Rhetorical Structure Analysis Of English Argumentative Texts

Based on subjective evaluation of a problem, argumentative text is one of the text types that is intended to persuade and convince the reader to believe in, accept, or at least to entertain a particular opinion, standpoint or proposition. Due to this function, argumentative text has relatively steady structure and format. AS an important genre of text, both the reading and writing of it are frequently encountered by English language learners. However, many of them cannot get the main idea and purpose of the whole text due to poor mastering of the over-all structure when reading an argumentative text. Correspondingly, many students may meet with the problems that the main idea is ambiguous, the sentences are illogic and the paragraphs are poorly organized during the argumentative writing. Thus, studying on argumentative text structure is of great importance in improving students’ability in both reading and writing the argumentative text.Traditionally, class instruction of English texts is mainly through intensively explaining the whole text of the textbook in Chinese colleges. Currently, Reading and Writing series of New Horizon College English are widely adopted textbook for intensive reading in most colleges. Of the whole texts in these textbooks, argumentative texts take a high proportion. And the reading and writing of argumentative texts are also frequently examined in various kinds of tests (such as final exam of each semester, CET-4,6, TEM-4,8, IELTS, etc.). In addition, learning argumentative text is important for us to express opinions and to be informative of all kinds of comments.Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST, for short)"is a theory of text organization and analysis primarily proposed by American scholars William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson based on the frame work of Systemic Functional Theory"(liu ShiZhu, Zhang Zheng,2003:21). Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST, for short) is "a theory of text organization which provides a framework for an analysis of text "(Mann and Thompson,1987:91). It emphasizes on text structure rather than grammatical and lexical analysis. As a relatively integrated theoretical system,"RST owns a wide applicability that is fit for texts of a wide range of length and genres and can be used to analyze and describe various text structures comprehensively and uniformly"(Wang Wei,1995:55). To comprehend and analyze text from RST perspective can help students understand how an excellent argumentative text is organized and how to organize such a text in a deeper level. In the reading respect, students can form a clear and complete image of the text through the search of the overall structure. Then they can quickly and exactly get the main idea of the text. In the writing part, students can learn how to organize an argumentative text which is structurally complete, logically rigorous and clear in theme.In view of the above, this dissertation attempted to analyze the text structure of some excellent argumentative texts under the framework of Rhetorical Structure Theory, aiming to analyzing the rhetorical structure of the text and reveal how a well text is organized. To this end, five argumentative texts selected from the textbooks of New Horizon College English:Reading and Writing series Book1-Book4based on certain criteria were put to the RST for analysis. This study was set to investigate1) characteristics of excellent English argumentative texts at macro structure level;2) structural characteristics displayed in the layout of excellent English argumentative texts.The thesis primarily performed RST analysis on the selected5argumentative texts (total words:4039) using an analytical RST Tool and make RST tree for the texts. Then, frequency of RST relations, root rode distribution, arrow directions were put to quantitative research regarding the macro structure. While qualitative analysis was done as to the global structure of five texts. Later, the dissertation respectively displayed the RST tree and certain qualitative analysis with respect to the opening paragraph(s), the middle paragraph(s), the concluding paragraph(s) and the nucleus of the whole text with purpose of illustrating structural features of the layout of the text more visually.The macro structure analysis of the text denotes that:(1)7relations, including Antithesis, Evidence, Elaboration, Interpretation, Concession, Evaluation and Justify enjoy a considerably high frequency of occurrence;(2)5different global structure patterns were explored at the upper level(s) of the selected texts, and3of them are similar;(3) root node distribution tend to be located at the beginning of the selected texts by the writers;(4) the overwhelming majority are mononuclear structures with a percentage of89.9%, while multinuclear ones only amount to10.1%;(5) among mononuclear relations, proportion for the forward and backward arrow directions are:61.4%:38.6%. Findings concerning the layout analysis are mainly:(1) English augmentative text tends to place the nucleus of the text (or thesis statements) in the rear of the opening after the setting information in terms of Background or Preparation relation.(2) leaf nodes of the RST tree for the body paragraphs are frequently located in the front or near-front of the text;(3) four different closing methods in terms of relations namely Evaluation, Summary, Enablement and Circumstance are employed to draw a convincing conclusion which is short and concise.(4) leaf nodes of body paragraphs and the conclusion of the whole text are not just simple repetition of the text nucleus.Finally, based on research findings, the thesis elaborated their implications to the reading and writing of English argumentative text in brief and the guiding significance to the teaching of reading of writing of English argumentative text.