An Exploration of Creativity in Selected News Report in the Punch Newspapers

Abstract

Creativity is an integral part of writing, enabling writers to craft unique ideas, perspectives, and narratives that engage and captivate readers. The lack or excessive use of creativity in any text can either hinder or enhance its understanding. This study examines how creativity is employed in news reporting to disambiguate information. Using Halliday and Hasan’s (1976) perspectives on cohesion, as expanded by Idowu (2016), the study explicates various lexical tools such as reiteration/repetition, synonym, antonym, collocation, and grammatical tools like reference, conjunction, and substitution as journalistic strategies for creativity and clarity. A mixed-methods approach was adopted, involving textual analysis for content and quantitative analysis for percentile findings. The findings revealed that the reporter utilized grammatical features like reference, which had eight occurrences (40%), followed by conjunctions with seven occurrences (35%) and substitution with five occurrences (25%), to guide readers and ensure clarity of the speaker’s thoughts. However, there was no occurrence of ellipsis. Lexical tools such as repetition, synonym, antonym, and collocation appeared with frequencies of 46%, 40%, 7%, and 7%, respectively, emphasizing the speaker’s points and avoiding misinterpretations. The study concluded that the cohesion tools employed enhanced the creativity of the selected reporter and helped disambiguate information by simplifying complex lexical items that might lead to misinterpretation. Additionally, it encouraged the public to stay informed with accurate and updated information to aid proper economic decisions. The study recommended that reporters should be innovative by integrating elements that foster creativity and enhance overall text comprehension.