Intonation patterns in news headlines in the Spanish television channels

Abstract

The aim of this article is to describe the intonation trends in the headlines of the main Spanish television channels. For this, a discursive-perspective of analysis is taken. First, the prosodic features of the three prosodic patterns identified for the news reading discourse in different media and contents are described: the singsong, the emphatic and the natural. Secondly, an acoustic analysis is carried out to identify the pitch peaks and intonation contours by using percentages on a 79 corpus of contours, classified in anacrusis, body and final inflexion, which belong to the beginning, development and end of the headline. Results show a general tendency to use the natural pattern, although there are two sensationalist-driven channels that still use the singsong and the emphatic patterns. Finally, it is proposed that a comprehensive structure of news be modeled with margins for variability depending on text content.