Leaving this unsaid

Abstract

We investigated the use of this in a large corpus of headlines gathered from three North American satirical newspapers (The Onion, The Beaverton, and The Babylon Bee). There were 551 instances of this in the corpus, 26 of which were used pronominally but without a clear referent, which we dub the empty satirical this (e.g., None Of This Would Have Happened Had You Flossed). We argue the lack of a clear referent prompts the co-construction of satirical meaning, the final resolution of which depends upon the reader’s willingness and ability to provide a fitting referent. While infrequent overall, the empty satirical this was found in all three newspapers, representing a creative and unique use of this atypical in non-satirical headlines.