Descriptive Language in Snow Fall by John Branch

Authors

  • Uyên-Minh Le Nguyen Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)
  • Thao Quoc Tran Faculty of English Language, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology (HUTECH)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.55766/CUHZ9409

Keywords:

Descriptive language, digital mega-story, lexical repetition, Snow Fall

Abstract

This study examined several descriptive parts of speech (e.g., strong verbs, descriptive adjectives, and descriptive adverbs) and figures of speech (e.g., simile, metaphor, and personification) in The New York Times’ digital mega-story Snow Fall by John Branch.  A corpus-based approach was applied to examine the occurrences of each category hereof in the six-chapter multimedia presentation. The theoretical framework of the descriptive language list was based on Barcelona’s (2003), Strausser’s (2009), Mathis (2013), and Dunkelberg’s (2017) propositions. Results reveal the function of descriptive language is a means of cohesive and artistic devices in journalism writings and, in particular, online digital mega-stories in order to allure readers today. Hopefully, the
findings might be a parameter for skill-training for the future of journalism.

References

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Published

2019-12-27

Issue

Section

Research Article