Truman Show Essay

Peter Weirs 1998 film The Truman Show is a metaphor for modern society, it focuses on the way the media manipulates reality. We are complicit in that manipulation and also victims of it. The film challenges us to critique the media and extricate ourselves from the â€Å"reality† it surrounds us with. The Truman Show tells us about life and reality, it portrays from what is real and what is a fantasy. Truman’s world is somewhat like our own world because of the way things are perceived and approached. Everyone expects and wants a true reality and build things around a world that we all seem to want and truly believe in.This is a similar case to what Christof seemingly tried to create, however it was more forced and mannered compared to what the worlds view and society’s form of a world would be like. We all expect things to be perfect; however nothing can be too perfect. There has always got to be imperfections or something going wrong. In a way we are set up, nat urally you’re always going to want something, but when you see something better you want that instead; it’s the same with wanting things that you can never get. The concept is the same.It’s that lust of just wanting to be accepted into the world accordingly to what society approves of, just that feeling of wanting to be accepted into the world. In Truman’s case, everything was controlled. From staging to lighting, friendships, and relationships and just how absolutely everything was set out. It was a manifested stage; the perfect little world where everything was always right. In our world, reality; we try and make it the same, however things don’t go our way all the time which causes the little caresses in time and change, completely flipping a scenario around therefore causing things to go unexpected.Not as planned and not as we have hoped. We are controlled by forces that we cannot handle such as the push and gravitational pull. The earthâ€℠¢s atmosphere and weather, our love and emotions. Little things like this that has such a big impact into the world; our world and our reality. The media plays a big role in both our world and Truman’s world. We are impacted by it every day and most don’t seem to notice. We rely on it a lot and we all seem to revolve around the media always wondering and dependent so we know what to expect next.The media plays an important role in The Truman Show because it is a set up world. The way that Christof has made it to be, to advertise to the viewers watching his show. Almost every way that it is staged out, there is a product being sold or just the way that they talk to each other is fake, you can tell that it’s been scripted and Truman is really only oblivious to this because he chose to believe that this is his real world and this is what it is made out to be until he has suspicions into what is really occurring.In our world, the media somewhat plays a similar part. We rely on it to get our information. It can be used for good and bad. There really is not telling in what to expect next coming from the media as they are so unexpected and mysterious. As it is, we are a lot like the viewers of the Truman show because we support the media industry. We are keeping the industry going by encouraging it and egging it to go on. The media is our form of entertainment and it’s almost our crucial bit of daily medicine, like we must take some in each day in order to survive and go on.We rely on the media as much as it relies on us to keep it running. In modern society we accept whatever goes on and most of the time approve and agree of whatever the media is saying, posting or filming; either broadcasting online or offline. It has become so relevant in our world and especially to this generation. We are like the viewers of the Truman Show because whatever the media plays, and we watch it is just another form of entertainment for us and the peopleâ₠¬â„¢s lives that they intrude on is merely a form of enjoyment to our eyes.

Asaaaa

Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 www. elsevier. com/locate/pragma On newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers Daniel Dor* Department of Communications, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel Abstract This paper suggests an explanatory functional characterization of newspaper headlines. Couched within Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) relevance theory, the paper makes the claim that headlines are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers: Headlines provide the readers with the optimal ratio between contextual e? ect and processing e? ort, and direct readers to construct the optimal context for interpretation.The paper presents the results of an empirical study conducted in the news-desk of one daily newspaper. It shows that the set of intuitive professional imperatives, shared by news-editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of headlines for speci? c stories, can naturally be reduced to the notion of relevance optimization. The a nalysis explains why the construction of a successful headline requires an understanding of the readers—their state-of-knowledge, their beliefs and expectations and their cognitive styles—no less than it requires an understanding of the story.It also explains the fact that skilled newspaper readers spend most of their reading time scanning the headlines—rather than reading the stories. # 2002 Elsevier Science B. V. All rights reserved. Keywords: Headlines; Relevance theory; Pragmatics; News value; News framing; Media, communication 1. Introduction This paper is an attempt to suggest an explicit and generalized answer to a very fundamental question in the study of the mass media, i. e. , the question of the communicative function of newspaper headlines.The importance of the role of headlines in the communicative act performed by newspapers can hardly be exaggerated, yet the nature of this role has virtually never been explicated in the literature. As we shall see below, the regular strategy adopted in the literature has been to make ? negrained descriptive distinctions between di? erent types of headlines—news headlines in ‘quality newspapers’; news headlines in ‘tabloid newspapers’; ‘summarizing * Tel. : +972-3–6406521; fax: +972-3-6406032. E-mail address: [email  protected] tau. ac. il (D. Dor). 0378-2166/02/$ – see front matter # 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved. PII: S0378-2166(02)00134-0 696 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 headlines’; ‘localizing headlines’, ‘quotation headlines’, etc. —and assign them different types of communicative functions. In this paper, I will suggest an explanatory functional de? nition of newspaper headlines which attempts to transcend the above distinctions in type and explain the very fact that newspapers—all types of newspapers—have headlines in them. The functio nal de? nition to be developed in this paper relies very heavily on Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) technical notion of relevance.Newspaper headlines will be functionally de? ned as relevance optimizers: Newspaper headlines are relevance optimizers: They are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. This functional de? nition positions the headline in its appropriate role as a textual negotiator between the story and its readers. It explains why the construction of a successful headline requires an understanding of the readers—their state-of-knowledge, their beliefs and expectations and their cognitive styles—no less than it requires an understanding of the story. It reduces the di? rences between the di? erent subtypes of headlines mentioned above to a matter of tactical choice: As we shall see, all the di? erent subtypes target the same functional goal, that of relevance optimization, although they do it in di? erent ways. The literatu re on newspaper headlines covers a wide range of theoretical and empirical topics, all the way from the grammar of English headlines to the e? ects of headlines on news comprehension and recall. 1 Surprisingly, however, the literature dealing directly with the communicative function of headlines is rather sparse.I will review it in the next section. In Section 3, I will brie? y introduce Sperber and Wilson’s theory, and then develop the notion of relevance optimization. In Section 4, I will apply the notion of relevance optimization to newspaper headlines. In Section 5, I will present the results of an empirical study conducted in the news-desk of the Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv, where I followed the process of headline production from close range. 2 I will show that the set of intuitive professional imperatives, shared by news-editors and copy-editors, which dictates the choice of headlines for speci? stories, can naturally be reduced to one meta-imperative: Ma ke the headline such that it renders the story optimally-relevant for the readers. In Section 6, I will apply the relevance-based conception to the analysis of tabloid headlines. In Section 7, I will deal with the role of the reader in this framework, and show that my relevance-based theory explains some of the more intriguing behavioral patterns manifested by newspaper readers—especially the fact that many skilled readers On headline reading, interpretation and recall, see Henley et al. 1995), Leon (1997), Lindemann (1989), Perfetti et al. (1987), Pfau (1995) and van Dijk (1988 and references therein); on headline production, see Bell (1984, 1991), Fasold (1987) and Chang et al. (1992); on the grammar of headlines, see Bell (1984), Jenkins (1990) and Mardh (1980); on metaphors in headlines, see de Knop (1985); on headlines from a cross-linguistic perspective, see Dierick (1987) and Sidiropoulou (1995). 2 Between 1996 and 1998, I worked as a senior news-editor and head of the news-desk in Ma’ariv.This was a period of very intensive participant observation: I was involved in the decision-making process concerning the formulation of thousands of headlines. The e-mail exchanges which were analyzed for this paper were randomly collected throughout this period—from other senior editors. 1 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 697 spend most of their reading time scanning the headlines rather than reading the stories. In the concluding section, I will sketch some of the larger-scale implications of my theory, and suggest some directions for further research. . Multiple types, multiple functions Traditionally, newspaper headlines have been functionally characterized as short, telegram-like summaries of their news items. This is especially true with respect to news headlines. Van Dijk (1988) couches this traditional insight within his discourseanalytic framework: ‘‘Each news item in the press has a Headline . . . and many have a Lead, whether marked o? by special printing type or not. We also have an elementary rule for them: Headline precedes Lead, and together they precede the rest of the news item.Their structural function is also clear: Together they express the major topics of the text. That is, they function as an initial summary. Hence, as in natural stories, we may also introduce the category Summary, dominating Headline and Lead. The semantic constraint is obvious: Headline+Lead summarize the news text and express the semantic macrostructure. ’’ Obviously, some newspaper headlines do provide what seems to be a summary (or abstract) of their stories, but the general theoretical conception which takes this to be the essential function of the headline seems to be too narrow, for at least three complementary reasons.First, even the most prototypical news headlines, those which appear in what is sometimes called ‘quality newspapers’, do not always summarize their s tories. Some headlines highlight a single detail extracted out of the story, and others contain a quotation which the editor decided should be promoted to the foreground. As we shall see below, some headlines even contain material which does not appear in the news item itself. The fact that headlines do not always summarize, but sometimes highlight or quote, has been noted by di? erent writers.Bell (1991), for example, makes a distinction between headlines which ‘‘abstract the main event of the story’’, and headlines which ‘‘focus on a secondary event or a detail’’ (p. 188–9). Nir (1993) distinguishes between headlines which function as ‘‘a summary of the story’’ and ‘‘headlines which, rather than summarize the story, promote one of the details of the story’’ (p. 25). 3 Second, the traditional notion of headlines-as-summaries de? nitely does not capture the function of head lines in more popular newspapers, and especially in tabloids. This point has been made by di? rent writers, most notably by Lindemann (1990). As Lindemann shows, tabloid headlines rarely summarize their stories, are not always telegram-like, and in many cases are not even informative. Lindemann discusses the 3 Note that none of the above writers goes beyond the descriptive labeling of the di? erent types of headlines to suggest explicit theoretical de? nitions and explanations. This fact is most clearly demonstrated by Bernstein and Garst (1982), quoted in Lindemann (1990), who claim that ‘‘†¦ the headline contains the main highlight of the story. Since it is the most conspicuous part and the part that is read ? st, the copy editor must present the essence of the news before he goes further’’. In this short quotation, Bernstein and Garst seem to equate the essence of the story with its highlight, thus equating the function of summarizing with that of h ighlighting. 698 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 function of tabloid headlines in poetic terms: They present the reader with a ‘‘fairly complex riddle’’, which, ? rst, triggers frames and belief systems in the reader’s mind, and, then, gets resolved in the ensuing text. Thus, the following headline, (1) NO-LA-LA! The Frogs Get Bored with Bed raps the reader ‘‘in the treadmill of well-established cliches and prejudice’’, through the use of such expressions as frogs, no-la-la and bed, and is then informationally resolved in the intro: ‘‘The days of the great French lovers are over—froggies just don’t fancy it any more. A third of women and a quarter of men told a nationwide survey they found bedtime one big yawn’’. Implicit in Lindemann’s analysis is the assumption, that the function of tabloid headlines is so radically di? erent from their function in qual ity newspapers, that the two cannot be theoretically uni? ed.As I will show below, the relevance-based analysis will allow exactly for that—to my mind, a very welcome theoretical result. The third reason to reject the traditional conception is the simple fact that headlines seem to have an additional, pragmatic function, beyond the semanticallyoriented function which is supposed to be captured by the headline-as-summary analysis. Bell (1991) says that headlines are a ‘‘part of news rhetoric whose function is to attract the reader’’ (p. 189). Nir (1993) claims that the headline has ‘‘to attract the attention of the reader and provoke the reader to read the whole story’’.In a sophisticated analysis of the semiotics of headlines, Iarovici and Amel (1989) explicitly contend that the headline has a ‘‘double function’’: ‘‘The implicit convention between author and reader regarding the intentio n of correlating a text to another text as a headline, and regarding the formal marking of this quality by a privileged position, concerns the double function of the headline: a semantic function, regarding the referential text, and a pragmatic function, regarding the reader (the receiver) to whom the text is addressed.The two functions are simultaneous, the semantic function being included in and justi? ed by the pragmatic function. †¦ The main function of the headline †¦ is to alert the reader (receiver) to the nature or the content of the text. This is the pragmatic function of the headline, and it includes the semantic one. The headline enables the reader to grasp the meaning of the text. The headline functions as a plurality of speech acts (urging, warning, and informing)’’ (p. 441–443). The challenge posed by the above assertions is that of theoretical uni? cation.At least two questions are involved: First, can we functionally de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the above distinctions between the di? erent semantically-oriented functions? In other words, is there a generalized function which summarizing headlines, localizing headlines and quotation headlines have in common? Second, can we de? ne the headline in a way which would transcend the distinction between the above semantic function and the parallel pragmatic function which D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 699 headlines ful? ll?I would like to claim that this theoretical move becomes possible once we couch the functional analysis of headlines within the framework of Sperber and Wilson’s (1986) theory of relevance. 4 3. Relevance theory and relevance optimization Sperber and Wilson’s theory is an attempt to reduce a very complex set of phenomena having to do with communication and interpretation to a very constrained set of explanatory, cognitive notions. In its essence, the theory is one of cognitive cost-e? ectiven ess: It claims that human cognitive processes are geared to achieving the greatest possible cognitive e? ct for the smallest processing e? ort. This metaprinciple is incarnated in Sperber and Wilson’s technical notion of relevance. Let us take a look at the fundamental tenets of this framework: Our starting point is the individual mind: Every individual mentally represents in his or her mind a huge set of assumptions. Assumptions are propositional entitiesthey are the type of entities that can be believed to be true. Our assumptions may include, among other things, information on the immediate physical environment, expectations about the future, scienti? hypotheses, religious beliefs, anecdotal memories, general cultural assumptions, beliefs about the personal lives of our acquaintances, knowledge about politics and history, beliefs about our own emotions, fears and hopes, and so on. Each of the assumptions represented by the individual has a ‘‘strength’â⠂¬â„¢ for that individual. The strength of the assumption for the individual is the level of con? dence with which the individual holds to the belief that the assumption is true. The strength of the assumption is a function of its cognitive processing history.Thus, for example, ‘‘assumptions based on a clear perceptual experience tend to be very strong; assumptions based on the acceptance of somebody’s word have a strength commensurate with one’s con? dence in the speaker; the strength of assumptions arrived at by deduction depends on the strength of the premises from which they were derived’’ (p. 77) Note that the strength of an assumption for the individual has nothing to do with its objective validity—individuals may have a very strong belief in assumptions which are totally false, and vice versa.When an individual hears, or reads, a novel assumption, he or she always interprets it in a context. The notion of context is used here as a psychological construct: It is a subset of the assumptions which the hearer already represents in his or her long-term memory. Informally, what the mind of the individual does in the process of interpretation may be thought of as a comparison of the new assumption with the subset of assumptions represented in the individual’s memory. Sperber and Wilson name the cognitive apparatus responsible for this process of comparison- ‘‘the deductive device’’.The comparison of the novel assumption with the existing 4 The general notion of pragmatic relevance, which is not to be equated with Sperber and Wilson’s technical one, plays some role in van Dijk’s (1988) analysis of news selection. However, van Dijk does not make the connection between his notion of relevance and the function of headlines, which he takes to be summaries of their texts. 700 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 assumptions may have di? erent types of out puts: It may turn out, for example, that the novel assumption already exists in the individual’s long term-memory, in which case it is not new for the individual.Or it may be new, in which case it may either be in line, or in contradiction with some of the already existing assumptions. If, for example, the novel assumption contradicts existing assumptions, and if it is strong enough, the process of comparison will end up with the weakening of the existing assumptions. In some cases, it may even end up with the erasure of those assumptions. If the new information is in line with some existing assumptions, it may serve to strengthen them some more. Moreover, the union of the new assumption with some existing assumptions may lead to the deduction of additional assumptions.Thus, for example, if the individual already represents the assumption that ‘‘whenever Peter goes to a party, it becomes a success’’, and he or she now learns that ‘‘Peter came to Bill’s party’’, then the deductive device deduces an additional assumption, namely that ‘‘Bill’s party was a success’’. To the extent that the comparison of the new assumption with the old ones results in a change to the individual’s set of prior assumptions (if it either adds new assumptions, or weakens or strengthens existing ones), we say that the new information has a contextual e? ect for the individual.Now, the following point is crucial: The deductive device does not compare every novel assumption to the entire set of assumptions represented in the individual’s longterm memory. Doing this would be cognitively impossible. This means that the comparison is done with some subset of existing assumptions. This, in turn, raises a very important question: How does the deductive device choose this subset? Traditionally, pragmaticists have assumed that the context for the interpretation of an utterance is simp ly given: It consists of the immediate environment and the information explicitly mentioned in the conversation prior to the utterance.Sperber and Wilson ? ip this assumption on its head and suggest a radical alternative: They show that the deductive device has to update the context for the interpretation for each new assumption, and that the speci? c subset of existing assumptions which is chosen for the context is determined, at least partially, by the content of the new assumption. In cognitive terms, this means that the order of events in comprehension is reversed: It is not that the deductive device ? rst sets the context, and then interprets the new assumption.On the contrary, the deductive device has to partially ? gure out the meaning of the new assumption, retrieve a speci? c subset of assumptions from long-term memory, store them in its own short-term memory, and then make the comparison. An example should make this radical conception rather intuitive. Take a look at the f ollowing exchanges: (2) A: How are you? B: Not so good, Mary has that ear-infection again, I’m worried. (3) A: How are you? B: Great, I just bought the tickets. We’re ? ying to Beijing in exactly four weeks.In order to interpret B’s answer in each of these exchanges, A has to compare them to a subset of existing assumptions. The proper context in (2) should include assumptions about the identity of Mary, her relation to B, her medical history, ear- D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 701 infections, and so on and so forth. The proper context in (3) should include assumptions about B’s travel plans, the identity of her companion, or companions, whatever assumptions A has about Beijing, and so on and so forth. Obviously, these assumptions are not stored in A’s short-term memory on a permanent basis.A’s deductive device has to retrieve these assumptions from long-term memory, and only then make the comparison and deduce the contextual e? ects. We may now make two parallel cognitive assumptions regarding the process I have described. First, we may assume that in its appropriate context, a new piece of information has a certain number of contextual e? ects, which, at least theoretically, can be counted. Practically speaking, when we deal with interpretations of actual utterances by real people, we do not know exactly how to make the measurement, but the dea itself is intuitive enough for us to accept. We may be pretty certain that in di? erent contexts, the same piece of information may yield di? erent amounts of contextual e? ects, and that in the same context, some pieces of information would yield more contextual e? ects than others. Second, we may assume that the work of the deductive device involves some mental e? ort, which—theoretically speaking, again- may be measured. 5 Other things being equal, for example, the computation of a more complex piece of information will take more e? ort than the computation of a simpler one.Moreover, the construction of a new context for interpretation also involves some mental e? ort: To the extent that the interpretation of the novel piece of information necessitates the retrieval of a larger set of assumptions from long-term memory, the mental e? ort involved in the interpretation process would be greater. The measurements of contextual e? ect and mental e? ort constitute the basis of Sperber and Wilson’s notion of relevance: (4) Relevance for an individual (p. 145): a. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the contextual e? cts achieved when it is optimally processed are large. b. An assumption is relevant to an individual to the extent that the e? ort required to process it optimally is small. It is crucial to understand that this is not a de? nition of relevance in some objective sense, but a claim concerning the way our minds make relevance judgments about new assumptions: We consider new assumptio ns to be relevant if they carry a contextual e? ect at a reasonable cognitive price. We judge new assumptions to be irrelevant if they do not carry a contextual e? ect, or if the computation of the contextual e? ct entails too much of a mental e? ort. Note that this is a comparative, gradual conception of relevance, rather than a binary one: New assumptions are not either relevant or not; they are more or less relevant than others, in di? erent contexts, for di? erent people. Thus, for example, a regular newspaper reader will prob5 Sperber and Wilson (1986, p. 130) conceptualize about the measurement of contextual e? ects and cognitive e? ort in terms of physico-chemical changes which occur in the brain as a result of the processing of the contextual e? ects. 702 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 bly judge a piece of local news to be more relevant than a piece of foreign news because (i) the potential contextual e? ect derivable from the local news would probab ly be larger; and (ii) the e? ort needed to interpret the foreign news (especially in terms of the retrieval of the appropriate set of assumptions from long-term memory) would probably be larger. This judgment need not be made consciously; the reader may simply skip the foreign-news page, or note that ‘foreign news is boring’. Note, however, that the very same reader may take the trouble to read the foreign news to the extent that their contextual e? cts would be worth his or her processing e? ort. This may be the case, for example, if the story is about a country which the reader intends to visit; if some people which the reader knows are there; if there is a local angle to the foreign story; if the foreign story has a global consequence which is felt locally, and so on. Finally, note that this technical notion of relevance should not be equated with relevance in the ordinary sense of the word. Relevance in this ordinary sense may be thought of as the measurement of th e association, or congruence, between some content and its context of interpretation.Thus, a news story will be relevant in this sense to the extent that it is about those issues which are directly related to the readers’ lives and interests. Indeed, relevance in this sense may play a role in news value judgments. Note, however, that a story may be relevant in this ordinary sense but very low on relevance in the technical sense (if it is long and complicated to read, for example, or if it does not carry a lot of new information); and it may be irrelevant in the ordinary sense, but high on relevance in the technical sense- if its potential contextual e? cts justify the construction of a new context for interpretation. Now, our technical de? nition of relevance is addressee-oriented, but it may actually tell us something of importance about the role of speakers in communicative contexts. Think about a speaker, Ann, who is trying to tell her addressee, John, a story. Being a coo perative communicator, Ann would like to make the story as relevant for John as possible. How should she go about achieving this goal? According to relevance theory, she has three principled strategies which she can try to dopt: (i) First, Ann can try to compress the largest possible number of new assumptions (those which are new for John) into her story: Other things being equal, the more new assumptions the story contains, the more contextual e? ects it may have for John. In the worst-case scenario, the story will not contain any assumptions which are new for John, in which case he is going to ? nd it totally irrelevant. Ann de? nitely needs to ? nd a way to do better than that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the story will contain a very large number of new assumptions.As we shall see below, this is not always going to be possible. (ii) Second, Ann can try to minimize John’s processing e? ort: Other things being equal, the smaller the e? ort he has to put in , the greater the relevance of the story is going to be for him. In the worst-case scenario, the story is going to be too long and complicated, and John is going to lose interest. Ann de? nitely has to avoid that. In the best-case scenario, on the other hand, the D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 703 story will take a very minimal e? ort to process. Again, this is not always going to be possible. iii) Third, Ann can try to manipulate the context in which John is going to interpret her story. Other things being equal, the closer the context of interpretation is to the optimal one, the more contextual e? ects the story is going to carry for John. (Note that in regular conversation we regularly take the trouble to manipulate our addressee’s context of interpretation, especially when we wish to ‘‘change the topic of conversation’’: We say things like ‘Oh, I wanted to tell you something about Bill’, or ‘talking abo ut school, did you hear about Bill’s exam? ’).In the worst-case scenario, John is going to try to interpret Ann’s story in the wrong context, and the interpretation is going to yield no contextual e? ects. In the best-case scenario, the story is going to be interpreted in the most appropriate context, yielding the maximal amount of contextual e? ects. This, again, is not always going to be possible. Now, it is very important to realize that the three strategies mentioned above are not only completely intertwined, but are also in direct competition with each other. This is why achieving the maximal results associated with each of the strategies is not always possible.This is so for the following reasons: (i) First, every new assumption which the speaker adds to the story does not only contribute to the overall number of contextual e? ects- it also adds to the overall processing e? ort. Thus, the new assumption adds to the overall relevance of the story only to th e extent that it clearly adds more contextual e? ect than processing e? ort. To the extent that the new assumption adds more to the processing e? ort than to the contextual e? ect, it actually reduces the overall relevance of the story. In this case, more information results in less relevance.So, the attempt to maximize relevance simply by maximizing the amount of new information is bound to end up in failure. The speaker has to ? gure out the optimal amount of information which would not result in relevance reduction due to processing e? ort. (ii) Second, Ann may de? nitely try to maximally reduce John’s processing e? ort by making her story short, simple and clear, but this reduction will not necessarily result in maximal relevance: This is so, because the reduction in the story’s complexity characteristically reduces the number of its potential contextual e? ects. The reduction of processing e? rt will enhance the relevance of Ann’s story only to the extent t hat the amount of e? ort saved is larger than the amount of contextual e? ects lost. So, again, Ann cannot simply reduce John’s processing e? ort to the minimum. She has to ? gure out the optimal amount of e? ort which would not result in relevance reduction due to loss of contextual e? ects. (iii) Third, the number of contextual e? ects which John may deduce from Ann’s story is not just a function of the sheer number of new assumptions in the story, but a function of the interaction between these new assumptions and the context of interpretation.This means that Ann should not just provide 704 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 John with the optimal number of new assumptions, but also take care to provide him with those speci? c assumptions which would yield the maximal amount of contextual e? ects in the appropriate context, and at the very same time direct John to construct that speci? c context. This complicates our relevance considerations to a considerable extent, because the construction of the appropriate context entails a signi? cant amount of processing e? ort.Consequently, in principle, the construction of the appropriate context may eventually result in relevance reduction due to the increase in processing e? ort. Thus, the construction of a partial context for interpretation may sometimes be the optimal strategy. As we have seen, Ann’s role as the story-teller is going to be that of relevance optimization: She will need to provide John with the optimal ratio of contextual e? ect and processing e? ort. This, I would like to claim, is exactly the generalized communicative function which newspaper headlines are supposed to ful? l: They are designed to optimize the relevance of their stories for their readers. 4. Newspaper headlines as relevance optimizers Consider the following story, from the Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv: (5) The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. , his wife Caroline and his sister-in-la w Lorraine were discovered yesterday in the ocean, at a depth of 30 meters, 10 kilometers away from Martha’s Vineyard Island, where they were headed on Saturday. Senator Edward Kennedy, John’s uncle, arrived at the site where the bodies were found, in order to identify them. Kennedy Jr. ill be buried in NY in the coming days. This news item requires a certain amount of mental e? ort to interpret. To begin with, the paragraph requires some e? ort to read: It consists of about 70 words, and is grammatically fairly complex. Moreover, the news item requires the construction of a context for interpretation- one which includes whatever the reader knows about John Kennedy Jr. , his family, their disappearance two days before, the relevant geography, and probably at least something about the Kennedys’ history. As we have said before, the construction of this context takes an additional e? rt. Let us assume, for the sake of simplicity, that the interpretation of the enti re story will require the ordinary reader to invest a certain amount of e? ort, let us dub it E(story). Now, to the extent that the reader manages to construct the appropriate context and read the passage, the story carries a certain amount of contextual e? ects: It changes a lot of factual assumptions the reader represented in his or her long-term memory (e. g. , the assumption ‘John Kennedy Jr. is alive and well’ is replaced by ‘John Kennedy Jr. died in an irplane accident’), and it changes, weakens or strengthens a great many related assumptions having to do with, for example, the inescapable tragedies of the Kennedy family, the life-styles of the rich and D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 705 famous, the blindness of fate, the risks involved in ? ying your own plane, and so on and so forth. Obviously, di? erent readers will probably deduce di? erent sets of contextual e? ects from the story, but for the sake of simplicity, let us a ssume that the ordinary reader will deduce a certain amount of contextual e? cts, let us dub it C(story). The relevance of the story for the ordinary reader will thus be: R(story)=C(story)/E(story). Now, let us take a look at the headline the newspaper gave to the story: (6) John Kennedy Jr. ’s body found How much e? ort does the reader have to invest in interpreting the headline? Obviously, much less than E(story): The headline is a single, short and simple sentence, comprising ? ve words, and the e? ort needed to read it is insubstantial. The e? ort needed to construct the context for the interpretation of the headline is also signi? antly smaller—the reader does not need to retrieve the sets of assumptions having to do with the geography of the story, with Senator Ed Kennedy, and so on. For the sake of simplicity, let us make the arbitrary assumption that E(headline) equals 10% of E(story). Now, how many contextual e? ects can the reader deduce from the headline? Su rprisingly, when the headline is interpreted in its reduced context, a signi? cantly large subset of the contextual e? ects of the entire story survive. Obviously, some things are missing—for example, the fact that Kennedy’s wife and his sister-in-law were found too—but Kennedy’s death, its signi? ance within the tragic history of the Kennedy family, and the more general implications of the story are clear contextual e? ects of the headline. Let us adopt a conservative estimate: For the ordinary reader, C(headline) equals 50% of C(story). As a simple calculation clearly shows, our estimates entail that the headline multiplies the relevance of the story by ? ve (! ). It saves much more on the processing e? ort than it loses on the contextual e? ects. This is exactly what a headline should do. A short and simple text, it optimizes the relevance of the story by minimizing processing e? ort while making sure that a suf? ient amount of contextual e? ects are d educible within the most appropriate context possible. Just like Ann, our story-teller, the headline does not adopt an all-ornone strategy of either reducing processing e? ort to zero, or maximizing new information, or constructing the most appropriate context for interpretation. Rather, it attempts to optimize the ratio between processing e? ort and contextual e? ects- and thus optimally negotiate between the story and the ordinary reader. Note that for the optimization of relevance to be successful, the right material should be chosen for the headline.Consider, for example, the following three clauses as alternative headlines for the Kennedy story: (7) a. Caroline Kennedy’s body found b. Sen. Edward Kennedy arrived at the crash site. 706 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 c. The bodies of John Kennedy Jr. and his wife Caroline were discovered yesterday in the ocean, near Martha’s Vineyard Island. The ? rst two alternative headlines (7a and 7b) ar e probably as easy to read as the actual one, and we may assume that they require the construction of a very similar context for interpretation. However, they do not carry the same amount of contextual e? cts as the original. The third alternative (7c) carries a slightly larger number of contextual e? ects than the original, but it very obviously requires much more processing e? ort. Thus, all three alternative fall short of providing optimal relevance. Is the original headline in (6) a summarizing or a highlighting headline? It is hard to tell. The important point, however, is that from our theoretical point-of-view the summarizing-highlighting distinction is simply not that crucial: Summarizing the story is just one tactical approach to relevance optimization.Highlighting the most intriguing aspect of the story, or reproducing the most interesting statement quoted in the story, may have the very same result. It may turn out, for example, that the quotation or the highlighted aspec t carry more contextual e? ects than the summary of the whole narrative. In this case, the rational thing to do would be to promote them to the headline- and thus optimize the relevance of the story for the readers. The choice between these di? erent tactical approaches is in part a matter of the editorial style of the newspaper, and to a very large extent a matter of the experience and creativity of its editors.For every given story, some headline options are going to suggest themselves. The editor may opt for a summarizing headline, a highlighting headline or a quotation headline- depending on which type of headline will provide optimal relevance. 6 Moreover, the editor may manipulate the length and complexity of the headline, and its speci? c contents. And again, these manipulations, to a very large extent, are going to be relevance-oriented. 7 In the following section, I will present the results of an empirical study conducted in the years 1996–1998 in the news-desk of th e Israeli national newspaper Ma’ariv. In the study, I followed the decision-making process leading to the choice of headline for a large number of news items. As the results of the study clearly indicate, the set of professional intuitions shared by the editors, concerning the properties of the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ headline, are theoretically reduced to our notion of releI will discuss the choice of tabloid-type headlines later on. An anonymous referee notes that some text manipulations may not be relevance-oriented. Thus, for example, some manipulations may have to do with spacing on the page, and others with political considerations. I agree with the ? st point. In Dor (2001), however, I show that relevance-oriented manipulations play an extremely important role in processes of political framing. 8 There are currently three national newspapers in Israel: Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv are considered to be the popular newspapers, whereas Haâ €™aretz is considered to be the quality, high-brow one. Yediot Ahronot and Ma’ariv, however, are not tabloids in the regular, American-European sense. They contain a variety of ‘‘serious’’ news items which is not that di? erent from that of Ha’aretz, and are distinct from it especially in writing style and graphic design.In all three newspapers, headline formulation is considered part of the editorial process, and reporters do not formulate headlines for their stories. 7 6 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 707 vance: The most appropriate headline for a news item is the one which optimizes the relevance of the story for the readers of the newspaper. 5. The notion of relevance and the art of headline writing In general, news editors do not work with a very explicit de? nition of what headlines are, or of their communicative functions.What they do work with is a cluster of professional intuitions—gradually develop ed ‘in the ? eld’, and never seriously explicated—concerning the properties of what we might call, rather informally, the ‘right’, ‘appropriate’, or ‘good’ headline. When asked to provide an explicit de? nition of what a headline is, senior newspaper editors usually give an answer of the type: ‘I don’t know what headlines are, but I can tell a good one when I see it’. This answer is actually a pretty accurate rendition of a very fundamental sentiment: Professional knowledge is practical, not theoretical.However, when presented with a news-item, and asked to choose a headline out of a set of alternatives, experienced news editors do so with extreme ease and e? ciency. Moreover, senior editors in the same newspaper have a very high rate of agreement on the preferred headline. This means that experienced news editors know a great deal more about the functional properties of headlines than they ever explicate . In this sense, headline production is more similar to an artistic activity than, say, to the practice of an exact science. This a? ity with the arts is very clearly re? ected in the trial-and-error process which beginning copy-editors go through as part of their on-the-job training procedure. Rather than receive their professional education in the form of explicit lecturing, beginning copy-editors in Ma’ariv simply start out working: They are assigned a new-item, and are asked to rewrite it and suggest a headline for it. The result is then reviewed by the senior editor in charge, who, in most cases, rejects the suggested headline and writes a di? erent one, which eventually gets published.Sometimes, the copy-editor is asked to suggest the alternative headline, which is, again, reviewed by the editor in charge. Deadline pressure usually does not allow for long explanations: When the process is over, the copy-editor gets another story, suggests a headline, which usually gets rejected, and so on and so forth. This process goes on for years, and in a real sense never ends: In Ma’ariv, each and every suggested headline is sent to the senior editor in chief, in the form of an electronic message, to be approved or rejected, even if the copy-editors have years of experience behind them.Obviously, the rate of rejected headlines goes down with time, when the trained editor internalizes the set of implicit intuitions shared by the other, more experienced editors, but even very experienced editors get some of their headlines rejected some of the time: Sometimes, for example, the editor in chief knows something about the wider context of the story which the copy-editor was not aware of. The fact that these real-time negotiations about the headlines are done in writing, by e-mail messages, allowed me to follow the process of headline formulation from very close range.I collected 134 e-mail exchanges, concerning 134 news-items, and analyzed the semantic-pragm atic di? erences between the rejected and approved headlines. In some cases, I asked the editor in charge to reconstruct the reasons for 708 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 the rejection of the suggested headline. I then extracted a list of ten properties, which I shall call the properties of the appropriate headline. I submit that this list is an accurate rendition of the set of implicit intuitions shared by experienced news editors in Ma’ariv.In the following section, I will present the ten properties, each with its representative example, and show that the list is actually reducible to one professional meta-imperative: Make the headline such that it renders the story optimally-relevant. Three notes should be made at this point: First, the following discussion should not be thought of as an attempt to construct a theoretical framework, but as a description of a set of professional intuitions, shared by news editors, concerning the properties of the à ¢â‚¬ËœÃ¢â‚¬Ëœappropriate headline’’. In other words, I do not intend to make any signi? ant claim concerning the theoretical status of the ten properties to be discussed below. Quite obviously, some of the properties seem to bear close resemblance to some principles discussed in the literature under the rubric of news value (e. g. , in Galtung and Ruge, 1965; Bell, 1991); other properties may remind the reader of Grice’s conversational maxims. I will leave the elaboration of these resemblances for further research, and concentrate on the possibility of reducing the entire set of properties to the relevance-based meta-intuition mentioned above. Second, the properties are to be thought of as default conditions, rather than obligatory ones. It is not the case that every headline should have all 10 properties. It is the case that a headline which meets any of these conditions is better than a headline which does not, and a headline which meets a larger number of the conditions is better than a headline which meets a smaller number of them. Thus, for example, the ? rst property—‘headlines should be as short as possible’—should be read as saying: ‘other things being equal, a shorter headline is better than a longer one’.Finally, The headlines presented in the next section are translated from the Hebrew original. I chose to keep the translation as literally accurate as possible, and avoided translating the headlines into ‘‘headlinese’’, because Hebrew headlines do not usually have the telegraphic syntax characteristic of English headlines. 5. 1. The properties of the ‘‘appropriate headline’’ [1] ‘‘Headlines should be as short as possible’’. Newspaper headlines are, quite obviously, very short clauses.The actual length of each particular headline, however, is a matter of considerable debate and negotiation between senior editors an d copy editors: Copy-editors, especially the beginners, suggest longer headlines, attempting to ‘capture’ as much of the story as possible. The senior editors shorten the headlines to a considerable extent- leaving out whole chunks of information. One of the expertises mastered by experienced editors is the ability to decide which parts of the story should be left out of the headline. The following exchange is a very typical example. The I thank an anonymous referee for his/her discussion of this point.The referee also wondered whether any of the ten properties may be reducible to another. Thus, for example, the referee felt that properties [6] and [7] are mirror-images of each other, and should thus be put together. I assume that this can indeed be done. For me, however, the more important point was that the editors I talked to felt these were two separate, although obviously related, principles. As I am interested here in the description of intuitions, rather than in the construction of a theoretical framework, I will discuss the two principles separately. 9 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 709 tory is about a youth gang which was caught red-handed mutilating gravestones in a military cemetery in Haifa. The copy-editor suggested the following headline: (8) Haifa: A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones in the city’s military cemetery The head of the news-desk ordered the copy-editor to shorten the headline, in the following way: (9) Haifa: A youth gang was caught mutilating gravestones Note that the decision to shorten the headline is not without its price: We have lost a piece of information, i. e. , that the gravestones were mutilated in a military cemetery, which means we have lost some contextual e? ects.We have, however, gained in reading e? ort. The shorter headline is simply easier to read. This is a very clear example of relevance optimization by e? ort reduction. The editor in charge decided that the loss in contextual e? ects is smaller than the gain in reading e? ort. [2] ‘‘Headlines should be clear, easy to understand, and unambiguous’’. Formulating a headline to a complex story is not an easy task. Copy-editors sometimes suggest headlines which come out unclear, di? cult to understand, or unintentionally ambiguous. Such headlines are rejected, and the copy-editor is asked to formulate a clearer, simpler, unambiguous headline.In the following example, the article tells the story of a police drama in the city of Ramat-Gan, where a single arsonist threatened the city for weeks, burning down vehicles every night. On that speci? c night, the police caught a suspect, but had to release him after the ‘real’ arsonist took out to the streets again, burning down more vehicles to prove that he was not caught. The copy-editor suggested the following headline: (10) The ‘real arsonist’ from Ramat-Gan proves: You Haven’t caught me The headline was rejected because it was considered unclear and unnecessarily ambiguous.It raises more questions and vaguenesses than it actually answers: Who is the ‘real arsonist’? Is there an ‘unreal arsonist’? How has the ‘real arsonist’ proven that he wasn’t caught? By whom? The copy-editor was ordered to formulate a clearer headline. This was his second attempt: (11) The arsonist ‘was caught’- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan went on burning This version is much clearer: It makes clear that a claim was made that the arsonist was caught, which turned out to be false, and it makes clear that, on that day, 710 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 fter the capture incident ended, some vehicles in Ramat-Gan were still burning. There is, however, a potential ambiguity here: The headline can be read as making the claim that the arsonist set the vehicles on ? re before the police made the false claim, and that they went on burning after the incident. The headline was rejected again, and the copy-editor suggested the third version, in (12), which was ? nally accepted and published as it is. Note that the only di? erence between (11), the rejected headline, and (12), the approved one, is in the tense of the verb in the second clause. 12) The arsonist ‘was caught’- and the vehicles in Ramat-Gan go on burning This headline makes it clear that the arsonist is still on the loose, and is still in the habit of setting vehicles on ? re. Finally, the story is captured in a clear, simple and unambiguous fashion. This reduces processing e? ort to the necessary minimum— and optimizes the relevance of the story. [3] ‘‘Headlines should be interesting’’. This quality plays a central role in the negotiations between copy-editors and senior editors. Many suggested headlines are rejected on the grounds that they are ‘not interesting’.What is usuall y meant by this rather obscure phrase is that the editor imagines that the readers of the paper will not ? nd the headline interesting enough. In terms of our relevance-based theory, this means that the editor estimates that the amount of contextual e? ects carried by the headline will not justify the amount of reading e? ort. The copy-editor is then asked to read the article again, and look for a ‘more interesting’ piece of information to foreground to the headline. In the following example, the story includes an interview with Uri Lubrani, IDF’s Chief of Military Operations in Southern Lebanon.General Antoin Lahed, who is mentioned in the rejected headline, is the Commander in Chief of the South Lebanon Army (SLA), a Christian Militia which has traditionally been IDF’s ally in Lebanon. The context of the story is a wave of rumors, according to which the IDF plans to withdraw from Southern Lebanon, thus leaving General Lahed and his people on their own ag ainst their Islamic rivals: This is the headline which the copy-editor suggested: (13) Lubrani: ‘There was no secret meeting with General Lahed’ Whether or not there was a secret meeting between IDF o? ials and General Lahed on the previous day is hardly an interesting question. After all, IDF o? cials and General Lahed meet on a regular basis, and their meetings are usually kept secret. In our terms, the headline does not carry a substantial amount of contextual e? ects. The headline was rejected, and the copy-editor came up with the following alternative: (14) Lubrani: ‘There is no plan to evacuate SLA seniors to Europe’ Whether or not there is a secret plan to evacuate SLA seniors to Europe is very obviously much more interesting.If there was such a plan, this would be a pretty D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 711 remarkable sign that the IDF is on its way out of Lebanon. Lubrani’s ? at denial can be interpreted in more than one way: We can take him for his word, or assume that he chose to deny the existence of the plan for tactical reasons- at any rate the denial has interesting implications. It is de? nitely more interesting than just another meeting- in our terms, it carries more contextual e? ects for the same amount of processing e? ort. Note that this is a very good example of the signi? ant role of headline writing in the workings of a newspaper. The two headlines, the rejected one and the suggested one, make it quite obvious that the Lubrani interview did not contain any remarkable scoops, and that the editor had to dig in to ? nd something which was worth promoting to the headline. As the senior editor’s decision makes clear, even negative statements, ? at denials of the type that Lubrani suggested as answers to the reporter’s questions, have di? erent amounts of relevance, and the one which was more relevant than the other was promoted. 4] ‘‘Headlines should contain new information’’. A major topic for negotiations between copy-editors and senior-editors has to do with the question of whether the readers already know what the copy-editor decided to promote to the headline. Obviously, editors do not really know what their readers know, but their estimates of their readers’ state of knowledge play a central role in the decision-making process. This makes perfect sense within our relevance-based framework: A headline which does not contain novel assumptions cannot bring about contextual e? ects, and is thus irrelevant.In Ma’ariv, as in any other daily newspaper, estimates of the readers’ state of knowledge are based primarily on what has already been communicated by the other mass-media, especially the evening news on TV. If the content of the proposed headline for the next morning has already appeared in the news the night before, most chances are it will be rejected. The following headline, for example, was rej ected on these grounds: (15) The Austrian Chancellor Arrived for a visit; will meet Netanyahu today The copy-editor had a hard time ? nding an alternative headline. This is what he came up with: (16) O? ials in Jerusalem hope for the Austrian Chancellor’s visit to run smoothly This headline was accepted, for two reasons: First, it carries the implication that o? cials in Jerusalem are worried that the visit might not run smoothly—an angle on the visit which was new. Second, it connects the story to prior events and expectations: The visit of the British foreign minister had just ended the day before, and that visit was full of political hurdles and diplomatic embarrassments. As we shall see below, connecting a story to its wider context is another important property of good headlines. 712 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 5] ‘‘Headlines should not presuppose information unknown to the readers’’. This principle, in a sense , is the mirror-image of the previous one: The information in the headline should de? nitely be new—but it cannot be ‘overly new’. Headlines should only presuppose information which is already part of the mutual knowledge established between the newspaper and its readers. In terms of our relevance-based framework, every presupposition in the headline should already be available within the readers’ context of interpretation. Otherwise, the computation of the headline will result in zero contextual e? cts. Consider, then, the following headline: (17) Advanced negotiations on the establishment of the second Israeli-owned casino in Jericho This headline presupposes the existence, or at least the potential existence, of the ? rst Israeli-owned casino in Jericho. The ? rst news concerning the plans to build this casino, the ? rst one, were published only a few days before the above headline was suggested. According to the editor in chief, the readers had not yet registered the future existence of the ? rst casino in their long-term memory—it was premature to treat it as a presupposition.The copy-editor was asked to change the headline, and came up with the following alternative: (18) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in February In this headline, the establishment of the ? rst casino in Jericho is not presupposed, but reported as part of the news. This is much better. But the editor in chief asked the copy-editor to rephrase the headline again, this time for a di? erent reason: The proposed headline forces the reader to calculate the amount of time it will take till the casino will be operational. This adds to the processing e? ort. The alternative, which was eventually published, reduces this e? rt, thus optimizing the relevance of the story: (19) The ? rst casino in Jericho will be operational in a year [6] ‘‘Headlines should include names and concepts with high ‘news value’ for the readersâ €™â€™. 10 Experienced editors develop a sense of the ‘news value’ of names and 10 This property, and the next one, reminded one anonymous referee of Ariel’s (1988, 1991) accessibility theory (see also Kronrod and Engel 2000). The resemblance, however, is rather super? cial. Ariel is not interested in the speci? c contents of the referring expressions, but in their general cognitive and structural properties.Thus, for example, referring expressions which function as high accessibility markers (e. g. , personal pronouns, ? rst names) are used by speakers when they assume that the referents are highly accessible for their addressees; lower accessibility markers (e. g. , long de? nite descriptions, full names etc. ) are used when the speaker assumes low mental accessibility for their addressees. The point I am making here, however, is not that newspaper editors prefer certain types of referring expression (e. g. , full names) to others (e. g. , last names), but that they prefer certain referents (e. g. , famous ? gures) to others. D.Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 713 concepts: They very easily identify names and concepts which should appear in headlines- and those which do not. In terms of our relevance-based theory, experienced editors know, or at least believe they know, which names and concepts will carry a large number of contextual e? ects for their readers. The following example demonstrates this very clearly. Some background: Two days before the following story was to be published, a story in one of the national newspapers revealed that the popular musicians contracted to perform in Israel’s 50th Jubilee were paid high sums of money- at the ax-payers’ expense. In our story, some other popular musicians reacted to the revelation and angrily declared that they were willing to perform in the Jubilee for free. This was the headline suggested by the copy-editor: (20) A group of artists suggests an alternative for the Jubilee: ‘‘we are willing to perform for free’’ This headline, a classic summarizing headline, was rejected in favor of the following, which replaces the expression ‘a group of artists’ with the names of two celebrity musicians, Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani: (21) Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani: ‘‘we are willing to perform in the jubilee for free’’Note, ? rst, that the replacement headline in (21) actually loses some of the information we had in (20): The group of artists included many more musicians than just the two mentioned in (21). The point, however, is that the two are the most famous members of the group, and names of well-known popular musicians always carry a lot of contextual e? ects: This is so, because their names direct the readers to construct a much wider context for interpretation, which includes whatever we know about them, their personalities, their views, t heir social background, their wealth, their life styles, and so on. 20) is a headline suited for a regular news story about the 50th Jubilee; (21), on the other hand, is a headline for what is basically a gossip story about Shimi Tavori and Margalit Tsan’ani. [7] ‘‘Headlines should not contain names and concepts with low ‘news value’ for the readers’’. This is the mirror-image of the last property: Some names and concepts do not have ‘‘news value’’ for the readers, and experienced editors avoid promoting them to the headline. In our terms, these names and concepts do not help the reader construct the optimal context for the interpretation of the headline.In the following example, the copy-editor attempted to promote such a name to the headline, and was intercepted by the editor in charge. Some background: The story has to do with an accident in which two military helicopters collided in the air on their way to I srael’s northern border, an accident in which more than 70 soldiers were killed. New immigrants to Israel receive an immigration grant from the Jewish agency, and it turned out that the agency asked the parents of one of the soldiers killed in the accident, a newly-arrived immigrant, to pay back his grant.The copy editor suggested the following headline: 714 D. Dor / Journal of Pragmatics 35 (2003) 695–721 (22) The Michaelov family was ordered to return the immigration grant given to their son- who was killed in the Galilee The editor in charge rejected the headline, and ordered the copy-editor to produce another one, which would not contain the name. This was the alternative headline, which was ? nally published: (23) The Jewish agency refused to let a family, whose son was killed in the helicopter accident, keep his immigration grantNote that the move from the de? nite ‘the Michaelov family’ to the inde? nite ‘a family’ made it di? cult for the copy-editor to keep it in subject position, and dictated an overall grammatical change from passive to active voice. [8] ‘‘Headlines should ‘connect’ the story to previously known facts and events’’. Just like the last two principles, this one has to do with the construction of the appropriate context for interpretation. A story interpreted on its own, as an isolated event, will carry a certain amount of contextual e? ects.The same story can carry more contextual e? ects to the extent that the readers interprets it within a wider context, which includes previously known facts and events. Consider the following example, which is a report on a violent taxi robbery in the city of Haifa: (24) The driver was beaten and thrown out- and the stolen taxi was later found stuck in the mud The editor in charge, who rejected this headline, asked the copy-editor to connect the incident in Haifa to the rising trend of taxi robbery throughout Israel. The f ol

Selfawareness and career management feedbaack Essay

Selfawareness and career management feedbaack - Essay Example Personal Career Strategy The personal career strategy will discuss about my personality type and the career that will match my personality. There are various tools and techniques to understand personality characteristics of a person. In this paper, ten tools and techniques have been explained to understand what type of personality characteristics match a person’s career. 1.1 Four Overlapping Career Competency There are five competencies for career development. It includes accountability and ownership, which means that at the individual viewpoint, it needs initiative and presumes personal accountability for objectives, results and deadlines. The individuals need to develop specific work goals in order to attain business results. Another competency is analytical thinking that means the ability to consider critically as well as systematically information related to the job. ‘Challenges the status quo’ is another competency which refers that growth and development of an individual along with organisation is based on the capability of the employees to modify their conventional thinking. The competency collaboration or integration denotes that for developing opportunities across the whole organisation, the individuals are required to think and work collaboratively. Communication or persuasion refers that for success of an individual, strong communication along with skill are essential (Nash, 1998). I have experienced this gradual development of career opportunities throughout the five years during which I had been working in the HR department for an organization. My experience taught me the lesson that realizing the personal career competencies is more important than anything else for an individual. In the development process of career opportunities, we should focus comprehensively on the identification of our competencies. 1.2 Holland Hexagon John Holland’s hexagonal model describes the relationship between the personality types of a perso n related to the environment. There are six key personality types which include realistic, social, artistic, investigative, enterprising and conventional. People who select their work environment in relation to their personality are likely to be more successful than others (Career Key, 2011). Realistic refers to the people who possess high-quality of physical skill but they may face trouble while communicating with others. They provide preference over things rather than dealing with people or ideas. Investigative people are task oriented and provide interest to take responsibilities that provide them with opportunities in their work. Artistic people prefer to work in artistic environment and are extremely structured. Social personality types prefer to contact with others and want to solve problem through discussion. Such people are good leaders and are cheerful and take responsibilities that provide them opportunity to relate to others. Enterprising people are energetic, self-confid ent, dominant, challenging and prefer to work in expensive setting. Conventional personality typ

Digital revolutions (3) Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words

Digital revolutions (3) - Essay Example oss border, multi cultural, diverse business engagements where the products and services are delivered based on the cultural constraints and cultural specialties. The world’s leading brands in the form of B.M.W, Coca-Cola, Nokia and many more are operating based on this concept that are focused around the cultural and geographical characteristics of a given locality and local market. The digital revolutions have brought about a total change with regard to the relationship between the two ends. The relationship is now much speedier, accurately, customer centric with increased benefits and productivity at both ends. The means so adopted are different. The physical undertaking of visits to the outlets, the company shops are no more the trends, rather online shopping, online orders, online visit of the websites and online interaction in various means serves the overall relationship and purpose between the two stakeholders of business engagements. As a result of the digital revolution, the new means of communication are adopted. These include the ordinary digital communication to the video calls to online shopping offers, online services and app stores to many more similar features. Between the business partners, the usage of video conferencing is another added feature which has come about in the form of virtual engagements, meetings and business partnerships that have virtually removed the reliance upon physically undertaken tours, trips and meetings that would otherwise cost for physical participations as well as the time spending on different tours and trips. E commerce defines activities and engagements in business processes that are performed over the digital medium. Predominately the electronic interchange and exchange of business. These may include the use of credit cards in the simplest terms to the other electronic transactions, online bookings, online purchases, online interaction, visiting the websites, visiting the online stores and the engagements may

The Importance of Cultural Ties Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

The Importance of Cultural Ties - Essay Example It's vital that people who find themselves in this position find new ways to cope with that loss, maintain a sense of their cultural heritage, and create some form of identity with their country of birth. Cross culture adoption, a trend that has become more popular in recent years, points to the child's need to maintain close cultural ties with their birth country. In a recent study of Asian American adoptions it was found that while growing up, the children often considered themselves white. As they reached adulthood, that trend had reversed and most considered themselves Asian American (Dong). As adults they would seek out ways to connect to their country of birth through language, art, and ethnic organizations. Many of the adoptees in the survey reported lifelong feelings of alienation and isolation. Nancy Ng, member on the board of the Palo Alto group Families Adopting in Response (FAIR) asserts the importance of "the need to honor the birth country and raise them with knowledge of their birth culture" (Dong), Developing a cultural awareness and close ties to your ethnic heritage is more than just the curiosity to discover who you are. Lacking the knowledge of ones background can lead to more serious issues and manifest in an identity crises.

Book review1 Literature review Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Book review1 - Literature review Example The book was published in the year 2007 by Crossway Books publishing ministry of Good News Publishers whose headquarters are in Illinois. Among the several books that J. Piper has published includes God’s Passion for His Glory, The Pleasures of God, Future Grace, A hunger for God and Desiring God among others. Based on the many items on theology, the author has produced a book that provides a basis for today Christian living. The various concepts displayed in the book relate to academic, biblical and psychological understanding of the writer on key items as presented in the bible. John Piper addresses main topics basing his ideas on the works of N.T Wright and citing his works throughout his book which centres on justification and judgment. The scope of the book is wide as the writer outlines his ideas concerning previous works of others, maintaining his thought on various issues and using ideas to base his argument. Among the issues discussed in the book are such as the relationship between law and covenant, dynamics of justification, justification and gospel, and places of Christian works in justification. The author also analyses the concept of justification on the death of Christ being able to cleanse sin. In this, he notes that avoiding sin is essential for the forgiveness of sin but noting with precedence that his death was to ensure human justification. He cites Colossian 2:14, Revelation 1:5, Galatians 2:21 among other books to show that the death of Christ is sufficient to cover human sins. He is opposed to the view of the writers of the New Testament who saw the death of the Messiah as the ultimate end to His life (Piper, 2007, p.43). Piper’s view is that the Lord continually seems to manifest himself in us implying He lives as implored in the story of the resurrection. According to him, the obedience of Christ to die for us

Middle Eastern Studies Journal Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Middle Eastern Studies Journal - Essay Example This basic enumeration of the conflicts within the region betrays the inherent causes and motives by speaking only of the volume and frequency, and the extent of both human and financial resources (mis)directed towards the defense and invasions within the Middle East as compared to other regions of the world. These connect between wars and the military has been the largest barrier to adoption of more â€Å"liberal political practices† that are favored by Western states such as the United States and Britain. Therefore, what are the geneses of such conflicts? What roles do the military serve herein? In Western Europe, the perceived desires to create powerful military forces pushed central authorities to tighten their grip on societies and acquire resources through the imposition of taxes which was used to pay military effort. Consequently, strong centralized states emerged around militaries; the inherent nature of war therein led to protonationalism. Middle East societies have l argely been under military rule since they gained independence; whether directly or indirectly, the power wielders have uncharacteristically been military officers (Richards and Waterbury 345). ... A fundamental aspect of Middle East’s military-industrial complex is the tendency to become powerful economic enclaves unaccountable to either auditors or national assemblies (Richards and Waterbury 345). The Israeli, Turkish and Saudi-Arabia form 60% of all military expenditure in the region. Is there military weight to the GDP of the region? Certainly! 1. Military-industrial sector heavily relies on advanced technology 2. Research into the direct use and manufacture advances telecommunication, telemetry and remote sensing technology 3. Growth in the triad sectors (military, industry and research and development) is a key source of foreign exchange 4. The military-industrial sector competes against other private sectors for human and financial resources thereby increasing the aggregate efficiency of the economy People within the region seem to welcome the disproportionate public investment into defense either due to national pride or perhaps in cognizance of the inherent need to survive in an increasingly complex global geo-political atmosphere. Real expansion in defense came shortly after 1975 with Saudi-Arabia and several other Gulf members resolving to finance the Arab Military Industrialization Organization (AMIO) in producing advanced weapons for Arab states (Richards and Waterbury 345). Soon after, Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. This prompted a UN force led by the United States under the now famous operation â€Å"desert storm† to successfully come to the aid of Kuwait. The unmistakable presence of the United States in the Arabian affairs would once again be witnessed in 2003 when the combined force of US and Britain invaded Iraq overthrowing the Ba’athist regime under Sadam Hussein. They additionally

Discribe the parliamentary sovereignty from constitutional prespective Essay

Discribe the parliamentary sovereignty from constitutional prespective - Essay Example According to the conventions of the British constitutional law in the past century, it is indicative that the dicey theory was the most influential one among all that were advanced in the century. The theory advanced by lord dicey postulates that the parliament has the right under the English constitution to make or repeal any law irrespective of circumstances. The theory goes further to state that there is no one under the constitution that has the right to override or amend the legislation made by the parliament. Therefore, the theory posits that the sovereignty of the parliamentary made legislation is absolute as long as it is working within the scope of the constitution. Notwithstanding the above ideal postulated by the theory, there are some sophisticated arguments that can be levelled against the doctrine that lord dicey fronts. The argument, notably, challenge the validity of the theory in the light of devolution, European convention on human rights and European union laws. This means that the point of absolute power of the parliament is not valid since there are limitations imposed upon it on the issues stated. Therefore, due to lack of the common point of reference on the absolute power of the parliament made legislations, various authorities in constitutional law have suggested an evaluation of the sovereignty of the constitution from a purely conventional approach. This approach seeks to remove the notion postulated by dicey theory on the supremacy of the parliament made law. As indicated earlier the power of the parliament in making the laws is absolute and it can only be repealed by another parliament. However, some of the scholars in law insist in the absolute power of the parliament in making the laws. This means that the parliament still harbor the right to make the unquestioned law as it is a convention under the British constitution. Others argue that in as much as the sovereignty of the constitution forms a

Narrative Writting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Narrative Writting - Essay Example I’ve lived here for about a year, but I still don’t know all that many people and an invitation to a costume party is unlikely at this point. The only people I know are the policeman and his wife next door and they’re not really the partying type. Then the doorbell rings. Not just the one she’s standing next to in the movie, but the one right behind my head. I almost hit my head on the ceiling I jump so high. The ring is followed immediately by frantic knocking. The knowledge that it’s the killer on the other side of the door in Scream doesn’t help much in getting me to answer the door. My feet are lead anvils and my legs are Jell-O, but some kind of curious invisible hook has snagged inside my belly compelling me to move to the door even while the two hemispheres of my brain argue back and forth about the wisdom of this movement. My right arm reaches to bang on the neighbor’s wall. He is a cop, after all. But the wall we share is on my left side, so it’s a fruitless but valiant effort by the creative side of me to preserve me from my logical curiosity. The ten steps it would take for me to reach the door of my tiny apartment have stretched to a marathon mile and the standard beige carpet has become molasses warmed. I have to walk past a darkened hallway on my right before I even come close to the door. The air kicks on at just this moment and I receive a quick burst of warm air puffing out of the open spaces. It feels like the breath of some giant creature leaning against my neck. The air is stale, I haven’t cleaned yet this week, and it’s full of dust since this is the first week the heater’s been on this year. This hallway reaches back into the bedrooms and bathroom areas. It’s an open hole, a gaping darkness, threatening to swallow me up or concealing malevolent beings, I don’t know which. I’m actually afraid to move across this open space. It just now occurs to me that the cat had

The Effect of the Internet on Global Marketing Strategies Assignment

The Effect of the Internet on Global Marketing Strategies - Assignment Example Internet services are important because they help global marketing possible because international businesses now attempt to use possible worldwide marketing instead of nationalized marketing(Shaw, 2012). In this case, the internet has two main purposes, demanding and enabling.   Enabling allows consumers to get in contact with a wide range of products (Shaw, 2012).   Clients who use or visit the websites share common lifestyles of communication because they have been directed to communicate with other customers through the internet (Shaw, 2012).   Furthermore, customers use different languages. This motivates the use of the English language, which is a common language of interaction (Shaw, 2012). In the demanding marketing strategies, the websites or the internet command that merchant’s use internationally recognized product names.   Using internet companies are in a position to identify leading states. This is usually achieved using global state competitions among man ufacturing companies.   Here, the internet provides information about the leading states or countries.   Through the internet, consumers can recognize the current trends and fashions that emerge because of technological developments (Ancarani, 2002).  Initially, the internet was introduced as a channel of education people through research and education (Ancarani, 2002).   However, it has developed to educate consumers on the type of current products in the market (Ancarani, 2002).   This is because it is still a source of information to consumers.   Consumers are currently seeking information about products from the internet.   This is advantageous because they have chances of choosing different products from different companies.   This changes the techniques of marketing used by different manufacturing companies (Ancarani, 2002).

Unit 49 - Dementia Essay Example for Free

Unit 49 Dementia Essay I have been working for a while in the Nursing Home and I have met patients with different situations. We have been dealing with more Nursing residents but getting to know with Dementia patients is very interesting. I have met Mrs. E which had been discharged from the hospital. She couldn’t communicate properly on what she wants, even her family are having a problem to recognize the things she liked and wants. It was a challenge for us to help her in her daily personal hygiene and especially eating and drinking. When she arrived we tried to comfort her and made comfortable. Her family was very supportive in her care but it’s very hard to predict what she really wants. We checked her weight, as the process of checking if what they need for their nutrition. Mrs. E had been spitting out food at meal times so we have tried to give her sweet drinks to divert her attention with the food. During the past days we have been trying to identify on how to communicate with her through different ways until we tried to hold her hands while eating to keep her calm. Because of the Dementia Mrs. E had, she had lost weight for the past days because she didn’t have good nutrition and until when she’s a bit settled in her new home, she has been eating well. With the assessment of the Nurse, her diet was then changed to soft. She is able to swallow her food straight away without chewing more that makes her more agitated. Her diet was changed because she don’t like to use her dentures, she don’t want anything that bothers her in her mouth. Mrs. E was admitted to the hospital because of poor nutrition caused by her Dementia. She wasn’t eating and drinking very well until she was settled in the home where she had been attended to by the carers regularly. We gave her different kinds of food, until we gave her the food that she likes to swallow. So now we knew that she likes soft foods like mousse, ice cream and anything sweet. It was emotionally very good to Mrs. E because it will make her calmer and settled if we have achieved to give her what she wanted. When she first came to the Home, Mrs. E is very unsettled. With her shouting and crying, other residents had been affected with her in the dining room. I wasn’t a very good atmosphere for Mrs E and the other residents and affected them so much in their meals. Some of them just go out without eating because of her in the dining room shouting. Since then we tried to make changes with the meal times and until we make her settled. We have to give her more attention, because when you just leave her and try to serve others she will then started to make cries and shouts because she can hear the noise in the dining room in which she don’t know what to do and made her agitated. So we have to give her more time to have her meal, along with those who need assistance with their food. Person-centred care played a very important role in Mrs E’s stay in the Home. We have been trying many ways on how we could communicate with her on what she wants to do, especially with her food. It helped the carers to recognize the wants of Mrs E with her food and gave the kitchen staff the list she is having and the kind of drinks she is taking. She wanted to have a quiet environment during meal times to make her calmer. With the families helped in the history of Mrs E, it was a great helped in assessing the right kind of care to be given to her. The way she deals with her personal hygiene, to the likes of her dress and the kind of food she wants. Through the care plan the carers have the basis of the thing they need to assist Mrs E in her care. It helped us in the care we give her and the food she’s having. I have met Mr L, who has been admitted at the Home and his daughter gave us his life’s history prior to his stroke. He wasn’t been eating and drinking he was not very well. That’s why his family decided to have him in the home to be taken care by the carers. We have been helping Him in the morning with his personal care as due to the stroke Mr L couldn’t move his left side very well. He could still immobilised himself through standing but with a help by us. He was very kind man but the problem is he is not eating very well. As we have seen in His care plan that we need to encourage him to eat and drink. Through the helped of His daughter we learned that because of his dementia he always forget the time of the day when he is still leaving on his own until He was not feeling well because He had no proper nutrition that He needs. Dealing his personal centred care we ask Him what time he usually eats breakfast, lunch and dinner and what kind of drinks He wants. He told us that He prefers to eat his meals in His room, because He was a writer before, he is just fund of reading books and papers. After a while in His stay at the Home he gets better, by giving Him the food at the right time and by helping Him with eating and drinking. As the result of this learning it has been very challenging in dealing this kind sickness. I know that we are not having full dementia unit but I am looking forward to learn more and to apply the things that I have learned in the different areas of Dementia.

Immigration Reform Essay Example for Free

Immigration Reform Essay Those that legally enter America do so because we are a land of opportunity. They are able to apply their skills and talents to better themselves. In the meantime, they are part of the population that finds better ways of doing things (technological advances). Technological advances increase everyone’s standard of living. Those that come here illegally are hired by firms because of the cheapness of their labor this is the reason illegal immigration needs to be dealt with. But, in the end, money talks so the political question on illegal immigration will not be decided in the near future. There is a lot of disagreement over this. Many people contend that illegal immigration overwhelms government programs costing the country more in services than their labor provides. Both President Barack Obama and Fox News resident Michael Barone have points and idea on immigration reform and what should be done about it. In presidents Obama speech given in El Paso Texas, Obama gives his ideas on immigration reform. Obama gives four major points insides his speech his first point is that the government should enforce the law and secure the borders, second that businesses should be held accountable if they employ undocumented workers, thirdly for those who are here illegally to go through processing and â€Å"get in line for legalization†, lastly his DREAM act a way to reform our old regulations of illegal immigration giving immigrants the chance to get jobs and start businesses in America. In Obama’s speech he states different immigrants that have made the country more prosperous and that have lead in tech development. Obama states that American companies such as Intel, Google, Yahoo and eBay these companies that have created jobs for several Americans were all founded by immigrants. Obama states a way to strengthen the middle class is to get rid of undocumented works, by doing this you are getting rid of the underground economy that exploits cheap labor while getting rid of regular jobs to the average American. Michael Barone states that Obama rhetoric on immigration reform is hypocritical, he says that Obama is not really interested in passing a law and that he only gave the speech to get support from Latino voters. Barone claims El Paso was about election 2012 not serious immigration reform. According to Michael Barone’s article on Obama’s rhetoric, in the past Obama has not lift a finger to help in immigration reform. In 2007, 2009 and 2010 when bills were on the verge of eing passed for immigration laws Obama voted against the Latino community in each of these periods in time. Barone shows that Obama’s most attractive proposal to the people of El Paso, his DREAM act failed last December in a more democratic senate and won’t pass now. Michael Barone goes on to talk about a tool called E-verify which is an electronical system that is now available and can allow employers to verify the social security numbers of their employees. Barone says that if Obama was serious about the enforcement of illegal immigration he would call for mandatory E-Verify among companies and businesses. As for Barone’s idea of Obama not being serious about immigration reform, it is impossible for Obama to take back what he said about his ideas of what should be done involving immigration. Even if Obama wasn’t serious about immigration reform, what he said at El Paso can benefit in the future the legal immigrants and illegal immigrants that seek legalization that spent their lives or that are living in America. I agree with Barones idea of mandatory E-verify among businesses and companies since Illegal immigration can destroy our economy with its underground economy that denies jobs to anyone not willing to work underpaid. The idea of the DREAM act that cannot be passed now doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. Most proposals to congress aren’t passed right away; even throughout history it takes several years for a bill that gives more rights to others to actually be passed. Immigration reform is not a problem to America. Illegal immigration and employing undocumented workers as a cheap labor source destroys our economy and is the issue involving immigration. Immigration reform can allow legal immigrants the ability to make America as a whole prosper and develop while opening jobs and a chance to reach new technological advances ahead of other countries. With immigration reform and the DREAM act which I believe is still a possibility in our future, legal immigration can allow America as whole to reach the American dream.

Howard Gardners Theory Of Human Intelligence Education Essay

Howard Gardners Theory Of Human Intelligence Education Essay This assignment will critically discuss the topic of integrated learning in the early primary curriculum with reference to the use of the outdoor learning environment. It will be based on my personal research that stemmed from the curriculum. Firstly, this assignment will discuss the outdoor learning day, which incorporated learning outdoors with a topic themed activity. Secondly, the assignment will discuss integrated learning and outdoor learning in relation to the foundation subject Design and Technology. Howard Gardners theory of human intelligence, suggests there are at least seven ways that people have of perceiving and understanding the world. Gardner labels each of these ways a distinct intelligence in other words, a set of skills allowing individuals to find and resolve genuine problems they face. Within the Curriculum, traditional schooling heavily favours the verbal-linguistic and logical-mathematical intelligences. Gardner suggests that a more balanced curriculum that incorporates the arts, self-awareness, communication, and physical education (Gardner, 1999) is needed. Brief outline to the project. The project theme which was chosen was that of habitats and materials with reference to The Three Little Pigs, as this was a popular story that we all knew well and thought we could do a great deal to facilitate childrens learning across the age ranges of the school. We collaborated as a group and decided the story could be changed and saw it possible to have a good link to the outdoor environment leading to using the natural environment to build habitats. We adapted the story to relate directly to the natural environment by The Three Little Pigs building their homes from twigs, leaves and mud as we thought this would be more beneficial and support questioning and investigation. Within the discussion we chose a shaded area in the school grounds to set the scene for our performance and we believed this would then help with the wow factor of the introduction to the activity. The most successful aspect of the session was, once we had gained confidence and had run through the activities with the children, this allowed us to reflect on what was working and the timing of the session. This enabled our group to adapt our idea and allowed us to engage the children more successfully. The children showed positive reactions when building homes for animals from outdoor resources (sticks, mud, leaves etc), however the session at the beginning was not as successful as we were not sure on timing, in which the initial group finished the set task earlier than expected. We then had adapted our intentions to create new extension activities for the children to do and we decided to carry out a hunt for other items to go in the homes we had made. From this experience we had to dis cuss ideas for other activities we could develop if this timing issue reoccurred. I was surprised how engaged the children were when we were performing the story of The Three Little Pigs. Some of the ideas children came up with when building the homes were unexpected such as making sure the home was waterproof and the creative thinking they used to do this, for example; we need to build underground or in a sheltered spot and they also suggested, making sure that the roof was covered in leaves to keep the animals warm, dry and camouflaged. From the Outdoor Learning Day we collaboratively discussed where we could take the theme of materials and habitats. After a long discussion we decided to draw on our personal talents within the foundation subjects and use them to develop lesson plans and resources. I decided to opt for Design and Technology, as I find this subject interesting and feel that it has a wide scope for learning. The National Curriculum proclaims that, During Key Stage One  pupils learn how to think imaginatively and talk about what they like and dislike when designing and making. They build on their early childhood experiences of investigating objects around them. They explore how familiar things work and talk about, draw and model their ideas. They learn how to design and make safely and could start to use ICT as part of their designing and making. (National Curriculum 1999) The main content area of the project. Integrated Learning is discussed and used with alternative phraseology such as Topic Based Work, Cross Curriculum and Creative Curriculum. In research, Integrated Learning studies are stated as Opportunities to enrich and enhance childrens learning and make connections across the curriculum (Rose 2009).Ofsteds grade descriptor of an outstanding curriculum states: The schools curriculum provides memorable experiences and rich opportunities for high-quality learning and wider personal development and wellbeing. The school may be at the forefront of successful, innovative curriculum design in some areas. A curriculum with overall breadth and balance provides pupils with their full entitlement and is customised to meet the changing needs of individuals and groups. (Rose 2009). The National Curriculum for Design Technology suggests that it provides opportunities to promote pupils spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. (National Curriculum 1999) There are highly tailored progra mmes for a wide range of pupils with different needs. Cross-curricular provision, including literacy, numeracy and ICT, is mainly outstanding and there is nothing less than good. As a result, all groups of pupils benefit from a highly coherent and relevant curriculum which promotes outstanding outcomes. (Rose 2009) The Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (2010) explains The new curriculum is based on what is already happening in many schools to bring learning to life, and the structure reflects what other successful countries are doing with their national curricula. (Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency 2010). A quality curriculum should be broad and balanced a statement which was highlighted in the Education Reform Act 1988. Curriculum differs in each country, for example in New Zeland Te  Whariki  was developed by May and Carr to become the first national early childhood curriculum in New Zealand. This curriculum adopts a specifically socio-cultural perspective on learning that recognises the different social contexts in which children in New Zealand live and the social and interactive nature of learning. Carr and May (2000), discussed that the aim was the development of more complex and useful understanding, knowledge and skill attached to cultural and purposeful contexts. As discussed in Woods (2005) book Play, Learning and the Early Childhood Curriculum, the  Reggio approach,  from Italy, has developed a distinct pedagogy that places the emphasis on using multiple forms of expression and cross curricular links in learning to help children communicate their understanding and thinking, maintain their interest and explore to give value to activities. Practitioners see themselves as guides who are learning with the children and adopt a listening role that seeks to encourage thinking, negotiation and the exploration of difference, particularly in collaborative group work. Documenting the process of exploration as children work through a project is a key pedagogical activity which offers children a record of their process and progress through the project, and gives educators a detailed insight into childrens activities and learning. (Stephen, C. 2006).Reggio has developed the idea that children will develop their capacity to think, build and test theor ies through exploration and making links with prior knowledge and subjects. The Reggio approach believes that content knowledge is secondary to learning about how to learn, although specific contexts and bodies of knowledge may be the focus of the childrens investigations. Cross-curricular work offers a creative way to incorporate all strands of learning, developing the knowledge, skills and understanding of students while motivating them to learn through stimulating, wide-ranging and interconnected topics.(Wood 2005). It is particularly important to emphasise links between subjects to help children make sense of what they are learning. Cross curricular links are crucial to learning as learning depends on being able to make connections between prior knowledge and experiences and new information. Such connections help us make sense of our world and develop our capacity to learn. The human brain increases capacity by making connections with prior experiences which can be related to, therefore it is a crucial part of education to include experiences which the children can make their own connections. Within the curriculum the process of design may have wider applications in a future curriculum which will embrace features such as creativity on a more intens ive scale. Outdoor learning offers many opportunities for learners to deepen and contextualise their understanding within curriculum areas, and for linking learning across the curriculum in different contexts and at all levels. (Parkinson 2010) Research into this comes from the Primary Review which is a wide-ranging and independent enquiry into the condition and future of primary education in England. The review began in October 2006 and continued for two years, an interim report published in December 2007 on childrens learning emphasises the importance of thinking skills: Children think and reason largely in the same ways as adults, but they lack experience, and are still developing the ability to think about their own thinking and learning (meta-cognition). They need diverse experiences in the classroom to help them develop these skills. Learning in classrooms can be enhanced by developing meta-cognitive strategies. (Primary Review 2007) This development in the early years of children is important because of the large amount of brain growth that occurs in the first six years of life. It is vital that thinking skills are nurtured and developed in the early years to support more comprehensive learning when children are olde r. Teaching thinking skills to older children is a valid technique, however helping young children to develop these skills as they play is even more effective. From this it was also found that Cross Curricular Learning is a vital way to support childrens learning and will aid in progressing development in the classroom. Piagets theory is based on the idea that the developing child builds cognitive structures-in other words, mental maps, schemes, or networked concepts for understanding and responding to physical experiences within his or her environment. This can be reinforced by learning through Design and Technology in school which enables pupils to; appreciate the made world, the environments in which they live and work, the products they know about and use and the many communication systems that exist. (National Curriculum 1999) Making links between subjects also helps pupils to learn more effectively as it offers opportunities to apply skills and knowledge in meaningful and purposeful contexts. For example experiencing and describing processes in geography and science offer children relevant experiences and enhanced understanding. Strong links such as these can enhance learning in all subject areas as they help learners see the relevance, within a wider context, of the skills and knowledge they are acquiring in specific subjects. Since the cross-curricular nature of Design Technology needs to involve teachers working in collaboratively to ensure children have progression in their learning and development . This means creating and organising a structure for the management of Design Technology work and, for the effective organisation particularly in the planning and implementation stages which are crucial to its success. In relation to this concept, Palmer and Doyle discussed Education is not just learning kn owledge and skills, but the development of childrens learning capacity. Education is the development of thinking clearly and creatively, implementing their own plans and communicating their ideas to others in a variety of ways. (Sue Palmer and Galina Doyle, 2004) In support of this, making cross curricular links can help learners recognise how they are learning, such as was discovered in constructivist learning theory Constructivist Learning Theory promotes learner-centered study under the guidance of teachers.It has an important role in training students with the innovative capability and subject consciousness, while improving their qualities in human culture as well as in the ideological and ethical standards( TIAN Ye 2010). There are certain aspects of learning such as problem solving, reasoning, creative thinking that are used across the whole curriculum. During cross curricular work teachers can help learners recognise these underpinning skills and how they are used in differ ent contexts. The Design Technology National Curriculum demonstrates that, Opportunities for teaching and learning all these skills across the key stages can be identified when planning. Pupils can be encouraged to reflect on what and on how they learn, and how these skills can be applied to different subjects, different problems and real-life situations. (National Curriculum 1999) Recognition is an important step towards using such skills in a strategic, flexible and intentional way. Learning is enhanced by learners being aware of how thinking and learning occurs, which gives them increased control over their learning, however coherence must be taken into account to ensure lessons are taught with a meaningful outcome. Social constructivism is a variety of cognitive constructivism that stresses the nature of a broad range of learning. Vygotsky was a cognitive theorist, but rejected the assumption made by other cognitivists such as Piaget and Perry that it was possible to separate learning from its social context. He argued that all cognitive functions originate in, and must therefore be explained as products of, social interactions and that learning was not simply the incorporation and accommodation of new knowledge by learners; it was the process by which learners were integrated into a knowledge community. According to Vygotsky: Every function in the childs cultural development appears twice: first, on the social level and, later on, on the individual level; first, between people (interpsychological) and then inside the child (intrapsychological). This applies equally to voluntary attention, to logical memory, and to the formation of concepts. All the higher functions originate as actual relationships between individuals. (Vygotsky 1978 p. 57) Vygotsky accepted Piagets claim that learners respond not to external stimuli but to their interpretation of those stimuli. However, he argued that cognitivists such as Piaget had overlooked the essentially social nature of language. As a result, he claimed they had failed to understand that learning is a collaborative process. Vygotsky distinguished between two developmental levels (Vygotsky 1978 p. 85) The level of potential development, the zone of proximal development is the level of development that the learner is capable of reaching under the guidance of teachers or in collaboration with peers. The learner is capable of solving problems and understanding material at this level that they are not capable of solving or understanding at their level of actual development. The level of potential development is the level at which learning takes place. It comprises cognitive structures that are still in the process of maturing, but which can only mature under the guidance of or in coll aboration with others. Similarly in Literacy from the National Curriculum it is stated that children should; talk about matters of immediate interest. They listen to others and usually respond appropriately. They convey simple meanings to a range of listeners, speaking audibly, and begin to extend their ideas or accounts by providing some detail. (National Curriculum 1999) This valuable approach to learning can give pupils the option to choose their own questions, this gives ownership of control over work and increases commitment to it. The National Curriculum only gives teachers a small amount of flexibility in the way they plan to teach literacy as the structure of literacy hour itself is tightly defined. (Hayes 2004) Using an integrated approach to teaching and learning allows the teaching to be incorporated into a fun and different pedagogy and therefore allows the learning to become less structured, rigid and formal. Teaching Design Technology can be seen to require a cross-curricular and team approac h and ultimately a whole school approach. It has added implications for resourcing, for timetable changes and for different teaching and learning styles and strategies. (Sebba 2007) An activity using the collaborative learning theory, may include going on a treasure hunt and generally being outdoors and undertaking something different and new, which increases enjoyment and variety, thus having potential to enhance teacher-pupil relationships. Child centred teaching approaches, based on interpretations of Piagets work, were adopted with commitment by teachers in the late 1960s and 70s. Great imagination and care were put into providing varied and stimulating classroom environments from which children could derive challenging experiences.( Pollard 2008) This relates also to the Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years (REPEY 2002) One of the key findings of this report concerns the development of thinking skills: it has been found that good outcomes for children were found to be linked to adult-child interactions that included sustained shared thinking and open-ended questioning to extend childrens thinking. Including adult modelling is often combined wit h sustained periods of shared thinking. Developing childrens own ideas and investigation activities often provided the best opportunities for adults to extend childrens thinking. In support of this in the research for The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education Project (EPPE project) sustained shared thinking is identified as one of the key features of high-quality provision, and is described as: Where two or more individuals work together in an intellectual way to solve a problem, clarify a concept, evaluate an activity or extend a narrative. Both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend their understanding. (EPPE project 2003) The research found that the most effective settings encourage sustained shared thinking, which was most likely to occur when children were interacting one on one with an adult or with a single peer partner. Excellence and Enjoyment which can be developed through varying ways of learning, is a key factor within cross curricular and outdoor learning. Within these factors is the enquiry cycle however, it is vital that the enquiry is structured. This means that children at all levels of development can work in mixed groups to achieve their full potential. The Excellence and Enjoyment Document from the Department of Children Schools and Families (DSCF) claims that education is a critical stage in childrens development it shapes them for life. As well as giving them the essential tools for learning, primary education is about children experiencing the joy discovery, solving problems, being creative in writing, art, music, developing their self-confidence as learners and maturing socially and emotionally.(DCSF 2003) Outdoor experiences reinforce learning in the classroom by providing an environment to test out ideas and hypotheses and allowing pupils to extend their understanding of the real world. The social, economic, physical, cultural and mental environment in which we live seems to have a powerful effect on how we develop intellectually and physically (Barnes 2007) Education is more than the acquisition of knowledge it is improving young peoples understanding, skills, values and personal development which in turn can significantly enhance learning and achievement. Learning outdoors provides a framework for learning that uses surroundings and communities outside the classroom. This enables the pupils to develop communication skills and self confidence and allows them to construct their own learning and live successfully in the world that surrounds them. The Outward Bound Document (2012) hypothesised that outdoor experiences improve academic achievement as pupils are free to learn openly and outdoor learning can introduce children to a widening range of environments. The fact of the environment so clearly affects the brain development of other mammals might lead us to examine closely the relationship between the environments our children work in and their mental, physical and spiritual development(Barnes 2007). Overall learning outdoors provides challenges and the opportunity to take acceptable levels of risk. Giving young people responsibility for achieving these outcomes helps them to learn from their successes and failures. (Outdoors Manifesto 2006) The National Advisory Committee on Creative and Cultural Education (NACCCE) report inferred that creativity in education and learning should include, imaginative activity fashioned so as to produce outcomes that are both original and of value (Craft, A.; Cremin, T.; Burnard, P. and Chappell, K. 2007). The report includes that creativity should be more incorporated in the national curriculum, however creativity is not just related to the creative arts, music, art and dance it is about different ways of thinking. Creativity is about exploring different ways of doing things, such as asking what if..? questions and then looking for the answers. Being creative helps us to adapt and respond to a rapidly changing world. We dont know the challenges that the children we work with will grow up to face, but we do know that for them to meet these challenges they will need to be creative and imaginative. (Department for Education 2005) Children gain knowledge and develop with different learning styles, visual, auditory and kinesthetic, the outdoors environment reinforces this. Barnes argued that there are other important factors influencing creative development the teachers personal qualities the ethos of the school and the particular pedagogical style all impact on the learning of the child. (Barnes 2007). Creativity is about allowing individuals to follow their interests so that they become lost in a task or an idea. In relation to our group project the children could be encouraged to ask questions, collect materials to use within the class room and from this incorporating the findings into a scrapbook. Within the class room investigation this has a strong link with Design Technology and could include collages, paintings, designing, drama and other ways of developing their creative skills. The Excellence and Enjoyment Document supports this theory as Teachers found that when they actively planned for and responde d to pupils creative ideas and actions, pupils became more curious to discover things for themselves, were open to new ideas and keen to explore those ideas with the teacher and others. Promoting creativity is a powerful way of engaging pupils with their learning. (Department for Schools Children and Families 2003) Ofsted released documents in both 2004 and 2011 which concluded that many educational establishments recognised the importance of outdoors learning. Experience of the outdoors and wilderness has the potential to confer a multitude of benefits on young peoples physical development, emotional and mental health and well being and societal development. (OFSTED 2004 pg17) It is commonly known that children enjoy being outside and exploring new experiences, à ¢Ã¢â€š ¬Ã‚ ¦the outdoor environment can be more than a place to burn off steam, with more educators and architects and designers embracing the ideas that outdoor play space provides chances for the highest level of development and learning. When used best, it can be a place for investigation, exploration and social interaction. (Child Care and Resource Unit, 2008). The Early Years Foundation Stage (2012) (EYFS) has also stated that young children need adults around them to value and enjoy the outdoors themselves in order to feel safe and secure, and this means there is a need for higher staff to child ratio allowing all children to receive the same support. In support of this it has been stated by Dillon et al (2006) that the fear and concern about  health  and  safety is a main issue about using outdoor provisions freely and meeting school curriculum requirements and the time used meeting these targets. Dillion also stated that the amount of time used for outdoor learning were affected by the shortages of time, resources and support and the wider changes within and beyond the education sector, affecting teachers and pupils experiences of outdoor learning. Moyles discusses the issues of how teachers view outdoor learning; the article researched into outdoor learning and it was suggested that Integrating indoor and outdoor teaching and learning experiences is less well developed. Outdoor experiences are somewhat problematic for some settings which have only very restricted or no outdoor facilities. The most effective practitioners are able to develop creative ways of ensuring field trips to local parks and playgrounds (Moyles et al 2002 pg140) Ideally both environments should the available simultaneously to the children through a seamless transition space and the children should be able to choose between indoor and outdoor spaces in free flow provision, which in turn allows children to make their own decisions building self development skills. This practise can also be used in relation to the curriculum and particularly Design Technology, as the variety of materials that can be collected and use differ greatly when looking at indoor and outdoor resources. The use of interactive communication technology can support all subjects, however with Design Technology and the outdoors it can be part of the planned approach to outdoor learning and can add value to the outcomes for children and young people. Experiences  recorded digitally, for example, can be  taken back into the classroom and used to reinforce and further expand on the experience itself. The EYFS states Outdoor learning complements indoor learning and is equally important. Play and learning that flow seamlessly between indoors and outdoors enable children to make the most of the resources and materials available to them and develop their ideas without unnecessary interruption. (EYFS Effective Practice: Outdoor Learning 2007) The outdoor environment usually offers more freedom and space to move, allowing development of gross motor skills. This is vital for young children to develop their coordination, build muscle mass and experiment with moving their bo dies. Research has shown that encouraging children to play outside may be a key way of increasing their levels of physical activity (Burdette, et. al., 2005). Gross motor skills can be developed better in the outdoors where there is space for children to move around as discussed by Parsons in his article, Young Children and Nature: Outdoor Play and Development, Experiences Fostering Environmental Consciousness, And the Implications on Playground Design (2011). Conclusion Overall from the literature I have read and discussed in relation to the outdoors, integrated learning and Design Technology, it can be seen that both cross curricular and outdoor learning have positive and negative aspects in childrens education, including safety precautions and child development. The outdoors can be seen to offer a perfect companion to provision indoors, used in addition to the outdoor environment as it enhances and extends what we are able to give children inside on the contrary it can be argued many settings do not get the opportunities to use the outdoors space appropriately (OFSTED 2004). Conversely I believe that even without adequate outdoor provision children can be taken outside the setting on walks and trips supported by EYFS (2012) Providers must provide access to an outdoor play area or, if that is not possible, ensure that outdoor activities are planned and taken on a daily basis.(DFES 2012) In summary children require a range of teaching techniques to ensure that they develop correct ways of thinking through problems and generally prepare them for the rest of their educational life. As can be seen the use of cross-curricular teaching and outdoor learning is a very useful way of promoting learning. By incorporating a topic which motivates and inspires the children (habitats and materials) into the childrens learning it allows them to make mental cognitive links and allows the children to develop problem solving, and also to develop the ability to make links between curricular subjects such as history, science, art, design and technology, literacy and geography. Promoting creativity in learning provides a new dimension to the curriculum by exciting the children about a subject, which then goes on to develop strong links with the child and the possibilities of learning. Overall the links between cross-curricular activities, linked with local area studies and finally incorp orating creative learning, all go to aid in improving the development of key techniques which a child needs for later life. In thinking about outdoor provision, the central idea that we must hold in our minds is that the outdoors is different to indoors, these differences are what make it special and important. As a professional I need to be clear about how the outdoors differs from the indoors, why children benefit from being outside and how the outdoors affects the ways in which young children learn. This thinking then gives us the key for what to provide and how to plan for the outdoor provision. The special nature of the outdoors fits the ways young children want to be, behave, learn and develop in so many ways. From creating both research and the resource file as a group, I have developed an in-depth understanding of teamwork and the importance of working collaboratively drawing on my own skills and those of others. I have a firm understanding that I need a breadth of subject knowledge to make coherent links between subjects. In reflection from the Outdoor Learning Day and the resource file I have recognised as a practitioner the importance of getting to know the strengths of the team I would be working with and therefore being able to discuss and support each other. As I learnt from the Outdoor Learning Day an issue that was challenging was that of having a whole school doing a similar activity with a wide age range and ability levels. In conclusion to this assignment I believe that integrated learning in the early primary curriculum both indoor and outdoor environments should complement each other. As a teacher I should make valid links between topics and use a wide variety of teaching techniques to enable children to meet all childrens needs helping them to develop and make progress at their own individual level. References Barnes, J. (2007) Cross-Curricular Learning 3-14. SBN-13:  978-0857020680  | Edition:  Second Edition Burdette, H., L., Witaker, R., C., (2005) Resurrecting free play in young children: looking beyond fitness and fatness to attention, affiliation and affect, American Medical Association, www.archpediatrics.com Cambridge Primary Review (2007) Children in primary schools: research on development, learning, diversity and educational needs Carr M. May H. (2000). Te Whariki: Curriculum voices. In H. Penn (Ed.) Early Childhood Services: theory, policy and practice. Buckingham: Open University Press. Craft, A.; Cremin, T.; Burnard, P. and Chappell, K. (2007). Developing creative learning through possibility thinking with children aged 3-7. In: Craft,