Fifty shades of opinion

This book explores the expression of opinion and the personalisation of news events in editorials of British, German and Italian quality papers. Therefore, 45 editorials from six national quality papers (i.e. the British "The Guardian" and "The Independent", the German "Frankfurter Rundschau" and Die Welt, and the Italian "Corriere della Sera" and "La Stampa") are empirically analysed for objectively measurable style differences in the linguistic realisation of editorials dealing with the Snowden leaks, the ensuing NSA scandal and the more general debate of global surveillance. At the heart of this culture-contrastive research lies a framework that aims at systematising and classifying possible differences in editorial discourse with respect to how directly opinions are expressed, to what extent news actors, news sources and the news event are being evaluated by the text producer, and on how personally the recipient is being addressed.