Headlines, Text and Communication

!9#: Headlines, Text and Communication

Assuming that most people will not read every article in a newspaper, the communicative impact of newspaper headlines is important in capturing the reader's attention. Some headlines are able to deliver a message potent enough to grab the reader's perspective with great power. In general, editorial letters often contain the most heavily slanted headlines. Beyond the thematic slant of an article (including the headline), the text of the article may be loaded with multiple messages and images.

Even though an article might have an overall positive depiction of bilingual education and/or the needs of language minority students, individual quotations might accentuate a socially negative stereotype. For example, when a journalist quotes individuals favoring the ballot initiative as saying, "'Bilingual education is an evil system of racial discrimination that has destroyed the education of countless Hispanic children in our state,'" the reader may think about bilingual education in terms of "evil" and "discrimination."

When bilingual education is portrayed in a positive light, however, the significant details of how it benefits children are often missing. Daniel Gonzalez, an editorial writer for the Republic, asserted that "scrapping bilingual education would especially hurt Hispanic and Native American children with limited English proficiency", but he does not explain how this might happen. This relationship between the positive and the negative often taps into what we think of as "natural," speculate David Croteau and William Hoynes.

According to this view, nature is something that we define in contrast to culture. Unlike culture, nature is understood to be beyond human control. If social structures and relationships are perceived as natural, they take on a certain degree of permanency and legitimacy that makes them seem uncontested.

For example, readers may assume that it is only "natural" that the difficulties experienced by language minority students are rooted in their home language and condition, which is, in turn, aggravated by the continued use of the language via bilingual instruction.

For example, according to Gonzalez, Congressman Matt Salmon blamed bilingual education for the high dropout rate among Hispanic students in Arizona. The Republic made no mention of the fact that there is no research evidence supporting this assertion.