ABSTRACT

News commentary aims at spreading information of views and expressing argumentation which propose viewpoints on an issue and use arguments to prove or against these viewpoints.

Current study of news commentary mainly lies in the fields of news writing and linguistics, while formal studies from this prospective are not logically systematic and specific. Pragmatic argumentation is a common way to persuade readers through argumentation. This study analyzes opinions in news commentary in terms of pragmatic argumentation and evaluates its rationality. It focuses on the basic scheme of pragmatic argumentation and three elementary type of argumentation (analogy, symptom, causality) in practice in order to provide a rational model for people to read news commentary.

Key words: news commentary, Washington Post, pragmatic dialectics, argument scheme; Alibaba

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Aim and significance-2

1.3 Organization of this Thesis-2

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW-4

2.2 Studies on News Commentary-4

2.2 Studies on pragmatic argumentation-5

2.3Summary-7

Chapter Three RESEARCH DESIGN-8

3.1 Theoretical Assumption-8

3.1.1 News Commentary as Argumentative Discourse-8

3.1.2 General Argument Scheme of Pragmatic Argumentation-8

3.1.2 Pragmatic Argumentation in News Commentary-9

3.1.3 Types of Pragmatic Argumentation in News Commentary-10

3.1.4 Soundness Criteria for News Commentary-12

3.3 Data Collection-12

3.4 Research Method-12

Chapter Four RESULTS AND DISCUSSION-14

4.1 _Toc4282Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Analogy-14

4.1.1 Identification and Analysis of pragmatic argumentation based on analogy-14

4.1.2 Evaluation of Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Analogy-16

4.2 Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Symptomatic Relation-16

4.2.1 Identification and Analysis of Pragmatic Argumentation Based on a Symptomatic Relation-16

4.2.2 Evaluation of Argumentation Based on Symptomatic Relation-18

4.3 Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Causality-19

4.3.1 Identification and Analysis of Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Causality-19

4. 3.2 Evaluation of Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Causal Relation-20

Chapter Five CONCLUSION-22

5.1 Major Findings-22

5.2 Limitation-23

5.3 Future Research-23

REFERENCES-24