Towards an Analysis of Argumentation Structure and the Strength of Arguments in News Editorials Bal Krishna Bal 1 and Patrick Saint-Dizier 2 1 INTRODUCTION Editorials in general fall under persuasive texts.These types of texts intend to persuade the readers over a certain issue or topic.Hence per- suasion involves the use of persuasive elements(opinion words and expressions)and facts presented in the form of arguments.A closer look at editorials reveals that they consist of an argumentation struc- ture consisting of an opening statement(also known as the conclusion in argumentation theory[6,7,12,13,15]),which in turn is supported by other statements(known as the supports in argumentation theory)for or against the conclusion.These supports as well as the conclusion can be either facts or opinions.The underlying supports for or against a conclusion may be further developed,illustrated,justified,elaborated etc.by means of text fragments,also widely known as rhetoric rela- tions[11]. The proposed work is aimed towards analyzing the argumenta- tion structure and the strengths of arguments in news editorials thus determining the persuasiveness inherent in the texts.The result is a discourse analysis of opinions as stated in editorial texts producing a kind of dedicated semantic representation. Ultimately, the analyzed argumentation structure would be used to construct a synthesis of positive and negative arguments on a particular topic from one or several editorials(single or multiple sources)over a common date or a span of time.Such a synthesis can provide a relatively true view of how an event has been perceived by the public in general and is of much interest to journalists, public figures and political analysts.We also will be analyzing the change in opinions taking time as an eval- uative factor for change as reported in [8,9].In order to automate the analysis as well as the synthesis construction process,we would be developing a computational model that would suggest methods and appropriate techniques.The manually annotated texts and collected editorials would serve as training data and test data respectively for validating the computation model over ideal outputs[1]. Currently, the work is in its preliminary stage,primarily focused towards analyzing the different facets of supports and rhetorical re- lations required for an adequate semantic-pragmatic analysis of the underlying argumentation structures in editorials.In parallel with the analysis,we are also in the process of specifying tags for annotating editorials in order to establish patterns characteristic to the different facets of support.We noted that the opinions and the argumentation structure in editorials are not so apparent and structured,which makes synthesis construction a challenging task. 1 Madan Puraskar Pustakalaya, Lalitpur, PatanDhoka, Nepal, email: bal@mpp.org.np 2 IRIT, 118 Narbonne 31062 Toulouse, France, email: stdizier@irit.fr 2 PERSUASIVE TEXTS AND THE UNDERLYING ARGUMENTATION STRUCTURE In order to make the text convincing or persuasive,the common prac- tice is to follow one or more of the following strategies [14]: 1. Use of logical and cause effective connectives like however, so, and,although etc. Example - However ,if we compare the present situation with the period before 2006,we have definitely come a long way. 2. Trying to make opinions sound like facts. Example - The year also saw the height of anarchy,impunity and lawlessness . 3. Use of powerful adverbs and adjectives. Example - The Post believes that the long awaited and ever elusive CA elections will take place this year,and that the country will take the course to sustainable peace and development . 4. Use of words like surely,obviously,of course, definitelyetc. Example - If the Maoists do not run away from the elections, if the recently formed and old parties in the terai live up to the promises to allow the CA elections to take place,and if the gov- ernment deals with other problems appropriately,the year 2008 will definitely herald the beginning of a new Nepal . Source: Editorial - ”Year of hope”,The Kathmandu Post,December 28,2007(http://ekantipur.com/ktmpost.php) 3 SUPPORT AND RHETORICAL RELATIONS IN THE ARGUMENTATION STRUCTURE OF EDITORIALS In our semantic and pragmatic representation of editorials,the root node is a conclusion.This conclusion bears a polarity: positive, nega- tive or neutral.It has also a date and a source.Obviously,this polarity is either inherent through explicit linguistic marks, or needs to be de- duced.In the latter case,depending on the view point of the reader,the polarity may vary. Next,the root node is associated with one or more supports.The support relation,we define,consists of six fields that represent the facets of the support.These are represented by means of attribute- value pairs. These facets are: • The date the support has been uttered. • The source(name of newpaper,name of utterer if it is a reported opinion). • The orientation of the support,namely for or against the conclu- sion.At the moment,we are not completely satisfied with the plain