Argumentation as the Expression of Individual Communicative Verbal Styles

Abstract

The results of theoretical and empirical study of argumentation as particular form of discourse which reflects the individual communicative verbal styles are represented in the article. Argumentation is defined as cognitive and communicative processes contained cognitive mechanisms of decision making and communicative ways of transferring it to the recipients. The direct/indirect and elaborate/succinct communicative verbal styles are des­cribed and psycholinguistic markers for these styles are determined. The direct communicative verbal style is characterized by individualism, low context culture, orientation for own needs and interests. The indirect communicative verbal style is characterized by collectivism, high context culture, orientation for addressee’s needs and interests. The psycholinguistic markers for the direct/indirect communicative verbal styles are pronouns “me/we”, parenthetic words of high / low degree of probability: “of course”, “no doubt / may be”, “perhaps”. Elaborate/succinct communicative verbal styles are characterized by expressive, rich/laconic, poor speech with/without stylistic devices. The psycholinguistic procedure of argumentation analysis based on the criteria of anticlimactic vs. climatic structure, horizontal vs. vertical macro-structure, serial-type micro-reasoning, compound type micro-reasoning is represented. Macro-struc­ture expresses global patterns of argument organization, micro-structure (micro-reasoning) expresses the specific supporting or extending relationships among units of arguments. The inter-rater agreement between argumentation coding proposed by two different experts are represented and the kinds of students’ communicative verbal styles are revealed. The prospective research of efficiency of interpersonal interaction based on students’ communicative verbal styles is outlined.

Keywords: communicative verbal styles, argumentation, anticlimactic vs. cli­matic structure, horizontal vs. vertical macro-structure, serial-type micro-reasoning, compound type micro-reasoning.