ABSTRACT
Editorials are quite diverse in their styles or textual strategies, and that is part of the point, to suggest a distinctive ‘voice’ for the newspaper, as the old Times ‘thunderer’, the strident interrogating of the Mirror, the appearance of a careful balancing of alternatives practised by the Guardian and the Observer. This chapter argues that representation in a semiotic medium such as language is inevitably a structuring process; that values and implicit propositions are continuously articulated as discourse on a subject proceeds, so that discourse is always representation from a certain point of view. It tries to be careful to avoid unwarranted generalizations; some distinct editorials are quoted, with commentaries on their discursive procedures. The consensus from which the newspaper starts concerns a 'lawful and humane existence' which defines the consensual 'we' being appealed to; to that core accrete pathos, feeling and shock. The confidence of the leader is developed in a series of hypothetical predictions using the modal 'would'.
