This study illuminated the strategy of Zenith Bank®, employing characteristics of children as fascinating instruments to persuade parents-cum-guardians to open a ZECA account for their children. Mrs. Bonke and the author randomly collected the advertisements for one year and nine months with a camera, utilizing a laptop to adjust the advertising…

This discourse analysis study examines the final moments of selected online sermons delivered by America's leading evangelical pastors and speakers, paying particular attention to the language employed in the presentation of Christian gospel tenets, the public invitation for salvation, the altar call that identifies new followers, and the…

It is often observed that the globalization of social media has opened up new opportunities for informal intercultural communication and foreign language learning. This study aims to go beyond this general observation through a case study that explores how discourse analysis tools might be used to uncover evidence of language and intercultural…

Non-participation and poor quality participation in online environments is often discussed in the literature. Interaction and engagement in online discussions are critical for understanding and constructing new knowledge. In this case study, we examined messages posted by graduate students in four online debates for quantity and quality. The…

Rancorous dialogue among political opponents is nothing new in the American political system. However, in the past two decades or so, pundits and scholars have noted an increase in the overall intensity and frequency of incivility among elected officials and citizens. At the collegiate level, many universities have undertaken some form of civility…

Social networking sites may include argumentative writing about particular issues in which participants adopt competing perspective and discourses on those issues. This study examined roles and discourses adopted by high school students participating in an online role-play conducted on a Ning platform regarding their school's Internet policies on…

This article reviews and synthesizes over a decade of research that has used discourse analysis, dialogue modelling and empirical techniques to investigate educational argumentation and to design digital tools that support its practice. This approach--incorporating theoretical, empirical and design-based methods according to what tends to now be…

This study investigates whether combining chat discussion and construction of an argument diagram stimulates students to formulate new ideas in practising argumentation. In this study, 16 secondary school students discussed vivisection and gender equality in pairs using both free and structured chat tools. In structured chat, the students selected…

This paper examines how two American presidential candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, make use of a VIDEO EXCHANGE IS CONVERSATION metaphor on YouTube, a channel of communication that allows the exchange of video clips on the Internet. It is argued that the politicians exploit the metaphor for its connotations of creating involvement and…

Recent research indicated that students' ability to construct evidence-based explanations in classrooms through scientific inquiry is critical to successful science education. Structured argumentation support environments have been built and used in scientific discourse in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, no research work in the…

This article examines the discourse of 10 groups of children during text-based online discussions. Analysis of the discourse in the discussions showed that 8 different rhetorical moves, or argument stratagems, were used by most groups of children, whereas 3 other stratagems were used by 1 group. The use of argument stratagems snowballed; that is,…

Online auctions are dominated by eBay, which started bringing together buyers and sellers in 1995. eBay product listings can easily be used in business communication courses to better understand online sales messages. One great advantage is that the vast majority of nearly 15 million listings a day are written and assembled by everyday consumers…

This paper elaborates on the rhetorical uses of immigrants' life experiences as expressed through late technology of the Internet. The paper draws readers' attention to stories about refugees in electronic texts from the Kosovo War of 1998. It compares these materials to archival material about a Greek immigrant family from the 1954 "New York…

In recent years there has been growing awareness of the need to support primary and secondary students in developing competencies for active and participatory citizenship. Among the essential competencies identified in a recent study of politically active teachers was the ability to expand ideas into arguments. This article reports on the early…

This study tested the effects of linguistic qualifiers and intensifiers on the number and types of replies elicited per argument and per challenge posted in online debates. To facilitate collaborative argumentation, thirty-two students (22 females, 10 males) enrolled in a graduate-level online course classified and labeled their messages as…