The Use of Historical Present Tense in Media Headlines: A Study of The Telegraph and The New York Times
Abstract
This study examines the use of the present tense in media headlines, particularly focusing on the phenomenon of historical present tense. Analyzing 100 headlines from The Telegraph and The New York Times, this research identifies patterns of tense usage and explores how the historical present tense, employed to describe past events, contributes to creating vivid and immediate news narratives. The findings show that the present simple tense is the most commonly used, with the historical present often employed to evoke a sense of immediacy and drama in news stories.
References
Birner, B. (1991). Is English changing? A statistical analysis of the prose style of Ernest Hemingway. Linguistic Society of America: Washington, D.C.
Chomsky, N. (2006). Language and mind. Cambridge University Press.
George, C. (2006). Language change and evolution. Cambridge University Press.
Huddleston, R., & Pullum, T. (2002). The Cambridge grammar of the English language. Cambridge University Press.
Jour, A. (2006). Time and tense - The handbook of English linguistics (2008). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
McEwen, N. (2004). How to write telegrams properly. Texas Arion Press.
Mencken, H. (2006). The American media language. Arcadia Publishing Company.
Praskova, E. (2009). Grammar in newspaper headlines. University of Pardubice Publishers.
Smith, P. (1996). Hemingway's luggage and the miraculous year. The Cambridge Companion to Ernest Hemingway.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2025 International Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
