摘要：
This study aims to investigate the content and language of newspaper
articles referring to the start of the official ban on smoking in
Greece in July 2009. Given that smoking in Greece is generally taken
to be a social and acceptable habit, despite its undeniable negative
impact on health, Greek government launched an extensive anti-smoking
campaign. Newspapers played a crucial role in conveying anti-smoking
messages and keeping public opinion informed. Having in mind that
language as a code expresses and reflects social values and beliefs
and news is full of these values, we conducted a survey in order
to study the major themes and language devices used in newspaper
articles before and after the implementation of the new anti-smoking
legislation. Our search yielded 196 articles, which were classified
according to their dominant theme into 13 categories. From our analysis,
it was concluded that, on the occasion of the ban on smoking, there
was full coverage of all the main issues related to tobacco use.
Moreover, the language features found varied depending on the identified
dominant theme.
