Newspaper Headline Language: Burnley say sorry over plane shame

In this football language post we look at the headline, ‘Burnley say sorry over plane shame‘ from the Times newspaper (June 23rd 2020) and this is all about a plane to fly over Manchester City’s ground and show a banner saying ‘White Lives Matter Burnley’. You can see more explanations of newspaper headlines here and don’t forget we have hundreds more explanations of football language in our football glossary. If you have questions or comments about this or any other phrase then email us at: admin@languagecaster.com.

Newspaper Headline Language: Burnley say sorry over plane shame

This headline is taken from the Times newspaper (June 23rd 2020) and reports on the story about a plane that flew over Manchester City’s ground on Monday night against Burnley with a sign (or banner) that showed the phrase ‘White Lives Matter Burnley’. The message clearly was a disrespectful response to the Black Lives Matter campaign and the club immediately distanced itself from the banner, while their captain, Ben Mee, in his post-match interview was very clear in his condemnation of the incident.

There are some typical features from a headline employed in this example. First of all, there are no articles used in the headline (‘…over the plane shame’), while there is some form of assonance which is when words have similar sounds with their vowels such as in the example, ‘plane shame’. It is fairly clear that the newspaper also disagrees with the incident as it uses a strong word ‘shame’ to describe what happened.