Intercollegiate Debate Discourse: From A Perspective Of Speech Activity Type

The present thesis makes a tentative research on debate discourse as a particular type of speech activity (institutional discourse). In spite of its popularity on university campus, this speech event remains practically untouched upon in the corpus of conversational discourse, perhaps for it is notoriously tinged with traditional sophistry and logical fallacy. The present analysis shows a shift of concern and offers a new perspective on the conflict interaction of debate in terms of speech activity type. The present research gains a pragmatic insight to examine the discursive features of verbal argumentation, thus having worked through verbal description toward a rich appreciation of this institutional discourse. In light of the descriptive analysis, the present author has also identified some interactional strategies for effective argumentation and persuasion.