”Uutisista hyvää iltaa.” : Kielenhuollontutkielma SVT:n uutisjuttujen ymmärrettävyydestä

Sammanfattning: ABSTRACT The aim with this essay is to specify and to describe such linguistic elements, which hamper readability of the Finnish news language at SVT: s Uutiset. The aim is also to give examples on how, with the aid of language cultivation, readability of the Finnish news language can be improved. Yet another aim is to write an essay that is useful in news reporters’ daily work and that the essay justifies and enthuses them to an active language cultivation. The study is based on 224 news cases, done by SVT: s Finnish editorial staff between January 3 and July 1, 2005. The study method is qualitative and descriptive, and the study includes morphology, syntax and semantics. The result of the study shows that the linguistic elements that hamper readability of news language are long sentences and long attribute chains, noun style, postpositional constructions, word order and cases, and statistical expressions. These linguistic elements influence how clearly, easily and concise news language is considered. Problematic seems also to be how sentences, constituents and words are to be emphasized and how they should be tied together in a cohesive and correct way. The linguistic elements that often occur in the material are common also in other text genres and are well-known within language cultivation literature.