Plenty of studies have been published on the interrelatedness of language and culture, in which several aspects of this relationship have been analysed. The question of cross-cultural differences in writing, the research area of contrastive rhetoric in applied linguistics, is one such aspect. 

The basic assumption of contrastive rhetoric is that written discourse is culture specific, therefore, every language has its own preferred writing conventions (Connor, 1996, p. 5). The original aim of contrastive rhetoric was to explain the writing problems of students of English who have different cultural backgrounds and to offer pedagogical solutions to these problems (Kaplan, 1965). However, the research area of contrastive rhetoric has expanded from student essays to a wide range of genres, for instance, research articles, grant proposals, résumés, business writing and newspaper editorials.

Newspaper editorials constitute a part of media language, which is an extremely important field of research in applied linguistics today. Bell (1991) gives a comprehensive list of the reasons why linguists are interested in studying the language of the media, most significant of which are the following: 1) examining this special area is intrinsically interesting to language users and receivers; 2) the media influences the language that is used in the society; 3) media language reflects the society and the culture where it occurs; 4) it mirrors the media’s structure and its values; and 5) linguists have a very easy access to media language.

Despite the fact that today the effect of the electronic media (TV, radio, the Internet) seems more widespread than the print media, some journals, magazines and newspapers have retained their prestigious position, therefore, their articles are also worth studying. 

The present paper has a three main aims. As contrastive rhetoric is not frequently discussed in the Hungarian applied linguistic literature, the first aim of the paper is to outline the most significant steps in the evolution of contrastive rhetoric embedded in the history of second language (L2) writing education and to present some important findings in the field. The second aim is to examine, from a contrastive rhetoric point of view, how similarly or differently two articles in The Economist  and two in Heti Világgazdaság, both influential English and Hungarian news magazines, treat the same topic. The third aim is to briefly summarise some possible pedagogical implications of the findings. 

The interface between the linguistic analysis of written media texts and the teaching of L2 writing is a relevant issue due to the growing number of Media and English majors at Hungarian colleges and universities. These students can profit from a comparative English-Hungarian article analysis since it may enhance their rhetorical awareness both in English and in Hungarian media discourse. Although the texts compared are not editorials but background articles, which are expository in their nature, we can agree with Connor (1996), who claims that “research on editorials cross-culturally is significant even if ESL students do not become editorial writers for, in most cases, they are readers of editorials. Good editorials are considered some of the best examples of persuasive writing in all countries; they set standards for written persuasion” (p. 144). In my opinion, due to their recognition and prestige the articles in The Economist  and Heti Világgazdaság set standards for written exposition; therefore, their application for pedagogical purposes is worth taking a look at.

Literature overview: Contrastive rhetoric

Contrastive rhetoric “identifies problems in composition encountered by second language writers and, by referring to the rhetorical strategies of the first language, attempts to explain them,” (Connor, 1996, p. 5). Until the middle of the 1960s controlled composition was the main approach to teaching writing in the USA. As a result of the fact that the number of international students increased dramatically in American higher education institutions where writing had a central position in measuring students’ academic performance, it was no longer satisfactory to teach them to write grammatically correct sentences under the label of second language writing education (Grabe & Kaplan, 1996). Therefore, the opponents of controlled composition argued for the necessity of a “bridge between controlled and free writing” (Silva, 1990, p. 13). The first dominant theory to inform the teaching of second language writing was contrastive rhetoric propounded by Robert B. Kaplan, which provided the basis for a new product-based approach to the teaching of writing called current traditional rhetoric.

Kaplan put forward his contrastive rhetoric hypothesis in 1966. He claimed that a sentence-based analysis is not sufficient to study texts and argued for a complete text-based text analysis. He stated that not only spoken but also written discourse, its logic and rhetoric, is culture specific and hypothesised that each language, as well as each culture, has its own preferred rhetorical conventions. To support this hypothesis he examined more than 600 international students’ essays, on the basis of which he assumed that the students’ mother tongues (L1) interfere with their second language writing; therefore, students of English as a second language must be aware of the rhetorical conventions of English writing. Kaplan found that the essays examined followed four different paragraph organisation patterns according to the students’ different cultural backgrounds. English essays have a linear development, whereas Semitic students’ paragraph development contains several parallel co-ordinate clauses. Discourse in Oriental languages is specified by an indirect approach by which the writer comes to the conclusion only in the end, while both in Romance languages and in Russian several digressions from the main idea can be detected. Kaplan described these findings in diagrams, too, which had a huge effect on the teaching of writing for they appeared in several composition books in the USA. As to the pedagogic applications of his results, Kaplan proposed that students study the linear English development pattern and also advised some exercises to practise this pattern for students of English.

Kaplan’s claims received a great deal of criticism. Some of them were substantiated, but others interpreted Kaplan’s point too literally. Several researchers claimed that Kaplan’s study was more intuitive than scientifically-based. The opponents of contrastive rhetoric maintained that his diagrams were overgeneralised as all writers of a language do not compose all their writings according to patterns determined by Kaplan. Kaplan’s diagrams were also said to be too simplistic in taking all Oriental languages under one umbrella. Contrastive rhetoric was also criticised for being too ethnocentric by giving preference to the writing of native speakers of English and regarding L1 transfer on L2 writing as a negative effect. The opponents also expressed that Kaplan did not carry out empirical research on English discourse but relied on the findings of style manuals; and they also asserted that ESL writers’ difficulties are rather the regular problems of inexperienced writers than problems resulting from cultural differences (Leki, 1991).

These critical remarks were complemented with the ones by the proponents of process writing, a radically new approach in the history of second language writing education from the beginning of the 1970s. As opposed to the previous product approaches (controlled composition and current traditional rhetoric) that put the final product of writing into focus, the process approach laid emphasis on teaching students how to create their own composing processes and strategies concentrating on text content rather than form (Kroll, 1991). Proponents of the process approach identified contrastive rhetoric with product orientation (current traditional rhetoric) as it examined only the product of writing and ignored the composing process, thus separating it from the rhetorical background L2 writers come from (Leki, 1991). Their other main assertion was that contrastive rhetoric was too prescriptive in determining how students should structure their writings.

 During the era of the process approach, the dominant composition teaching ideology until the mid-1980s, discourse analysis and text linguistics did not make any relevant contribution to contrastive rhetoric (Leki, 1991). Since the 1980s, contrastive rhetoric has received renewed attention due to several factors. One of them is the fact that the first critiques of the process approach arguing for a balanced product-process approach were published (Silva, 1990). As Leki summarised (1991), both process orientation and contrastive rhetoric intend to teach students proper discourse schemata, to help them write for certain discourse communities and to aid students in discovering meaning, but the way they teach these is different. Another reason for this change was that text linguistics, discourse analysis and sociolinguistic research developed, the latter extending to speech variables caused by cultural differences and to the different varieties of English used throughout the world as norms. The third force to place contrastive rhetoric in the forefront of research was that cultural diversity programmes gained prestigious status in the United States (Connor, 1996). These changes also resulted in a paradigm shift in which the concept of contrastive rhetoric was broadened to cognitive and sociocultural writing variables across cultures (Connor, 1996).

However, contrastive text linguistics is still in the focus of contrastive rhetoric-based investigations. Some of the most interesting findings were revealed in connection with Oriental languages (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) and Arabic, but the presentation of these results would extend  beyond the limitations of this paper. For this reason only different types of texts written  in European languages (Spanish, German, Czech and Finnish) contrasted with English will be discussed briefly.

As far as student writing is concerned, the main Spanish-English contrastive studies (e.g. Reid, 1990) corroborate the fact that Spanish writers use a more elaborate style by using longer sentences, fewer simple sentences, more coordinated clauses and more pronouns. Comparing German and English academic texts, Clyne (1987) found that, in German, content is favoured over form, texts include digressions from the main argument and there are only scattered advance organisers in texts, if any. As to the Czech language, Cmejrková states (summarised in Connor, 1996) that in academic articles the purpose of the papers is not explicitly stated at the beginning of the articles as opposed to English research papers. Finnish research (Mauranen, 1993) shows that Finnish academic texts use fewer metalinguistic devices to organise the text and orient the reader.

There has also been some contrastive rhetoric-related research in the area of media discourse; however, the number of studies is relatively low. Tirkkonen-Condit and Lieflader-Koistinen (1989) compared Finnish, German and English editorials. English editorials put the argument statement at the beginning of the text less frequently than the German editorials, while the Finnish texts did not have an argument statement. Large-scale research on the structures of international news was carried out by van Dijk (1988), although he never called his work contrastive rhetoric-based. He examined the press coverage of the assassination of the Lebanese president-elect in 1982, which was reported in more than 700 articles in 138 newspapers in 99 countries. He found that the thematic and schematic structure of the articles in different countries was very similar, but he detected significant differences between the organisation of quality paper articles and popular press articles regardless of the country where they were written.

Method

Having discussed the most important research findings of contrastive rhetoric, I will now turn to the analysis of Hungarian and English media texts. Research results about the comparison of texts written in English and in Hungarian have not yet been published; therefore, as was mentioned before, the principal aim of this paper is to analyse the rhetorical structure of Hungarian and English newsmagazine articles from a contrastive rhetoric perspective.

The magazines

The magazines selected for investigation were The Economist (E) and Heti Világgazdaság (HVG). Established in September 1843, E has been regarded as one of the most influential economic and political magazines in Europe. Its columns cover political, economic, financial, technological and cultural issues from all the continents of the world. The distribution of the magazine is worldwide and its editorial policy is followed by several magazines throughout the world (Bart, 1998). It is published in a magazine format, but its editors label it as a newspaper "because it is concerned with views as well as news and works to a newspaper deadline" (About us, 2001). In this paper, "magazine" will be used for the sake of simplicity.

HVG was first published in 1979 and soon became one of the leading weeklies for highbrow readers in Hungary. Its content, structure and layout are quite similar to E. It is also divided into several sections dealing with both Hungarian and international issues in connection with politics, economics and culture. As both magazines are highly prestigious and have a similar profile, E and HVG can be compared to one another. 

The articles

I have chosen two English and two Hungarian articles to be compared, which were written on the same topic. They are so called background articles (van Dijk, 1988, p. 50), which inform the readers not only about the news itself but also provide a broader context and background to the events. This genre is widespread, and their analysis can be very useful for media majors in higher education. The reasons for selecting these articles and not others are twofold: (1) when the research was carried out these topics were the ones that were covered in both magazines; (2) both of them are about political changes, parliamentary elections in Spain and a government reshuffle in France, which made the articles even more comparable. The selected articles were the following:

· Author not mentioned. "Triumph for the right." E, March 18th 2000, pp. 33-34. (SPAIN1)

· Vass, Péter. "Abszolút helyzet." HVG, 2000. március 18. pp. 17-18. (SPAIN2)

· Author not mentioned. "France shuffles its pack." E, April 1st 2000, pp. 23-24. (FRANCE1)

· Vásárhelyi, Júlia. "Békebal." HVG, 2000. április 8. pp. 19-23. (FRANCE2)

The authors of the E articles are not indicated: "It [The Economist] is written anonymously, because it is a paper whose collective voice and personality matter more than the identities of individual journalists" (About us, 2001).

Research questions

The main research questions were as follows: 

1. Are there any differences between the organisational patterns of the English and Hungarian articles?

2. Are there any differences between the organisational patterns of the English and Hungarian paragraphs?

Procedures for data analysis

Van Dijk (1988, p. 17) provides a simplified framework for the analysis of news reports. He mentions that an analysis can be carried out both on microstructural (morphology, syntax, semantics, lexicon, cohesion, coherence) and macrostructural (thematic structure, schematic structure) levels. As contrastive rhetoric mainly concentrates on discourse-level patterns, a microstructural analysis is not conducted in this study.

Examining the organisational patterns of the whole articles, I applied van Dijk's (1981) analysis on their schematic superstructure, which is "a form which organises the overall macrostructure of a text as a whole" (p. 14), while macrostructures "make explicit the overall topics or themes of a text" (p.13). He lists the following schematic categories, which I illustrate with example sentences taken from van Dijk, (1988, pp. 92-93): 

1. Headline: Gemayel killed in bomb attack 

2. Lead: Gemayel was found dead after a bomb explosion in the Falangist headquarters in East Beirut during a meeting. 

3. Main Event: Gemayel died when addressing 400 party members at a weekly meeting.

4. Background: The election of Gemayel on August 23 was boycotted by Moslems.

5. History: Gemayel was commander of the Christian militias.

6. Context: Gemayel was to be inaugurated on September 23.

7. Consequences: It will be difficult to find a new president.

8. Reactions: Premier Wazzan deplored the killing.

9. Evaluations: The murder increases instability in Lebanon.

10. Expectations: Who will become president in Lebanon?

In the analysis I examined which of these categories appear in the articles, what their order is and whether there are any differences between the English and the Hungarian articles from this perspective. The identification was not always an easy process as van Dijk does not provide an explicit definition of the categories. Therefore, some of the categories, like Context and Background, seemed to overlap on several occasions in both E and HVG articles. To overcome this difficulty for the purposes of this research, I merged the categories of Context, Background and History as Background, and the categories of Evaluations and Expectations as Expectations.

Apart from the schematic structure analysis, the use of advance organisers, which "explain the path and organisation of a paper" (Clyne, 1987, p. 229) and help "people know what to expect and it [the text] may be easier to understand" (Clyne, 1987, p. 229), is also closely connected to the structural arrangement of the articles. An example for an advance organiser is taken from Clyne's article (1987, p. 245): 

11. ". . . , the third part [of the paper] will attempt to put nationalism into a general theoretical framework." 

In spite of the fact that in news magazine articles advance organisers might not have as important a role as in academic articles, mainly because the former are usually much shorter in length, advance organisers still play a significant part in reader orientation (Esser & Little, 2000); therefore, I counted them in the texts to be analysed.

As far as the structural organisation of the paragraphs is concerned, I examined the existence and position of topic sentences in the paragraphs. Writing handbooks suggest that a topic sentence "alerts readers to the essence of the paragraph by stating the central idea and expressing the writer's attitude toward it" (Fowler, Aaron & Limburg, 1992, p. 72). This source also mentions that the position of the topic sentence can vary from paragraph to paragraph. Sometimes it is not explicitly stated in a single sentence (mainly in narrative and descriptive writing), but if it is in paragraph-initial position, it "helps you select details in the rest of the paragraph. For readers the topic-first model establishes an initial context in which all the following details can be understood" (Fowler et al., 1992, p. 73). Van Dijk (1988) also says that in news reports as well as in background articles "the general principle is that important information must come first. This may affect not only the overall thematic or schematic organisation of the news report but also the ordering of the sentences in paragraphs" (p. 16). The following example of a topic sentence in a paragraph is taken from Connor (1996):
 

In the past two decades, the study of writing has become part of the mainstream in applied linguistics. Reasons for this change are many: the increased understanding of language learners' needs to read and write in the target language; the enhanced interdisciplinary approach to studying second language acquisition through educational, rhetorical, and anthropological methods; and new trends in linguistics. These new trends empasize discourse analysis . . . (p. 5.)

My analysis focussed on the following variables: (1) the number of topic sentences as opposed to the number of paragraphs in E and HVG articles, and (2) the position of topic sentences in the paragraphs. Where I could not state the topic sentences of the paragraphs for certain, I asked two of my colleagues to help me so that the findings of the analysis could be more reliable.

Sample analysis

In this subsection of the paper, I will show the analysing process in one of the English texts, SPAIN1, and in one of the Hungarian texts, SPAIN2.

The analysis was made up of three phases: (1) the schematic structure of the articles was determined, the results of which can be seen on the left margin typed in bold letters; (2) the explicit advance organisers were counted, which are underlined in the texts; (3) the topic sentences, typed in italics, were identified. Counting the topic sentences, I only took into consideration the body paragraphs of the texts without the first "real" paragraph (the one after the lead) and the last paragraph as they have an introductory and a concluding nature respectively. For the sake of easy reference, I numbered the paragraphs. 

SPAIN1: ( © The Economist Newspaper Limited, London, March 18 2000, pp. 33-34.)

Headline 
Spain
Triumph for the right
Madrid

Lead
The victory of Jose Marisa Aznar and his centre-right People's Party in the General election on March 12th was historic

Main Event

(1) For the first time in Spain's history, a rightwing party albeit one whose leader declares himself to be firmly at the "reforming centre" has won an outright majority of seats in a democratic general election. Jose Maria Aznar's People's Party (PP), which has run Spain for the past four years as a minority government beholden in parliament to Catalan nationalists, can now rule the roost with a comfortable surplus of 16 in the 350-seat chamber. Though Mr Aznar says he will step down when his renewed mandate runs out in 2004, his place in Spanish history looks secure. The PP's win was certainly a stunning personal triumph.

Background

(2) Two strong factors underpinned the victory, along with several tactical ones. The most obvious was that Spain's economy is booming; unemployment, though still high at 15% (by one measure), has fallen by eight percentage points in four years. No less important, Mr Aznar's brand of cautious and consensual government has clearly dispelled the ghosts of the authoritarian past that have haunted Spain's right since the death of General Franco in 1975. Four years ago, a lot of middle-of-the-road, middleclass Spaniards were queasy about voting for a party that descended, however indirectly, from the old right. Last weekend, the same people were happy to give Mr Aznar their nod. Spanish democracy, in that respect, has truly come of age. 

(3) Mr Aznar was also helped by some tactical moves that rebounded against the Socialists, whose worthy but uninspiring leader, Joaquin Almunia, resigned as soon as the scale of his party's defeat became clear. For one thing, a much-heralded electoral alliance between the Socialists and the Communist-led United Left, which was meant to broaden the appeal of the left as a whole, evidently frightened off many middle-of-the-roaders. The Socialist vote dropped from 38% to 34%, while the PP's soared from 39% to 45%. "We couldn't connect with the voters," confessed a forlorn Mr Almunia. His ally, the United Left, slumped from 11% in 1996 to less than 6%, its tally of seats falling from 21 to eight. Though the Communists had a new, more moderate and modern-looking leader in Francisco Frutos, he too failed to impress.

(4) A second explanation for the Socialists' defeat is that their emphasis on the cronyism and share-option windfalls that have certainly benefited some of Mr Aznar's friends evidently fell on deaf ears. Many voters may indeed have recalled the much more widespread sleaze and even criminality that did so much to sully the reputation of the Socialists in their 14 years in power before Mr Aznar's first victory four years ago. Though Mr Aznar, a former provincial tax inspector, still lacks eloquence and glamour, he nonetheless comes across as efficient and straight, if occasionally harsh. And of late he has been looking much more relaxed.

Consequences

(5) On the face of things, Mr Aznar now has less need to heed Spain's regional parties, which were able to wring concessions out of him during his previous minority government. A conservative Catalan coalition called Convergence and Union is still the largest regional force in parliament, but it dropped a seat in the election. And the hope of its long-serving leader, Jordi Pujol, that he would remain the kingmaker in parliament in Madrid was in any event dashed by virtue of the PP securing an overall majority. More strikingly, the PP did notably well in the volatile Basque region.

(6) But Mr Aznar cannot afford to disdain regionalists altogether. Though the Basque-nationalist vote dipped, the vote for regional parties elsewhere in Spain, in such places as Andalusia, Aragon, the Canary Islands and Galicia, went slightly up. Regional parties now hold 33 seats, compared with 29 before. Mr Aznar was careful no to pander to those of his more nationalistic supporters who, in the excitement of victory, vociferously rubbished the regionalists, especially the Basques and Catalans. On March 14th, Mr Aznar said he would seek to from an alliance in parliament (but not a formal coalition) with the mainstream Catalans and the Canary Islanders, but not with any Basques. Even though they have lost influence in parliament in Madrid, regional politicians will go on fighting for more devolution.

Expectations

(7) Despite his party's triumph, Mr Aznar has been at pains to stress that consensus will continue to be his watchword. "The next government," he says, "will be open to dialogue with other political and social forces. Everyone must get together to help Spain move ahead." He is also keen to keep the trade unions sweet as he presses ahead with reforms to make hiring and firing easier, to cut income tax, and in due course to tackle Spain's pensions and welfare systems.

(8) In theory, Mr Aznar can now venture more daringly towards further economic liberalisation. In fact, he will probably continue to be cautious. But there is little doubt about the direction in which Spain is heading.
 

SPAIN2: 

Headline
Magabiztos jobboldali gyõzelem Spanyolországban
Abszolút helyzet
(Vass Péter)

Lead

A vártnál sokkal biztosabban, az abszolút többséget is megszerezve nyerte a vasárnapi parlamenti választásokat Spanyolországban José María Aznar kormányfõ vezérletével a jobboldali Néppárt. A gyászosan leszerepelt baloldal egyelõre magához sem tért a kudarc után, de a szocialisták pártvezére máris bejelentette lemondását.

Main Event

(1) Hajnalig tartó hangos fiesztával ünnepelte vasárnapi választási gyõzelmét Madridban a jobboldali Néppárt (PP), de talán még a politikusoknál is jobban örültek az eredménynek hétfõn a madridi tõzsdén. Spanyolországban ugyanis 1986 óta nem volt példa arra, hogy egy párt megszerezze az abszolút többséget, azaz egyedül, kompromisszumok és folyamatos politikai engedmények nélkül, a gazdasági növekedés számára elengedhetetlen stabilitásban kormányozzon négy éven át. A PP most elérte ezt, mégpedig meggyõzõ fölénnyel, a 350 fõs parlamenti alsóház 183 helyének a megszerzésével, úgy, hogy még a szenátusban is övé a legtöbb hely. 

Background

(2) Jóllehet a közvélemény-kutatások az utolsó héten biztos néppárti gyõzelmet jeleztek már, a spanyol lapok többsége még a választás elõtti napon is azt jósolta, hogy 1996-hoz hasonlóan a PP csak szûk különbséggel fog a szocialisták elõtt végezni, s arra még esély sem látszott, hogy megszerzi az abszolút többséget. A Spanyol Szocialista Munkáspárt (PSOE) szereplése sem felelt meg egyébként az elõrejelzéseknek, csakhogy attól negatív irányban tért el. Míg a PP - a nem végleges eredmények alapján - 27-tel növelte képviselõi mandátumainak számát, addig a PSOE az eddiginél 16-tal kevesebbet, csak 125 fõt juttathat el a parlamentbe.

(3) A jobboldali gyõzelem feletti tõzsdeöröm már csak azért is (8) In theory, Mr Aznar can now venture more daringly towards further economic liberalisation. In fact, he will probably continue to be cautious. But there is little doubt about the direction in which Spain is heading.

(4) Valószínûleg tudatában voltak ennek a választók is, akik elsõsorban éppen az Aznar-kormány gazdasági sikereit jutalmazták. A gazdasági növekedés 3-4 százalékos üteme az utóbbi években rendre az európai uniós (EU) átlag felett volt. A szocialisták kormányzása idején rekordmagasságú, 20 százalékot is meghaladó munkanélküliség 15 százalék alá szorult, az inflációt a kormány kézben tartotta - igaz, valamivel az EU-átlag felett -, a kamatok elviselhetõek, s az országnak nem okozott gondot a csatlakozás az euróövezethez. 

(5) José María Aznar kormányfõ így aztán a választást megelõzõ idõszakban semmi látványos szavazócsalogató akciót nem hajtott végre, sõt a kéthetes kampány ideje alatt jobbára csak a négy év eredményeit ismételgette, inkább visszafogott volt. Talán túlzottan is, vélték politikai elemzõk, hozzátéve, hogy a miniszterelnök nagyobb vehemenciával is bedobhatta volna magát küzdelembe. Leginkább azt rótták fel neki, hogy nem volt hajlandó a kamerák elõtt megmérkõzni ellenfeleivel. Pedig Aznar a nyilvános szereplések terén sokat fejlõdött az utóbbi években, s bár korántsem vált megnyerõ személyiséggé, vitathatatlanul színesebb szónok lett. 

(6) A jogász végzettségû, a politikai pálya elõtt adóellenõrként dolgozó, 47 éves Aznarról pár éve még úgy élcelõdtek az akkor kormányzó szocialisták, hogy nincs egyetlen önálló gondolata, fanyar mosolya mögött zavarodottság, bizonytalanság húzódik meg. Mára kiderült, ha nem is túl invenciózus, de egy bulldog szívósságával a végsõkig harcolni képes személyiség, aki ha valamit elhatároz, akkor azt bármi úton-módon végrehajtja. Az utóbbi években pedig még annak is tanújelét adta, hogy már nem ront ajtóstul a házba, céljait hajlandó fokozatosan is elérni. 

(7) A voksok alapján úgy tûnik, a korábban inkább a fordulatos beszédeket tartó, színes személyiségeket sokra értékelõ spanyolok is változtak az utóbbi években. Mára a társadalom pragmatikusabbá vált, kormányfõként jobban elfogadja az olyan, kevésbé villogó, de kiszámítható, biztos jövõt ígérõ politikust, mint Aznar. Társadalmi változásként értékelik a választások utáni elsõ elemzések azt is, hogy míg a Franco-éra utáni években a lakosság többsége - érthetõen - határozottan baloldali irányultságú volt, ma már az Aznar által képviselt centrista gondolkodás a meghatározó. Különösen a fiatalok körében érezhetõ a változás, s elemzõk szerint éppen az a mintegy másfél millió elsõ szavazó állt a PP mellé, akinek nincsenek emlékei a francóista évekrõl, nem tart a jobboldaltól, ugyanakkor végignézte, miként vált az egykor haladó szocialista párt a kilencvenes évek közepére korrupt, egyik botrányból a másikba bukdácsoló hatalmi elitté. 

Consequences

(8) A vereséget már az elsõ részeredmények alapján elismerõ szocialista pártvezetõ, Joaquín Almunia szinte temetési beszédnek beillõ szónoklatot tartott vasárnap a PSOE-székházban, amit azzal zárt, hogy bejelentette lemondását. Aligha volt más választása, a szocialistáknak valóban teljesen elölrõl, új arcokkal kell kezdeniük a politizálást, ha négy év múlva eséllyel akarnak indulni a választásokon. Persze azért nem lehet mindent Almunia számlájára írni, különösen - szólnak az értékelések - miután Felipe González korábbi miniszterelnök és PSOE-vezetõ pártbéli befolyása és országos népszerûsége tudatában egyszerûen nem hagyta, hogy utóda valóban önálló, elsõ számú vezetõként szerepelhessen. 

Background

(9) Kétségtelen, hogy Almunia jól felépített, hibátlan vonalvezetésû, világos beszédeket tartott, kulturáltan érvelt, nem használt szélsõséges jelzõket, vagyis - értékelte szereplését a PP-vel szimpatizáló El Mundo napilap - tökéletesen megfelelt volna egy szakmai konferencián. De nem egy választási nagygyûlésen, szavazatgyûjtõ korteskörúton vagy televíziós vitában. Ráadásul a szocialisták vezetõ politikusainak kampánybeszédeiben is érzõdött a széthúzás, nem tudták a PP-hez hasonló egységes, dinamikus csapat képét mutatni. 

(10) Az utolsó pillanatban elhatározott baloldali összefogás sem jött be, a kommunisták által vezetett pártkoalíció, az Egyesült Baloldal (IU) szintén jóval 1996-os eredménye alatt szerepelt. A PSOE-IU szövetség kudarcában szerepet játszott, hogy nem tették elég világossá, mire is irányult voltaképpen a gyõzelem esetén közös kormányzást ígérõ baloldali szövetség, amely még választási együttmûködésnek sem volt tökéletes, hiszen jelöltjeiket nem léptették vissza egymás javára. Így aztán a szövetség még azt a célját sem érte el, hogy együttesen több szavazatot szerezzen, mint a PP. A baloldal vereségében persze az is közrejátszott, hogy ezúttal az 1996-os választásnál 7,4 százalékkal kevesebbet voksoltak - a jogosultak 69,9 százaléka -, s a közvélemény-kutatások szerint a távolmaradók többsége baloldali érzelmû. 

(11) Politikai elemzõk szerint egyébként a PP túl magabiztosan indult neki a választásoknak, s csak februárban rettent meg, miután egy korrupciós botrány, majd a baszkföldi szakadár szervezet, az ETA halálos akciói, illetve a baloldali összefogás hatására veszélybe került a korábban biztosnak hitt választási gyõzelem. Ezért aztán a kampány utolsó napjaiban Aznar mégis rátett egy lapáttal: a fiataloknak a kötelezõ katonai szolgálat eltörlését, a középkorúaknak jövedelemadó-csökkentést, a kisgyerekeseknek lakásvásárlási és családtámogatást, az idõseknek nyugdíjemelést ígért, s a vállalkozókat is különféle kedvezményekkel igyekezett maga mellé állítani. 

Expectations

(12) Igazán érzékeny sebet mindössze egy dologgal tudott ejteni az ellenzék a PP-n: a párthoz és magához a miniszterelnökhöz közel álló vállalkozói kör elképesztõ személyes meggaz-dagodásának és az ország gazdasági életében betöltött szerepének a kritizálásával. Az "Aznar barátaiként" emlegetett vállalkozói kör az utóbbi években privatizált - fõként az energetika és a távközlés terén, valamint a médiában mûködõ - nagyvállalatok élére állított vezetõket jelenti. Elsõsorban a távközlési mamutcég, a Telefónica terjeszkedése került a figyelem középpontjába, illetve az azt vezetõ egykori Aznar-iskolatárs, Juan Villalonga pár év alatt szerzett mesés vagyona állt a baloldali támadások középpontjában. A kormányhoz mindeddig lojális Villalonga ráadásul a minap hálátlannak bizonyult: még Aznar közbenjárására sem volt hajlandó lemondani arról, hogy elfogadja a Telefónicától "kapott" 17 millió dolláros - Spanyolországban példátlanul magas - részvényopciót. Ezen napokig rágódott a sajtó és az ellenzék. Ha Aznar nem változtat az ehhez a körhöz fûzõdõ kapcsolatán a következõ ciklusban, akkor ez - szólnak máris egyes madridi lapokban a jóslatok - négy múlva megakadályozhatja a mostanihoz hasonló eredmény elérésében.
 

Results and discussion

Organisational patterns of articles: Schematic structures

Table 1 presents the schematic categories of the articles in E and HVG. The numbers next to the ticks indicate the number of paragraphs in the article devoted to the category.

Table 1 shows that the organisational patterns of the English and the Hungarian articles are similar. It can be seen that the Background section comprises the most paragraphs which is because the genre of the texts examined is background article, the communicative function of which is to provide explanations for the events discussed. The second in rank is the Consequences category, an integral part of political analyses. As can be seen in the sample analysis of SPAIN2 it is clear that that the Background section is interrupted by the Consequences category. This phenomenon comes organically from the nature of news articles: "Since topics are discontinuous, schema categories must also occur discontinuously in the text" (van Dijk, 1988, p. 92). 

The reason for the similar schematic organisations seems obvious. Even the layout of the two magazines makes it clear that HVG takes E as its model; therefore, the finding that the structural organisation of the articles and the paragraphs is similar is logical. As Bell (1991) writes, ". . . news norms worldwide are patterned on Western, and particularly Anglo-American, models" (p. 174). 

Although content analysis was not part of this paper, it is still worth noting that despite the similar schematic structure of the articles, the conclusions they draw from the discussion of the events are different. SPAIN1 suggests that Spain will be on the well-beaten track after the elections, while SPAIN2 looks into the distant future by claiming that corruption might lead to the fall of Prime Minister Aznar in 2004. FRANCE1 states that there might be further government reshuffles in France with Laurent Fabius as a leading figure in it, whereas FRANCE2 predicts that in 2002 current Prime Minister Lionel Jospin may be the President and Fabius the Prime Minister. The difference between the E and the HVG articles is that the former ones do not risk predicting anything in connection with what could happen in the distant future, while the latter ones make a strong prediction for the same time span.

An interesting finding, which is presented in Table 2 below, is that HVG leads are significantly longer than the ones in E, consequently, they also contain more information. It seems that the function of the leads in the two magazines is slightly different: in E they aim at arousing readers' interest in the topic, while in HVG, besides attention-getting, they also try to give a by and large full picture of the content of the article.

Moreover, the first paragraphs in the HVG articles come quite organically from the leads, without which the first paragraphs would be difficult to comprehend. As to the E articles, the first paragraphs are much more independent from the leads, which means that without them the first paragraphs would still be clearly understandable. A possible explanation for these dissimilarities might be the different lead writing policy of the two magazines.

Advance organisers

Table 3 shows the number of advance organisers in the examined articles of the two magazines.

Regarding all the advance organisers in the four articles, one can see that their number is low. However, their distribution among the magazines is striking: there are no explicit advance organisers in the HVG articles at all, in spite of the fact that the schematic structure of the articles in the two magazines is similar. This finding might reveal an important aspect on cross-cultural differences across the two magazines: the E articles seem to devote more emphasis on orienting readers in what they can expect to read in the rest of the text. This phenomenon can be explained with reference to the English rhetorical convention revealed by Hinds (1987), according to which English is a writer-responsible language, where it is the writer's responsibility to present things as clearly as possible. Advance organisers are a useful tool to achieve this goal.

Organisational patterns of paragraphs

Although Table 1 shows that in SPAIN1 the Expectations section contains two paragraphs, not just one, still, the last paragraph has a more concluding nature than the penultimate paragraph belonging to the same category. Thus, in all four of the articles only the very last paragraphs were taken into consideration as conclusions. As discussed earlier, in these concluding paragraphs, just as in the first ones, topic sentences were not identified, as topic sentences do not appear in text-initial and text-finishing positions (Fowler et al., 1992, p. 71). The findings in terms of the structural organisation of the paragraphs of the articles are presented in Table 4.

Clyne (1987) states that the position of topic sentences is subject to the function of the text. According to van Dijk (1988), in background news articles the sentence containing the most important information, that is, the topic sentence, comes first. This can be observed both in E and HVG articles; the difference (13/12 topic sentences in 15/17 paragraphs in E and HVG articles respectively) does not seem considerable. 

In E 10 topic sentences out of 13 are in paragraph-initial position, while in HVG 11 out of 12. In FRANCE1 (E), in the three paragraphs (3, 9, 10) which do not have topic sentences in paragraph-initial position, the first sentences are bridge sentences "referring back to the previous paragraph or another paragraph" (Clyne, 1987, p. 232). In SPAIN2 (HVG), the second paragraph has the topic sentence in end-position. Based on the limited corpus of this study, we cannot conclude that in English background articles bridge sentences occur more often in paragraph-initial position than in their Hungarian counterparts, but Clyne (1987) has found that German academics applied bridge sentences at the beginning of paragraphs more frequently than English scholars. It would be an interesting line of research to examine bridge sentences in different genres both in Hungarian and in English. 

Pedagogical implications

Matsuda (1997) states that contrastive rhetoric has significantly enriched our understanding of how texts are developed in different cultures, but "the insights gained by research have not been effectively translated into the practice of teaching organisational structures" (p. 45). However, the results of my study that background articles in both of the magazines examined and in both languages have similar organisational patterns, have relevance for the teaching of writing in Hungary, and we do not have to be afraid that we (teachers) force English rhetorical conventions on Hungarian learners in a deterministic way (Leki, 1991).

In the following list, I recommend some exercises based on background articles, which may enhance students' awareness of text and paragraph organisation. The procedures discussed below can be exploited both in writing and in reading classes as well. Exercise 7 has been designed especially for Media and English majors, while the rest of the tasks can be applied in other groups too.

(1) Teachers jumble the paragraphs of the text examined, which students put in the correct order; 

(2) Students spot the lead and the conclusion from the scrambled paragraphs; 

(3) Teachers eliminate advance organisers from the texts that students place in their original position;

(4) The topic sentences of the paragraphs are taken out of the text and students put them back into their proper places; 

(5) Students state which sentences present facts and which sentences present opinions, a crucial point in teaching expository writing. They also look for grammatical and lexical devices that make the difference between a fact and an opinion.

(6) The topic sentences are erased from the text and students write them in on their own.

(7) Students write a background article on the previously mentioned tasks (1-6) for a college magazine, in which they report on a pedagogical approach dealing with media texts in the language classroom (Main Event), provide a rationale for the exercises (Background) and comment on the effects of these execises on how they can improve students' language skills (Consequences, Expectations). 

Although Peter Grundy's (1993) excellent collection of activities based on newspapers does not exclusively deal with reading and writing tasks, it also provides exercises focusing on raising cross-cultural awareness in terms of how the same topic is treated in English and in mother-tongue newspapers.

Conclusion

The findings of this small-scale research show that, on the one hand, there are many similarities in the rhetorical structure of English and Hungarian background articles on politics. The schematic structure of the articles and the organisational patterns of the individual paragraphs were found to be alike in the two magazines. This result supports previous findings of van Dijk (1988) discussed earlier in this paper.

On the other hand, there were two clear differences between the way HVG and E treated the same topic. First, the leads in HVG were significantly longer and contained more information than the ones in E. We concluded that this phenomenon can be the result of the different functions leads play in the two magazines. In E this function is attention-getting, while in HVG the attention-getting function is complemented with the intention to represent the content of the whole article. Second, explicit advance organisers and metalinguistic devices were assumed to make make these texts more reader oriented than the ones in HVG. It was also found that HVG articles made more far-reaching conclusions in terms of what might happen in the future in connection with the events discussed in the articles.

As contrastive rhetoric, which served as the basis of analysis, does not only seek to detect cross-cultural writing differences but it also tries to account for them, I also made a modest attempt to explain the similarities and the differences that were revealed in this study. I emphasise the word "modest" on purpose since the explanations discussed above are to be regarded only tentative as only the articles, the finished written products, were analysed; for a better understanding of the reasons for discourse similarities and differences one has to study the editorial policy of the magazines, the news sources of the magazines, the authors' individual backgrounds and their writing processes, to name but a few of the factors to be taken into consideration (Bell, 1991; van Dijk, 1988; Matsuda, 1997).

Besides these research lines, for further inquiry it would also be worth examining background articles and other genres as well on a larger corpus, so that we could come to more reliable findings. From the perspective of research methodology, computer-assisted text analysis could also contribute to a better understanding of the rhetorical differences between English and Hungarian texts.

Notes

I thank the two anonymous reviewers of novELTy for their thoughtful comments on an earlier version of this paper. I also thank the Editors of Heti Világgazdaság and The Economist for granting reprint rights.

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