ABSTRACT

Rhetorical question is one of the common argumentative strategies employed by spokespersons at regular press conferences of foreign ministry. Based on the selestablished corpus which contains all foreign ministry spokespersons’ argumentative replies at the regular press conferences dated from February 2013 to June 2014, this paper analyzes and critically evaluates the rhetorical questions from the perspective of pragma-dialectics.

As is shown in the research results, rhetorical questions in foreign ministry spokespersons’ argumentative replies mainly occur in the opening and argumentation stages of an argumentation, with the function of proposing a common starting point and putting forward the argument. According to the differences in syntactical characteristics, rhetorical questions as argumentative strategies can be divided into three types: positive questions (implying negative answers), negative questions (implying positive answers) and specific questions, with three corresponding functions: being expressive (anger, reproach, appreciation, etc.), representative (assertion) and directive (request, order, etc.),  respectively. However, in accordance with the rules for a reasonable discussion provided by pragma-dialectics, we find some explicit defects in rhetorical questions in foreign ministry spokespersons’ argumentative replies. 

Key words: Foreign Ministry Spokespersons; Argumentative Replies; Rhetorical Question; Pragma-Dialectics

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter One  INTRODUCTION-1

Chapter Two  LITERATURE REVIEW-3

2.1 Study on Foreign Ministry Spokespersons’ Replies-3

2.1.1 Introduction to foreign ministry spokespersons-3

2.1.2 Previous studies on foreign ministry spokespersons’ replies-4

2.2 Studies on Rhetorical Questions-5

2.2.1 Introduction to rhetorical questions-5

2.2.2 Previous studies on rhetorical questions in the argumentative context-5

2.3 Summary-6

Chapter Three  RESEARCH DESIGN-7

3.1Theoretical Foundation-7

3.2 Research Objective and Questions-8

3.3 Data Collection-9

3.4 Research Method-9

Chapter Four  RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS-11

4.1 Types of Rhetorical Questions in Foreign Ministry Spokespersons’ Argumentative Replies.-11

4.1.1 Positive question-11

4.1.2 Negative question-12

4.1.3 Specific question-13

4.2 Rhetorical Functions of Rhetorical Questions in Foreign Ministry Spokespersons’ Argumentative Replies-14

4.2.1 Expressive and representative function-14

4.2.2 Directive function-16

4.3 Rhetorical and Dialectical Evaluation of Rhetorical Questions-17

4.4 Fallacies with Rhetorical Questions-20

Chapter Five  CONCLUSION-23

5.1 Major Findings-23

5.2 Implications-24

5.3 Limitations and Further Research-24

REFERENCES-26