Eesti Päevalehe juhtkirjade informatsioonilis-loogiline struktuur ja arusaadavus 2006. aastal
Date
2006
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Abstract
Description
The Bachelor’s thesis «Informative-logical structure and understandability of the
editorials of Eesti Päevaleht in 2006» is a study of the editorials of the newspaper
Eesti Päevaleht primarily from the structural aspect.
The purpose of the study is to identify the link between the structure of the text, its
perception and understanding, and the factors that affect the writing and editing of the
text, on one hand, and the creation of an association between what the author conveys
and what the readers perceive, on the other.
Riina Kallas analysed the structure and understandability of the editorials of Eesti
Päevaleht in 2001. Her study results give valuable information for comparison
purposes – the changes that are notable in the process of writing and editing of
editorials and in the purpose and understandability of lead story texts six years later.
The first chapter provides an overview of the most important concepts pertaining to
understanding a text and the factors affecting it in general, as well as the nature of
opinion writings and the methods used for analysing journalistic texts.
The second chapter explains how to apply the informative-logical method to the
analysis of newspaper editorials. A scheme has been drawn up of 10 texts, which
convey the structure of the article – purpose, main thesis/theses, antithesis/antitheses,
arguments, examples, background, etc. As a result of the analysis, one well-structured
and one poorly structured lead story were chosen for an understandability experiment.
Ten persons participated in the experiment; they were asked to summarise the content
of the two editorials, formulate the purpose of the text and assess whether the content
and meaning of the text was easy to understand or not. On the basis of the average
result computed from the participants’ assessments, the understandability of the two
texts, one with a more logical and the other with a less logical structure, were
compared.
The third chapter summarises the results of the text analysis and the understanding
experiment, and provides a comparison of the results of R. Kallas from 2001 and
those of this study.
The closing chapter discusses the prospective trends of further studies into opinion
writings and the developments in the opinion editorial work of Eesti Päevaleht over
the past six years, and points out the main limitations and problems that may render it difficult for journalists and editors to focus only on the publication of well-composed
and understandable texts.
The main results of the study are summarised below.
The expression of purpose in the editorials of Eesti Päevaleht has remained
relatively on the same level as in 2001.
The purpose is clearly expressed in nearly a half of the cases and hidden or implied in
less than a half of the texts. Unfortunately, there are still editorials that, in the opinion
of the author of this study, lack any purpose. Probably, the editor or journalist has not
even questioned the reason why those texts were published.
The experiment confirmed the hypothesis that a logically structured text
facilitates the readers’ understanding of its content and meaning.
The understandability of a well-structured editorial was between adequate and fairly
fully understandable according to the mathematically computed summary assessment.
Less well structured texts were partly rather than fully understandable.
A comparison of the understandability experiments of 2001 and 2006 revealed
a slight improvement of the understandability of the content and meaning of
the editorials of Eesti Päevaleht.
In summary, the opinion editorial staff of Eesti Päevaleht, whose work includes
writing editorials, should continuously and purposefully address the issues of the
formulation techniques and structure of the texts. The more attention is paid to style,
the structure of sentences and understandability, the clearer and more articulated the
expression of the newspaper’s opinion.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd