{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19422"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/19422","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"Argumentation pragmatics, text analysis, and contrastive rhetoric","abstract":"The contrastive rhetoric hypothesis (Kaplan, 1966) predicts that language users across cultures will vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse. The problem for contrastive rhetoric research is to develop a method for reliably describing this variation. To this end, a number of methods of text analysis have been proposed that claim to describe the linguistic and discoursal features crucial to coherent interpretations of text. In this dissertation, I review these methods and then present an alternative adapted from argumentation pragmatics (Ducrot et al., 1980) and the model of discourse structure proposed by Roulet et al. (1985). Ducrot's theory rests on the observation that utterances in sequence are describable as having one of two functions--that of being an argument for some conclusion or a conclusion from some argument(s). Roulet proposes a hierarchical model of discourse having three constituent types: acts, moves, and exchanges. To test the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, using this method of analysis, I analyzed twenty lead editorials each from the The Times of India, The Singapore Straits Times, and The New York Times. These texts represent three distinct varieties of English from three different cultural settings (Kachru, 1986) and as such allow for testing the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. The results of these analyses do not support the hypothesis that language users across cultures vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse.","abstract_html":"The contrastive rhetoric hypothesis (Kaplan, 1966) predicts that language users across cultures will vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse. The problem for contrastive rhetoric research is to develop a method for reliably describing this variation. To this end, a number of methods of text analysis have been proposed that claim to describe the linguistic and discoursal features crucial to coherent interpretations of text. In this dissertation, I review these methods and then present an alternative adapted from argumentation pragmatics (Ducrot et al., 1980) and the model of discourse structure proposed by Roulet et al. (1985). Ducrot&#x27;s theory rests on the observation that utterances in sequence are describable as having one of two functions--that of being an argument for some conclusion or a conclusion from some argument(s). Roulet proposes a hierarchical model of discourse having three constituent types: acts, moves, and exchanges. To test the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, using this method of analysis, I analyzed twenty lead editorials each from the The Times of India, The Singapore Straits Times, and The New York Times. These texts represent three distinct varieties of English from three different cultural settings (Kachru, 1986) and as such allow for testing the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. The results of these analyses do not support the hypothesis that language users across cultures vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Kenkel, James Michael"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Linguistics","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Kachru, Yamuna"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011-05-07T12:07:01Z","date_published":"2011-05-07T12:07:01Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:12Z","subjects":["Education, Bilingual and Multicultural","Language, Linguistics","Speech Communication"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Copyright 1991 Kenkel, James Michael"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9210859","(UMI)AAI9210859"],"render_values":[{"text":"AAI9210859","href":null,"code":true},{"text":"(UMI)AAI9210859","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19422","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Kachru, Yamuna"]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Kenkel, James Michael"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2011-05-07T12:07:01Z","10000-01-01","1991"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Linguistics"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Education, Bilingual and Multicultural","Language, Linguistics","Speech Communication"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 1991 Kenkel, James Michael"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9210859","(UMI)AAI9210859","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19422"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["The contrastive rhetoric hypothesis (Kaplan, 1966) predicts that language users across cultures will vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse. The problem for contrastive rhetoric research is to develop a method for reliably describing this variation. To this end, a number of methods of text analysis have been proposed that claim to describe the linguistic and discoursal features crucial to coherent interpretations of text. In this dissertation, I review these methods and then present an alternative adapted from argumentation pragmatics (Ducrot et al., 1980) and the model of discourse structure proposed by Roulet et al. (1985). Ducrot's theory rests on the observation that utterances in sequence are describable as having one of two functions--that of being an argument for some conclusion or a conclusion from some argument(s). Roulet proposes a hierarchical model of discourse having three constituent types: acts, moves, and exchanges. To test the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, using this method of analysis, I analyzed twenty lead editorials each from the The Times of India, The Singapore Straits Times, and The New York Times. These texts represent three distinct varieties of English from three different cultural settings (Kachru, 1986) and as such allow for testing the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. The results of these analyses do not support the hypothesis that language users across cultures vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse.","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T12:07:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9210859.pdf: 7467647 bytes, checksum: 33b0b463bdb240c43181203a8afe344b (MD5) Previous issue date: 1991","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:36:51Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:15:00-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Argumentation pragmatics, text analysis, and contrastive rhetoric"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Kachru, Yamuna"],"dc:creator":["Kenkel, James Michael"],"dc:date":["2011-05-07T12:07:01Z","10000-01-01","1991"],"dc:description":["The contrastive rhetoric hypothesis (Kaplan, 1966) predicts that language users across cultures will vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse. The problem for contrastive rhetoric research is to develop a method for reliably describing this variation. To this end, a number of methods of text analysis have been proposed that claim to describe the linguistic and discoursal features crucial to coherent interpretations of text. In this dissertation, I review these methods and then present an alternative adapted from argumentation pragmatics (Ducrot et al., 1980) and the model of discourse structure proposed by Roulet et al. (1985). Ducrot's theory rests on the observation that utterances in sequence are describable as having one of two functions--that of being an argument for some conclusion or a conclusion from some argument(s). Roulet proposes a hierarchical model of discourse having three constituent types: acts, moves, and exchanges. To test the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis, using this method of analysis, I analyzed twenty lead editorials each from the The Times of India, The Singapore Straits Times, and The New York Times. These texts represent three distinct varieties of English from three different cultural settings (Kachru, 1986) and as such allow for testing the contrastive rhetoric hypothesis. The results of these analyses do not support the hypothesis that language users across cultures vary in the means they use to construct coherent discourse.","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T12:07:01Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9210859.pdf: 7467647 bytes, checksum: 33b0b463bdb240c43181203a8afe344b (MD5) Previous issue date: 1991","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T14:36:51Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:15:00-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"],"dc:identifier":["AAI9210859","(UMI)AAI9210859","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/19422"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 1991 Kenkel, James Michael"],"dc:subject":["Education, Bilingual and Multicultural","Language, Linguistics","Speech Communication"],"dc:title":["Argumentation pragmatics, text analysis, and contrastive rhetoric"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Linguistics"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:12Z"}