A PRAGMATIC ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENT WILLIAM “BILL” JEFFERSON CLINTON’S APOLOGY SPEECHES I MISLED AND I HAVE SINNED

The objectives of this research were 1) to find out the kinds of speech acts employed in the two apology speeches of President Clinton, I Misled and I Have Sinned based on Searle‟s theory on illocutionary forces, 2) to find out the context of situation that influences the speeches, and 3) to explain the arrangements of classical rhetoric speeches in the delivery of President Clinton‟s apology speeches. This study applied a descriptive-qualitative research. The object of this study was all utterances spoken by President William “Bill” Jefferson Clinton in his two apology speeches during the Lewinsky scandal, I Misled and I Have Sinned. The data were in the form of words, phrases, utterances, and discourse uttered by him in the apology speeches. The researcher has the role of planning, collecting, analysing, and reporting the research finding. A set of Clinton‟s speeches, the speech transcripts, and the data sheets were also employed as supporting instruments. Some steps were undertaken during the data collection: watching the videos of the speeches, finding their transcripts, making data sheets, and categorising. The researcher collected documents to do an in-depth learning process and interpretations. This technique of collecting data was a non-interactive technique. This research was principally using credibility, dependability and conformability to check the trustwothiness of the data. The research result showed that there was a different approach to be made from his first to his second apology speech under the essence of embracing the society‟s forgiveness. That attitude was represented through illocutionary acts performed by him. The most illocutionary acts performed was representatives under the act of convincing. In his second apology, he did not perform offensive acts such as protesting, blaming, and refuting which means that he changed his attitude, to maintain harmony between the speaker and the hearers. Mostly, regretting, apologizing, and thanking were performed as illocutionary acts of expressives. In the result of the arrangement of classical rhetoric, among six parts of rhetoric, the most dominant for both speeches is proof. However, what became so different is about the content itself. Proofs that were presented in I Misled showed self-defense for the speaker instead of giving more elaboration on apology purposes. On the contrary, I Have Sinned gave more elaboration on its proof to show the purpose of apologising. Thus, his second apology was more effective because he gave himself credibility through the use of structure and language by making himself sound sincere and by not placing the blame on his opponents. He formed the minds of his audience and made them elaborate on the information to create their own opinions that he was innocent. If the idea of his innocence came from within their minds, they would in turn accept his apology, support him, and take the actions that he asked them to

Using Data-Driven Approach to Teach Descriptive Text: A Study in High School

This paper aims to describe how data-driven learning can be applied in English classes when teaching descriptive text to senior high school students. This study was a self-observation involving 24 high school social studies students. The data were obtained from observation of student activities during learning, and the tasks carried out by students were in accordance with the basic competencies of the descriptive text material. The data were analyzed by conducting sorting the data and analyzing the sorted data by codifying and reporting the data. The results of this study showed that the application of data-driven learning with communicative learning methods can make students more confident in their abilities during the learning process. The use of data-driven learning is expected to increase students' motivation and learning abilities, especially in the field of writing. &nbsp

A case study of argument diagramming in Thai and Indonesian higher education argumentative essays

This study explores first-year undergraduate students’ argumentation essays using argument diagramming structure. A corpus-driven data of 394 argumentative essays were gathered from both Indonesian and Thai universities. A content analysis was employed to examine the dataset of the students’ argumentative essays. After gathering primary information from the body parts of their essays, we subcategorized their argumentations into claims and premises in a compliant reading. To ensure data trustworthiness, this study employed triangulation by source and method. The findings show that the most prominent type of argument diagramming was a basic argument, followed by convergent and divergent arguments. Regardless of how the argument diagramming was written, the study found that the students still lacked mastery in structuring their logic when building up the case to be extended to claims and premises. This study suggests a need to revisit pedagogical instructions, in which there should be a provision not only on the basic knowledge of argument structures but also on the skills to recognize the quality of a good argument cognitively. This additional practice will provide important insights to recognize the representational strengths and weaknesses of the students’ argumentative writing proficiency to achieve a better performance in the content of their essays

The Use of Verbal Rhetorical Devices to Construct Readers’ Ideology in Online News Headlines

Headline editorials have their merit to create inventive language choices to meet a targeted discourse. This paper serves as an understanding on how news discourse can be elaborated by taking both meaning and effects of language use in the production and interpretation of a text into account. Gathering the key instrument from 139 relevant online news headlines under the discourse of Gerwani, a debarred women’s organization in Indonesia’s New Order regime from various online news websites publication year 1999-2016, this research aims to: 1) identify verbal rhetorical devices (alliteration, parallelism, testimonial, metonymy, irony, quotation out of context, rhetorical question, and antithesis) used in the headlines, and 2) elaborate the use of verbal rhetoric devices and how they serve the readers with persuasive manner toward their ideology, including beliefs, opinions, and value systems, regarding with Gerwani-related case. The analysis proved that the use of verbal rhetorical devices in online news headlines contributed to create relevance of the topic, thus, aided the readers to perceive intended meaning, which might influence the establishment of power to construct their ideology. Consequently, the use of language can never be separated in socio-cultural contexts of a particular society, driving a persuaded manner for headline-oriented and language practitioners to notice how important it is to use verbal rhetorical devices as one of incorporating attitudes in delivering messages in public sphere ensuring a variety of contents and contexts to be perceived.

Profiles, Differences, and Roles of Learners’ Agency in English Learning in Thailand

Human agency theory has been known for more than two decades, but the applications in EFL learning are still insufficiently researched and the roles in enhancing English proficiency are still little explored. This study, thus, examined learners’ agency in English learning and investigated the role in English proficiency. Using a quantitative research design, it collected data from 13 nonEnglish disciplines of schools at a university in the south of Thailand. The total number of participants was 389 undergraduate students (22.4% male; 76.9% female; .8% prefer not to say) involving 43.4% 2nd and 56.6% 1st-year students with levels of proficiency ranging from A1 to B1 in the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). The data were analysed by using descriptive statistics, independent t-test, one-way ANOVA, bivariate correlation, multiple linear regression, and mediation analysis. The results indicated a higher level of learners’ agency for learning with some variations by year of study and proficiency level. Thai EFL learners’ agency for learning had predictive roles on their proficiency, yet no potential mediators were observe