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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Figurative emotional expression in popular science headlines

subject

description

This study is devoted to science journalism and it explores how audience engagement is achieved through emotion-laden figurative (e.g., metaphorical and metonymic) expressions used in headlines. It is claimed that figurative expressions foreground emotional investments in science reporting while retaining the semblance of journalistic objectivity. With the use of a multiple open-coding procedure of the sample of 250 most read headlines from the website of the international science magazine gathered between November 2013 and November 2014, the main patterns of figuration are identified, including specific and metaphors and such schemata as conduit, event structure, complex system and force dynamics. The study also discusses figures in which and are target domains in order to trace the emotional attachments ascribed to them.