Stylistic Effect and Use of Metaphors in Broadsheet Papers versus Tabloids

Abstract: The use of figurative language can be found in all kinds of texts but the manner it is used differs. This piece of work deals with the frequency of the use of metaphors in general and the distribution of its three subcategories - new, conventional and dead metaphors - in articles from a broadsheet paper and a tabloid. Ten articles, five from The New York Times and five from the New York Daily News, were analyzed and scrutinized for metaphors. The analysis and the categorisation of the metaphors point towards that there should be a higher frequency of metaphors in the broadsheet paper and that the distribution of the subkinds is the same in the two papers. However, results state that there is a great range of variation in the frequency of the metaphor in the individual tabloid articles compared to the broadsheet articles. This point to the conclusion that none of the two papers can be said to generally contain a higher frequency of metaphor compared to the other, simply because with tabloids there is no norm to compare with.