Book Description

The major purpose of newspaper headlines is to trigger the reader’s interest. A popular way to achieve this goal is the use of phraseological modifications. Based on previous findings from various linguistic disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to shed light on the reception of substitutions like More than Meats the Eye. It develops an empirical methodology for investigating the complex cognitive processes involved, using a large sample of authentic examples for illustration. Along these lines, this volume not only shows what associations readers make when they encounter a lexical substitution and what factors facilitate the recognition of the canonical form. It also addresses the question of how meaning is constructed in terms of Conceptual Integration Theory and establishes an experimentally supported model of interpretation. This multifaceted perspective renders Phraseological Substitutions in Newspaper Headlines: "More than Meats the Eye" relevant to scholars and advanced students from a wide range of linguistic areas, such as phraseology, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and humour research, but also to interested journalists.