Toward a genre-based characterization of the problem–solution textual pattern in English newspaper editorials and op-eds

Abstract

The current study presents the results of a discourse analysis research on the problem–solution pattern of textual organization (henceforth, the PS pattern) in a sample of English written newspaper editorials and op-eds. My main goal is to characterize the linguistic realization of the PS pattern in written opinion journalism and to describe its textual variations. The PS pattern is analyzed here as part of a wider framework, Tirkkonen-Condit's (Argumentative text structure and translation, Univ. Tyväskylä, 1985) method of textual description, specifically designed to outline the global structure of argumentative texts. The application of Tirkkonen-Condit's method involves the dissection of texts into PS sequences and communicative acts. Both the PS sequences and the individualized communicative acts are assigned an illocutionary value and are analyzed in terms of the rhetorical relations holding between them. Findings reveal that the texts analyzed are complex networks of functionally arranged and interrelated PS sequences whose unmarked order can be purposely subverted with emphatic aims. In addition, an illocutionary and rhetorical analysis of each one of the PS textual components reveals different ways of addressing the reader in editorials and op-eds.