LINGUISTIC MECHANISMS OF SPEECH ECONOMY IN NEWSPAPER DISCOURSE

Abstract

This article examines the linguistic mechanisms of speech economy in contemporary British newspaper discourse, with particular attention to headline construction in The Times and The Guardian. It focuses on three principal lexico-semantic mechanisms: abbreviation, nominalization, and metaphorization. The study also considers the role of conventional expressions and lexical compression in producing concise yet informative headlines. Drawing on linguistic theories of media discourse, framing, and conceptual metaphor, the article explores how these mechanisms contribute to brevity, semantic density, and rhetorical effectiveness. Examples from newspaper headlines illustrate how abbreviations activate shared background knowledge, nominalizations condense complex processes into compact linguistic units, and metaphors communicate abstract events through familiar conceptual images. The article argues that speech economy involves more than reducing the number of words: it also depends on readers’ linguistic competence, cultural knowledge, and ability to infer implicit meanings. The analysis provides a theoretical framework for further comparative research into the stylistic characteristics of British newspaper headlines.