Assessing argumentative normativity in the english medium Kenyan newspaper editorials from a linguistic-pragmatic approach

Abstract

The paper explores argumentative Normativity in the English medium newspaper editorials in Kenya. The paper aimed at establishing whether the editorials meet the logical, dialectal and rhetorical demands as aspects of Normativity. Four editorial texts were analysed from a Linguistic-Pragmatic approach. The Rhetorical Structure Theory and Text-Type Theory were used as descriptive tools. The findings show that editorials in the Kenyan newspaper discourse adhere to the classical structure of argumentation and that different clause relations signal the editorial structural components, opinion and arguments though implicitly. Interpersonal relations are preferred to ideational-textual relations. Pragmatically, editorials are written to shoulder the burden of proof; however, this is determined by the acceptability or unacceptability of the claim depending on the context and external constraints playing a role within the particular argumentative framework in which this claim is supposed to play its argumentative role.