A comparative study of proximity in Iranian and American newspaper editorials

Abstract

The study is aimed at gaining further insight into the concept of proximity and its contribution to text development in general and newspaper editorials in particular. It also furthers our understanding of cross-linguistic differences in the use of metadiscourse. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate and compare proximity elements in Iranian and American newspaper editorials. Following Hyland's proximity model (2010a) which comprises five major elements, organization, argumentative structure, stance, engagement, and credibility , we focused on a detailed analysis of proximity features in two corpora, Iranian newspaper editorials and American newspaper editorials. To this aim, 240 newspaper editorials, including 120 editorials from each category, were collected. The outcomes revealed that there were significant differences in the use of proximity elements in the mentioned corpora. It was demonstrated that stance markers were considerably more recurrent in the American data than their Iranian counterpart. Unlike the American editorials, the Iranian ones contained a larger number of engagement markers. The key reasons behind such discrepancies are discussed in terms of differences in cultural, social, and political backgrounds. This study can be helpful for English for Specific/Academic Purposes (ES/AP) learners who study journalistic English to become familiar with proximity.