| This study aims, by comparing data representing two distinct languages, English and Arabic, to describe the underlying semantic-pragmatic structure of the argumentative prose of these two languages. Such description is based on the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) developed in the 1980's by William Mann and Sandra Thompson.;In this study, the data sets, representing English and Arabic newspaper editorials, quantitatively displayed a similar array of RST relations at all three levels of text decomposition. Another clear similarity between the two languages is the predominance of Elaboration at Level 1, where the title functions as the nucleus and the rest of the text as its satellite.;In addition, the differences are found, for instance, in the predominance of Evaluation and Interpretation in the Arabic texts than their counterparts in the English texts; and the fact that Elaboration was by far the leading relation in every English text, while Interpretation and Evaluation took that role in several Arabic texts.;Notwithstanding the similarities and differences in the overall rhetorical structure as measured by RST, major (qualitative) differences are found in the MANNER the propositions of these relations are presented. It was found that there is a number of rhetorical aspects characterizing the semantic fashions of expression in the two sets of texts. It has been demonstrated that the English texts display a specific, detailed, and explicit style conveyed in a relatively simple syntactic structure. By contrast, the presentation of propositions in the Arabic texts is characterized by an opposite array of stylistic features labelled as general, brief, and implicit, wrapped up in a complex syntactic structure. |
