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1、A Study on Pragmatic Presupposition in AdvertisementsIntroductionThe advertisement is a kind of linguistic art. Nowadays, advertisements can be found everywhere, which have become an inescapable part of our daily life. As a matter of fact, the advertisement is a kind of public activity, which means
2、to inform somebody of something and catch his attention. Advertisements intend to trigger a special response from the consumers; therefore they are loaded with great persuasive language. It is no exaggeration to say that our life is more or less influenced and even changed by so many advertisements
3、around us in the modern society. A lot of advertisements in the publication are competing for the audiences attention, and then the advertisers try to make their advertisements catch the audiences attention. However, sometimes smart advertisers use some concealed means or implication to control thei
4、r true meanings. In order to realize the true meanings of the advertisement, we must learn to utilize fully pragmatics. Pragmatic presupposition concerns about the speakers and the hearers, so does the advertisement. Therefore, pragmatic presupposition is a comprehensive means applied to the adverti
5、sements, which makes advertisements more concise, attractive and persuasive.1. An Introduction to Advertisements1.1 Definitions of Advertisements and Its ImportanceThe advertisement is one of the oldest forms of public announcements. Encyclopedia Britannia defines advertising as following: The techn
6、iques used to bring products, services，opinions or cause to public notice for the purpose of persuading the public to respond in a certain way towards what is advertised. Most advertising involves promoting goods that is for sale, but similar methods are used to encourage people to drive safely，to s
7、upport various charities，or to vote for political candidates. In many countries advertising is the most important source of income for media (e.g. newspaper, magazines, or television stations) through which it is conducted, (Encyclopedia Britannia Dictionary，1985:96). As a matter of fact, the defini
8、tions of “advertisements” are many and varied. Among them, one of the both widely accepted and latest definitions is put forward by OGuinn,T.C. and Semenik,J.R.(1998.6) as “advertising is a paid ,mass-mediated attempt to persuade.”As we know, advertisements have become a part of our daily life and w
9、e are all exposed to various kinds of advertisementson radio and television, in newspapers and magazines, on city streets and buses, and even on computer screens and mobile phones. In todays age of mass production and fierce competition for markets, the advertisement has become an essential means fo
10、r advertisers to make their products or services publicly known and ultimately to move consumers to buy and keep buying their goods or services. National economy needs advertisements for its development. Enterprises need advertisements for competition. People generally need advertisements for help i
11、n choosing commodities and for the enrichment of spiritual life. Therefore, it is no exaggeration to say that our life is more or less influenced and even changed by so many advertisements around us in the modern society.1.2 Purposes and Functions of AdvertisementsFrom the definition of advertisemen
12、t we have mentioned above, we can learn the functions of advertisement: informing and persuading. By informing, advertisers want to communicate information about the products, its features, and its sale. By persuading, advertisers try to induce consumers to try new products. The ultimate goal of adv
13、ertisement is to inform the potential consumers of the advertised products or services, and to persuade them to take purchase actions. Therefore, if advertisers succeed in providing a great deal of information about their products but fail to persuade anybody to buy the product, it is hard to say th
14、e advertisement is successful. Generally speaking, advertisers should let their advertisements conform following steps:Firstly, it is necessary to catch the audiences attention for a long time. Once the audiences attention has been captured, the advertisement must hold the audiences attention and co
15、nvince him that the advertisement is particular. The successful advertisement should let the audiences have the desire to buy the products and persuade them that the products satisfy their needs or provide a need that they have not felt before. Moreover, the advertisements must let them know that th
16、e products advertised are better than other competitive products. If the advertisement is successful, it would promote the audiences to buy the products. Then, the audiences will take actions and buy the advertised products. Maybe they will buy the products in a short time or even a few years later.
17、 So, the more successful the advertisement is, the more possible the consumers will buy the advertised products. From the above discussion, we may make it clear that the purpose of all of the advertisements is the same: to persuade consumers to buy the products. In order to reach the purpose, the la
18、nguage of the advertisements must be persuasive. All in all, the advertisers will use kinds of means to let consumers to accept their goods and services.1.3 Features of Advertisements In order to make clear how pragmatic presupposition works in advertising language, it is necessary to know something
19、 about the lexical, syntactical and rhetorical features of the language of advertisements.1.3.1 Lexical FeaturesThe language of advertisements has its own usage. The vivid and expressive spoken words are highly used in advertisements. Among these words, adjectives，verbs, compounds and derivatives al
20、l occur in high frequency. Some of them even have been developed into typical advertisement-featured or stereotyped words. The advertisement copywriters tend to choose strongly positive adjectives, which are always linked to particular types of products. For example, food is always “delicious” “juic
21、y” and so on. These adjectives often appear in advertisements in the form of the comparative or the superlative to show the superiority of the goals and services. In contrast, verbs in advertisements are used in the imperative form when we are told to do something, e.g.: “try” “See”1.3.2 Syntactical
22、 FeaturesGenerally speaking, the sentences of advertisement are short and simple, because short and simple sentences are usually emphatic, expressive and have special clarities, that is, simple sentences are widely used; however the compound ones are not. Coordinate structures are better than subord
23、inate structures. Imperative sentences are often used rather than negative ones, and the present tense is dominant in the texts of the advertisements.1.3.3 Rhetorical FeaturesIn advertisements, the copywriters of advertisements adopt some rhetorical methods to make the advertisements more attractive
24、, thus enabling the language of advertisements to be highly artful and loaded. Metaphor, simile, personification and repetition are frequently used to build up the expected effects; many advertisements tend to repeat words or ideas. For example, something repeated frequently is more likely to be rem
25、embered.2. An Introduction to Pragmatic PresuppositionFrom 1973, many works show that presuppositions are too sensitive to contextual factors (Levinson, 1997:177). Presuppositions are not inherent in particular lexical items or constructions, but associated with properties of utterances in a context
26、. Semantics and semantic theories of presuppositions are theoretically inadequate to explain some language phenomena. Therefore, studies on presupposition from the pragmatic perspective have emerged. Pragmatic presupposition characterizes presupposition from the perspective of language use, and rega
27、rds presupposition as a major factor of the context, belief and knowledge state of the speaker and hearer. From the pragmatic perspective, speakers have presuppositions.2.1 Definitions of Pragmatic PresuppositionPresupposition can be divided into two types: semantic and pragmatic presuppositions. Th
28、e former is deduced from internal part of a sentence without any relation to the context. However, the latter concerns the factors about person and context in communications; it is the speakers presupposition. Although on basis of the meaning of the sentence and structure, pragmatic presupposition c
29、an only be deduced by combining with contexts. Therefore, semantic presupposition analyses the sentence from the aspect of logic semantics, which is a linguistic means of speakers to express the purpose of the utterances. It is a kind of presupposition in a narrow sense. While pragmatic presuppositi
30、on analyzes sentences from pragmatics, which is a kind of presupposition in a broad sense. Pragmatic presupposition essentially studies the relationship between human beings and the propositions they make. It is also called pragmatic premise and used to refer to the assumption of the context in whic
31、h the speaker makes an utterance, or it is taken as appropriate conditions necessary for the performances of speech act or the conditions that must be satisfied to make an utterance, it is taken as the mutual or background knowledge shared by both the speaker and the hearer.Since 1970s, many studies
32、 on presupposition from pragmatic aspect have been made, which has led to varieties of definitions on pragmatic presuppositions. Stalnaker(1973)argues that presupposition is essentially a pragmatic phenomenon and is a part of the set of assumptions made by participants in a conversation, which he te
33、rms “the common ground”. This pragmatic view of presupposition is also proposed by such researchers as Sperber and Wilson(1986),who argues that presupposition is not an independent phenomenon but one of a series of effects is produced when the speaker employs syntactic structure and intention to sho
34、w the hearer how the current sentence fits into the previous background. Pragmatic presuppositions are best described as a relation between a speaker and the appropriateness of a sentence in a context (Levinson, 1997:177). Presupposition is something the speaker assumes to be the case prior to makin
35、g an utterance. Speakers, not sentences, have presuppositions (Yule, 1996:25).Linguists define pragmatic presupposition with different focuses and in different diction. However, they agree on one point, pragmatic presupposition is closely connected with the speaker. That is to say, 1) pragmatic pres
36、upposition is concerned with shared background information. We will use “presupposition of a sentence” to denote the information in the sentence that is assumed by the speaker to be shared by him and the hearer.2) pragmatic presupposition is regarded as a speakers assumptions about the speech contex
37、t.3) definitions show that the pragmatic presupposition of a sentence is a series of conditions which have to be satisfied so that the intended speech could be appropriate in the circumstance.2.2 Characteristics of Pragmatic PresuppositionFrom the angle of pragmatics, pragmatic presupposition has th
38、e following characteristics:1) Appropriateness: appropriateness refers to the fact that presuppositions must be closely related to the context and it must be precondition of speech act. Appropriate presupposition will have the hearer understand the speakers speech act. e.g.: “Dad, please repair the
39、light” includes such appropriate presuppositions as the light is broken or something is wrong with it, and Dad knows which light is broken and Dad is able to repair the light.2) Mutual knowledge: mutual knowledge is the knowledge that is known to both the speaker and the hearer, e.g.: a child says t
40、o her mother “It is almost 12 oclock”. Presupposition is 12 oclock, which is the time to cook lunch. The implied presupposition is that lunch is usually a few minutes earlier than 12 oclock and the child is hungry. The mutual knowledge is implied in the speakers utterance and can be understood by th
41、e hearer.3) One-sidedness: it refers to that pragmatic presuppositions are made by the speaker and are known only to the speaker before they are dealt with by the hearer. It seems that one-sidedness is incompatible with common ground. In fact, common ground relates to utterance understanding while o
42、ne-sidedness relates to pragmatic presupposition itself. Pragmatic presupposition must be known mutually to the speaker and hearer, at least accepted by them. Thus the hearer can correctly understand the speaker. However, such mutual knowledge is not always given; it is set up, supplemented, and mod
43、ified through communication. Undoubtedly, the speaker knows pragmatic presupposition firstly, which leads to the characteristic of one-sidedness.4) Subjectiveness: pragmatic presupposition is the speakers assumption on the context and it reflects the speakers subjective thought and intention in the
44、communication. Pragmatic presupposition is closely related to the speaker and the context. It is not the relationship between propositions but the human being and propositions. It indicates that presupposition itself does not possess factuality or accuracy. Presupposition can be objective facts or f
45、acts considered in speakers mind or even assumed conditions. For example： A: How old is your child?B: I have no kid at all.In this conversation, A subjectively judges that B has at least one child. But from the response from B, As pragmatic presupposition is totally subjective and wrong. Advertiseme
46、nt mostly makes use of the subjectiveness of the pragmatic presupposition.5) Sneakiness: pragmatic presupposition is closely connected with the speakers belief, attitude and intention. In addition, it comes from peoples knowledge about the way, in which language users conventionally interpret the wo
47、rds and structures that trigger it, so presupposition is concealed in a conversation and can be quite “sneaky”. It is very easy for the hearer to accept it as an assertion. As a result, the hearer is controlled and deceived by the speaker. For example:A: When did you stop beating your son?B: Yesterd
48、ay.B: No, no, I never beat my son. As utterance presupposes that the hearer has beaten his son. The hearers answer “yesterday” proves that he had beaten his son before and stopped yesterday. In fact, he has never beaten his son. The hearer easily trusts the truth of the utterance spoken by the speak
49、er through the use of pragmatic presupposition.3. Pragmatic Presuppositions in AdvertisementsWhen close attention is being paid to the advertisements, we will find that a lot of information is being presupposed. Because presupposition can influence behavior, the advertisement copywriters use them very carefully to motivate the audiences to change beliefs or take actions. Therefore, we may already notice that some sentences in advertisement