Positioning the reader

The present contribution analyzes the linguistic realization of the Problem-Solution pattern, the Question-Answer pattern and the Claim-Response pattern (Hoey 2001) in a sample of US written newspaper editorials and opinion articles. The objectives pursued are twofold: to explore how these textual patterns interact in the newspaper opinion genre and to unveil the kind of writer-reader relationship this interaction reflects. To achieve these goals, sample texts were analyzed first for the three textual patterns under consideration, and then the patterns themselves were characterized by identifying their most frequent textual components (e.g. Problem, Solution, Evaluation, Question, Answer, Claim, Affirm, etc.). Findings reveal different types of interaction among text patterns, which respond to different persuasive strategies unfolded by writers to achieve their communicative objectives. Results presented here can be of interest to researchers in discourse analysis and written communication.