Abstract

A press release, as an important tool of providing information for the media and general public, has its own specific features regarding its constitutive parts and the manner of writing them. One of the most important parts of a press release is its headline, which provides the first impression for the journalists and readers, as it is the most visible element, both online and in print. The press release headline generally contains elements of addressability and/or self-reference. Being based on a corpus of both English and Romanian press releases concerning education and culture, the present paper focuses on the linguistic means used by the writers to suggest addressability and self-reference. While the analysis of the data indicates important differences in the two languages regarding the manner of linguistically marking addressability and self-reference, the findings also highlight certain patterns of writing press release headlines in both English and Romanian.