T HERE IS A SYNTACTIC RULE in the language of news reporting which goes unnoticed in the United States but is regarded by other English speakers as a hallmark of American journalistic style. The rule deletes the determiner in appositional naming expressions of the form (the) race relations conciliator Hiwi Tauroa; (a) local resident Beth Anderson; (his) 'Chips'series co-star Erik Estrada. American informants confirm that they find determiner deletion in such structures quite unremarkable. By contrast, the style books which prescribe New Zealand journalists' language usage warn them "not to follow this American style." The journalists, however, are increasingly ignoring the prescription and adopting the American norm. This paper compares the use of the rule of determiner deletion in the media of three countries which speak different dialects of English-the United States, Britain and New Zealand. The evidence reveals two competing international norms for this rule-a British standard of low deletion and a high-deleting American norm. How frequently New Zealand mass media apply the rule proves to be diagnostic of their orientation towards the culture and language of one or other of those two nations.
