Editorials in English and Vietnamese Newspapers

It is widely accepted that newspapers have been playing an essential role in the development of our society. Thanks to this form of media, people from every part of the world, even low-income people, can know what is happening around them as they can read
newspapers at anytime and anywhere they find comfortable. As a person in modern society, you must develop communicative skills, problem-solving and critical thinking because these are extremely important skills for us to keep up with the fast development of science and technology. Also, you must consider one problem in many aspects to have a perfect look and general view so that you can effectively solve it. One of the effective ways to develop these skills and abilities is to read editorials in newspapers. However, when Vietnamese learners read editorials in English newspapers, they usually find it hard to understand the writing styles of journalists especially their stylistic devices. Understatement is a stylistic device used in English newspaper causing many difficulties to learners to understand.
For example, instead of writing ‘Unfortunately, Congress isn’t listening.’ journalists write ‘Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t seem to be listening.’ Or ‘I don’t agree with you at all’ can be said ‘I think we have slightly different opinions on this topic’.
And in Vietnamese editorials:
(1.1)“Những năm gần đây, mặc dù phải khắc phục không ít khó khăn do thay đổi khí hậu, thị trường năng lượng tiền tệ quốc tế biến động phức tạp và tác động của những tiến trình toàn cầu hóa gây ra, kinh tế Hàn Quốc vẫn phát triến khá nhanh”

[62]

(1.2)“Nằm ở trung tâm châu Âu, với diện tích bảy mươi chín nghìn ki-lô-mét vuông, dân số hơn mười triệu người, Séc không phải là nước có những ưu thế về nguồn tài nguyên và nhân lực” [86]
In (1.1) and (1.2), “không ít khó khăn” or “không phải là nước có những ưu thế về nguồn tài nguyên và nhân lực” is used to replace “nhiều khó khăn” and “có nguồn tài nguyên và nhân lực thấp kém”
If the readers find it hard to understand those understatements they may lose their interest in the entire article as they read it.
Moreover, editorials are more and more popular because of the fact that people pay a lot of attention to criticizing one problem from many aspects. That is the reason why many newspapers, for example, “the New York Times” or “The Quân Đội Nhân Dân”..., have several pages for editorials. And, understatements are found in editorials.