Analysis of Newspaper Headlines from the Times and the New York Times: UEFA Euro 2024 and Paris Olympics 2024

Introduction

The focus of our study is the media representation of two major sporting events in two respectable British and American daily newspapers, The Times and The New York Times. The Times is one of Britain’s oldest and most influential newspapers and it has rightfully been considered as one of the world’s greatest newspapers (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Times). The New York Times is also deemed as one of the world’s great newspapers due to its’ editorial excellence, and objective and reliable reporting (https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-New-York-Times).

The UEFA Euro 2024 (the 17th UEFA European Football Championship) took place from 14 June to 14 July 2024 and was hosted by Germany. 24 football teams participated in the tournament, with Georgia participating in this championship for the first time. The importance of this sporting event is confirmed by the fact that it is the second- most watched football tournament in the world (EURO 2024: All you need to know | UEFA EURO 2024 | UEFA.com). The 2024 Olympics took place from 26 July to 11 August in Paris, France. The Olympic games in Paris were eagerly anticipated because the last games in Tokyo were largely held without spectators due to COVID-19. The Paris Olympics gathered 10,500 athletes who represented 206 countries. Athletes competed in 32 different sports.¹

We live in a period of rapid societal, cultural and political changes, challenges and transitions. Mass media, on the one hand, in a variety of ways reflect these processes, and on the other they are shaped and stimulated by them. Since the media represent an independent social subsystem and operate within the framework of economic and political systems (Rus-Mol and Zagorac Keršer, 2014), the connection between media on the one hand and politics, economy, and society and culture on the other is inextricable (Stojan, Novak Mijić, 2024: 39). Considering all the specific features of mass communication, it can be said that it has changed the social practice of communication structurally and culturally, and ‘’it increases the exchange of information, enriches the option of constructing reality, expresses a new order of knowledge construction, reorganizes the social order of discourse, and to a certain extent replaces interpersonal communication’’ (Bauer, 2007: 29).

Headlines play a key role in turning news into a newspaper story, which introduce the reader to the story, frame it and place it in the appropriate context (Papacharissi, 2019). The main function of a newspaper headline, apart from a concise presentation of the main news, is to attract the attention of readers (Hudeček, 2006; Rišner and Glušac, 2011). Furthermore, Hudeček (2006: 297) emphasizes that this function is achieved in two basic ways: by summarizing the text so that the reader can decide whether to continue reading the entire article, and by alluding at the content of the article, arousing reader's curiosity.

According to van Dijk (1988), at all levels of analysis of newspaper articles, including headlines, traces of context can be observed, i.e. linguistic structures, hints of the conditions of the creation of the newspaper article itself, indications of professional and social ideology, as well as preparation for the reading process, or interpretation of the article by the reader.

Theoretical Background

The basic tenet of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), in most general terms, is to understand the complex interrelationship between language and society. CDA analyses how discourse reflects social realities and how individuals construct them with the aim of critically addressing systemic inequalities in society by focusing on revealing power relations between individuals, communities, different political entities (Silva, 2023).

According to Fairclough (1995: 57) CDA focuses on relationships between text, discourse practice, and sociocultural practice. The analysis of texts refers to the analysis of vocabulary, semantics and the grammar of sentences, phonology and writing systems. Our study focuses on the analysis of meanings of newspaper headlines, which are considered to be a particularly important part of newspaper discourse. Discourse practice, according to Fairclough (1995), refers to various aspects of text production and text consumption. Fairclough (1995: 95) states that some of these aspects include institutional procedures, like editorial strategies used for the production of media texts and others include discourse processes that texts undergo in their production and consumption. The CDA analytical framework is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A framework for critical discourse analysis of a communicative event (Fairclough, 1995: 59)

It is shown in this figure that discourse practice mediates indirectly between text and sociocultural practice, which means that characteristics of sociocultural practice mould texts. Furthermore, by moulding the nature of the discourse practice, the ways in which texts are produced and consumed are changed, which is fulfilled in characteristics of texts. It should be emphasized that discourse practice bridges the division between society and culture (institutional processes) on the one hand, and discourse, language and text on the other (discourse processes) (Fairclough (1995:60). Analysing sociocultural practice may include immediate situational context, which in our study includes two major sporting events. Furthermore, there is a wider socio-cultural context in which these events are embedded, or in which the study of British and American societies is in focus. Another important aspect of the discourse practice dimension, according to Fairclough (1995) refers to institutional aspects of media, such as practices of media text production, social and cultural structures, practices and values which shape mass media communication, and are shaped by it at the same time.

Another well-known scholar whose work has contributed immensely to the field of discourse studies is Ruth Wodak. Wodak’s approach, developed by her and colleagues at the University of Vienna, is known as the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA). In the CDA approach in general, focus on linguistic characteristics of a piece of text is just the first step in this multi-layered analysis. This analysis is further extended to include context, which inevitably broadens the analysis of a text and places in focus its relations to other texts and discourses, the situational context, and the historical and socio-political conditions in which the text is rooted. By referring to historical aspects of the discourse and contextualizing it in this specific way, Wodak’s approach strives to ‘’analyze, understand, and explain the complexity of the objects under investigation’’ (Wodak, 2016: 3). In CDA a basic differentiation is the one between discourse and text. According to Reisigl and Wodak (2016: 27) texts are considered to be parts of discourses, and discourse is:

• a cluster of context-dependent semiotic practices that are situated within specific fields of social action; - socially constituted and socially constitutive; -related to a macro-topic; - linked to argumentation about validity claims, such as truth and normative validity involving several social actors with different points of view.

Furthermore, Reisigl and Wodak (2016: 27) point out that boundaries of discourse, in our case the one on sporting events, are up to a certain point fluid, and ‘’a discourse always depends on the discourse analyst’s perspective.’’ The DHA also utilizes two important concepts: intertextuality and interdiscursivity. Intertextuality basically means that texts are connected to other texts, both in the past and present. These relations can be established ‘’through explicit reference to a topic or main actor; through references to the same events; by allusions or evocations; by the transfer of main arguments from one text to the next, and so forth ‘’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016: 28). On the other hand, interdiscursivity means that discourses are interconnected in different ways. For example, a discourse on sporting events can refer to topics or subtopics of other discourses, such as politics, gender, or terrorism. ‘’Discourses are open and often hybrid; new subtopics can be created at many points’’ (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016: 28).

According to van Dijk (1989: 115), a newspaper article has a well-defined scheme that consists of established categories such as a summary that includes a headline and leads, then a presentation of the main event, background situation, context, followed by readers’ reactions and comments. This scheme and its thematic content are structured so that the most important and most interesting information in each category comes first, followed by other, less important information. Thus, newspaper discourse is structured according to the principle of relevance of information, which, according to van Dijk (1985: 69-70), is crucial in the structural scheme of a newspaper article. Van Dijk (1989: 115) emphasizes that all these aspects of a newspaper article, together with the ideological orientation of the journalist, but also the cognitive processes involved in the creation of a newspaper article, determine the structural dimension of the newspaper discourse. For example, the process of summarizing is important for the creation of headlines and leads, and the ideological orientation can be interpreted from which information that is presented most prominently is given the most importance, and from the usage of particular vocabulary items and journalists’ comments.

Sociocultural Context

The Olympics and the Euro (UEFA European Football Championship) are among the most popular sporting events in the world. Sports play a very important part of the cultural lives of the British (Stojan, 2023). Moreover, the spread of sports at the global level is one of the British Empire’s important cultural legacies. It is generally accepted that the modern game of football originated in England. The Football Association was founded in England in 1863. Thus, it is not surprising that a large number of newspaper articles is dedicated to the Euro. Not only is football highly appreciated in the UK, but other sports as well. This country attended every Olympic Games, starting with the first competition in Athens, Greece, in 1896. It also hosted the Games three times in London. British athletes won hundreds of medals, making impressive showings in athletics, tennis, rowing, yachting and figure skating. (https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Sports-and-recreation).

Sports play a very important role in American society as well, it is a cultural phenomenon that brings together people of different ethnicities, genders, ages, social background. The USA has always presented itself as a strong nation that fights for its wins. In the same manner, its sports culture can be described as a celebration of supremacy and the fighting spirit that characterizes modern America

The United States has competed in every Olympic Games with the exception of the 1980 Moskva Olympics and has been the dominant country in terms of medals won since the inception of the Games (https://www.olympedia.org/countries/GDR). 1Although football has been considered the world’s most popular sport, it ranks fourth in the popularity in the USA with American football (NFL), baseball (MLB) and basketball (NBA) holding the top three positions in popularity (https://news.northeastern.edu/2024/07/03/why-is-pro-soccer-not-popular-inthe-us/). There are different reasons for football lacking popularity in the USA, one of them being the existence of so many sports that prevents the dominance of football culture (https://www.thejustice.org/article/2023/02/call-it-soccer-therise-of-the-worlds-game-in-the-united-states-brandeis).

Methodology

This paper thoroughly analyses newspaper headlines that report on two major sporting events, the UEFA Euro 2024 and the Paris Olympics 2024. Headlines selected for analysis are published in The Times and The New York Times (digital editions). The corpus is composed of headlines related to the UEFA Euro 2024 (published from 15 June to 16 July 2024) and headlines related to the Paris Olympics (published from 11 July to 12 August 2024). The sampling procedure was purposive since it involved headlines focused on two major sporting events. There are 258 headlines revolving around the theme of the UEFA Euro in The Times and 23 headlines with the same topic in The New York Times. There are 126 headlines dealing with the theme of the Paris Olympics in The Times and 106 headlines focused on the same theme in The New York Times.

In this qualitative-quantitative study we implemented some methodological aspects of CDA developed by Norman Fairclough, Ruth Wodak and Teun van Dijk. The analysis is conducted at two levels, the linguistic analysis of headlines and the intertextual analysis. Linguistic analysis in general is descriptive, it deals with formal properties of the text and can be conducted at various levels. In our study we focused on semantic properties of headlines taking account of an overall meaning expressed by each headline.

According to van Dijk (2013: 182) discourse meaning can be analysed at a local level that includes meanings of words, clauses, sentences, and paragraphs, on the one hand, and at a global level that refers to overall, global meanings of a whole discourse. These global meanings are referred to as macro-propositions, which are described as conceptual summaries of larger parts of discourse, or discourse topics (van Dijk, 2013: 183). Thus, at this global level of semantic analysis, headlines and leads express underlying macrostructure, or topical organization of the news discourse. Topics are commonly expressed in headlines, leads, abstracts (van Dijk, 1989: 116).

Following van Dijk’s approach, topics of newspaper articles, with the focus on headlines are selected and analysed. The findings are presented in the form of tables, with each category being exemplified by appropriate examples of headlines.

The intertextual analysis follows which is interpretative, it is focused on relating the text to social repertoires of discourse practices based on semantic properties of our headlines that provide evidence for such interpretation. Moreover, the text is placed within the aspects of the culture that is shaped by orders of discourse by our social and cultural understanding of discourse practices (Fairclough, 1995: 61). Such analysis brings into focus interdiscursivity, which signifies that discourses are linked to each other in different ways (Reisigl and Wodak, 2016). Our study focuses on analysing texts from the perspective of discourse practice, searching for traces of these complex interrelations in selected pieces of discourse, newspaper headlines.

Analysis of Newspaper Headlines from the Times and the New York Times

Based on van Dijk’s approach, topics of articles found in newspaper headlines were analysed. The following table shows topics related to the Euro 2024 in headlines from both The Times and The New York Times and their number in each newspaper.

Table 1 Topics related to Euro 2024 in The Times and The New York Times

There are 258 headlines that deal with topics related to the Euro 2024 in The Times and only 23 headlines in The New York Times. Topics of the headlines from The Times are grouped in 8 categories. 85 headlines (32.9%) deal with football players, in relation to their career and performance in football games. Examples:

Harry Kane: I’m at my peak — I can definitely be Euro 2024 top scorer (15 June 2024)

Lamine Yamal shows Spain’s incredible gamble on youth is paying off (15 June 2024)

There are 58 headlines (22.5%) that deal with football, their main focus are matches, results, match analysis, tactics. Examples:

Scotland restore pride to set up do-or-die clash with Hungary (19 June 2024)

England have finally learnt to keep the ball – now they need to use it (2 July 2024)

There are 42 headlines (16.3%) that focus on football manager. Examples:

Fans’ anger is on me, says Gareth Southgate before Slovakia clash (26 June 2024)

If Gareth Southgate thinks he’s England’s weakest link, it’s time to go (26 June 2024)

32 headlines (12.4%) are focused on fans. Examples:

England fans told to drink non-alcoholic beer in Cologne heatwave (25 June 2024)

Germany has been a festival for fans … but when do Spain come to party? (14 July 2024)

Topics of 26 headlines (10.1%) are grouped in the category of versatile since they include topics related to books, fashion, WAGs, food, television, prince William, princess Kate, singers, podcast, racism, weather. Examples:

Forget the Euros — can a new wave of football books get men to read? (16 June 2024)

The biggest talking point at the Euros? Who has the hautest handbag (16 June 2024)

Uefa investigates claims of racist abuse of England players (17 June 2024)

Gareth Southgate finally sends in England’s WAGs for extra time (21 June 2024)

Prince William apologises for ‘hoarse voice’ after cheering on England (11 July 2024)

10 headlines (3.9%) are focused on various political issues. Examples:

Kylian Mbappé urges French to vote against ‘extreme’ Rally (17 June 2024)

Mbappé’s home town cries foul at his warnings over hard right (21 June 2024)

Digital vigilantes hunt Ukrainian patriots in Crimea — and at the Euros (26 June)

England stars don’t need to speak out like Mbappé – let’s keep it that way (6 July 2024)

Euros winners chant ‘Gibraltar is Spanish’ at Madrid parade (16 July 2024)

There are 3 headlines (1.2%) that focus on topics that deal with national identity. Examples:

Conflicting emotions for Turkey fans in their home away from home (17 June 2024)

The England football team represent the very best of our nation (11 July 2024)

There are 2 headlines (0.7%) dealing with referees. Examples:

England’s semi-final referee served six-month match-fixing ban (8 July 2024)

England penalty row was last thing referee and Uefa needed (10 July 2024)

Topics of the headlines from The New York Times are grouped into 7 categories. 5 headlines (21.7%) deal with football players, in relation to their career and performance in football games. Examples:

As Messi Seeks Another Trophy, Soccer Fears for a Future Without Him (20 June 2024)

A New Prince Leads Spain as It Rules European Soccer Again (14 July 2024)

Topics of 5 headlines (21.7%) are grouped in the category of versatile, they include topics related to history, traffic, identity, music, football analyst. Examples:

In Germany, a Tournament Runs Smoothly, but the Trains Do Not (23 June 2024)

Are Soccer’s Showcase Games the Riskiest Gig in Music? (14 July 2024)

There are 4 headlines (17.4%) that focus on football manager. Examples:

England next manager contenders: Who could replace Gareth Southgate? (16 July)

Gareth Southgate’s England Tenure Ends With a Jump, Not a Push (16 July 2024)

There are 4 headlines (17.4%) that deal with political issues. Examples:

A Battlefield Break to Cheer Ukraine’s Soccer Team in Euro 2024 (17 June 2024)

Split by Politics and Protests, Georgia Lets Soccer Carry the Flag (18 June 2024)

Black Shirts and Banned Flags: Ultras Push Politics at Euro 2024 (26 June 2024)

A Political Fight Won, France’s Stars Turn Back to a Soccer One (11 July 2024)

There are 3 headlines (13.2 %) that deal with football, their main focus are matches, results, match analysis, tactics. Examples:

Another Summer to Remember? For Germany: So Far, So Great (14 June 2024)

At Euro 2024, a Very England Fight Misses the Point (28 June 2024)

1 headline (4.3%) deals with identity and 1 with fans. Examples:

For Turkish Germans, Heart Overrules Home at Euro 2024 (22 June 2024)

You Are Cordially Invited to Euro 2024’s Best Party. Please Wear Orange (11 July 2024)

Table 2 Topics related to the Olympics 2024 in The Times and The New York Times

There are 126 headlines that deal with topics related to the Olympics 2024 in The Times and 106 headlines in The New York Times. Topics of the headlines from The Times are grouped into 8 categories. 41 headlines (32.5%) deal with athletes, in relation to their career and performance at the Olympics. Examples:

Athletics lucky to have in-your-face Noah Lyles, Bolt’s true successor ( 5 August 2024)

How Katarina Johnson-Thompson became an Olympic medallist at last (9 August 2024)

Topics of 30 headlines (23.8%) are grouped in the category of versatile, they include different aspects of this sporting event such as food, music, stereotypes, health, smoking, actors, television, environment, financing, interesting moments. Examples:

How artists made sport sexy in the last Paris Olympics (13 July 2024)

Olympic ‘green’ cars are no such thing, say scientists (15 July 2024)

Paris mayor swims in Seine to show water’s fit for Olympics (17 July 2024)

Charley Hull fears Olympic smoking ban will affect her golfing. (7 August 2024)

Keeping watch on Daniel Craig at the Olympics (9 August 2024)

There are 22 headlines (17.5%) that deal with different individual sports, their main focus are results, medals, performance, tactics. Examples:

GB let triathlon gold slip – then lose silver in photo finish (5 August 2024)

DJs, a giant turntable and odd names: breaking makes Olympics debut (9 August 2024)

There are 12 (9.5%) headlines that focus on various aspects of the situational context. Examples:

Flying taxi service cleared for take-off at Paris Olympics (9 July 2024)

Submarine on the Seine? A very Parisian Olympic ceremony (21 July 2024)

Christians should rise above Paris pantomime (3 August 2024)

Take a bow, Paris, for your spirit of global community and Olympic joie de vivre (11 August 2024)

Olympics closing ceremony review: Paris signs off with a bang (12 August 2024)

There are 7 headlines (5.6%) that deal with topic related to law and crime. Examples:

Coach of triathlon medallist was child sex offender (3 August 2024)

Former UK Athletics coach Rana Reider accused of raping teenager (9 August 2024)

6 headlines (4.7%) deal with topics that focus on gender issues. Examples:

Dumb IOC’s fixation on inclusivity has hurt both boxers: end this insanity (1 August 2024)

IBA has plenty of questions to answer in boxing’s gender row (2 August 2024)

Gold for second gender-row boxer as Imane Khelif alleges ‘harassment’ (10 August 2024)

Imane Khelif wins Olympic gold medal: ‘I’m a woman and I’m proud’ (10 August 2024)

5 headlines (4%) are focused on various political issues. Examples:

Olympians should seek podiums not campaign platforms (17 July 2024)

Olympic sponsors criticised for maintaining business in Russia (12 August 2024)

Emmanuel Macron appeals for unity as he faces end of ‘Olympic truce’ (12 August 2024)

3 headlines (2.4%) deal with some aspects of terrorism in relation to the Olympics. Examples:

British bobbies (and their bomb dogs) on the beat in Paris (21 July 2024)

Crowdstrike outage stokes fears of Russia cyberattack on Olympics (21 July 2024)

Topics of the headlines from The New York Times are grouped into 8 categories. There are 22 headlines (20.8%) that deal with different individual sports, their main focus are results, medals, performance, tactics. Examples:

After Olympic Triathlons in Seine, Leaders Hail Dual Wins for France (30 July 2024)

Is the Men’s 100 Meters Still a Can’t-Miss Olympic Moment? (3 August 2024)

Topics of 22 headlines (20.8%) are grouped into the category of versatile, since they include different aspects of this sporting event such as drinks, food, climate, age, fans, famous people, social media, health, jewellery. Examples:

10 French Wines to Drink While Watching the Olympics (22 July 2024)

Jill Biden, Jessica Chastain and Nick Jonas Toast Team U.S.A. in Paris (28 July 2024) Champagne, Soft Piano and No Lines: Luxe Life at the Olympics (2 August 2024)

For These Olympians, the Bling Is the Thing (7 August 2024)

There are 20 (18.8%) headlines that focus on various aspects of the situational context. Examples:

Olympic Torch Reaches Paris in Elegant Style (14 July 2024)

Beefed-Up Olympics Security Thins Out Tourists, Squeezing Merchants (24 July 2024)

Full stands, Full Volume: The Olympics You Remember Are Back (26 July 2024)

An Olympics Scene Draws Scorn. Did It Really Parody ‘The Last Supper’? (28 July 2024)

18 headlines (17%) deal with athletes, in relation to their career and performance in the Olympics. Examples:

In the 1,500, There’s Katie Ledecky and Then There’s Everyone Else (30 July 2024)

For Simone Biles, a Long Road Back Is Paved in Gold (1 August 2024)

10 headlines (9.4%) are focused on various political issues. Examples:

Israel Rolls into Paris Olympics Amid Cheers, Boos and Police Sirens (24 July 2024)

Kremlin Uses Olympic Ban as Another Arrow to Shoot at the West (25 July 2024)

Belarus Casts Aside Dissident Athletes, Their Talent ‘Buried’ (9 August 2024)

The Olympics’ Toughest Act: Balancing Sports and Politics (10 August 2024)

7 headlines (6.6%) deal with topics that focus on gender issues. Examples:

Italian Boxer Quits Bout, Sparking Furor Over Gender at Olympics (1 August 2024)

Olympic Officials Defend Fighters’ Eligibility in Women’s Boxing Controversy (2 August 2024)

There are 6 headlines (5.7%) dealing with doping. Examples:

China, Citing Tainted Burgers, Cleared Swimmers in a New Doping Dispute (30 July 2024)

Feud Flares Between U.S. and Global Antidoping Agency (7 August 2024)

There is just 1 (0.9%) headline that focuses on terrorism. Example:

Police Investigate Death Threats Against Olympics Opening Ceremony Director (2 August 2024)

Discussion and Conclusion

Our study focuses on the differences and similarities between pieces of newspaper discourse that are embedded in two different sociocultural settings. The results of the analysis of headlines related to the UEFA Euro 2024 show a noticeable difference between the number of headlines in The Times (258) and The New York Times (23). It’s not surprising that The New York Times’ coverage of the Euro is quite low considering the fact that the UEFA Euro is a European championship, the USA does not participate in it and football in the USA in general lacks popularity.

Regardless of the fact that there is a big difference in the number of headlines, our analysis of topics has revealed some interesting findings. 32.9% of headlines in The Times focus on individual players, as opposed to 21.7% in The NYT. Furthermore, 22.5% of headlines in The Times deal with football matches, results, tactics, and 13.2% in The NYT. 12.4% of headlines in The Times vs. 4.3% in The NYT focus on football fans. The proportion of headlines dedicated to football managers is similar in both newspapers. There is a considerable difference in the number of articles dedicated to versatile topics such as books, fashion, WAGs, food, television, famous people, podcast, racism, weather, traffic. The percentage of these headlines is higher in The NYT (21.7%) as opposed to 10.1% in The Times. Furthermore, The NYT focuses more on political issues with the proportion of 17.4% of headlines and on issues related to identity (4.3%) as opposed to just 3.9% of political headlines and 1.2% of headlines dealing with identity in The Times.

According to Fairclough, CDA focuses on determining traces of sociocultural context, ideology and identities in pieces of discourse. We can conclude that sports are one of the most important aspects of the UK culture, what is more it is one the British Empire’s most significant legacies. Football in particular is highly appreciated in the UK, which is reflected in the number of headlines that deal with individual players and football matches. Topics dealing with football fans are also frequently found in headlines in The Times. It’s worth pointing out that football in particular offers fans a form of social interaction and is considered a favourite pastime. They are fiercely committed to supporting their teams. Football championship has brought astonishing amount of social interaction and excitement into fans’ lives, which is also reflected in the number of headlines in the British newspaper. American newspaper, on the other hand, is not so much focused on individual players, details about football matches and football fans. It is more concerned with different political aspects of the championship in relation to different countries that participated in the championship and other versatile topics such as history, traffic, identity, music.

Our study has shown that interdiscursivity is present in both newspapers since discourse about football frequently refers to topics and subtopics of other discourses such as politics, identity, racism, weather, entertainment. It’s important to point out that, according to our analysis, there’s the difference in these discursive practices of newspaper discourses in two different sociocultural contexts, in the UK and the USA.

When we compare the results of the study dealing with headlines related to the Olympics, there is not such a big discrepancy in the number of headlines between the two newspapers as there are 126 headlines in The Times and 106 headlines in The NYT. Both newspapers cover similar topics with certain differences in the number of headlines related to each topic. Our analysis has shown that the biggest difference between the two newspapers is in the number of headlines that focus on athletes, their performance, medals, and struggles. There are 32.5% of these headlines in The Times and 17% in The NYT. These results are similar to the results related to football players. We can conclude that talented athletes, owing to their remarkable achievements and huge impact, enjoy popularity that transcends their individual sports, which is particularly recognized by the British newspaper since they focus most on these individual athletes in the selected headlines.

There is also a noticeable difference in the number of headlines that deal with topics in relation to situational context such as the Olympic torch, Paris neighbourhood, the Seine, opening ceremony etc. There are 9.5% of such headlines in The Times and twice as many in The NYT (18.8%). Discourse practice in the American newspaper discourse puts greater emphasis than the British one on the contextual aspects of the Olympics. The number of headlines dealing with this topic in The NYT is similar to the number of topics related to actual sports and versatile topics. Political issues are covered more in The New York Times (9.4%) than in The Times (4%), just like in the football championship. The NYT focuses on gender issues slightly more (6.6%) than The Times (4.7%). There are no headlines related to doping in The Times, while such headlines are found in The NYT (5.7%). Terrorism is mentioned in 3 headlines in The Times and just in 1 in the NYT. There are 5.6% headlines in The Times dealing with law and crime, and no such headlines in the NYT. The proportion o headlines dealing with versatile topics and individual sports (results, medals, performance, tactics) is similar in both newspapers.

Our results have shown that a discourse about the Olympics, just like a discourse about the Euro, is linked to topics of other discourses revealing interdiscursive relationships that show that discursive practices of news headlines related to the Olympics are different in different social and cultural contexts.

It is important to point out that there are headlines that explicitly refer to the same event in the past thus showing that texts are interconnected, by focusing on some historical conditions in which the text is embedded. There are 5 such headlines related to the Euro in The Times, 1 headline in The NYT. There are more headlines that refer to some historical events in relation to the Olympics, 15 in The Times and 8 in The NYT. Examples are:

From the archive: Heatstroke casualties at the Olympics (The Times, 13 July 2024)

Daley: Olympic Superstar review- a thorough portrait of the 1980s hero (The Times, 16 July 2024)

They Called It ‘Improper’ to Have Women in the Olympics. But She Persisted (The NYT, 11 July 2024)

The Thai Women Punching Their Way Out of Poverty (The NYT, 31 July 2024)

In this way, according to Wodak and her DHA, intertextuality, or connecting to some other texts by referring to certain historical aspects of the discourse, enables us to understand as well as better explain complex interrelationships between texts and sociocultural practice. We can conclude that sports are deeply embedded in both British and American culture. Our analysis shows that discourses are connected to each other. The context in which they are embedded helps to understand social realities and power relations in the society. Particular representation of these two sporting events has shed light on some political, ideological and cultural aspects of the British and American societies. We can conclude that sports are not merely a means of amusement but a universal phenomenon that gives meaning to many individuals’ lives and influences society in different ways.

References

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