"We Believe That…": A Pragma-Dialectics Study of Argumentative Indicators Used in Student Debate Programs

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-120-3_5How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Argumentative Indicator; Argumentation Stage; Student Debate

Abstract

The current study intends to examine the argumentative indicators produced by second language learners in a university-level student debate competition and the functions of the indicators in each stage of argumentation (confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion). The researchers employed a descriptive qualitative case study design. The data were collected from two university student debate teams' speeches (government and opposition teams) produced in Indonesia's Java Overland Varsities English Debate (JOVED) debate competition. The researchers recorded and transcribed the debaters' speeches and analyzed the transcriptions to determine the types of argumentative indicators and their purposes at each argumentation stage. The findings showed that students used twelve argumentative indicators in their confrontation, opening, argumentation, and conclusion stages, indicating rich cognitive processes in debate situations. More specifically, the debaters used propositional behavior indicator, mixed-dispute indicator, and indicator of emphasis expression in their confrontation stage, as well as using indicators of resistance and indicators of proposals in the opening stage. Moreover, the debaters used diverse argumentative indicators in their argumentation stage: comparison, symptomatic argumentation indicators, non-univocal subordinate argumentation indicators, univocal-non-univocal various argumentation indicators, non-univocal cumulative coordinating argumentation indicators, and indicators of acceptance of propositions with restrictions. The debaters employed two indicators in their conclusion stage: the government side (protagonist/affirmative) maintains or withdraws their standpoint, while the opposition side (antagonist/negative) maintains or withdraws their doubt. The results are expected to contribute to the body of knowledge focusing on effective argumentation strategies.

Copyright

© 2024 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Durotun Nasihah
AU  - Nanang Zubaidi
AU  - Nova Ariani
PY  - 2023
DA  - 2023/09/28
TI  - "We Believe That…": A Pragma-Dialectics Study of Argumentative Indicators Used in Student Debate Programs
BT  - Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on English Language Teaching (ICON-ELT 2023)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 29
EP  - 42
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-120-3_5
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-120-3_5
ID  - Nasihah2023
ER  -