AN INVESTIGATION INTO LINGUISTIC FEATURES OF ARGUMENTATIVE UTTERANCES IN THE AMERICAN TV SERIES “THE LAST SHIP”

Abstract

This thesis titled “An Investigation into the Linguistic Features of Argumentative Utterances in the American TV Series “The Last Ship”” studies the linguistic features of argumentative utterances used by the characters in the American TV series “The Last Ship”. The methods used are observational, descriptive and analytic method accompanied by the qualitative and quantitative approach. The analysis is based on 100 pilot samples and 200 final samples. The findings of the study show that the strength of an argumentative utterance is the combination of the choice of both argument types including valid argument and invalid argument, and linguistic features in terms of syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features. Depending on the situational context in the debate, the choice whether to use which types of argument as well as the suitable sentence structures, the modality or the types of illocutionary acts affect the force and the effect of the argumentative utterances. The findings of the thesis could help learners of English as a foreign language learn better and be able to identify speaker’s implicature and realize arguments through illocutionary acts which are used frequently in real life English debates.