Asian Journal of English Language Studies

15-32

Authors: John Michael B. Magtira; Alejandro S. Bernardo

Newspaper editorials comprise a portion of media discourse deemed to be important in the field of research in both intercultural rhetoric analysis and English as a Second Language or Foreign Language studies. Thus, this study aims to explore the different kinds of textual features and rhetorical strategies employed in the editorial headlines of the American newspaper, The New York Times (NYT), and the Philippine newspaper, Philippine Daily Inquirer (PDI). The study analyzed 50 headlines culled from the electronic versions of both the NYT and the PDI. Based on Alireza and Samuel’s (2012) framework, the study applied a systematic contrastive textual analysis in investigating the said headlines. The results point to the fact that differences between the two sets of headlines exist, specifically in terms of the use of presuppositions and rhetorical devices.

49-70

Authors: Shielanie Soriano-Dacumos; Marilu Rañosa-Madrunio

In the Philippines, the increasing number of issues about beauty-product hazards has become an involuntary outrage since mass media exposed the tremors brought by chemical contents in cosmetic items. Under certain circumstances, even if business owners designed and manufactured their products as vigilant and watchful as possible, consumers remain susceptible to a certain degree of risks associated with beauty-product use. The practicability and viability of upholding consumer safety were made possible as this paper examined 45 beauty product-warning texts in the Philippines. A range of linguistic features, such as signal words (Shuy, 2008), orders of nouns (Lakoff, 1987; Lyons, 1977), synthetic personalization (Fairclough, 1989), tenor and field continuum (Halliday, 1985), attributive adjectives (Marza, 2011), manner, temporal, and spatial adverbs, were employed to determine the lexical features of warning messages. Using qualitative analysis, the results revealed that cautionary texts may have some lapses on the use of noun abstractness, synthetic personalization, field continuum, adjectives, and adverbs. Such an investigation brought up the transparency of communicative features of safety texts. Moreover, conditional sentences and the use of declarative and imperative sentences were analyzed, which disclosed the manufacturers’ practice on anticipating emergencies. The results display significant implications for the product-liability law in the country, which can further bridge consumers’ vital access to safety, hence bringing to light the real purpose of product-warning texts in the mainstream Philippine market.