ABSTRACT

The press conferences of China’s foreign ministry play a crucial role in posting diplomatic message and expressing China’s internal and external policies and standpoints of vital matters concerned. There is no doubt that as the mouthpiece of China’s foreign ministry, the spokespersons bear a more important function of persuading others to accept these policies and standpoints naturally in a reasonable and effective way. Studies on the spokespersons’ replies contribute a better defense of national standpoints and rational image and a better enhancement of international credibility. And due to its characteristics of practicality and argumentation, pragmatic argumentation is widely used in the spokespersons’ replies.

Current studies on the spokespersons’ replies at the foreign ministry’s press conferences mainly focus on the perspective of politics, communication, linguistics or pragmatics while their argumentative character is always ignored. This research aims to identify and analyze the use of pragmatic argumentation in China’s foreign ministry spokespersons’ replies based on the basic argument scheme of it. Furthermore, the complex pragmatic argumentation would be classified into three main categories on the basis of three argument schemes. They are pragmatic argumentation based on a symptomatic relation, pragmatic argumentation based on analogy and pragmatic argumentation based on causality.Furthermore, different critical questions in the pragma-dialectical theory would be asked to evaluate the three types of pragmatic argumentation applied in specific cases to help defend the standpoint better.

Key words: China’s foreign ministry spokespersons’ reply; Pragmatic argumentation; Argument scheme; Critical question

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABSTRACT

摘要

Chapter OneINTRODUCTION-1

1.1 Research Background-1

1.2 Aim and Significance-2

1.3 Organization of the Thesis-2

Chapter TwoLITERATURE REVIEW-4

2.1 Studies on China’s foreign ministry spokespersons’ replies at the press conferences-4

2.2 Studies on Pragmatic Argumentation-5

2.3 Summary-6

Chapter ThreeRESEARCH DESIGN-7

3.1 Theoretical Assumptions-7

3.1.1 China’s foreign ministry spokespersons’ replies as argumentative discourse-7

3.1.2 General Argument Scheme of Pragmatic argumentation-8

3.1.3 Different Types of Argumentation Based on the Argument Scheme-9

3.1.4 Pragmatic Argumentation Supplemented by the Three Different Types of Argumentation-10

3.2 Research Questions-10

3.3 Data Collections-11

Chapter FourRESULTS AND DISCUSSION-12

4.1 Pragmatic Argumentation Based on a Symptomatic Relation-12

4.1.1 The Identification and Analysis of pragmatic argumentation based on a symptomatic relation-12

4.1.2 Evaluation of pragmatic argumentation based on a symptomatic relation-14

4.2 Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Analogy-16

4.2.1 The Identification and Analysis of pragmatic argumentation based on analogy-16

4.2.2 Evaluation of pragmatic argumentation based on analogy-17

4.3 Pragmatic Argumentation Based on Causality-18

4.3.1 The Identification and Analysis of pragmatic argumentation based on causality-18

4.3.2 Evaluation of pragmatic argumentation based on causality-21

Chapter FiveCONCLUSIONS-23

5.1 Major Findings-23

5.2 Implication-24

5.3 Limitations-24

5.4 Future Research-24

REFERENCES-25