner deletion in naming apposition. He says that in
initial mentions of people in the news usually take the form of two appositional noun phrases. The first NP is descriptive of the person, followed by an
appositional NP which names the person. However, a variable syntactic rule which operates on these expressions is characteristic of perhaps unique to-the
language of news reporting. The uniqueness in it is it deletes the determiner in the first of the appositional expressions, as in the Finance Minister Bill English. The
deletion, according to Bell, restructures the apposition, elevating the name to equal status with the description. It treats the description as a pseudo-title, equal to
‘President’ or ‘Professor.’ This implies an exclusivity for the class of persons described by the title,
parallel to the exclusivity of full titles. It means that a person’s entitlement is newsworthy. Bell reveals his finding on his study in 1988. According to Bell,
among the four stations used as the object of the study, namely BBC Overseas Radio, National Radio, ZB Community Station, ZM Rock Music Station. His
34 study shows that the more formal the radio is, the less determiner deletion
happens. In his case, BBC Overseas Radio serves an absolute norm with zero deletion.
However, Bell revisited his study in 2011 and he still used the same radios as the objects of the study. The result has changed. Even in the year of
2011, BBC Overseas Radio which had been well known for the zero deletion, had four percent of deletion. However, the number was the lowest compared to the
other radio stations. The study by Bell, has only been done in New Zealand and through radio stations
Jucker 1992 adds the explanation on determiner deletion, especially in name apposition. He gave the example Labour Leader Neil Kinnock. In the
example, according to Jucker, the determiner-slot is empty and it makes the apposition partial because only one appositive could be omitted without violating
the grammar. Further, he also says that the deletion process always happen in restrictive appositive. This construction has the advantage of not having any
implications as to whether the referent is familiar or unfamiliar to the audience. Then, the deletion process creates a title-like quality to all kinds of everyday
nouns used to refer to people’s role in society. Later, there are not just Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Opposition Leader Neil Kinnock but also
goalkeeper Peter Guthrie, fashion designer Norman Blackweek, pensioner Gerry Doherty Jucker, 1992: 212.
The previous studies above will be good references for the writer since the writer attempts to investigate more on how determiner deletion works in local
35 English-language Newspapers. Indonesia does not belong to the inner circle of
world English and it belongs to the expanding circle, English has been a foreign language in Indonesia. The fact that Indonesia only belongs to expanding circle,
makes English has no wide use in the society especially as a medium of communication Lauder, 2008: 11. Therefore, this research is important to see
how the Indonesian journalist writes the news articles when they are not used to English as their main language. Moreover, the style of deleting determiner in
name phrase apposition is relatively recent and is in Britain largely Jucker, 1992: 40. The present researcher is eager to know whether this style exists in English-
language newspapers published in Indonesia.
B. Theoretical Framework
Having known the nature of stylistics study, that is analysing distinctive features of language and the description of its purpose and effect in the text as the
nearest domain where the homogenous and specific of languages exists, this research aims to conduct a stylistic study on one of the texts, which is newspaper.
Since there are four categories which are proposed by Leech and Short 1981 in conducting stylistic analysis, this research will only take one. It is the grammatical
features. Under the grammatical features itself, there are nine categories which are proposed to conduct. However, this research will take only one, namely
determiner which belongs to the word classes. In analysing the determiners and also the deletions, the further analysis
uses the theory of articles and determiners proposed by Close 1977, Yule 2004 and Quirk et al 1985. Bell’s model theory of determiner deletion on descriptive
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