Right to a fair trial: could hard news reports influence jurors?

3.1. Serial vs. orbital ideational structure

In recounting the events of the crime story, the court Decision privileges the field time, unfolding chronologically from the time the offender and the victim met until the offender’s arrest, whereas the Daily Telegraph article unfolds non-chronologically.

Effectively, the court Decision is organised sequentially according to a “serial” ideational structure whereby segments of text are aligned syntagmatically like links in a chain (Martin and Rose 2008, 25). The crime events are narrated in chronological order, presenting a linear, chronological story. The Decision recount presents two sequences of events. The first one spans from the meeting of the offender and the victim, through the breakup of their relationship and the events that took place in the lead up to and on the day of the crime until the offender’s arrest, as illustrated in excerpt 1:

(1)   1 The offender met Ms Rathbone sometime in 2005 or 2006.

2 Within a few months she had moved into the offender’s home.

[…]

5 There were two boys born of their relationship, Taylor born in xxxx 2008 and Robbie born in xxxx 2010.

6 The relationship broke up in late 2010 to early 2011.

[…]

104 At approximately 4.45pm he [the offender] was arrested and taken to Penrith Police Station.

105 He was interviewed in three sessions beginning at 7.36pm on 8 April 2011 and concluding at 3.23am on 9 April 2011.

106 He was then charged.

As shown in excerpt 1, the legal recount of the court Decision narrates events in chronological order, starting with the offender and victim meeting sometime in 2005 or 2006 (clause 1) and ending on 9 April 2011 (clause 105) with police interviews and the offender being charged.

Another sequence of events, taking place on a simultaneous timeline, involves the discovery of the victim’s body by the offender’s mother and the involvement of the police, as shown in excerpt 2:

(2)   75 In the meantime, his mother had returned home.

This second sequence of events is introduced clearly through a marked topical Theme (in the meantime).

The Daily Telegraph article is characterised by the linguistic and generic conventions of “event stories”, with a headline plus lead that signpost key meanings (see Figure 1). Typically, the “opening nucleus”, constituted by the headline and the opening sentence, directly launches the reader into the climax of the social-order disruption, or most “newsworthy” element:

Figure 1.

Daily Telegraph article. Reproduced by permission of Copyright Agency Limited (CAL).

(3)   1 Man charged over woman’s murder

2 LOVING mother Yvette Rathbone had recently had the names of her two young sons tattooed inside a large heart across the upper half of her back.

Typically, the outcome of the story, heralded with “man charged over woman’s murder”, appears in the headline at the very beginning of the article, in a characteristic “inverted pyramid structure” whereby what is most important comes first in hard news reports (Thompson, White, and Kitley 2008). Thus, the opening nucleus does not proceed through chronological or background information. Rather, the headline directly describes the current status quo and element that constitutes the heightened point of social-order disruption. Indeed, “[t]he need for a sensational lead to attract readers mean[s] that a story might begin at any point in the sequence, and jump about in time as it present[s] different aspects of the events” (Martin and Rose 2008, 75). This is in sharp contrast with the text of the court Decision where the charge is mentioned last (clause 106, as illustrated in excerpt 1) following a real-time chronology.

The use of nominalisation in woman’s murder provides decontextualisation through lexicogrammatical metaphorisation, contributing to a sense of objectivity – indeed, as stated in Halliday and Martin (1993, 39), “you can argue with a clause but you can’t argue with a nominal group”. Then, the opening clause qualifies the murdered woman of the headline as LOVING mother Yvette Rathbone, and proceeds to describe a recently made tattoo bearing the names of her two sons inside a heart. In contrast, the information about the tattoo is totally absent from the text of the court Decision. In the Daily Telegraph article, this creates an emotional peak, with the affective meaning LOVING intensified and foregrounded through capital letters (see further discussion below). It is noteworthy that the headline and opening sentence fail to establish a relationship between the charged man and the murdered woman, nor do they mention the source of the information provided. Thus, the opening nucleus contains both essential informational and interpersonal meanings, as they single out the elements that threaten the social order equilibrium, compelling the reader to engage immediately with the story (White 1997, 112), while the lack of preamble or background information as well as the pre-eminence of elements of high evaluative load are typical of news report openings (White 2003).

The body of the Daily Telegraph article presents a non-chronological structure in the presentation of events, as is typical of hard news reports (e.g., White 1997, 124). The article is organised around a repeated return to the original point of maximal social-order disruption that was set in the opening nucleus (White 1997, 115), along a non-linear, “orbital” path, with “satellites” of text segments organised around the “nucleus” (Martin and Rose 2008, 25). Figure 2 shows an attempt to reorganise the article in chronological order along a field axis, highlighting the lack of chronological organisation in the text time (the words that indicate the time of the events have been highlighted in bold). Figure 2 highlights a disconnection between the text time of the Daily Telegraph story and the field time of the events that are reported. Indeed, the structure of this recount hardly matches the unfolding of the events in real time. Figure 2 also highlights the difficulty of locating the opening clause within the time frame. This clearly illustrates how “news stories jump around in time” (Martin and Rose 2008, 78), and how the headline and opening sentence can be said to “present the essence of and the (most dramatic) angle on the event, while the rest of the story fills in the details” (Iedema 1997, 103).

Figure 2.

Daily Telegraph text time against field time.

The orbital structure of the hard news report encourages readers to construe journalists’ choices as objective and predictable, when in fact these choices are ideological (White 1997, 128). This is reflected in clause 3α, her little boys have now been left all alone, which opens the main body of the article right after the headline and opening sentence – in contrast, this clause appears towards the end of the story in my tentative chronological re-organisation of the text. The inconsistency of the referent her little boys in the re-writing also highlights how the Daily Telegraph depicts the children as being the murdered woman’s, although they are the children of the man being charged with her murder as well. Significantly, the children’s loss of their mother is not mentioned in the court Decision, while it is considered an aspect of great disruption to the social order in the Daily Telegraph article, warranting a strong claim of moral wrongdoing based on popular assumptions about the primacy of traditional feminine gender roles and family life. The textual prominence of this element at the beginning of the article (clause 3), rather than at its end as in the re-writing, also shapes this information as highly noteworthy.

3.2. Rhetorical organisation

Experiential meanings may be linked to one another by means of logico-semantic relations so as to form clause complexes (Halliday/Matthiessen 2014, 428). The clause complex system differentiates relations between clauses of equal status (parataxis) and clauses of unequal status (hypotaxis) (Halliday/Matthiessen 2014, 438–442). In a paratactic relation, one clause is continuing what another has initiated, as with coordination (He was arrested (1) and taken to Penrith Police Station (2)) and direct speech (He said: (1) “I’m sorry” (2)). In a hypotactic relation, one modifying clause (β) is dependent on another (α), as with subordination (I’ll tell you (α) when you come home (β)) and indirect speech or thought (The offender stated (α) that he had little contact with his youngest [sic] son (β)). Meanwhile, the system of logico-semantic relations contributes to construing the rhetorical organisation of a text as projection or expansion. Projections may present a locution or an idea. In the case of expansion, one clause may elaborate (=) on another through the specification of finer detail, comments or examples; one clause may extend (+) beyond another through the addition of an element or the suggestion of an alternative; one clause may enhance (x) another by qualifying it through circumstances of time, place, cause or condition (Halliday/Matthiessen 2014, 444).

Since the text of the court Decision is based on what was said during the trial, and, in some measure, the speech events of the crime story, it is not surprising that the highest incidence of clause complex relations concerns hypotactic and paratactic locutions (37%), as shown in Table 1. Most Sayers are participants in the crime story, as in the following excerpt:

(4)   12 α The offender stated

”βα that he had little contact with his youngest [sic] son, Robbie,

xβ because “[h]e was only a baby”.

Extract 4 shows two examples of projection of a locution, with the offender presented as saying something through both indirect speech (the offender stated that he had little contact with his youngest [sic] son, Robbie) and direct speech (“he [Robbie] was only a baby”). The second highest incidence of clause complex relations concerns hypotactic and paratactic extensions (25.2%), more particularly paratactic ones, as in the following excerpt:

(5)   7 1 The offender returned to living in the converted garage

+2 and returned to work as a truck driver and forklift operator.

In extract 5, the clause and returned to work as a truck driver and forklift operator adds new information to the clause of equal status the offender returned to living in the converted garage through coordination. This highlights the recounting of the crime story as a series of events succeeding one another, whereby this happened and that happened, etc., thus contributing to presenting a linear crime story.

If we consider the clause complex relations concerning enhancement, a count shows that 13 of these clauses, or 65%, deal with temporality, in particular succession or simultaneity, as shown in the following two excerpts:

(6)   38 α The offender asserted

“β1 that he did not eat on 7 April 2011,

+2 α but instead consumed a large amount of alcohol

xβα (temporal) from the time he returned home from work at 8pm until 3am the following morning

xβ (temporal) when he went to sleep.

(7)   85xβ (temporal) While the police were at the scene

α the offender rang his mother again.

This prevalence of hypotactic temporal enhancements is unsurprising, since it contributes to construing a clear chronology of the crime story.

Other occurrences of hypotactic enhancement serve essentially to expand various events of the crime story, as highlighted in excerpt 8, when the offender explains that he did not go to work because of his high consumption of alcohol:

(8)   41α He said

“β α that he decided

‘β α not to go to work

xβ α (cause) because he thought

‘β he was “over the limit”.

In this instance, the causal relation because he thought he was “over the limit” contributes to explaining why the offender stayed home on that day.

In the Daily Telegraph article, as in the court Decision, the highest incidence of clause complex relations concerns hypotactic and paratactic locutions (41.35%), as shown in Table 2. This highlights the significance of in/direct quotations in the recount of the events, as in the following excerpt:

(9)   12“β α Johnny had earlier called Mrs Meyn,

x β α telling her

“β 1 “something bad had happened”

+2 and to come home,

α Mr Meyn said.

Unlike the text of the court Decision though, the Daily Telegraph article mainly includes quotations from the offender’s father, who does not appear as a participant in the crime story of the court Decision. In excerpt 9, he is also reporting something that someone else said to a third party (see discussion below).

3.3. Orientational information

The court Decision shows a high incidence of circumstantial details such as the place, date and time of the various events that are relevant to the crime story, making it clear who did what to whom, when and where, etc. For instance, excerpt 1, reproduced below for convenience, shows a plethora of circumstances, in particular with regards to the time and place that events took place.

(1ʹ)   1 The offender met Ms Rathbone [when?] sometime in 2005 or 2006.

2 [when?] Within a few months she had moved [where?] into the offender’s home.

5 There were two boys born of their relationship, Taylor born [when?] in xxxx 2008 and Robbie born [when?] in xxxx 2010.

6 The relationship broke up [when?] in late 2010 to early 2011.

104 [when?] At approximately 4.45pm he [the offender] was arrested and taken [where?] to Penrith Police Station.

105 He was interviewed [how many times?] in three sessions beginning [when?] at 7.36pm [when?] on 8 April 2011 and concluding [when?] at 3.23am [when?] on 9 April 2011.

Note that all the spatial and temporal locations are absolute, rather than relative to the here-&-now (see for instance the choice of Penrith Police Station rather than a nearby police station, or in late 2010 to early 2011 rather than recently). Also, while a few circumstances are indefinite (e.g., a few months rather than, say, six months), most are definite (e.g., at 7.36pm on 8 April 2011). This is especially the case when the information derives from police records. As shown in Table 3, temporal and spatial circumstances in particular abound in the text of the court Decision with a total of 98 instances (or 76.6% of all circumstances), with a smaller number of circumstances of extent (8.5%). This over-specification of orientational information is distinctive of trial narratives (Heffer 2005, 76). It is also typical of opening statements in criminal cases (Lipovsky 2017).

Circumstances also abound in the Daily Telegraph article, with temporal and spatial circumstances accounting for 79.1% of all circumstances – about the same proportion as for the court Decision (see Table 4). Clause 9 of example 10 relates the offender’s arrest, as clause 104 from excerpt 1 above from the court Decision:

(10)9 α Meyn was arrested [when?] at 4.50pm [when?] the same day [where?] at Glenbrook, [where?] in the Blue Mountains,

xβ (temporal) after he went for a drive [who with?] with the boys.

As is the case with extract 1, extract 10 shows commitment to precision regarding the circumstances surrounding the recounted events (see at 4.50pm, at Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains), as well as their sequencing in time (after he went for a drive with the boys). This factual precision augments the plausibility of the events, thus contributing to enhancing the persuasive force of the news story (van Dijk 1988, 84–85).

Both the text of the court Decision and the article from the Daily Telegraph then are dedicated to factual precision in the rendition of the events. One major difference between the two texts however concerns the degree of precision of the circumstances. We know for instance from the court Decision text that the arrest took place on 8 April 2011. Clause 9 from the Daily Telegraph article refers to the same day, rather than the date. A reading of the whole article shows two earlier references (in clauses 3 and 4) to Friday. The use of the date in the court Decision points to the need to be specific in legal writings to avoid any ambiguity. It also highlights the time lapse between the events and their recount. The Daily Telegraph article was published on Sunday 11 April (see Figure 2). Therefore, there is no need to be as specific as 8 April 2011 is, and a reference to Friday was clear enough to the Sunday readers of the article. Another example of precision in circumstances concerns the comitative circumstance with the boys, used in clause 9 from excerpt 10. The court Decision specifies the boys’ names: these are participants, Taylor and Robbie, in clause 5, excerpt 1. In contrast, the Daily Telegraph article uses the terms her two young sons (clause 2), her little boys (clause 3), the children (clause 5) and the boys (clauses 8 and 9). The initial reference to her two young sons is thus tracked through various forms of anaphoric reference, eventually switching from the possessive deictic her to the definite the and diminishing in specificity. The omission of the children’s names probably originates in journalistic ethical guidelines. Unicef (2003) reporting guidelines for instance states that “special attention is needed to ensure each child’s right to privacy” when reporting on children. The children’s dates of birth are crossed out from the court Decision possibly for the same reason.

3.4. Transitivity analysis

The focus on doing is evident from the high proportion of material processes, which make up half of all processes in both the court Decision and the Daily Telegraph article, as shown in Tables 5 and 6. The predominance of material processes is not surprising since the purpose of both texts is to familiarise the reader with the events of the crime story. Both recounts progress via temporal sequencing through the use of temporal enhancement clauses, material processes, and past tense, as in excerpts 11 and 12, respectively, from the court Decision and the Daily Telegraph article:

(11)4 α They [the offender and the deceased] lived in that garage

xβ (temporal) before moving to various other premises.

(12)10 α Mr Meyn said

“β α Johnny had been living in the granny flat

xβ (temporal) after moving out of the Rooty Hill apartment [[he had shared with Ms Rathbone until their relationship broke down two months ago]].

Verbal processes are the second most frequent processes, accounting for one-fifth (21.5%) of all processes in the court Decision, and nearly one-third (31.8%) in the Daily Telegraph article. Locutions in the court Decision typically arise from quotations from the participants in the crime story, such as the offender and the witnesses, as shown in Table 7. This high incidence is due to the significant proportion of quotations from the evidence that the offender provided during the trial, as shown in the following excerpt:

(13)56α In his evidence he [the offender] said

“βα he went there

xβ to get a bottle of milk for Robbie.

A small number of locutions also originate in direct quotations re-enacting certain events in the crime story, voiced by participants with personal experience in the related events, providing a first-hand account of what happened, as in excerpt 15 (the Sayers are underlined):

(14)68 1 She [the offender’s mother] asked

“2 “What’s the matter?”

69 1 He [the offender] replied

“2 α “I’ll tell you

xβ when you come home. […]

70 α She again asked,

xβ what the matter was.

71 1 He said

“2 “I’m sorry,

“3 α I will tell you

xβ when you get here.

72 I can’t tell you on the phone”.

Thus, the court Decision recount of the crime engages interactively with the voices of the crime participants, shifting the responsibility of the advanced propositions to the offender and the witnesses. Forensic narratives are indeed multi-perspectival and multi-voiced, as they are mediated through numerous retellings (police interviews, etc.), lending them authorial complexity (Cotterill 2003, 33–35). The judge’s own voice is seldom heard in his recount of the crime story.

In the Daily Telegraph, the unavailability of the crime participants, apart from a “police source”, and the scarcity of eyewitnesses, are overcome through the presentation of the article as based on “an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph”:

(15)5 α α In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Meyn’s father,

≪ =  β whose name is also John Meyn≫, said

xβ α he was struggling

= β to tell the children [what had happened],

where “exclusive interview with The Sunday Telegraph” is emphasised through a marked Theme. The use of a journalistic source with appropriate knowledge of the events is meant to ascertain the reliability of the reported events (White 2000).

Indeed, most of the information quoted in the news article comes from a single source, the offender’s father. This contrasts with the text of the court Decision, where the offender’s father never appears as Sayer (see Table 7). Seven verbal processes in the news article have the father as Sayer, two of them including direct quotes, with the “police source” providing one piece of information. This is consistent with the use of evidence from close eyewitnesses and/or reliable sources to promote the persuasiveness of news discourse (van Dijk 1988, 84–85).

Another feature of the Daily Telegraph article, compared with the text of the court Decision, is the embedding of quotations, as shown in excerpt 9, reproduced below for convenience:

(9ʹ)12 “β α Johnny had earlier called Mrs Meyn,

x β α telling her

“β 1 “something bad had happened”

+2 and to come home,

α Mr Meyn said.

While in excerpt 14 from the court Decision, the Sayers say directly what they said, in excerpt 9 from the Daily Telegraph, the reader is told what the offender’s father said his wife said their son said. This shows the multiplicity of Sayers within one clause complex (see further discussion below). Excerpt 9 also shows the ways in which the verbiage is usually made more prominent than the Sayer in the article, highlighting a higher preoccupation with the vivacity of the recount, rather than the authenticity of its sources.

3.5. Agency

Agency expresses causation. This is important in trials where the issue of blame is crucial and responsibility for events needs to be assigned to specific participants (Gibbons 2003, 155). Social actors can be assigned either active or passive roles. “Activation occurs when social actors are represented as the active, dynamic forces in an activity, passivation when they are represented as ‘undergoing’ the activity, or as being ‘at the receiving end of it’” (van Leeuwen 1996, 43–44). “Effective” clauses represent processes as being brought about by an “Agent”, or external cause, which impacts on or affects another participant, such as the “Goal” in a material clause (Halliday/Matthiessen 2014, 339). Even if the Agent function can be found in projecting clauses of the mental type and being clauses of the relational type, Agency, or causation, “is most easily perceived in material clauses because only in the field of doing has the Agent the physical power to impact on things” (Caffarel 2006, 88).

In a legal recount where over half of all processes are material (see earlier discussion), it is not surprising that all the Agents are found in material clauses in which some Actors are presented as having the ability to impact on other persons or objects. In total, the court Decision includes 52 effective clauses (22.3% of all clauses). In 32 clauses, the offender appears as the Agent, clearly foregrounding his control over his actions and responsibility, as highlighted in example 16:

(16)72 1 [Agent/Actor] The offender then drove to Taylor’s preschool

+2 and [Process: material and effective] signed his son out shortly before 2pm.

In contrast, a combination of middle clauses and passive clauses with no Agent in the Daily Telegraph article avoids assigning responsibility to the related events, as in the following examples:

(17)Her little boys have now been left all alone, after their father, John “Johnny” Meyn, 32, was charged with murdering Ms Rathbone, 26, on Friday.

(18)Meyn was refused bail yesterday and will appear in the Penrith Local Court on Friday.

In example 16, the child is represented grammatically as Goal, that is, as acted on, whereas the father is presented as Actor/Agent, that is, as having an impact through his actions. Evidently, the court Decision seeks to clearly assign responsibility to the reported actions. In contrast, examples 17 and 18 from the Daily Telegraph background the role of human agents, with the offender being acted upon (see their father […] was charged), and the murder even relegated to a causal circumstance (see with murdering, representing the reason for which the process was charged takes place). In effect, it is left to the readers’ interpretation of the events to decipher the links of cause and effect between the woman’s murder and the plight of the children, since a temporal enhancement clause is used (Her little boys have now been left all alone, after their father, John “Johnny” Meyn, 32, was charged with murdering Ms Rathbone, 26, on Friday), rather than an enhancement clause specifying a cause.

3.6. Attitudes and engagement

The court Decision exhibits little evaluation, similarly to recounts in legal testimonies (Martin and Rose 2008, 55). Indeed, its main point is “the record of events, that are allowed to speak for themselves – as witnessing justice or truth” (Martin and Rose 2008, 55). In other words, the Decision considers factual evidence as speaking for itself and not requiring additional appraisal.

Although hard news stories usually avoid interpersonal meanings that might contribute to revealing their authors’ subjective opinions of the events described, such meanings may be found in the quoted comments of authorised sources (White 1997, 107). The Daily Telegraph journalists, who did not observe the events themselves, and could not access the main participants, rely on secondary participants for the description of the events that took place and for the presentation of opinions. The journalists strive to establish their neutral stance by allowing their witness to speak at length for himself, and presenting some of his verbiage through direct quotes. In this manner, a number of the attitudinal meanings expressed in the Daily Telegraph article actually originate in the quotations from the father’s interview, such as this emotional reaction:

(19)John Meyn, said he was struggling to tell the children what had happened.

Although Meyn senior is in a sense responsible for all the evaluations that he provides to the journalists, he actually attributes some of these evaluations to other participants through ‘projections’, thus introducing additional sources of evaluation, e.g.:

(20)Johnny had earlier called Mrs Meyn, telling her “something bad had happened” and to come home, Mr Meyn said.

In this manner, the article introduces evaluations through recursive projections (Martin and Rose 2003, 45), even giving a voice to the offender, as illustrated in Figure 3 (appraisal underlined). Thus, an explicit negative evaluation of the events is offered, however as illustrated in Figure 3, the grounding of the evaluation in external sources provides the two journalists with opportunities to engage their readers attitudinally without abandoning their own stance of professed neutrality.

Figure 3.

Instance of recursive sources.

Another resource used to position the Daily Telegraph readers attitudinally and engage them with the plight of the victims is found in the use of “pseudo” questions (Martin and White 2005, 110), as in the following example:

(21)61 “How do you explain it to them?

+2α How do you tell them

“β1 their mother’s dead

+2 and their father has been arrested?

7“2α They’re too young

xβ to understand,

1 Mr Meyn said.

The rhetorical effect of the pseudo questions is also enhanced through the placement of the verbiage ahead of the projecting clause, as already shown when discussing excerpt 9, amplifying the engagement with the reader.

Although the authors of the Daily Telegraph article generally shun interpersonal meanings that may contribute to revealing their subjective opinion, one major exception concerns the appraisal of the victim. This appears in the opening nucleus as shown in example 3, reproduced below for convenience:

(3ʹ)1 LOVING [positive affect] mother Yvette Rathbone had recently had the names of her two young sons tattooed inside a large heart across the upper half of her back [positive appreciation: reaction].

2 Her little boys have now been left all alone [negative appreciation: reaction].

The opening sentence begins with an explicit evaluation (LOVING mother) that is supported by her recent tattoo of the names of her sons in a large heart. The explicit appraisal is accompanied by intensification lexis (underlined in excerpt 3ʹ), and emphasised through typographic intensifications of capitalising and bolding (as shown in Figure 1). These attitudinal meanings are made all the more significant through their position in the opening nucleus, marking them as most newsworthy. Although there is no explicit evaluative lexis in the clause Her little boys have now been left all alone, the colocation of “little boys” and “all alone” activates negative views of the situation, prompting the reader to react emotionally, since “[w]hen ‘objective’ experiential meanings are adjusted with resources of graduation, that is when they are intensified or quantified, those objective meanings take on a subjective potential” (Hood 2010, 91). Such intensified lexis is actually a common characteristic of hard news journalism (White 1997, 108). This use of attitudinal resources positions the Daily Telegraph readers to view the events and their consequences as emotionally charged. These instances of attitudinal meanings also highlight how hard news stories may include mixed types of evaluations (such as affect and appreciation) (see White and Makki 2016).

3.7. Use of crime participants’ names

When using a person’s name, naming options include the use of a nickname, first name (FN) only, last name (LN) only, FN + LN, title + LN, or title + FN + LN. Other options to refer to individuals may include kinship terms (son, father, etc.) or a role name (such as offender or victim). These options can be used alone or in combination. Naming choices can individualise or, on the contrary, depersonalise individuals.

In the court Decision, as shown in Table 8, the victim is mostly referred to through her FN + LN (27 instances). Her FN is also used twice in the context of quoted conversations. In contrast, the offender is named using the role-based term the offender (51 instances).

In the Daily Telegraph article, the victim and the offender are named distinctively as well; the chosen names also show a wider variety, compared with the restricted range of the court Decision. First, the naming pattern in the headline is different from the rest of the article, since both the offender and the victim are referred to in generic terms:

(22)Man charged over woman’s murder³

However, the woman of the headline is next designated as a LOVING mother in the opening sentence of the article. As shown in Table 9, the victim is also identified through her title + LN (4 instances) and FN + LN (1 instance). The offender is also designated through a variety of names, although the options chosen are different. They include his LN (3 instances), his FN + nickname + LN (1 instance) and his nickname (2 instances), so as to differentiate him from his father, who has the same FN and LN. He is also referred to using kinship terms in relation to his children (their father) and father (his son) in 3 instances.

Depending on the option chosen to name a person in a text, further involvement, or conversely distantiation, of the readers can be achieved. Thus, the differentiated naming choices by the judge vs. the journalists of the Daily Telegraph article to designate the individuals who are implicated in the crime story may indicate attempts to either establish a closer relationship, or, on the contrary, increase the distance, between the participants in the crime story and the readers. In the court Decision, the offender is depersonalised through the sole use of a role-based term; in contrast, the victim is individualised through the frequent use of her FN + LN. On the other hand, the use of kinship terms makes the participants less distant for the readers of the Daily Telegraph, who are more likely to identify with a mother or son than with an offender or victim. The offender and the victim are also made more familiar through the mention of their ages, as well as profession in the case of the offender – all elements that are absent from the court Decision, but add to the news article’s sense of truthfulness (van Dijk 1988). Furthermore, the use of the kinship term mother, together with the evaluative meaning LOVING, for the victim in the opening sentence positions the Daily Telegraph readers attitudinally to view the victim sympathetically. Significantly, the position of LOVING mother in the opening nucleus not only entices readers to continue with their reading, but also positions them to view the victim compassionately in their reading of the rest of the story.