An investigation into linguistic features of argumentative utterances in the american tv series

THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES HỒ HẢI XUÂN TRANG AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ARGUMENTATIVE UTTERANCES IN THE AMERICAN TV SERIES “THE LAST SHIP” Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 822.02.01 MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES Da Nang, 2020 THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES HỒ HẢI XUÂN TRANG AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ARGUMENTATIVE UTTERANCES IN THE AMERICAN TV SERIES “THE LAST SHIP” Major: ENGLISH LINGUISTICS Code: 822.02.01 MASTER THESIS IN LINGUISTICS AND CULTURAL STUDIES OF FOREIGN COUNTRIES SUPERVISOR: HỒ THỊ KIỀU OANH, Assoc Prof Dr Da Nang, 2020 ii ABSTRACT This thesis titled “An Investigation into the Linguistic Features of Argumentative Utterances in the American TV Series “The Last Ship”” studies the linguistic features of argumentative utterances used by the characters in the American TV series “The Last Ship” The methods used are observational, descriptive and analytic method accompanied by the qualitative and quantitative approach The analysis is based on 100 pilot samples and 200 final samples The findings of the study show that the strength of an argumentative utterance is the combination of the choice of both argument types including valid argument and invalid argument, and linguistic features in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features Depending on the situational context in the debate, the choice whether to use which types of argument as well as the suitable sentence structures, the modality or the types of illocutionary acts affect the force and the effect of the argumentative utterances The findings of the thesis could help learners of English as a foreign language learn better and be able to identify speaker’s implicature and realize arguments through illocutionary acts which are used frequently in real life English debates iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Statement of authorship i Abstract ii Table of contents iii Abbreviations vii List of tables viii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1.1 RATIONALE 1.2 SCOPE OF STUDY 1.3 AIMS AND OBJECTIVES 1.3.1 Aims 1.3.2 Objectives 1.4 RESEARCH QUESTIONS 1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY 1.6 ORGANIZATION OF THE STUDY CHAPTER LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.1 REVIEW OF PREVIOUS STUDIES 2.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 2.2.1 Critical Thinking 2.2.2 Arguments 2.2.2.1 Concept of Argument 2.2.2.2 Entailment 10 iv 2.2.2.3 Types of Argument 11 2.2.3 Modality 13 2.2.3.1 Epistemic Modality 14 2.2.3.2 Volitional Modality 15 2.2.4 Pragmatic Markers 16 2.2.5 Speech Acts 17 2.2.6 Definition of Politeness 19 2.2.7 Some Viewpoints on Linguistic Politeness 20 2.2.7.1 Grice’s Conversational Principles 20 2.2.7.2 Lakoff’s Rules of Pragmatic Competence 21 2.2.7.3 Leech’s Maxims of Politeness 22 2.2.7.4 Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory 23 2.2.8 Arguments as a Face Threatening Act 24 2.2.9 Implicature 25 2.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY 25 CHAPTER RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY 3.1 RESEARCH DESIGN 27 3.2 RESEARCH PROCEDURES 27 3.3 RESEARCH METHODS 27 3.4 SAMPLING 28 3.5 DATA COLLECTION 29 3.6 DATA ANALYSIS 30 3.7 RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY 31 v CHAPTER FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 4.1 ARGUMENT TYPES USED IN THE ARGUMENTS IN TV SERIES “THE LAST SHIP” 32 4.1.1 Valid Arguments 32 4.1.2 Invalid Arguments 36 4.2 LINGUISTIC FEATURES EXPRESSED IN THE ARGUMENTS IN TV SERIES “THE LAST SHIP” 38 4.2.1 Pilot Results 38 4.2.1.1 Syntactic Features Expressed in the Arguments in TV Series “The Last Ship” 38 4.2.1.2 Semantic Features Expressed in the Arguments in TV Series “The Last Ship” 41 4.2.1.3 Pragmatic Features Expressed in the Arguments in TV Series “The Last Ship” 45 a Representative 46 b Directive 54 c Commissive 59 d Expressive 63 e Declaration 65 4.2.2 Final Results 66 4.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY 70 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 5.1 SUMMARY OF MAJOR FINDINGS 71 5.2 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY 72 vi 5.2.1 Theoretical Contributions 72 5.2.2 Practical Contributions 73 5.2.2.1 For English Learners 73 5.2.2.2 For English Teachers 74 5.3 DELIMTATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES 74 REFERENCES QUYẾT ĐỊNH GIAO ĐỀ TÀI LUẬN VĂN (bản sao) vii ABBREVIATIONS - C(s) : Conclusion(s) - CP : Cooperative Principles - FTA(s) : Face Threatening Act(s) - F : Frequency - InA(s) : Invalid Argument(s) - N : Number - P(s) : Premise(s) - PP : Politeness Principles - VA(s) : Valid Argument(s) viii LIST OF TABLES Number Name of Table Page Table 4.1 The Frequency of Argument Types in TV Series “The Last Ship” 32 Table 4.2 Syntactic Distribution of Argumentative Utterances 39 in TV Series “The Last Ship” Table 4.3 The Frequency of Argument Types in TV Series “The Last Ship” 67 in 200 Later Samples Table 4.4 Syntactic Distribution of Argumentative Utterances in TV Series “The Last Ship” in 200 Later Samples 67 66 Mike: What the hell are you doing? Chandler: That's a direct order We'll ride off into the sunset (P) with that package It has been my sincere honor serving with you all This will be my final (C) transmission My position is hereby terminated Mike, you are the new captain of Nathan James (Steinberg and Welsh, 2014, The Last Ship, season 1, episode 3) (Forever Dreaming Retrieved April 2nd, 2019 from http://transcripts.foreverdreaming.org/) In this example, Chandler gives all the right to decide to Mike by perform two consecutive declarative acts: resigning from the captain position: “My position is hereby terminated” and appointing Mike to be the new captain: “you are the new captain of Nathan James.” Because of the characteristic of this speech act is formal, the structures used in declaratives are simple sentences The use of hereby helps increase the formality of the declarative and ensure the possibility of the action; therefore most of this type of speech act belongs to epistemic modality Declaratives are most commonly found in the conclusion of an interlocutor to close up an argument yet very seldom to find in the samples that have been collected, accounting for only N=1#F=1% This may be because declaratives put high imposition on the Hearer to change the world according to the Speaker’s wish This violates the negative politeness strategies in speech acts in general and in arguments in particular 4.2.2 Final Results To guarantee the reliability and validity of the data, after carrying out the steps of 100 first pilot corpus analysis as mentioned above, I analyzed 200 more samples collected in the same context, produced by the same characters in the same series but in different timeline to see whether the result remains the same over time or not 67 The results of the 200 later corpora show that there is no big difference from the first 100 pilot samples The data of those could be seen in table 4.3 (the types of the arguments), table 4.4 (syntactic distribution), chart 4.3 (epistemic and volitional modality distribution) and chart 4.4 (pragmatic distribution) as follow: Table 4.3: The Frequency of Argument Types in TV Series “The Last Ship” in 200 Later Samples Frequency Argument types Complete Form Total Shortened Form Valid arguments 41 20.5% 127 63.5% 168 84.0% Invalid arguments 16 8.0% 16 8.0% 32 16.0% Total 57 28.5% 143 71.5% 200 100% Table 4.4: Syntactic Distribution of Argumentative Utterances in TV Series “The Last Ship” in 200 Later Samples Declarative N F Simple Sentence 66 33% Compound Sentence 32 16% Complex Sentence 21 10.5% Total 119 59.5% Interrogative N F 23 11.5% 18 9% 13 6.5% 54 27.0% Imperative Total N F N F 15 7.5% 104 52.0% 12 6% 62 31.0% 0% 34 17.0% 27 13.5% 200 100% 68 Epistemic Modality N=116#F=58% Volitional Modality N=84#F=42% Chart 4.3: Semantic Distribution of Modality of Argumentative Utterances in TV Series "The Last Ship" in 200 Later Samples 69 Directive N=63#F=31.5% Representative N=87#F=43.5% Declaration N=1#F=0.5% Expressive N=2#F=1% Commissive N=47#F=23.5% Chart 4.4: Pragmatic Distribution of Argumentative Utterances in TV Series "The Last Ship" in 200 Later Samples The first 100 pilot samples are collected in the scope of 10 episodes of season of the American TV series “The Last Ship” which was filmed and aired in 2014 The later 200 samples are also collected in the same TV series “The Last Ship” yet in different timeline: they are argumentative utterances in the arguments by the characters from season to season which are aired from 2015 to 2018 Despite the fact that the 200 final samples are collected in a different period of time, the final result and the pilot result show no significant difference in not only the frequency of argument types but also the linguistic features of argumentative utterances used in the American TV series “The Last Ship” in terms of syntax, 70 semantics and pragmatics Even though the first pilot samples and the later final samples are different in size (100 pilot samples and 200 final samples) and in time (pilot samples are in 2014 while final samples are from 2015 to 2018), the same result of the pilot and final samples could show the vadility and the reliability of the thesis 4.3 CHAPTER SUMMARY This chapter has presented the linguistic features covering syntactic, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of argumentative utterances used by the characters in the American TV series “The Last Ship” such as the syntactic distribution, some semantic characteristics of two typical kinds of modality, including epistemic and volitional modality, the frequency use of types of illocutionary acts are also discussed and analyzed in this chapter Each sample is analyzed under a certain situational context so that we could see the effect of the context on the use of argument language 71 CHAPTER CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS 5.1 SUMMARY OF MAJOR FINDINGS After the data analysis in the thesis, the following conclusions could be withdrawn: At syntactic level, argumentative utterances discussed in this thesis are classified into three labels: declarative, interrogative and imperative along with the three sentence structures: simple sentence, compound sentence and complex sentence Due to the characteristic of the argument conversation, it could be understood that the highest frequency of occurrence of declarative and simple sentence could help the interlocutors strengthen their premises and have a higher chance of winning in arguments At semantic level, argumentative utterances can be categorized into two main groups: epistemic modality and volitional modality As for epistemic modality which is more commonly used in argumentative conversation, they are to mark the Speaker’s judgment and commitment to the proposition of the utterance and to the listeners The scale of certainty depends on the reliability of evidences which are encoded as premises for strong or weak statements in the arguments With should, its obligation meaning is not as binding as it is with must With the different use of epistemic modality and volitional modality in arguments, the speaker could convey the different strength of his/her argument in different situations and different people that he/ she is arguing with In terms of validity, the validity of argument is determined by the logical connection between premises and conclusions A true premise could entail a true conclusion However, a false premise could also lead to a true conclusion More importantly, a true premise and a false conclusion could make up an invalid argument 72 At pragmatic level, the argumentative utterances are expressed in all types of speech acts: representatives, commissives, expressives, declarations, and directives Specifically, valid arguments are the most commonly expressed via the speech act of representative Ranking the second and third in the expression of argumentative utterances are the speech acts of directives and commissives The speech acts of expressives and declarations are not popularly used in argumentative conversations due to the need of avoiding imposition on the Hearer and of producing a convincing argument Besides the findings in terms of speech acts, there are also some conclusions involving politeness strategy choice in communication Because the utterances analyzed in the thesis are produced by Native American whose culture is individualistic culture, we could see the choice of language used in arguments in relation to this cultural characteristic Apart from the Social Distance between Speaker and Hearer, the Relative Power between Speaker and Hearer; the absolute Imposition Rank in a particular culture, the choice of which politeness strategy the interlocutors decide to use in argumentative conversations could be affected by the topic of the argument and the tension or the urgency of the argument that the interlocutors are in 5.2 IMPLICATIONS OF THE STUDY 5.2.1 Theoretical Contributions The findings of this thesis could help intercultural communicators of English understand the choice of politeness strategy in communication and help these interlocutors avoid culture shock since the politeness strategy in arguments that the interlocutors choose to use not only depends on the social distance and the relative power between them but also the argumentative topic and the atmosphere, the tension or the urgency of the argument As a result, the interlocutors could base on the above factors and especially the argument topic to decide the suitable politeness strategy This could contribute to the framework of politeness theory 73 suggested by Brown and Levinson (1987) and many other recent pragmatists as well as the governing factors related to the choice of politeness strategies in speech acts in general and in arguments in particular 5.2.2 Practical Contributions The qualitative results from the examination of the linguistic features of argumentative utterances used by the characters in TV series “The Last Ship” have laid the foundations for some implications to the English learning and teaching as follows: 5.2.2.1 For English Learners Firstly for the English learners; they should know the dimensions of the validity of the arguments in order to produce a valid argument so that they could make their arguments convincing in an argument In terms of syntactic, learners should know the differences between epistemic modality and volitional modality in order to indicate the appropriate degree of certainty to the content of their premises and conclusions in an argument and especially in the appropriate atmosphere of formal or informal discourse Moreover, the failure in analyzing the implicature of the utterance could make learners confused when making argumentative statements without awareness of the real intention of the interlocutors Understanding the meaning of the arguments and how to use them correctly requires not only knowledge of syntactic, semantic, but also of pragmatic features This suggests a need to provide the learners with pragmatic knowledge in general and knowledge in identifying the types of speech acts in particular More importantly, learners should study the relation among all the linguistic features by various ways; for example, by watching and discussing the conversations in movies, so that they can have a better insight into argumentative utterances in daily conversations used by native speakers of English Learning in this way can be said to be more meaningful than learning examples of arguments in isolation and out of context 74 The Vietnamese learners of English sooner or later should be equipped with the knowledge of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features that are used in arguments Thanks to this, they can make a good argumentative utterance in an argument in different situations as well as grasp the speaker’s intention in a certain communicative circumstance The study may help them identify speaker’s implicature and realize arguments through the illocutionary acts which are used frequently in real life English arguments Moreover, the findings in the arguing politeness strategy could give the learners of English more ways to produce polite argumentative utterances in daily communication including arguments 5.2.2.2 For English Teachers Finally, some implications could be put forward to the teachers of English Teachers should help learners know the rules of producing a valid argument in collaborating with suitable linguistic features of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic as well as give them the suitable materials and references for their self-study This could be done by encouraging learners to read written materials as well as watch films and programs in foreign languages of a reliable source Theory should go together with practice Therefore, teachers should also offer more chances for learners to apply theoretical knowledge to exercises or practical activities related to argument A popular activity in English classes is presentation in public or public speaking With the findings of this thesis, teachers of English should consider politeness aspect when teaching speaking and presenting skills for the students due to the fact that after presenting time, the discussion that goes after where they ask and answer questions about the presentation in fact is in form of an argument 5.3 DELIMITATIONS AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER STUDIES Within the scope of the study, just such linguistic features as syntactic, semantic and pragmatic ones are focused on; suprasegmental features like utterance stress, intonation of argumentative utterances have not been investigated 75 Additionally, due to the limited time, knowledge and references, the study has mainly examined some certain aspects of argumentative utterances like medical, political, military aspect Therefore, it has not dealt with other aspects such as social, environmental, educational Moreover, contrastive studies of linguistic features of argumentative utterances in films in two certain different languages namely English and Vietnamese have so far not studied yet Therefore, there still remain some other aspects for research I strongly suggest further studies in the following areas: - An investigation into intonation of argumentative utterances used in argumentative conversations in English - An investigation into argumentative utterances used in debates in social, environmental and educational issues - A contrastive analysis of linguistic features of argumentative utterances used in films in English and Vietnamese REFERENCES Allwood, J., Andersson, L & Dahl, O (1977) Logic in Linguistics Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Arista, S.D & Murni, S.M (2014) Language Functions Used by the Main Character in Sherlock Holmes II: A Game of Shadows Movie Jurnal Ilmiah Mahasiswa Fib, 4(8) Armstrong, W.S and Fogelin, R.J (2009) Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic (8th ed.) 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Retrieved April 8th, 2019 from https://www.springfieldspringfield.co.uk/ TopTVShows Retrieved April 1st , 2019 from http://toptvshows.io/the-last-ship-1-g ... ? ?An Investigation into the Linguistic Features of Argumentative Utterances in the American TV Series ? ?The Last Ship”” studies the linguistic features of argumentative utterances used by the characters.. .THE UNIVERSITY OF DANANG UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES HỒ HẢI XUÂN TRANG AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ARGUMENTATIVE UTTERANCES IN THE AMERICAN TV SERIES ? ?THE LAST... Investigation into the Linguistic Features of Argumentative Utterances in the American TV Series ? ?The Last Ship” 1.2 SCOPE OF THE STUDY The identification of the argument types used in the arguments in the