Tijdschrift voor Taalbeheersing - Volume 36, Issue 2, 2014

Abstract This contribution deals with arguments that make an appeal to the arguer’s own or someone else’s behaviour in order to make the standpoint likely. Such arguments resemble descriptions of classical rhetorical plausibility topoi related to the conjectural status (concerning the issue whether the accused ‘did or did not do it’). Today, argumentation studies hardly pay any attention to these kinds of argument. The Read More

Abstract This study investigates the effects of thematic and topic sentence headings in business letters. In an experiment readers evaluated letters in which the headings were manipulated (no headings, thematic headings and topic sentence headings). The results show that letters with heading are valued higher than letters without headings. Topic sentence headings performed slightly better than thematic. No effect were found Read More

Abstract The process of informalisation in newspapers is seen as an increase of subjectivity (Vis, 2011). The use of direct speech in newspapers is treated as a main characteristic of subjectivity. Whereas the quoted speech itself belongs to the domain of character or source subjectivity, the introducing linguistic element is part of the reporter subjectivity. The analysis has been concentrated on the final and medial position of t Read More