IV. The structure of a typical magazine article. Schematic view.

Norman Fairclough offers a ‘generic structure’ of the article, which consists of (1) the headline, (2) the lead, (3) the satellites, and (4) the wrap-up. According to the scholar, this order is fixed, as the lead, for instance, cannot precede the headline. The headline can be complex, as an article may have a ‘major headline’ and a ‘minor headline’. The lead may consist of one or two paragraphs. The following paragraphs are the satellite paragraphs, they elaborate various aspects of the story. They usually contain little progression within themselves, they could be quite extensively reordered without disrupting the story. They will ultimately link back or refer to the lead, but they are relatively independent of one another. The satellite paragraphs may also have their own sub-headlines. The wrap-up (though optional in some stories) usually consists of the final paragraph in the story and offers some sort of resolution or conclusion (Fairclough 1995:85-86). The wrap-up, or the final paragraph, will often contain some sort of back referencing to the lead, in this way reinforcing the idea or the attitude provided there. Quite often the wrap-up consists of just one sentence, which reinstates or reiterates the ideas suggested in the lead. This sort of back referencing serves a binding function in the article, as while the arguments in the satellites may have diverted significantly from the core concept in the lead, the wrap-up will serve as a closing frame, which reminds the readers of the key concept in the lead.

Thus, from this scheme we can see that even though the satellite paragraphs contain the main volume of text, usually they are less significant than the other three elements. As the main desire of any author is to grab the readers’ attention to his text, the main function of the headline is to attract this attention. Therefore, headlines are mostly printed in larger fonts and are significantly more visually dominant than the rest of the text on the page. Moreover, some scholars comments on the commonly unusual form of the headline, calling it a ‘grammatical oddity’, as the desire to draw the attention and the interest of the audience will dominate the tendency to have a linguistically ‘correct’ statement in the headline, as a result of what some words may be left out in favor of more conceptually significant signs. The function of the lead is to set the angle from which the topic will be viewed. Here the author more prominently shows his/her bias and sets the ambience for the whole article. The satellites usually help the author to more fully set out his/her ideas or arguments. From the viewpoint of the linguistic versatility they are usually poorer, and simply cover more fully the main notions, which are helpful in getting the author’s viewpoint over to the audience. The wrap-up is important mostly as a means of reinstating the idea offered in the lead.

Most feature or lead articles will have this structure preserved. Yet contemporary magazines try to make use of the space to a better advantage. Hence we have at least two more elements, which are optional and serve mainly to intensify the ideas expressed in the article. The first one is an illustration. Though illustrations are forms of non-lingual communication, they are often used to a great advantage in media texts. Consider, for instance, two possible types of illustrations for an article on a war conflict. The author advocating for the use of force will use a picture of soldiers’ heroic efforts. While the author who condemns military actions will show casualties, damage to civilians, or scenes of ruined houses. The second extra-textual element of the article is what is known among journalists as a boxout. Usually, it is a citation from the article, which is printed in a separate square, occupies a more vivid space and serves as a reinforcement of the ideas provided in the text. In other words, sometimes authors choose to state the same idea twice – once in the text, and the second time separately in place of an illustration. It is similar to sound bites in radio or television, when a short citation is taken out of context and repeated several times, thus being able to create a different meaning than if read in the text along with other arguments. Even if a reader refuses to read the whole text of the article, there are more chances that he/she will read the parts that are deliberately made more visible, such as the headline, boxouts, and sometimes the beginning of the lead.

Conclusions

Thus, in order to properly understand the nature of the media influence on the public opinion, we need to take approaches of different disciplines, starting from typical language-related fields, ending with the studies of culture, politics and mentality. The study of media texts should not be limited to just the study of explicit language means. We need to go deeper, in order to understand the implicit messages that are sent through media channels. One of the solutions to the problem of the indisciplinary approach to media analysis was the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), which we will deal with in more detail in the next lecture. Being aware of the key notions in media discourse will help us better understand how they are used in this field. Even though there is no single or unified classification of the forms of the media, we should have a working platform, which would give us a better idea of the nature of different types of media. In order to understand the message sent through a magazine article, we should be aware of the structure of the article. The first elements in any article are usually most important, as they may cast a shade of the mood or the bias through which the whole text will be viewed.

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