Speaker
Description
This study investigates the use of stylistic devices in health-related headlines published in English online newspapers and examines how these linguistic features contribute to effective health communication in digital journalism. In contemporary online media, headlines play a crucial role in attracting readers’ attention and presenting complex health information in a concise and engaging manner. The study is based on a corpus of 300 health-related headlines collected from the Health section of “BBC News Online” Newspapers during the first six months of 2025. Using Galperin’s classification of stylistic devices as the analytical framework, the research primarily adopts a qualitative stylistic approach supported by quantitative frequency information to identify the most frequently used stylistic features and their communicative functions. The findings reveal that lexical stylistic devices are employed most frequently, with metaphor emerging as the dominant device, followed by hyperbole and rhetorical questions. The analysis also indicates that these stylistic devices help simplify medical information, increase reader engagement, express evaluation, and emphasize important health messages. The findings provide useful implications for language teaching, media literacy education, discourse analysis, journalism studies, and digital health communication.
Keywords: stylistic devices; health-related headlines; English online newspapers; health communication.
Biography
Nguyen Minh Han holds a Master’s degree in English Language from the University of Foreign Language Studies, the University of Danang. Her research interests lie in the field of stylistics, with current research focusing on stylistic devices in health-related headlines published in English online newspapers.
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