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Reference: From conventions to pragmatics
Edited by Laure Gardelle, Laurence Vincent-Durroux and Hélène Vinckel-Roisin
[Studies in Language Companion Series 228] 2023
► pp. 213–231

Leaving this unsaid

A case study of empty this in North American satirical newspaper headlines

| Victoria University
| Victoria University

We investigated the use of this in a large corpus of headlines gathered from three North American satirical newspapers (The Onion, The Beaverton, and The Babylon Bee). There were 551 instances of this in the corpus, 26 of which were used pronominally but without a clear referent, which we dub the empty satirical this (e.g., None Of This Would Have Happened Had You Flossed). We argue the lack of a clear referent prompts the co-construction of satirical meaning, the final resolution of which depends upon the reader’s willingness and ability to provide a fitting referent. While infrequent overall, the empty satirical this was found in all three newspapers, representing a creative and unique use of this atypical in non-satirical headlines.

Keywords: satirical news, newspaper headlines, demonstrative, empty reference, inference
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • 2.Definitions, non-satirical and satirical news
    • 2.1Satirical news
    • 2.2Newspaper headlines and reference
    • 2.3Satirical headlines and reference
    • 2.4The empty satirical this
    • 2.5Current study
  • 3.Method
    • 3.1Satirical headlines corpus
    • 3.2Data coding
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1This as a determiner inside an NP (Type I this)
    • 4.2Pronominal referents (Type II this)
    • 4.3Empty satirical this referents (Type III this)
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 2 February 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/slcs.228.11ska
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