Viewpoint representation in journalistic crime narratives: An analysis of grammatical roles and referential expressions

This study examines how grammar and reference in journalistic narratives help to represent the viewpoints of eyewitnesses to shocking criminal acts. Grammatical roles of eyewitnesses and non-eyewitnesses and the expressions referring to them were analyzed in four journalistic narratives about different shocking events and compared to four non-narrative news reports about the same events. Results show that in the narratives, but not in the news reports, eyewitnesses appear more often in subject position of a clause than non-eyewitnesses. This indicates that in narratives, journalists choose eyewitnesses as the lens through which they narrate the events. Furthermore, eyewitnesses are more often referred to with pronouns than nouns, whereas non-eyewitnesses are more often referred to with nouns than pronouns. This indicates that eyewitnesses are cognitively highly accessible in news narratives and that their viewpoints are conceptually most proximate to the viewpoints of journalist and reader. It is argued that the strategic use of grammatical roles and referential expressions in journalistic crime narratives puts the reader in the position of a “mediated witness”.