A Pragma-dialectical Study Of The Argument By Appeal To Authority In News Commentaries In China Daily

News commentaries refer to the comments made on people,social events or social phenomena by newspapers.As the soul of mass media,news commentaries play an indispensable role in guiding public opinion and in maintaining the mainstream value systems.New commentaries are by no means as objective and neutral as they are supposed to be.owever,in writing news commentaries,news commentators tend to take into account all potential doubts,criticisms or disagreements that their potential readers may have in order to convince them of a certain stance on controversial issues more effectively.In essence,news commentary discourse that resorts to both rational evaluation and rhetorical strategies is a kind of argumentative discourse,with an ultimate goal to convince the audience in a reasonable or seemingly reasonable way.Until now,studies on news commentaries have always been conducted from the perspectives of linguistics and journalism,concentrating on the linguistic features,the persuasive effects,and types of arguments.owever,few studies have paid attention to the argumentative characteristic of news commentaries,which makes it difficult to grasp a full picture of the embedded persuasion mechanism in news commentaries.In light of the undue neglect,this paper attempts to analyze a particular argument frequently adopted by commentators in news commentaries,i.e.argument by appeal to authority.The general research aims,among others,are to reveal how this particular argument is typically used in news commentaries,and to highlight the importance of taking an argumentative perspective in analyzing and evaluating news commentaries.To realize these research aims,this research,taking the editorials released from January the1 st to December the 31 st in 2015 as research data,answers the following four interrelated research questions within the theoretical framework of Pragma-dialectics:(1)What are the extrinsic constraints imposed by theix communicative activity type of news commentaries? And what are the argumentative characteristics of news commentaries?(2)What subtypes and variants of argument by appeal to authority are typically used in news commentaries in China Daily?(3)ow does China Daily maneuver strategically by using argument by appeal to authority in its argumentative news commentaries?(4)What are the context-independent and context-dependent soundness criteria for argument by appeal to authority?As shown in the research results,first of all,news commentaries could be characterized as argumentative discourse consisting of such four stages as initial situation,starting points,argumentative means,and outcome.Based on the relevant rules in the book The Norms of Journalism in China,seven institutional preconditions for strategic maneuvering by appeal to authority could be identified,i.e.the channels to obtain the source of information,the authoritative sources,and the principles imposed on quotation.Secondly,the research data reveal that three subtypes of argument by appeal to authority are frequently adopted by China Daily,namely,appeal to invested authority,appeal to professional authority,and appeal to experiential authority.The argument by appeal to invested authority can be further divided into appeal to leaders and appeal to organizations.The argument by appeal to professional authority is composed of appeal to scholars and appeal to surveys.Thirdly,each subtype of arguments by appeal to authority embodies the commentator's manipulation of topical potential,audience demands and the presentational devices.Finally,taking into account both the context-independent soundness criteria and the institutional preconditions for strategic maneuvering by appeal to authority,this paper tentatively devises specific context-dependent soundness criteria.Following critical questions are contained: whether the authority is reliable,whether the opinion is quoted accurately,whether the parties agree on the authority,and whether the opinion is related to the topic at issue.The study has both theoretical and practical implications.Theoretically,it indicates that news commentaries could be approached from an argumentative perspective,particularly a pragma-dialectical perspective.Moreover,the context-dependent soundness criteria should be taken into consideration whenevaluating the soundness of the argument by appeal to authority adopted by news commentaries.Practically,this research could be a useful aid for news commentators.When new commentators employ certain kind of arguments by appeal to authority,they could manipulate the triangle of strategic maneuvering,and bear in mind the soundness criteria at the same time.