Reshaping time in business news. Patterning news in the Letters to the Editor

Starting from Labov’s and Bell’s theoretical approaches to, respectively, oral and news narrative, the analysis of a sample of business articles has revealed that, exactly as in the news stories, the chronological order of business news is restructured according to the newsworthiness scale. In this evaluation has a fundamental role. Whenever business discourse (be it a news item or a letter) is created to offer an opinion, to put the blame on somebody or something for an event, or to support the correctness of the political reactions to a financial crisis, and whenever the writer’s interest is that of persuading the readers of the correctness of his/her hypothesis (Gotti, 2005), the style is characterized by implicit evaluation and the creation of consensus, as revealed by the ample use of the inclusive we and the second person pronoun in the business articles. Furthermore, the minimal presence of boosters and the great presence of hedges underline the a mitigation in the possible criticism. The investigation of some Letters to the editor suggests that here too consensus is created by means of a frequent exploitation of the inclusive we and the second person pronoun. However, persuasion is not so subtle as in the business news report. The texts analyzed reveal that evaluation is explicit and pervasive in the letters to the editor, whereas it is covert in the financial reports. The mastery of the journalist lies in the fact that he/she brings the reader to his/her own conclusions without making the reader perceive the persuasive force that occurs behind the text, which is thus perceived to be and non-face-threatening by the recipient. which guide the readership into the writer’s reasoning path