Projection in News Discourse: Speech Responsibility and Attitude

Abstract

In this paper I attempt to tackle the problem of allocating the strategy of directness and indirectness of discourse in newswriting. In news writing the reporter represents her/his own views through a number of strategic devices many of which have to do with grammatical structures such as projection of speech and thought. (Halliday 1985; Martin 1992). Several issues are involved here like factual and non factual utterances, as well as direct quotation and indirect report. I provide several examples of news writing about the Chechnya war published in a very short span of time. The news writers are committed not only to the truth of the events but also to the correct interpretation of the meanings reported and the words quoted.