National Culture and the Thematic Structure of News Texts

Abstract

The objective of this article is to examine the relationship between the thematic structure of news texts and the context of national culture in which they were produced. The study, though being part of a larger project, concerns only two front-page articles published in two national Polish and British dailies. The first stage of the study refers to an examination and determination of the thematic structure of news text, based on Teun A. van Dijk's analysis of international and national news in the press. In the second stage of the analysis, the results of the study are confronted with the cultural dimensions model proposed by Hofstede and Hofstede and the scores for Poland and United Kingdom, as well as with Hall's insights into the differences between high-context and lowcontext cultures.