The Study of Lexical Features in English Press Registers

Abstract

Register is a variety of a language used for a particular purpose or situation and different registers are marked by a variety of linguistics features. This research aimed to investigate the lexical features in two types of press registers that are news reportage and editorial commentary. This study applied a text-based approach in which 10 news reportage articles and 10 editorial commentary articles under the political theme during 2012 to 2016 were selected. To analyse the data, both content and function words were examined. In the news reportage, it was used to serve a narrative function in reporting facts and concise and factual information. On the contrary, argumentation and critique characterized the register of editorial commentary.

Based on the findings, the research showed that most of the content words classified by parts of speech were proper noun, reporting verbs and describing adjectives and adverbs while common nouns, cognitive verbs, evaluating adjectives and adverbs were commonly found in the editorial commentary. For the function words, it was found that first personal pronouns, modal verbs of prediction and suggestion, and conjunctions of addition and suggestion were the word forms which were found significant in the register of news reportage.

In the research, the types of word forms in each register type were markedly different. However, the functional feature of each register played a very important role in their use of the lexical forms and affected the variation of the linguistics features in the two types of the register in press.