| Based on the pragma-dialectics put forward by van Eemeren and Grootendorst,the present paper explores the news commentaries about Sino-US trade conflict in The New York Times,aiming to answer the following three research questions:(1)In The New York Times,what opinions or standpoints are uttered about the trade war between China and the U.S.?(2)What argument strategies are used to support these opinions?(3)According to the pragma-dialectics,are there any violations of the critical discussion rules? If yes,what are they?After a research to the above three research questions,some findings are concluded as follows:(1)In The New York Times,comments on the trade war between the U.S.and China are mainly made on five aspects: comments on China to discuss whether China will win the trade war and breaks the world economic order;comments on president Trump’s trade actions and their effects;comments on the motivation of the U.S.to launch a trade war and the impact of American actions on the trade war;comments on the actions from both sides;and comments on the trade war itself.Among them,the comments on president Trump take the largest percentage,the comments on the trade war itself share the least proportion,and the comments on other three aspects take amiddle percentage.From the results,it can be found that The News York Times mainly focuses on president Trump’s trade actions and their effects.(2)Three types of argument scheme are used in the defence of the opinions:symptomatic argument scheme,causal argument scheme,and analogy argument scheme.Among them,symptomatic argument scheme is the most one that has been used,the causal argument scheme is the second,and the analogy argument scheme is the least.This result shows that in order to relate the argument with its standpoints,the commentators mainly use symptomatic argument scheme to support their opinions.(3)Four types of rules are violated in the defence of the opinions: argument scheme rule,validity rule,relevance rule,and usage rule.Among them,argument scheme rule is the most one that has been violated,validity rule is the second,relevance rule is the third,and usage rule is the least.From this result,it can be drawn that argument scheme rule is often violated for the disguise of unreasonableness,because it is not easy to be distinguished.This study not only enriches the application of pragma-dialectics,but also offers an optional approach for the study of news commentaries. |
