83 The uses of the present tense in headlines Jan Chovanec Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Brno The aim of the present article is to explore ways the present tense is used in newspaper headlines and explain what function this tense plays. It reports the results of a small study undertaken in order to reveal the general tendencies and patterns of some of the more frequent sentence types used as headlines. The canonical use of the present tense to report past actions is noted and explained with reference to standard grammar. The material under investigation has also indicated a tendency to use the present simple tense in headlines made up of complex sentences, where it occurs in subordinate clauses introducing the circumstances for a more important event expressed non-verbally. The reference of the present tense to past time is explained in view of its universal reference within the system of English tenses, its role as an ‘internal evaluation device’ in narrative and the support it lends to the interpersonal function of headlines. 1 The present simple and its meanings – theoretical considerations The widespread use of the present tense in headlines is one of the defining characteristics of the register of news headlines (cf. Fowler 1991, Halliday 1985). In news discourse, the present tense is used conventionally to refer either to events which occurred in the past, or to present events (e.g. ‘state present’ and ‘habitual present’ as described by Quirk et al. (1985:179)). The focus of the present paper is to identify the reasons why the present tense can be used in headlines to refer to past events, what its effects are, and what major patterns of use emerge. The present tense is the fundamental tense in the system of English tenses (Dušková et. al 1988:217): in addition to present events, it can also express future and past events. In this sense, the present tense is atemporal. Although future reference of the present tense is usually complemented with an adverbial of time (the futurity thus being expressed lexically), this need not always be so, with the future reference being clear from the context. Although the stereotypical description of past events by means of the present tense is usual in headlines, it also frequently occurs in narration – both fiction and conversation (Dušková 1988:219, Shiffrin 1981). The ‘historical present’ is used as a stylistic means – as McCarthy and Carter (1994:94) note, it operates ‘as one of Labov’s “internal evaluation” devices, heightening the drama of events and focusing on particularly significant points in the story’. The concept of ‘internal evaluation’ refers to the fact that a speaker’s evaluation of the prominent importance of particular information is carried out through the manner of presentation and not by means of some kind of a lexicalized marker, which would constitute ‘external evaluation’.