Fallacies In Chinese English Majors’Argumentative Essays

The "lack of thought" of Chinese English Majors (Huang,1998; Gao,1999; Wen&Zhou,2006) inspires some scholars to study thinking features of Chinese English majors, through the observation of their argumentative essays (Wen&Liu.2006;Chai,2009). This study, under the guidance of Pragma-dialectics and Tuolmin’s rhetorical argumentation theory, identifies the reasoning fallacies and their causes in English majors’argumentative essays, to explore the sticking point of "lack of thought"Pragma-dialectics, aiming at a better resolution of the two parties’ conflicts in an argumentation, sheds light on our understanding of students’ reasoning fallacies, for the theory proposed Ten Commandments the two parties should abide by,whose violation leads to corresponding reasoning fallacies. Given the characters of Chinese English majors’argumentative essays, Pragma-dialectics’four stages in arguing and Ten Commandments are modified as three stages and seven commandments. Toulmin’s model, for its fully layout of6-element reasoning process, helps us to identify how the students observe the commandments or violate them and thus produce fallacies.This study takes150English argumentative essays as data and displays their reasoning processes according to Toulmin’s model. By observing the commandment abidance, we identifies twelve types of fallacies in seven groups:(1) concerning standpoint:straw man fallacy;(2) concerning the relevance of argumentation:pathetic fallacy and irrelevant argumentation fallacy;(3) concerning unexpressed premise: denying an unexpressed premise fallacy;(4) concerning starting point of the argumentation:circular reasoning fallacy:(5) concerning argument scheme:appeal to irrelevant authority fallacy, faulty analogy fallacy and hasty generalization fallacy;(6) concerning the validity of the argumentation:composition fallacy and division fallacy;(7) concerning the usage of language:unclearness fallacy and ambiguity fallacy.In every fallacy, this study also analyzes the cause and tentatively suggests some measures to avoid these fallacies.