Concession relations in argumentative discourse : the case of written reviews

Abstract

This paper has considered the role of concession in the argumentative genre, specifically the role of the concessive markers but and although in written reviews of books and films. Therefore, it was necessary to examine the theoretical ackground of such concession and written reviews. Firstly, the argumentative genre, and in particular written reviews were analysed in relation to concession. Secondly, a review of previous literature on concession was discussed. In this, concession was analysed with reference to its semantic features, its connection to other coherence relations (causal, conditional and opposite relations), its markers, its structure according to the RST, its discourse function and its pragmatic characteristics in consonance with Appraisal Theory. To this end, different examples(several taken from my corpus and others from the literature reviewed) were discussed