Telling it as it is: from sharing to telling in financial journalism

This paper aims to analyse the shift in the rhetorical style of the Financial Times’ (FT) editorial section, which, we intend to argue, is developing a more authoritarian and monologic rhetorical style. By monologic we intend communication which focuses on the communicator’s message and not on the audience’s needs. In monologic communication audience feedback is precluded or not wanted. Monological communicators strive to impose their ideas and truths on others, “they have the superior attitude that they must coerce people to yield to what they believe others ought to know” (Johannsen 1996: 69). We intend to analyse the editorial’s use of specific lexico-grammatical features to support our claim and in conclusion to examine certain socio-rhetorical aspects of the discourse in order to propose reasons why this rhetorical shift may be happening. Editorials, sometimes called leaders or opinion sections, are typified by a number of similarities. They are anonymous and typically composed by more than one writer and being unattributable to an individual, become the recognisable voice of the institution. However, they vary in the rhetorical styles and textual strategies they employ in order to establish this distinctive voice. One way in which the FT editorial has established its distinctive voice or personality is by displaying a high level of domain-specific knowledge. We aim to analyse how the FT is able to adopt certain positions in relation to situations and events and to “advance knowledge claims and seek consensus for the claims postulated” (Cortese and Riley 2002: 23). The editorial voice is institutional rather than personal and functions of the voice are economic and political, having to do with the newspaper’s place in the industrial and political arenas of contemporary society.