Analysis Of Argument Model Construction In News Discourse:a Perspective Of Toulmin’s Theories

Along with the development of science and technology, we now entered the information era filled with all kinds of information, which influences people’s life, work and study through different mediums. Among them, newspaper, as one of the most important channel in accessing to information, brings a great deal of important information of different places and countries to us in its economical while convenient way. Besides providing information for us, newspaper also proclaims its own opinions over the current social affairs in the name of the newspaper or the commentator personal to affect people’s recognition and thus reach the aim of leading public opinions.Regarding to the argument, it is one of the important model used by rhetors for the aim of persuasion. During the ancient Greek times, Aristotle, the father of classical rhetoric, put forward the concept of syllogism-the classical form of argument, which is still widely used in persuasion. In Aristotle’s words, syllogism consists of three parts:the major premise, the minor premise, and the conclusion. But in regard to rhetoric, Aristotle maintains that enthymeme (or rhetorical syllogism) is the heart and soul of rhetorical argument, in which one of the three constituents in syllogism is omitted. With the development of rhetoric, argument studies revive in the contemporary times. Scholars of different fields begin their studies on argument theories from different perspectives and put forward their own theories of argument and argument models. Among them, English philosopher Stephen Toulmin proposes his own argument model theory, which gains wide attention from rhetorical field and profoundly influences the argument studies. The argument theory of Stephen Toulmin includes argument model theory and the new terms of argument like qualifier, argument field, field-dependent, and so on. In Toulmin’s argument theory, he develops a new argument system consisting of two triads of elements, showing how evidence and assumptions combined to support the claim. The first triad is the main line of the argument, including data, warrant and claim; the second triad consists of elements that pertain to the force of the argument, including backing, rebuttal, and qualifier. Through such an approach, we can see the structure of the argument clearer and better analyze the structure of the argument, which is helpful for our understanding of argument and its construction in discourses.In this thesis, the writer combines the editorial-a sub-style of news discourse-with Stephen Toulmin’s argument model to study the argument and its functions in this communicative discourse. Through the analysis of argument structure and specific argument ways in editorial, this thesis shows how argument constructed in news discourse clearly and thus clearly presents readers with argument process, which is good for them in making sensible choice of useful information. This thesis tries to analyze news editorials from the angle of argument model with the hope of enriching the studies of news discourse and its sub-styles as well as providing a new perspective for news discourse study.