324 | nº 31, pp. 315-340 | doxa.comunicación

July-December of 2020

Analysis of the discursive framing strategies used in Spanish press headlines regarding the electoral coverage...

ISSN: 1696-019X / e-ISSN: 2386-3978

structure and presents an analysis carried out by the newspaper itself on the economic policy developed by the Andalusian Regional Government, which oversees a region where the Partido Popular governs in coalition with Ciudadanos, and with the external support of Vox. However, the reader is urged to observe how the headline only mentions the latter party, even though Vox does not manage any of the regional Andalusian government ministries, and deceptively omits reference to the other two parties.

3.2. Framing strategy at the interactive level

Analysis of the interactive level aims to discover the formulas for incorporating the receiver into the discourse. In this section we will first study those linguistic mechanisms that are determined by the consideration of the receiver to whom the message is addressed, and then focus on the study of the dialogic process and the different ways of reproducing the discourse of other people.

As an example, some of the headlines in our corpus are direct appeals to the reader:

[Ex. 18]. VOX: See Eduardo Inda’s full interview with Santiago Abascal (OK Diario, 15/04/2019)

According to Hernando Cuadrado (1988: 87), the imperative of the sense verbs or verbs of sensory perception often involves a stimulus for the listener in order “to integrate it fully into the dialogue”, something that has already been made clear by Narbona Jiménez, who is of the following opinion:

Certain appellative verb forms (above all verbs referring to the senses) are not only phatic elements, but also play a key role as a sign in delimiting the beginning of a structure (1986 [1989: 187]).

This function could also be attributed to the present tense of the subjunctive “see”, as in [Ex. 18], in which OK Diario expresses a kind of initiative to encourage Internet users to access the interview published by the media itself. By contrast, in other press headlines the interrogative approach is adopted, perhaps in an attempt to represent the issues that citizens3 may raise/ may have:

[Ex. 19]. Can Vox legally participate in an election debate? Will there be a debate in Atresmedia? (El País, 17/04/2019)

According to Charaudeau (2012: 31), the journalistic discourse “introduces an information request, a public request (this also constitutes its own instance of mediation), and has the discursive aim of making world events known to all”. As a result, the headlines published in digital editions of newspapers increasingly show examples of the use of the modal adverb así in Spanish, which acquires a deixis-textual relationship with the body of the news, and which is considered to be an invitation to the reader for “him or her to become informed” by accessing the hyperlink that will direct them to the information published in the newspaper: