Investigating The Pragmatic Argumentation In American Public Hearings On Sino-US Trade Frictions:A Pragma-dialectical Approach

In recent years,the United States has frequently initiated anti-dumping,countervailing and safeguard investigations into China-imported products and various trade remedy measures were taken against China.As one of the main institutions designated by the U.S.government to investigate trade frictions with other countries or regions,the United States International Trade Commission(USITC)offers “independent” findings and suggestions on international trade friction cases to the United States Trade Representative(USTR),the Congress and the President of the United States.The findings and suggestions provided by the USITC,more often than not,are decisive to U.S.final decisions on these cases.Public hearings held by the USITC are an important investigation procedure through which the USITC draws conclusions.All relevant parties involved in a certain case are supposed to participate in the public hearing,to present testimonies and to provide evidences.The testimonies and evidences are intended to affect the final voting of the commissioners and thus final decisions on the cases.Up until now,little research has been done on the public hearings concerning Sino-US trade frictions,most of which focuses on the introduction of core procedures of the public hearings on Sino-US trade frictions.Although some of the little research has noted that discourse may play an important role in public hearings and the skilful use of discourse may affect the final results of the hearings,they do not bother exploring in what ways discourse works in this particular setting.In this thesis,we deem public hearing discourse on Sino-US trade frictions as a typical argumentative communication,because: participants representing China and the United States(the two parties of argumentation)put forward a series of arguments over core differences of opinions(such as laws and regulations,facts of injures and punitive measures)to convince the audience of accepting their standpoints.In view of its argumentative nature,an argumentative perspective is indispensable in a fully-fledged research on the public hearings on Sino-US trade frictions.Within the research framework of Pragma-Dialectics,this thesis analyses the testimonies of the petitioners in the public hearings on Sino-US trade frictions held by the USITC from 2015 to 2017,investigating the pragmatic argumentation frequently and typically adopted by the petitioners.Throughout the whole research,we intend to answer the following four research questions: 1.What institutional preconditions constrain the petitioners' testimonies in the context of the public hearings held by the USITC? 2.How is pragmatic argumentation prototypically used by the petitioners at the public hearings held by the USITC? 3.How do the petitioners maneuver strategically in using the pragmatic argumentation within the institutional context of the public hearings held by the USITC? 4.What general soundness criteria should be observed in using the pragmatic argumentation at the public hearings held by the USITC?As shown in the research results,the prototypical pragmatic argumentation in this institutional context can be presented as: 1.standpoint: trade measures should be carried out against imports from China in the current case;2.premise 1: carrying out the trade measures against imports from China would lead to positive results;3.premise 2: if carrying out the trade measures against imports from China would lead to positive results,then trade measures should be carried out.In their testimonies,the petitioners use pragmatic argumentation typically from three perspectives: problem,inherency and plan.These three stock issues correspond to three critical questions,respectively.The critical question of the “problem” type is “is there any trade problem in current case?” The critical question of the “inherency” type is “is the trade problem inherent in the status quo?” The critical question of the “plan” type is “can the trade measures solve the trade problems?” Taking into consideration the institutional context of the public hearings held by the USITC,this thesis evaluates the soundness of pragmatic argumentation in the public hearings on Sino-US trade frictions based on PragmaDialectics.The results show that the petitioners cannot always keep a balance between reasonableness and effectiveness in using pragmatic argumentation.To make their testimonies more effective,they are prone to ignore the reasonableness criteria which lead to various fallacies.