Bohemica Olomucensia

The Persuasive Function of the Syntactic Plan Language Means as Attested in Selected Communicates Representing Spoken journalism

The author analyses the function of selected syntactic plan language means, the usage of which has been attested in the presenters' speech within Události, the main evening news of the Czech statutory broadcaster, Česká televize. The presenters use full valency syntactic constructions, i.e. syntactic constructions using the complete set of verbal arguments. The presenters don't manifest any of the phenomena typical of everyday spontaneous spoken interaction. Through thorough analysis of selected texts the author has proved that to influence the assumed audiences, the presenters use word-order modifications, epistemic language means, and voluntative modality, as well as utterances lacking finite verb forms. The attested persuasive means are functionally similar to the usage of headlines in written journalism; however, in other cases they may build ellipsis-based utterances or other types of utterance modifications. Individual presenter's idiolects have shown differences as for the relative frequency of modifications. The relative persuasive strength of the language means used with respect to the assumed audiences varied as well.