This thesis explores the role, if any, that implicature plays as a strategy in informal debate. Transcripts of spontaneous debates from television and radio public affairs talk shows were analyzed with a focus on the use of implicature as a strategic rhetorical tool employed to gain advantage in an argument.

Skills such as identifying evidence, evaluating the credibility of information sources, analyzing complex historical and geopolitical issues from multiple perspectives, asking good questions, and forming and articulating a point of view are useful for succeeding in school and in life. Speech and debate training can help students learn and practice these skills and is widely available in many independent elementary and middle schools, yet it is generally not available in public elementary and middle schools. There has been virtually no research on this topic. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore the perceptions of speech and debate professionals with respect to benefits, curriculum and pedagogy, feasibility, and acceptability concerning speech and debate programs in public primary schools. Using the snowball sampling technique, 25 speech and debate professionals in different parts of the speech and debate ecosystem and in different parts of the United States were identified and interviewed using a semi-structured qualitative approach. The findings indicated that speech and debate training supports health literacy and social-emotional development in students as early as elementary school by contributing to multiple aspects of “whole child” wellness, including through the promotion of identity development, mental health, psychological strengths, and life skills at essential periods of development. The findings underscored the importance of a culturally relevant pedagogical approach wherein students critically respond to, analyze, and interrogate larger social structural issues through the lens of their own cultural experiences and identities. Despite the consensus that nearly any educator can facilitate speech and debate instruction with limited training, there are several impediments to adoption and implementation, including time and school-community support. Speech and debate training requires many hours across multiple days to implement effectively. Gaining support across the curriculum from teachers and administrators was facilitated by these stakeholders having first-hand experience and observing positive outcomes for students. Policy and practice implications are proposed along with recommendations for future research relevant to increasing speech and debate programming in public elementary schools.

Skills of argument have attracted the attention of educators but remain challenging to both assess and develop. In contrast to the traditional essay, dialogic argument requires reflection on and coordination of one’s own claims with those of an interlocutor. Investigating a tool for assessing an individual’s dialogic argument skill is an objective of the present work. Building on an earlier study by the author and colleagues, and informed by philosophical writings on objectives of argumentation, undertaken here is a conceptual analysis of instances of dialogic argumentation by skilled arguers in order to discern its essential characteristics. The identified set of characteristics is then used as a basis for evaluating the argumentation skills exhibited by a sample of sixth grade students. A practical purpose is development of an assessment tool for use in educational contexts, identifying the range and variation of argumentation skills individuals bring to dialog. A value of the individual instrument referred to as a constructed dialog and developed and employed here, is that it overcomes the statistical problem created by lack of independence between participants in a dialog which requires that the unit of analysis be the pair-- thereby defeating the objective of assessing the skill of an individual. Empirical results document that young adolescents display competence in some basic skills of argumentation but, even following an intervention designed to build and exercise such skills, they continue to use these sparingly and to lack other equally fundamental ones. Discussion addresses implications for education, as well as the potential for use of the constructed dialog as an assessment tool for evaluating an individual student’s skill in argumentation and the associated understanding it reflects regarding the nature and objectives of argumentation.

published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The purpose of this thesis is to determine the impact of intermediate school forensics on high school forensic programs in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. First, the thesis records student and instructor evaluations of both the intermediate school and high school forensic programs. Second, it compares the evaluations by students with intermediate forensics and students without intermediate forensics. Third, it discusses the impact of intermediate forensics on high school forensic programs. This study reveals that intermediate forensics is beneficial to high school forensics. Previously trained students teach and interest others in high school. They are more confident, have more initiative and win more than other students.

This two years master’s thesis is a review and exploration of the Swedish debate concerning children’s literature from the 19th century to the present, as well as the evaluation and analysis of four adaptations of the tale Red Riding Hood. The aims are to identify how ideas and values regarding the role of children’s literature in society have developed over time and to contribute with a knowledge base for continued reflection and discussion on the subject of children’s reading and mediation of children’s literature in public libraries. The theory and method used in the thesis, is primarily based on the discourse analysis of Michel Foucault. I have identified four main discourses: the educational discourse, the liberation discourse, the politicized dis- course and the popular discourse. To explore the tension between contingency and permanence within the dis- cursive field I have revolved the analysis around key concepts such as ”pedagogy”, ”children” and ”childhood”. The four different adaptations of Red Riding Hood illustrate how beliefs about children and children’s reading have been revised over time. The study shows that the debate and the literature have evolved from a didactic and instrumental point of view to a more liberating and aesthetic approach. But the movement is not linear and uni- vocal. The current debates and the range of children’s literature today exhibit tendencies both of protective mo- rality, expressive and imaginative aesthetics and political awareness. The predominant view of children is still as human “becoming’s” rather than “beings”, and the value of reading literature is thus regarded as extrinsic and as a tool for language development. This continuous and ongoing educational discourse takes little interest in the children’s own ideas and opinions about books and reading. It is my conclusion that children’s libraries, as me- diators of children’s literature, have an enhanced role to play in today’s technologically based society; providing and encouraging book discussions and other literary activities where not only the literature is in focus, but the children’s own reading experiences as well.

Learning via apprenticeship is widely regarded as a powerful mechanism. To examine the role of apprenticeship learning and practice in developing argumentive thinking and writing, young adolescents (n = 64) participated in a four-week dialogic argumentation activity. They drew on available evidence and engaged 20 daily sessions in one-to-one electronic dialogues on contemporary social issues, anonymously, with a series of opposing-side partners. To assess the proposition that adolescents' argumentation skill advances via apprenticeship with a more skilled partner, in an experimental (but not control) discourse condition, a skilled adult arguer replaced a peer in half of the dialogues. Effects on students were evaluated in the dialogue and individual writing contexts. In the dialogue context, performance in initial peer dialogues during the first day of the workshop and in a final dialogic assessment on a new topic were evaluated. In the individual writing context, performance on the last workshop-debate-topic essay and non-workshop-debate topic essay were evaluated. Data were analyzed according to previously identified and well-validated coding schemes on counterargument and argument strategies. Although all participants showed skill gains, students in the experimental condition advanced in argumentive reasoning more rapidly than those in the peer-only control condition. Specifically, the strongest counterargument strategy (counter-undermine) appeared in greater proportions of idea units in the dialogues of students in the experimental condition, compared to those in the comparison condition. Only “weaken-other” improvements in dialogue reached significance in transferring to essays. These findings extend upon and support previous work on the power of dialogic engagement and engagement with more competent others as a mechanism of apprenticeship learning. Pedagogical and social implications are discussed.

This thesis takes a conversation-analytic approach examining the pragmatic functions of the linguistic marker "first (off/of all)" in second-pair-part (i.e., responsive) position relative to questions. Using data from question-answer sequences in the 2015-2016 U.S. Presidential Republican primary debates, I propose six claims regarding the composition, position, and action of what is referred to as the practice of "First"-prefacing. Analysis reveals that "First"-prefacing projects the displacement of a response (conforming or non-conforming) to a question. In projecting the displacement of a response, "First"-prefacing does two things: (1) it projects that the unit(s) of talk to come immediately next will be something other than a response, and thus this "first" matter should not be heard as being designedly "responsive" to the question; and (2) it claims that a conditionally relevant response to the question is forthcoming after the "first" matter is resolved. Debaters largely used "First"-prefacing to temporarily "get out from under" a question's conditional relevancies in order to "reach back" beyond the question and perform actions more properly sequentially fitted to earlier portions of the debate (e.g., defend themselves, make additional comments, counter-criticize other debaters). The more general function of "First"-prefacing as a misplacement marker is discussed, and its existence in ordinary conversation is briefly demonstrated.

香港教育在課程和評估等方面均十分重視學生口語或書面論辯的能力，不論是學習階段內的全港性系統評估，還是學生完成中學課程後所參加的中學會考 (2012年之前) 或文憑考試 (2012年後)，均要求學生參與小組討論，訓練並考核學生評價觀點的強弱、適當回應組員的觀點的能力。香港教師能夠引導學生綜合書面論辯篇章的組織，並指導學生提出理由支持自己的觀點，但少於培養學生如何理解乃至評價他人觀點的根據，以及回應並發展反駁的能力。學生能夠評價書面篇章內容，也能在教師指導下辨識作者觀點的理據，但在小組討論中建立相反觀點以說服持不同意見的其他成員，表現仍見不足。 本研究旨在發展理論架構與分析程序，以分析中學生在中文小組討論中的論辯。為此，本研究探討了中文小組討論的論辯話語的特徵、學生表達觀點與理據所運用的策略、批判地回應對手的方式，特別是發展反駁、評價對手觀點與理據，以及表達與有衝突的觀點。 十八名來自九所中學的中學畢業學生按學校與性別的分層隨機分配到三組六人組別中，參與時限為廿五分鐘的中文小組討論。他們須討論一項禁止學校小賣部售賣垃圾食物，並禁止學生?帶垃圾食物回校的措施是否合理。學生的討論經謄錄後，在質性分析軟體 (NVivo) 的輔助下，運用話語分析和非形式邏輯中的論辯理論分析，以發現學生在討論中建構論辯的模式，包括：意念、言語行為、論辯圖式、討論的四個中文小組論辯討論的四個層次、廿五項讓學生得以建構論辯並參與討論的言語行為、六種論辯圖式及發展反駁的相關批判問題、討論的五階段，特別是學生傾向於把相互矛盾的論點統合為沒有衝突的討論發展方向。 本研究提出了理論架構與分析程序，把學生在中文小組討論的論辯歸類，以分析論辯的特徵。本論文所提供的研究程序、理論架構、分析程序，以及學生在中文小組論辯討論的表現，有助中國語文課程及其他課程中論辯教育的課程發展、教學設計與評估。最後，本論文探索了研究設計的優點與不足，並提出了日後繼續發展本研究的可能方向。 The ability of Hong Kong students to frame arguments in written and spoken exchanges in Chinese is afforded high priority in Hong Kong secondary schools and is strongly emphasised in the Hong Kong Curriculum. The ability to attend to points made in a discussion, to identify strengths and weaknesses in assertions and content and to make appropriate counter responses has been formally examined in the matriculation examination since 2007. Teachers are comfortable about developing students‘ competence in identifying micro- and macro-structures in text content, and in using these to support opinions expressed in writing. They are less assured about teaching students how to perceive the grounds for counter-arguments and making measured responses and rebuttals of what others in a group have said. Students are able to critically examine text content, to appreciate points advanced and to assemble these in written responses, but, partly due to the Confucian endorsement of avoiding confrontation and disharmony, senior secondary students are apprehensive about public discussions in which they are asked to formulate opposing points of view and persuasive arguments to peers who hold conflicting standpoints. The study set out to assist teachers by establishing a theoretical framework and procedure for analyzing students‘ contributions in group discussion in Chinese. To achieve this, it was necessary to investigate characteristics of discourse; to identify the strategies students employ in presenting reasoned points of view; to critically analyse the contributions of others, especially those presenting counter-arguments; to weigh the merits of opposing opinions; and to present propositions against those expressed by fellow group members. Eighteen final year secondary school students from nine schools were selected, randomly placed into stratified groups of six and asked to participate in twenty-five minute long group discussions of the merits of a school policy prohibiting the sale of junk food in the school canteen and bringing junk food into school. The students‘ utterances were transcribed and points of argument examined using conversational discourse analyses, the logic of the arguments advanced being analysed with the assistance of research software (NVivo). Patterns of argument formulations by the students in the discussions were found. Levels of idea units, speech acts, argumentative scheme and discussion were identified and twenty-five types of spoken exchanges enabling students to construct arguments during the group discussions were identified. Six types of argument shemes were found; and types of critical questions for stimulating justifications and rebuttals of what participants said in the discussions were noted. A five-stage process of presenting arguments in the discussions emerged, together with a tendency for the students to attempt to integrate disparate and heterogeneous points of view into homogeneous standpoints. The research proposes procedures for analyzing and categorising the arguments students raise in group discussion in Chinese, and a framework for developing teaching students how to formulate and sustain telling arguments as part of the Chinese Language Curriculum. The strengths and weaknesses of the research are set out and the implications for further research and current practice are discussed. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

The aim of this paper is to investigate how the view on copyright emerges in the media debate, and the overall research question is what possible explanations there might be for the view being different depending on whom the writer is and whom s/he represents. The theoretical framework is Fairclough's critical discourse analysis and the method used is the analytic model in three stages that he presents in his book Language and Power (2001). The empirical material was selected through an initial search in Media Retriever, followed by a manual se-lection process, which resulted in a final selection of eight articles, all published in Swedish daily newspapers between the years 2006 and 2014. In the analysis, two main discourses were identified – the producer discourse and the consumer discourse – in which all the texts could be placed. The producer discourse puts the interests of the author first, and holds the view that copyright law must be strong to protect the authors' rights. The consumer discourse on the other hand puts the interest of the consumer first, and their view is that the public has the right to access the world's collect-ed knowledge and culture. This paper also examines the members' resources that authors bring to the texts in the form of common sense, and also in the form of a motive for entering in the debate. Furthermore, this paper also looks at the fact that power relations between the participants in the texts are complicated as they form a com-plex web of formal and informal power relations. The conclusion is that the main explanation for the different ways of viewing copyright is the two afore-mentioned discourses, and that the members' resources the authors bring to the texts are very ideological. The ideological arguments and the complex power relations result in very rigid positions in the debate. This is a two years master's thesis in Archive, Library and Museum studies.