Ing. Mgr. Jiří
Rambousek
Katedra
anglistiky a amerikanistiky
Filozofická fakulta Masarykovy univerzity
TV news subtitles: yet another instance of “little texts”
Titulky v TV zprávách: ještě jeden případ „krátkých textů
Key words: informative
text, little texts, subtitles, TV news, language of news.
Annotation: The article analyzes a specific type of TV
subtitle used on CNN International. It is the subtitle given in a permanent
area on the screen and summarizing the reported news. The analysis is based on
a corpus of 263 subtitles recorded during five hours of broadcasting on March
28–30, during the
Before presenting the
actual analysis, the article briefly outlines the role of printed text in
various types of media. It points out that the three most recent types of media
(teletext, dedicated TV news channels, the Internet)
brought a higher proportion of printed text in reporting news.
This tendency is
supported by the analyzed subtitles. They differ substantially from traditional
TV news subtitles: an overwhelming majority (74.5 %) could be used as
standalone texts conveying the essence of the news. Traditional news subtitles,
on the other hand, were used to add name to a person or a place (and could
therefore be seen as predicates to the subjects shown on the screen).
The analysis reveals
that the subtitles share some features with other types of “little texts” (Hallliday’s term); this applies especially to the high
proportion of non-finite clauses – 43.4 % (40.5 % in newspaper
headlines); within this specific category, TV subtitles show a slightly higher
occurrence of elipted clauses (in which the finite
verb is missing; 82.4 %) and a lower occurrence of nominal clauses (17.6 %)
compared to newspaper headlines (ratio 61.2 % : 38.8 %).
Some other features are specific to
TV subtitles. The most prominent of them – at the grammatical level – is the
innovative use of the comma to replace the conjunction and (even in cases when it is not motivated by the need to save
space). At the semantic level, the subtitles are characterized by the frequent
presence of the source of the news (brought about probably by the specifics of
real-time reporting in which it is not always possible to verify the news from
an independent source). In style, the examined type of TV subtitles differs
from newspaper headlines by the absence of language play and stylistic
embellishments. This difference, too, is ascribed to the real-time production,
as well as to the fact that they do not serve the purpose of attracting the
viewer.
Anotace: Příspěvek
rozebírá vybraný druh titulku užívaný v televizní stanici CNN International. Jde o titulek zobrazovaný v permanentní
textové oblasti, který shrnuje právě hlášenou zprávu. Článek je založen na
korpusu 263 titulků zaznamenaných během pěti hodin vysílacího času ve dnech 28.
– 30. 3. 2003 (při zpravodajství z války v Iráku).
Ještě před vlastním rozborem titulků je krátce shrnuta role psaného textu
v různých typech zpravodajských médií. Autor upozorňuje, že právě ve třech
nejnovější typech médií (teletext, zpravodajské TV kanály, internet) došlo ke
zvýšení podílu psaného textu na sdělování zpráv, což je v rozporu s obecně
rozšířenou představou o ústupu psaného textu.
To potvrzuje i zkoumaný typ titulků, jenž se zjevně liší od tradičních
titulků ve zpravodajství: výrazná většina (74,5 %) jich je schopna fungovat
jako samostatný text, kdežto tradiční titulky sloužily jen k informaci o jménu
zobrazované osoby nebo místa (tedy vlastně jako predikát k subjektu zobrazenému
na obrazovce).
Vlastní rozbor pak ukazuje, že zkoumaný typ TV titulků má některé rysy
společné s jinými typy anglických krátkých textů – především vysoký podíl vět
neobsahujících sloveso v určitém tvaru; těch je 43,4 % (v novinových
titulcích 40,5 %); v rámci tohoto větného typu vykazují TV titulky poněkud
větší podíl vět eliptických (kde je určité sloveso vynecháno; 82,4 %) a menší
podíl vět jmenných (17,6 %) oproti situaci u novinových titulků (kde je poměr
61,2 % ku 38,8 %).
Jiné rysy titulků jsou naopak specifické; po gramatické stránce je to
neobvyklé použití čárky jako náhrady za spojku and, a to i v případech, kdy není
vynuceno potřebou úspory místa. Po stránce významové je to pak vysoký podíl
údajů obsahujících informaci o zdroji dané zprávy (jde zřejmě o specifický rys
zpravodajství konaného takřka v reálném čase, daný potřebou distancovat se od
zpráv, které před zařazením do vysílání nebylo možno ověřit). Stylisticky se TV
titulky liší od novinových naprostou absencí jazykové invence a stylistických
figur, které jsou pro anglické novinové titulky typické. I tento rozdíl lze
připsat rychlosti produkce titulků, ale také tomu, že jejich funkcí není
přilákat pozornost diváka.
TV news subtitles: yet another instance of “little texts”
In this paper I will
describe a specific class of TV subtitle—a form of “little text”[1]—and
will examine the similarities and differences between such subtitles and
newspaper headlines. Before I proceed to the analysis, I will briefly summarize
the role that text—as opposed to other channels for relaying information—has
played in the history of news announcements.
Table 1 lists different
media “in order of appearance”, i.e. according to when they appeared and were
used in reporting news, and assigns to them the channels they employ to convey
information.
|
MEDIUM |
CHANNEL |
||||
|
Printed
text |
Still |
Moving |
Spoken
text |
||
|
1 |
Newspapers
and magazines |
|
x |
|
|
|
2 |
Silent
movie |
XX |
|
|
|
|
3 |
Radio |
|
|
|
|
|
4 |
Sound
movie (news-reels) |
x |
|
|
XX |
|
5 |
TV
news |
x |
|
|
XXX |
|
6 |
Teletext |
|
|
|
|
|
7 |
TV
news on news channels |
XX |
|
|
XXX |
|
8 |
Internet |
|
XX |
X |
x |
Table 1 Media types
(The main channel characteristic of
a particular media type is marked MAIN; the other channels involved are marked
'x' to 'XXX', expressing the importance the respective channel has in
supporting the main channel.[2])
I would like to argue that the
situation has changed radically in favour of printed text over the last few
decades, and that this change is not always fully appreciated. Most analyses
that were carried out in the 1960s and 70s did not foresee it—on the contrary, they
spoke of the end of written culture, of new technologies “bypassing
verbalizing” (McLuhan[3]
1995: 274), of picture-oriented culture, of images replacing the linear
sequence of symbols. Lines 1-5 of Table 1 show clearly why this was, and many
of these observations are still valid. However, the remaining three lines of
Table 1 dealing with the three most recent media formats (i.e., teletext, dedicated TV news channels, and the Internet)
suggest a different tendency: the comeback of written/printed text. Admittedly,
news reporting is only a small segment of public media activity, and one
especially suited to being relayed by printed text. On the other hand, the
tendency seems to extend into other areas as well.[4]
Furthermore, all instances of “printed text” in Table 1 fall into the category
of “little texts”, with only two exceptions: newspapers, and the Internet. So
only the oldest and the latest of all media forms offer the freedom to write a
text as long as is necessary, and the Internet goes even further by removing
the limitations present in the newspapers.
The increasing
importance of text as a component of TV news is illustrated by the way it is
used on dedicated TV news channels.[5]
At the dawn of TV news reporting, only very simple subtitles were used, mainly
to indicate the name of a speaker or the location of an event. Later, short
captions were added that characterized each piece of news (they are called headlines but lack many of the
characteristic features of newspaper headlines from which they take their
name). Dedicated TV news channels introduced several new text elements: a
permanent bar that sums up the news as it is being reported, and even one or
more text areas that present news or data unrelated to the news just reported;
these have the form of a running text in a news-bar (on CNN, different terms
are used for it depending on the category of news being dealt with at any given
moment: newsbar,
bizbar, and
sportbar),
or a permanent text area on which sports results, quotations and business statistics
etc. are posted.
If we compare dedicated
news channels with traditional TV news output, the difference in the amount of
text displayed and the overall layout of the screen is so prominent that it
encourages us to consider such channels a special type of media: the actual
area for the moving picture is sometimes restricted to less than half of the
total screen area; also, presenting two totally independent pieces of news at
the same time is a completely new feature. It should be stressed that until these
news channels appeared, there was hardly any medium that combined moving
pictures with spoken and written text in such a balanced way.[6]
In this paper I will
look more closely at the first type of text bar mentioned above—the permanent
bar summing up the news. In the example below (Fig. 1), it contains the text
FIGHTING OIL FIRES.
Fig.
1 A sample screen
My corpus consists of
263 subtitles taken from the permanent subtitle area on CNN International,
shown during 5 hours of broadcasting between 28th and
The subtitles can be
divided into two main types according to the functions they serve:
(1) Caption
This type corresponds to the
traditional use of captions in newsreels, TV news and newspapers. They can be
divided into the following sub-types:
1a. Photograph caption type 12 instances 4.6 %
This sub-type corresponds to the way
captions are used with photographs in newspapers, e.g.:[8]
|
23 |
29.03.2003 |
|
|
1b. Name of a speaker or location 36 instances 13.7 %
This sub-type was most common in
traditional TV news (that took it over from film newsreels):
|
5 |
28.03.2003 |
|
|
|
10 |
29.03.2003 |
|
UNITED
NATIONS |
|
12 |
29.03.2003 |
|
SERGEY
LAVROV |
1c. General topic 19
instances 7.2 %
This type of caption gives the general
idea of what is being discussed, without relating directly to the picture. It
has no direct equivalent in other media; the closest would probably be subheads
or sideheads used to make orientation in a printed
text easier.
|
41 |
29.03.2003 |
|
WAR
PERSPECTIVES |
|
46 |
29.03.2003 |
|
EDITORIAL
JUDGEMENT |
|
69 |
30.03.2003 |
|
|
|
86 |
30.03.2003 |
|
BRITISH
ATTITUDES |
The “caption” type subtitles amount to 67 instances, i.e. 25.5 % of all
subtitles.
(2) Summing up the news
In the examined corpus, 196
subtitles fell into this category, i.e. 74.5 %. These could be called
“self-sustaining” subtitles: they would be able to convey the essence of the
news by themselves. However, they are not intended to be read together as a
continuous text, and if we read them in this way, we find their coherence
clumsy without the surrounding context of picture and speech:
|
1 |
28.03.2003 |
23:42,
44 |
EXPLOSION
JUST HEARD IN |
|
2 |
28.03.2003 |
|
PLUMES
OF SMOKE FLOATING |
|
3 |
28.03.2003 |
|
|
|
4 |
28.03.2003 |
|
REPORT:
PATRIOT MISSILES INTERCEPTED |
|
6 |
28.03.2003 |
23:50,
51, 53 |
EXPLOSION
HEARD IN |
|
7 |
28.03.2003 |
|
|
|
8 |
28.03.2003, |
|
FLAMES
AND SMOKE SEEN |
The coherence is further diminished
by the occasional inclusion of “caption type” subtitles: e.g., subtitle 5 has
been omitted from the above sequence:
|
5 |
28.03.2003 |
|
|
Characteristics of the
text-type
The following analysis is based on
the 196 subtitles that form type (2) above.[9] I shall compare the proportions of various
clause-types with those found in newspaper headlines (the most frequently
analyzed representatives of little texts). I will also point out one specific
feature of punctuation that does not appear in other types of texts.
Two prominent syntactic
features are often stressed in descriptions of newspaper headlines. They are
the high frequencies of elipted clauses and nominal
clauses, resulting in a high proportion of non-finite clauses. In the present
material, the sentence types are distributed as shown in Tables 2 and 3.
|
|
Subtitles |
Newspaper |
|
|
|
occurrences |
% |
% |
|
Finite clause |
111 |
56.6 |
59.5 |
|
Non-finite clause |
85 |
43.4 |
40.5 |
|
Total |
196 |
100.0 |
|
Table 2 Distribution of finite and non-finite clauses
|
|
Subtitles |
Newspaper |
|
|
|
occurrences |
% |
% |
|
Elipted clause |
70 |
82.4 |
61.2 |
|
Nominal clause |
15 |
17.6 |
38.8 |
|
Total |
85 |
100 |
|
Table 3 Distribution of elipted
and nominal clauses
Table 2 shows that the
proportion of non-finite clauses in the corpus almost equals that in newspaper
headlines. It is important to note that the “caption” category, if included in
the analysis, would slant the results dramatically as it consists almost
exclusively of noun phrases. It was left out for the reason already mentioned:
the captions do not constitute sentences proper as they do not convey complete
information. They can be seen as nominal predicates if considered in the
context of the screen; e.g., the caption KEN POLLACK / CNN ANALYST could be
read
“[The man on the screen
is] CNN ANALYST KEN POLACK”.
Of the subtitles
consisting of a nominal phrase, only those are included that can exist
independently, e.g. ANTI-WAR
PROTEST IN INDONESIA'S CAPITAL. Table 3 shows that they are less frequent than
in newspaper headlines.
One more adjustment was
made to the data: only clauses that carry the actual information were analyzed.
As is mentioned below, many news subtitles begin by stating the source of the
news (“
Punctuation
There is one feature that appears
repeatedly in the corpus and this is the novel way in which the comma is used.
The comma is rare in the subtitles—it only appears 12 times throughout the 196
samples (one subtitle actually contains two commas).[10]
In no more than two instances it has the standard syntactic function of
connecting two propositions:
|
29.03.2003 |
|
ANTI-AIRCRAFT
FIRE OVER |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
DESPITE
QUARANTINES, MYSTERY |
In most cases (the remaining 10
occurrences) it replaces the conjunction and:
|
29.03.2003 |
|
RUBIN:
RUMSFELD, ADVISERS |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
SOMALIS IN |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
|
|
30.03.2003 |
|
IRAQI'S
IN THE SOUTH NEED |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
MARINES:
IRAQIS MAY HAVE STORED |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
IRAQI
GEN: COALITION “CRIMINALS |
|
30.03.2003 |
|
IRAQI
GEN. HONORS IRAQI SUICIDE |
|
06.04.2003 |
|
|
|
06.04.2003 |
|
WORLD
HEALTH ORG.: HOSPITALS |
It could be argued that in some of
these subtitles the comma suggests enumeration and does not necessarily stand
for and; however, and would be more appropriate in all of
them, and is obligatory in some (“
When searching for the conjunction and, only 7 instances are localized in
the corpus (so that substitution by a comma is more frequent than leaving and in the text):
|
28.03.2003 |
|
FLAMES
AND SMOKE SEEN |
|
29.03.2003 |
|
CNN
TURK: FORMER AND CURRENT |
|
29.03.2003 |
|
|
|
30.03.2003 |
|
MCCHRYSTAL:
“IT LOOKS AND |
|
06.04.2003 |
|
NUMBERS
OF CIVILIAN DEAD AND |
|
06.04.2003 |
|
IRAQI
TV AIRS VIDEO SAID |
|
06.04.2003 |
|
BUSH
AND BLAIR TO DISCUSS |
Only one rule seems to
hold concerning these substitutions: and is
only replaced when it connects sentence elements, not when it connects clauses.[11]
Otherwise, no logic can be found in the distribution of the two options: both
of them seem to appear in all types of connections, cf. RUMSFELD, ADVISERS x
HUSSEIN AND SONS (where “and his” would probably be used in longer texts).
The most logical
expectation would be that the usage is governed by the need to save space. But
the substitution occurs even in very short lines, e.g. “FOOD, WATER”. So it
seems that this substitution has become rather habitual, although it is very
likely that it was originally intended to save space.
A very frequent
punctuation mark is the colon. Its function will be discussed in the following
section.
Differences in style
and contents
The main difference between the
subtitles and newspaper headlines lies in style rather than in syntax or
punctuation. They completely miss the one feature that makes newspaper
headlines unique (and attractive for linguists): inventiveness and playfulness.
No puns, alliterations, allusions or other embellishments can be found in TV
news subtitles; they are just plain informative sentences. This is easily explained:
first, there is no need for such effects, as these texts do not serve the
purpose of attracting readers; TV channels rely mainly on the power of the
moving image. Second, there would be no time to formulate them, as subtitles
often have to be created and displayed in seconds.
Another common feature
of the subtitles is the stating of information sources. Stating sources is
generally important in news reporting. The sources become especially prominent
in the subtitles where they can sometimes take up a very high proportion of the
small space available:
|
22 |
29.03.2003 |
|
COALITION
COMMAND SPOKESMAN: |
But this is probably the price that
has to be paid for the real-time character of the coverage: there is often not
enough time to verify the news, and stating the source is necessary for the
news channel to avoid responsibility if the news later proves to be inaccurate.
Several examples of
stating sources are found in the tables above. The source is always given at
the beginning of the subtitle as the subject of a complex sentence containing
an object clause which conveys the main message; the object clause is linked
with the subject by a finite verb (most commonly “SAY/SAYS/SAID”—14 instances),
or—more frequently—by a colon (62 instances). The source may be approximate
(“ARAB MEDIA:”) or exact (“
Personal names often
serve as sources in several successive subtitles when a longer speech or
analysis is presented:
|
77 |
30.03.2003 |
|
KEN
POLLACK |
|
78 |
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
IRAQIS APPEAR TO BE |
|
79 |
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
USE OF IRREGULAR |
|
80 |
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
SOMALIS IN |
|
81 |
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
SADDAM TRYING TO |
|
82 |
30.03.2003 |
|
POLLACK:
SADDAM COUNTING ON |
Even though this usage still falls
under “giving sources”, it clearly differs from the instances when the source
is given to distance the news channel from the contents of the news; it could
rather be seen as the combination of a caption (giving the name of the
speaker), and a resume of the speech. Stating the sources of the news—and the
means employed to signal the reliability of the news in general—would certainly
deserve further attention.
Conclusion
News-bars and subtitles of all types
represent a specific type of text. They share some characteristics with other
“little texts”, especially certain syntactic features, and differ from them in
others: in addition to the innovation in the use of the comma, they bring interesting
changes to the use of on-screen text in general. A larger corpus comprising
data from other news channels, as well as from news on regular TV channels
would be necessary to draw more definite conclusions. Other interesting areas
for further research are the relationship between subtitles and the context
provided by the picture and speech, as well as the use of these texts in other
languages than English.
References:
Halliday,
M.A.K. 1994. An Introduction to
Functional Grammar.
McLuhan,
Eric and Frank Zindrone (eds.). 1995. Essential McLuhan.
Chovanec,
Jan. 2003. “The Uses of the Present Tense in Headlines.” Theory and Practice of English Studies.