From The Structure Of Argumentation Discourse To Its Single Argument

As one of the most important discourse genres, the phenomenon of argumentation shows itself in many different fields such as economics, psychology, politics, entertainment, education, law as well as many natural science disciplines. It is a vital way for people to communicate and cooperate with others, interact with the world and conduct social life. Since the very beginning of academic research, argumentation has all along been attached great importance to. The earliest argumentation study can date back to the "Greek Antiquity" when Aristotle proposed his famous syllogism. Thereafter, many scholars and experts devoted themselves to this field and approached this topic from philosophical, rhetoric, logical and other perspectives, leaving us abundant significant achievements.By researching and modifying relevant theories on written argumentation discourse study, the author manages to propose a new argumentation analyzing strategy and then conducts a sample analysis by applying the new strategy to David Hume's famous moral philosophical argumentation "Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature". All these efforts aim at a new strategy on argumentation structure analysis in order to complement the current argumentation study. This thesis consists of five chapters.The first chapter "Introduction" introduces the significance of argumentation study and major features of argumentation.The second chapter conducts a detailed literature review in the field of argumentation study, and defines some major terms for the convenience of later research.Next the third chapter proposes the new analysis strategy. This strategy consists of two major perspectives, a macro-and a micro-perspective. For the macro-perspective, the author combines Pro. Liao Qiuzhong's argumentation structure theory and Frans van Eemeren and Rob Grootendorst's theory in this field into one integrate and systematic strategy, which aims to figure out the overall structure of written argumentation discourse and locate every single argument. As to the micro-perspective, the author applies Toulmin's "layout of argument" theory to every single argument found out in last step and gives them a detailed analysis of their argument scheme.Then in chapter four, the author applies the newly proposed strategy to David Hume's famous article Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature. This sample analysis conducted is to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the newly constructed framework.After this theory to empirical progress, we draw the following conclusions in chapter five:1) This strategy insists that argumentation discourse analysis should start from the whole text and divide the text into core part and periphery part, which will be processed separately. This suggestion is practical and scientific.2) This new strategy combines argumentation structure analysis with argument scheme analysis into one strategy. This macro to micro method can make good use of each perspective's strength and lead to an all-sided and thorough analysis of written argumentation discourse.