Abstract: The news reporting covers all aspects of social life. At the same time, it has been influenced and restricted widely by the rapid social development, which has perfectly reflected in the news words. Different news reporting requires that the wording should be equipped with some features like conciseness and terseness, clearness and accuracy, novelty and originality, as well as vividness and lifelikeness. Therefore this study is intended to analyze these main characteristics of News English words, together with the reflection of some strong ethnic flavors on the news wording. Through comprehensive reading of abundant news, this paper aims to sum up some main characteristics of news English words from the perspective of English linguistics, combining with other scholars’ researches. And then based on this, many frequently-used words or phrases and some rhetorical devices are analyzed in the following article. Finally, seeing from the view of social linguistics, this paper takes America and British separately as an example to figure out some ethnic characteristics that are reflected in News English words.

Key words: news English; vocabulary; word features 

CONTENTS

Abstract

摘要

1. Introduction. 1

2. Literature Review 1

3. Analysis of the Characteristics on News English Words2

3.1 Conciseness and Terseness

  3.1.1 Abbreviations

  3.1.2 Clippings

 3.1.3 Short Words

3.2 Clearness and Accuracy

  3.2.1 Using Appropriate Modal Verbs and Reporting Verbs

 3.2.2 Using Appropriate Specific Numerals

3.3 Novelty and Originality

3.3.1 Borrowing Foreign Words

3.3.2 Creating New Words

3.4 Vividness and Lifelikeness

3.4.1 Metaphor and Simile

3.4.2 Metonymy

3.4.3 Synecdoche

3.4.4 Hyperbole

3.5 Euphemism

4. Ethnic Characteristics of News English Words11

4.1 Ethnic Characteristics of the USA

4.2 Ethnic Characteristics of the UK

5. Conclusion 13

Bibliography. 14

Acknowledgements15