The Sun

The Sun is a tabloid newspaper, making it traditionally smaller than a broadsheet and includes ‘tabloid journalism’. From researching on the internet I found that tabloid journalism focuses on scandal, such as celebrity gossip, television presenters, thrilling crime stories, football and sex and that this is what the Sun follows. This is not the case for all tabloid newspapers. The Independent for example is a British morning newspaper originating as a broadsheet in 1986 but later becoming a tabloid newspaper in 2003, calling itself a compact newspaper. According to Wikipedia the Independent is left-wing, however it does not tie itself to any particular party.

The Sun newspaper fits under the stereotypical opinion of a tabloid newspaper and Wikipedia says‘‘The Sun has been involved in a number of controversies in its history, including its coverage of the Hillsborough football stadium disaster, falsely accusing Elton John of having had sexual relationships with rent boys, and its attitude towards mental health issues and homosexuality.’’ whilst internet bloggers  from Yahoo view The Sun to be read by ‘’the white van man’’ ‘’torie chavs’’ and ‘’idiots’’. Taking the article‘Cops Battle Riots Across London’ by Laura Caroe the grammar is basic. Simple demonstrative sentences are used which are single independent clauses, such as ‘acting Scotland Yard Commissioner Tim Goodwin has asked the public to clear London’s streets’ and ‘more rampages broke out in Brixton last night’. The phonological features of rhythm and alliteration feature heavily in this article. ‘’Huge fires are burning out of control in Croydon, South London, with police struggling to maintain control.’’ There is alliteration with ‘control’, ‘Croydon’ and ‘control’ and there is a rhythm to the phrase ‘control in Croydon’. I think that this use of phonology links to sociolinguistics, the sociolinguistics used by The Sun fit with the social group whom read The Sun. It is relevant towards its target audience.

The Sun’s report on the London riots is dramatic with emotive language, high levels of bright graphology, slang and pragmatics. There are 19 photos in its 1,203 word article, each followed by a caption with highly emotive and expressive language such as ‘terrifying’, ‘inferno’, ‘destruction’ and ‘blaze’. Each word is followed by an ellipsis then a statement, such as with ‘blaze … remains of torched car in Hackney’. This is as though it is spoken discourse. The ellipsis adds a pause to the reading which makes the statement seem bolder and more significant, again adding drama to the article and a kind of thrill which The Sun seeks to give to its audience.

A use of slang gives the article an informal feel, instead of using ‘police’ the title includes ‘Cops’. Straight away this lowers the reading level. This simple language suggests that the audience is of this lower reader level which is what I expected to be included in The Sun. It is casual language and similar to what would be expected from a magazine. The title is in bold and is in sans serif. It is immediately next to a brightly coloured photograph which includes red and yellow colouring. This use of graphology grabs the reader’s attention and draws them in making them want to read the report.

The title is followed by two sub headings which both sum up what the article includes. ‘London’ is included in the first title, ‘Birmingham and Liverpool’ are included in the sub heading and in the subtitle ‘LONDON’ is repeated in upper case lettering. This will have been done to attract a wider variety of readers from different places as they are more likely to buy the paper if somewhere local to them, hence the mention of 3 differing places in the titles.