Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present work deals with the argumentation and persuasion found in the genre advertising and aims to highlight the importance of rhetoric in understanding, interpretation, analysis and production of texts in the classroom, enabling the experience in the educational environment to make it a learning space with expansion of knowledge and not just reproduction. By analyzing the persuasive elements found in this genre that reaches the classroom in various ways, including through the media, we create strategies that provide students conditions to become critical readers and writers. This study is a qualitative-interpretive and didactic and pedagogical application focus, your sample consists of advertisements that will be extracted from the media. Taking into account the characteristics that mark out, we will provide moments of analysis, sharing and interaction. To better contribute to the practice of the teacher in the classroom, this work is accompanied by an educational notebook with practical suggestions for activities involving the topics that will be discussed here. For both will report to some authors such as José Luiz Fiorin that privileges analysis of persuasive texts; the applied research within psychology and education, conducted by Schneuwly and Dolz , which aim to develop didactic sequences for the teaching and learning of speech genres as instruments of communication and social interaction; the modern theory of argumentation or New rhetoric, Perelman and Olbrechts founded by Tyteca -analyzing the reasoning transcribed in printed texts , among others. / O presente trabalho versa sobre a argumentação e a persuasão encontradas no gênero textual propaganda e tem por objetivo destacara importância da retórica para a compreensão, interpretação, análise e produção de textos em sala de aula, possibilitando que a vivência no ambiente educacional se transforme em momentos de aprendizagem com ampliação de conhecimentos e não apenas de reprodução.Ao analisar os elementos persuasivos encontrados nesse gênero textual, que chega até a sala de aula de diversas maneiras, inclusive através das mídias,iremos criar estratégias que proporcionem aos alunos condições para tornarem-se leitores e escritores críticos. Este estudo tem um enfoque qualitativo-interpretativo e de aplicação didático-pedagógica e sua amostra é composta por propagandas que foram extraídas da mídia. Levando-se em conta as características que demarcam esse gênero, iremos proporcionar momentos de análise, compartilhamento e interação. Para melhor contribuir com a prática do professor em sala de aula, este trabalho é acompanhado por um caderno pedagógico com sugestões de atividades práticas envolvendo os temas que aqui serão discutidos. Para tanto nos reportaremos aalguns autores, tais como, Fiorin, que privilegia análises de textos persuasivos; às pesquisas aplicadas no âmbito da psicologia e da educação, realizadas por Schneuwly e Dolz, que têm como objetivo o desenvolvimento de sequências didáticas para o ensino-aprendizagem dos gêneros do discurso como instrumentos de comunicação e interação social; à teoria moderna da argumentação ouNova retórica, fundada por Perelman e Olbrechts-Tyteca que analisam os raciocínios transcritos em textos impressos, dentre outros.

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No. of bitstreams: 1 thaisfernandessampaiodoutorado.pdf: 882530 bytes, checksum: c589047af991842814a2802956eb2e65 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2010-04-06 / FAPEMIG - Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Minas Gerais / Assumindo a perspectiva da Gramática das Construções Baseada no Uso (GOLDBERG, 1995; 2006; TOMASELLO, 2006), o presente trabalho tem por objetivo descrever e analisar a Construção de Estrutura Argumental do Português do Brasil, que licencia enunciados do tipo: (i) O estudante quebrou o braço; (ii) Meu tênis descolou o solado; (iii) Rubinho quebrou o carro; (iv) O combustível subiu o preço. Nossa proposta de análise deste fenômeno assume que esta Construção constitui um caso de desencontro (ou mismatch, nos termos de FRANCIS; MICHAELIS, 2000; MICHAELIS, 2004; TRAUGOTT, 2007) no número de papéis sintáticos e semânticos. Semanticamente, as sentenças destacadas acima possuem um único argumento – a entidade afetada – e, de fato, há no Português do Brasil (PB) o que poderíamos chamar de uma Construção Ergativa Canônica, que exemplifica um encontro perfeito entre a sintaxe da construção e a semântica do verbo: (v) O braço do estudante quebrou; (vi) O solado do meu tênis descolou; (vii) O carro do Rubinho quebrou; (viii) O preço do combustível subiu. Entretanto, aquela que nomeamos Construção de Argumento Cindido (CAC), apesar do seu único argumento semântico, apresenta dois argumentos sintáticos – um sujeito e um objeto direto. O sujeito da CAC corresponde ao elemento que, na Ergativa Canônica, é expresso como um adjunto nominal; e o núcleo do sujeito da Ergativa Canônica vira objeto direto na Construção de Argumento Cindido. Do ponto de vista semântico, o sujeito da CAC representa o TODO da entidade afetada e seu objeto corresponde a uma PARTE específica desta entidade. Nossa análise da semântica da construção será proposta com base na Semântica de Frames (FILLMORE, 1977; FILLMORE; JOHNSON; PETRUCK, 2003). Apesar das características – sintáticas, semânticas e discursivas – comuns, que nos levam a identificar a mesma Construção de Estrutura Argumental recobrindo todos os enunciados em (i) - (iv), é possível reconhecer neste conjunto quatro subgrupos. No primeiro, exemplo (i), temos usos linguísticos que se identificam diretamente com o que ficou conhecido na literatura como Possessor Raising. Nesse caso, há uma relação de posse inalienável, envolvendo um possuidor humano e uma das partes do seu corpo. No segundo subgrupo, representado por (ii), a relação, ainda de posse inalienável, se estabelece entre um artefato e uma de suas partes. No terceiro grupo, exemplo (iii), verificamos uma relação entre um possuidor humano e um objeto possuído; nesse caso, uma relação de posse alienável. Finalmente, no quarto grupo, enunciado (iv), se estabelece uma relação entre um item e uma de suas propriedades. Utilizando dados reais de uso lingüístico, nosso estudo descreve e analisa cada um desses subgrupos, reunindo evidências a favor da idéia de que a CAC é uma Construção de Estrutura Argumental do Português, pragmaticamente motivada. Considerando os resultados da análise, apresentamos uma proposta de formalização da CAC, nos termos da Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SAG, 2010; MICHAELLIS, 2009). / Adopting the perspective of Usage-Based Construction Grammar (GOLDBERG, 1995; 2006; TOMASELLO, 2006), this study aims to describe and analyze the Argument Structure Construction in Brazilian Portuguese, which allows sentences such as: (i) O estudante quebrou o braço; (ii) Meu tênis descolou o solado; (iii) Rubinho quebrou o carro; (iv) O combustível subiu o preço. Our analysis of this phenomenon assumes that this Construction illustrates a case of mismatch (FRANCIS; MICHAELIS, 2000; MICHAELIS, 2004; TRAUGOTT, 2007) between the number of syntactic and semantic roles. Semantically, the highlighted sentences above have only one argument – the affected entity – and, in fact, in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) there is a socalled ‘Canonical Ergative Construction’ which exemplifies a perfect match between the construction’s syntax and the verb’s semantics: (v) O braço do estudante quebrou; (vi) O solado do meu tênis descolou; (vii) O carro do Rubinho quebrou; (viii) O preço do combustível subiu. However, the construction we have named Split Argument Construction (SAC), in spite of its single semantic argument, presents two syntatic arguments – a subject and a direct object. The subject of SAC corresponds to the element which, in the Canonical Ergative, is syntatically expressed as a nominal adjunct; and the head of Ergative Canonical subject appears as the direct object in the Split Argument Construction. Semantically, the subject of SAC represents the WHOLE of the affected entity and a specific PART of this entity is expressed, in the syntax, as a direct object. The analysis of the semantic aspects of this construction will be based on Frame Semantics (FILLMORE, 1977; FILLMORE; JOHNSON; PETRUCK, 2003). Despite the shared syntactic, semantic and discursive properties, which have lead us to identify the same Argument Structure Construction covering all the statements in (i) - (iv), four sub-types become recognizable. The first, illustrated by (i), can be directly related to what has been referred to in the literature as Possessor Raising. In this case, there is an inalienable relation of possession between a human possessor and the parts of his body. In the second sub-type, represented by (ii), the relation – still one of inalienable possession – is established between a device and one of its parts. In the third group, example (iii), there is a relation between a human possessor and a possessed object; in this case, an alienable relation of possession. Finally, sentences of the fourth sub-type establish a relation between an item and one of its properties. Based on authentic usage data, this study describes and analyses each one of these sub-types, providing evidence to support the claim that SAC is an Argument Structure Construction, pragmatically motivated. Considering the results of the analysis, we present a proposal to formalize SAC, in accordance with the terms of Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SAG, 2010; MICHAELLIS, 2009).

[pt] Esta dissertação tem como objetivo principal discutir e analisar a possibilidade de se avaliar a expressão obrigatória de argumentos de verbos como índice de manifestação do Déficit Especificamente Lingüístico (DEL) em Português do Brasil (PB) e de prover uma marca clínica para o diagnóstico do DEL com base nessa análise. Tem ainda como objetivo ampliar a amostra de crianças com queixas de linguagem submetidas a uma avaliação lingüística teoricamente embasada, na construção do banco de dados do projeto MABILIN (Módulos de Avaliação de Habilidades Lingüísticas) do LAPAL (Laboratório de Psicolingüística e Aquisição da Linguagem), com vistas a verificar os aspectos lingüísticos mais atingidos no PB. Participaram desse estudo crianças com suspeita de DEL e crianças com desenvolvimento normal de linguagem com 3 e 5 anos. Foram realizados sete experimentos de produção eliciada que avaliam, particularmente, a expressão de argumentos externo (sujeito) e internos (objeto direto, objeto indireto), assim como de adjuntos. Os resultados obtidos sugerem um comprometimento na condução da computação sintática da estrutura argumental de verbos em crianças DEL, o que resulta particularmente na omissão do sujeito em contexto sintaticamente obrigatório. Conclui- se que a omissão do sujeito no contexto obrigatório aqui caracterizado pode ser tomada como um índice do DEL no PB. / [en] This dissertation aims at examining the possibility of taking the obligatory expression of verbs arguments as an index of Specific Language Impairment (SLI) in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and at providing a clinical criterion for SLI diagnoses on the basis of this analysis. A further goal is to enlarge the sample of children with language problems whose linguistic performance is assessed by means of a set of tests (Modules for the Evaluation of Linguistic Abilities) that has been developed in LAPAL (Laboratório de Psicolingüística e Aquisição da Linguagem), in order to identify those aspects of language that are particularly affected in BP. Children with a probable diagnosis of SLI and normally developing children from 3 to 5 years of age constitute the sample. Seven experiments were carried out by means of an elicited production task, which aimed at evaluating the expression of the arguments of the verb -- external argument (subject) and the internal arguments (direct object, indirect object), as well as adjuncts. The results suggest that children in the SLI group have difficulty in the syntactic computation of the verbs argument structure, which is particularly manifested in the omission of the subject argument in an obligatory context. It is concluded that subject omission in the obligatory context characterized here can be taken as an index of SLI in BP.

La linguistique informatique est un domaine de recherche qui se concentre sur les méthodes et les perspectives de la modélisation formelle (statistique ou symbolique) de la langue naturelle. La linguistique informatique, tout comme la linguistique théorique, est une discipline fortement modulaire : les niveaux d'analyse linguistique comprennent la segmentation, l'analyse morphologique, la désambiguïsation, l'analyse syntaxique et sémantique. Tandis qu'un nombre d'outils existent déjà pour les traitements de bas niveau (analyse morphologique, étiquetage grammatical), le hongrois peut être considéré comme une langue peu doté pour l'analyse syntaxique et sémantique. Le travail décrit dans la présente thèse vise à combler ce manque en créant des ressources pour le traitement syntaxique du hongrois : notamment, un analyseur en chunks et une base de données lexicale de schémas de sous-catégorisation verbale. La première partie de la recherche présentée ici se concentre sur la création d'un analyseur syntaxique de surface (ou analyseur en chunks) pour le hongrois. La sortie de l'analyseur de surface est conçue pour servir d'entrée pour un traitement ultérieur visant à annoter les relations de dépendance entre le prédicat et ses compléments essentiels et circonstanciels. L'analyseur profond est mis en œuvre dans NooJ (Silberztein, 2004) en tant qu'une cascade de grammaires. Le deuxième objectif de recherche était de proposer une représentation lexicale pour la structure argumentale en hongrois. Cette représentation doit pouvoir gérer la vaste gamme de phénomènes qui échappent à la dichotomie traditionnelle entre un complément essentiel et un circonstanciel (p. ex. des structures partiellement productives, des écarts entre la prédictibilité syntaxique et sémantique). Nous avons eu recours à des résultats de la recherche récente sur la réalisation d'arguments et choisi un cadre qui répond à nos critères et qui est adaptable à une langue non-configurationnelle. Nous avons utilisé la classification sémantique de Levin (1993) comme modèle. Nous avons adapté les notions relatives à cette classification, à savoir celle de la composante sémantique et celle de l'alternance syntaxique, ainsi que la méthodologie d'explorer et de décrire le comportement des prédicats à l'aide de cette représentation, à la tâche de construire une représentation lexicale des verbes dans une langue non-configurationnelle. La première étape consistait à définir les règles de codage et de construire un vaste base de données lexicale pour les verbes et leurs compléments. Par la suite, nous avons entrepris deux expériences pour l'enrichissement de ce lexique avec des informations sémantiques lexicales afin de formaliser des généralisations syntaxiques et sémantiques pertinentes sur les classes de prédicats sous-jacentes. La première approche que nous avons testée consistait en une élaboration manuelle de classification de verbes en fonction de leur structure de compléments et de l'attribution de rôles sémantiques à ces compléments. Nous avons cherché la réponse aux questions suivantes: quelles sont les composants sémantiques pertinents pour définir une classification sémantique des prédicats hongrois? Quelles sont les implications syntaxiques spécifiques à ces classes? Et, plus généralement, quelle est la nature des alternances spécifiques aux classes verbales en hongrois ? Dans la phase finale de la recherche, nous avons étudié le potentiel de l'acquisition automatique pour extraire des classes de verbes à partir de corpus. Nous avons effectué une classification non supervisée, basée sur des données distributionnelles, pour obtenir une classification sémantique pertinente des verbes hongrois. Nous avons également testé la méthode de classification non supervisée sur des données françaises. / We present the creation of two resources for Hungarian NLP applications: a rule-based shallow parser and a database of verbal subcategorization frames. Hungarian, as a non-configurational language with a rich morphology, presents specific challenges for NLP at the level of morphological and syntactic processing. While efficient and precise morphological analyzers are already available, Hungarian is under-resourced with respect to syntactic analysis. Our work aimed at overcoming this problem by providing resources for syntactic processing. Hungarian language is characterized by a rich morphology and a non-configurational encoding of grammatical functions. These features imply that the syntactic processing of Hungarian has to rely on morphological features rather than on constituent order. The broader interest of our undertaking is to propose representations and methods that are adapted to these specific characteristics, and at the same time are in line with state of the art research methodologies. More concretely, we attempt to adapt current results in argument realization and lexical semantics to the task of labeling sentence constituents according to their syntactic function and semantic role in Hungarian. Syntax and semantics are not completely independent modules in linguistic analysis and language processing: it has been known for decades that semantic properties of words affect their syntactic distribution. Within the syntax-semantics interface, the field of argument realization deals with the (partial or complete) prediction of verbal subcategorization from semantic properties. Research on verbal lexical semantics and semantically motivated mapping has been concentrating on predicting the syntactic realization of arguments, taking for granted (either explicitly or implicitly) that the distinction between arguments and adjuncts is known, and that adjuncts' syntactic realization is governed by productive syntactic rules, not lexical properties. However, besides the correlation between verbal aspect or actionsart and time adverbs (e.g. Vendler, 1967 or Kiefer, 1992 for Hungarian), the distribution of adjuncts among verbs or verb classes did not receive significant attention, especially within the lexical semantics framework. We claim that contrary to the widely shared presumption, adjuncts are often not fully productive. We therefore propose a gradual notion of productivity, defined in relation to Levin-type lexical semantic verb classes (Levin, 1993; Levin and Rappaport-Hovav, 2005). The definition we propose for the argument-adjunct dichotomy is based on evidence from Hungarian and exploits the idea that lexical semantics not only influences complement structure but is the key to the argument-adjunct distinction and the realization of adjuncts

Il est du rôle d’une discipline comme l’analyse du discours de revenir sur des textes, considérés dès lors comme discours, qui n’ont pas encore dévoilé leurs secrets et les enjeux qu’ils mettent sur le marché du sens. Nous avons cherché dans le cadre de cette recherche à démontrer le lien étroit entre le sujet du discours, en l’occurrence Pierre Rivière, le cadre familial dans lequel il a vécu et le cadre social qui l’a amené à commettre son triple assassinat. Comment le dire de Pierre Rivière est-il conçu pour argumenter en faveur d’un crime que le jeune paysan assume ? Quel rapport y a-t-il à établir alors entre le dire et les moyens linguistiques mis au service de ce dire lui-même ?Le dernier point sur lequel nous nous arrêtons est celui du pouvoir de l’écriture. L’écriture elle-même est un pouvoir dont jouit celui qui y recourt.Mots clésAnalyse du discours, arguments, discours, écriture, mémoire, prédiscours, texte, pouvoir, crime, société. / It is one of the roles of Discourse Analysis as a discipline to consider texts, regarded so far as speeches that have not yet totally revealed the secrets and issues that they place on the market of meaning. In this research, the close relationship between the subject of the discourse namely Pierre Rivière, the family where he lived and the social context that led him to commit the triple murder is investigated. How was the speech of Pierre Riviere designed to argue in favor of a crime that the young peasant assumes? What kind of connection is then, possible to establish between the speech and the available linguistic devices of this very speech? The last point to be mentioned is that of the power of writing. Writing in itself is a kind of power that only those who know it enjoy it. Key wordsDiscourse analysis, arguments, discourse, writing, memory, text, power, crime, society

Introduction: The aim of the present thesis is to determine the line of argument presented by the clergy of the Swedish State Church in the parliamentary debates regarding the forms of census registrations during the years 1723-1812. This discussion resulted in a new form of census registration in 1812, according to which the parish registration was accorded a greater importance than before. As a result of vast tax evasion, demands were put forth by the authorities that the clergy should be compelled to hand over the parish catechetical registries. The clergy was here faced with a conflict of loyalty between the state and their parishes. To structurally examine the line of argument of the clergy may not only clarify how this conflict was met by the clergy, but also serve as an illustration of the relationship between church and state in 18th century Sweden. The effects of the form of census registration of 1812 on the parish catechetical registries are also touched briefly upon.    Method: To fullfill this aim, the parliamentary records of the clergy have been examined and analysed in accordance with the methods of argumentation analysis presented in Vedung (1971). Secondary sources regarding the historical circumstances surrounding the parliamentary debates of 1723-1812 have been utilized as well.           Analysis: In the analysis the individual arguments presented by the clergy have been distinguished according to three levels: description, evaluation and recommended course of action. These levels are furthermore presented schematically, so as to comprehensively illustrate the line of argumentation.   Results: The results of the endeavour show that the representatives of the church and state did not agree as to the legitimate extent of the state’s influence in church matters. The clergy defended the Lutheran idea of separation between church and state power, despite the fact that contemporary canon law asserted an almost unbreakable bond between church and state authority. This is a two years master’s thesis in Archival Science.

This dissertation investigates whether transitivity distinctions are manifest in the phonetics of linguistic and paralinguistic manual actions, namely lexical verbs and classifier constructions in American Sign Language (ASL) and gestures produced by hearing non-signers without speech (i.e., pantomime). A positive result would indicate that grammatical features are (a) transparent and (b) may thus arise from non-linguistic sources, here the visual-praxic domain. Given previous literature, we predict that transitivity is transparent in pantomime and classifier constructions, but opaque in lexical verbs. <div><br></div><div>We first collected judgments from hearing non-signers who classed pantomimes, classifier constructions, and ASL lexical verbs as unergative, unaccusative, transitive, or ditransitive. We found that non-signers consistently judged items across all three stimulus types, suggesting that there is transitivity-related information in the signed signal. </div><div><br></div><div>We then asked whether non-signers’ judging ability has its roots in a top-down or bottom-up strategy. A top-down strategy might entail guessing the meaning of the sign or pantomime and then using the guessed meaning to assess/guess its transitivity. A bottom-up strategy entails using one or more meaningful phonetic features available in the formation of the signal to judge an item. We predicted that both strategies would be available in classing pantomimes and classifier constructions, but that transitivity information would only be available top-down in lexical verbs, given that the former are argued to be more imagistic generally than lexical verbs. Further, each strategy makes a different prediction with respect to the internal representation xv of signs and pantomimes. The top-down strategy would suggest signs and pantomimes are unanalyzable wholes, whereas the bottom-up strategy would suggest the same are compositional. </div><div><br></div><div>For the top-down analysis, we correlated lexical iconicity score and a measure of the degree to which non-signers ‘agreed’ on the transitivity of an item. We found that lexical iconicity only weakly predicts non-signer judgments of transitivity, on average explaining 10-20% of the variance for each stimulus class. However, we note that this is the only strategy available for lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>For the bottom-up analysis, we annotate our stimuli for phonetic and phonological features known to be relevant to transitivity and/ or event semantics in sign languages. We then apply a text classification model to try to predict transitivity from these features. As expected, our classifiers achieved stably high accuracy for pantomimes and classifier constructions, but only chance accuracy for lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>Taken together, the top-down and bottom-up analyses were able to predict nonsigner transitivity judgments for the pantomimes and classifier constructions, with the bottom-up analysis providing a stronger, more convincing result. For lexical verbs, only the top-down analysis was relevant and it performed weakly, providing little explanatory power. When interpreting these results, we look to the semantics of the stimuli to explain the observed differences between classes: pantomimes and classifier constructions both encode events of motion and manipulation (by human hands), the transitivity of which may be encoded using a limited set of strategies. By contrast, lexical verbs denote a multitude of event types, with properties of those events (and not necessarily their transitivity) being preferentially encoded compared to the encoding of transitivity. That is, the resolution of transitivity is a much more difficult problem when looking at lexical verbs. </div><div><br></div><div>This dissertation contributes to the growing body of literature that appreciates how linguistic and paralinguistic forms may be both (para)linguistic and iconic at the same time. It further helps disentangle at least two different types of iconicities (lexical vs. structural), which may be selectively active in some signs or constructions xvi but not others. We also argue from our results that pantomimes are not holistic units, but instead combine elements of form and meaning in an analogous way to classifier constructions. Finally, this work also contributes to the discussion of how Language could have evolved in the species from a gesture-first perspective: The ‘understanding’ of others’ object-directed (i.e. transitive) manual actions becomes communicative.</div>

Abstrakt Argumentations – Frameworks ließen sich mithilfe der zur Verfügung gestellten Algorithmen zuverlässig und strukturiert implementieren. Die Möglichkeiten, welche die Objektorientierung bietet, ließen dabei eine Implementierung zu, welche dieses Modell unabhängig von seiner Umgebung gestaltet und gleichzeitig die Zusammenarbeit dieses Modells mit dieser Umgebung ermöglicht. Daher eignet sich das Programm als Möglichkeit der Visualisierung dieser Frameworks und liefert gleichzeitig ein unabhängiges Paket, mit dessen Hilfe sich die zugrunde liegenden Berechnungen zuverlässig durchführen lassen.

This study investigates how power relations are organised in conversation between two sets of characters from the HBO-series Succession. The aim has been to analyse how power can be exercised, shifted or struggled over in conversation. The main method has been conversation analysis; particularly Hutchby’s methods and concepts (2013) have been applied both for this study’s use of the concept of power and for this study’s understanding of argumentative structures and Action-Opposition sequences in conversation. There has also been a significant focus on swearing, especially with the first research question, where the instances of swearing were analysed in terms of their function and type and whether they contributed to a shift in power relations. The study found asymmetrical relations of power with both sets of characters and that one can use the conversational possibilities at one’s disposal to exercise, resist or shift the power that is omnipresent in all contexts. The findings supported the theory that the second position in an argumentative structure generally has more power. However, the findings also suggested ways in which this can be avoided, for example by using the practical implications of one’s statement in particular contexts to overpower the opposition or to selectively choose which counter statements or questions to respond to to control the outcome of the conversation.

Thesis (Ph.D. (Communication Studies)) -- University of Limpopo, 2021 / This thesis explored the narratives of Soviet survivors of the Soviet-Afghanistan War that lasted from 1979 to 1989. The purpose of this exploration was to gain an understanding of the individual arguments that these survivors were making in a published work by Belarussian literary journalist Svetlana Alexievich, in her book Zinky Boys: Soviet voices from the Afghanistan War, that was originally published in 1989, and translated into English in 1992. The thesis purpose was to determine the central public moral argument that the published work is making at the close of the Soviet-Afghan War. The body of literature reviewed and discussed in Chapter 3 helped frame the interpretative context for the study. The themes that emerged and captured there are all external in origin to the core text of Zinky Boys, and served a triangulatory purpose to some of the emic data that emerged in the process of analysis of the core text. One of the major influencers of the study is JC Behrends (2015b) who associated the concept of the Gewaltraum with the Soviet-Afghan War. The notion of agency that was advanced by Giddens in 1984 is equally of importance, as well as Milgram’s (1984) ideas of the agentic state and Obedience to Authority Theory. As theorists, Habermas’ (1991) advancement of the Theory of the Public Sphere and Fisher’s (1984) Narrative Paradigm, contribute to and influence the theoretical grounding of the study. The study followed the methodology of a textual analysis within the narrative turn, and utilised Fisher’s fidelity and probability tests as proposed within his narrative paradigm to construct a set of thematic intertexts, which provided compelling good reasons to accept the narratives of the survivors. In addition, Fisher’s (1984) differentiating features that set the public moral argument aside from reasoned discourse of the type used in more formal settings were applied to ensure that the public moral argument as derived from the text of Zinky Boys meets the requirements of a public moral argument. As a published work, the public moral argument emerging from Zinky Boys is a matter for the public sphere as Habermas (1991) envisages the sphere as a public space for public reasoned discourse in conflict with the political state. In this instance, it is specifically the Soviet public sphere, which is historically important as the Soviet-Afghan War concluded shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union. This thesis positions Zinky Boys as portraying the public moral argument of the Soviet survivors in the public sphere. The major findings of the thesis indicate that the Soviet Limited Contingent in Afghanistan were exposed to extreme levels of violence which is portrayed as a Gewaltraum (violent space). Secondly, the thesis finds that the agency of the Soviets in Afghanistan was often of a violent and abusive nature. A third finding indicates that participants in the war and their immediate family members, notably mothers, become victims of the psychological and physical impact of war. Finally, the finding is presented that the matter of the Soviet engagement in Afghanistan had become a matter for discussion in the public sphere. The resulting public moral argument positions the survivors of the Soviet-Afghan War as victims of the Soviet State due to their agentic state and psychological changes that they underwent in the Gewaltraum of Afghanistan, as well as the Soviet media campaign of disinformation and victimisation, and its effect on their standing as Soviet citizens and their inability to reintegrate successfully back into society. Key words Textual analysis; Intertextuality; Narrative journalism; Narrative paradigm; Phenomenology; Public Moral Argument; Public Sphere.