Abstract
A sort of controversy has often been over the use of null constituents in English journalistic texts .This controversy creates an obvious need to tackle this phenomenon . This study is an attempt to find out the extent to which null constituents are frequently used in this area and the purposes behind using them. The study also aims at finding out the most and the least frequent null constituents in the texts understudy .
It is hypothesized that null constituents are frequently used in English journalistic texts and that the type of the article decides to a large extent, the type and frequency of null constituents . It is also hypothesized that some types of null constituent are more or less frequent than others .
To achieve the aims of the study and verify its hypotheses , two sorts of procedures have been followed :theoretical and practical . The theoretical part consists of presenting a theoretical framework of null constituents including their definitions , classifications and influenced characteristics of journalistic texts. The practical part consists of adopted model which is applied to a sample of selected journalistic texts . The analysis of results has shown that null constituents are frequently employed in the selected texts for reasons related to the nature of journalistic texts( to draw reader's attention, economy in space) rather than the content of article.
The study ends up with a number of recommendations and suggestions for further studies based on the study findings.
