Claims of fact in opinion-editorial columnist sections of The New York Times on-line newspaper

ABSTRACT

Argumentation is the art of influencing others by defending own action and opposing others. Argument is used to persuade people and create differences in order to change the perspective of other people. Argument creates experiences in order to gain knowledge to find a solution. It makes readers grow and become more mature because provides an experiences that need to be controlled. Also, it develops important critical tools. This becomes the starting point of this research, which concern with the linguistic aspect of argumentation in written form.

In this research, the research problems formulated are on how the writers of opinion-editorial columnist section of The New York Times on-line newspaper present and defend their claims of fact. The objectives of this study are to identify the method in presenting claims of fact and describe the way in defending claims of fact by the writers of this on-line newspaper.

This research was conducted by using descriptive qualitative method since the data of the claims are analyzed by using the researcher’s interpretation not by using statistical computation. The claim analysis is limited to the article in Opinion-Editorial Columnist section on economic issues from The New York Times on-line newspapers published from 1st to 30th April 2010.

The findings show that the method used by the writers in presenting their claims of fact are funnel and turn about. The first type of introductory paragraph is mostly found. The way the writers defend their claims of fact as the following: First, most of the writers state explicitly what they are trying to prove which strengthen the claim defending. Second, most of the writers do not define the term which might be ambiguous that still need to be defined. Third, all the writers use sufficient, accurate, recent, and typical evidences in the form of facts, interpretation, and opinion. All the data use facts and interpretations. Less than half of data uses facts, interpretation, and opinion at once. Most the data show the tendency of using facts than other types of evidence. There is none of the article that uses opinion as the main evidence employed. Fourth, the writers have made clear when conclusion about the data are inferences or interpretations, not facts. Fifth, most of the writers use the pattern of climatic order, only one datum using the pattern of chronological order. None uses spatial and topical order.