A Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Auto Advertising From The Perspective Of Relevance Theory

Automobile advertising communication is a kind of persuasive pragmatic speechact, whose purpose and function are to persuade consumers to take actions to buy itsadvertised car products. This thesis proposes that presupposition can help to enhancethe persuasive effects in advertising, and hence becomes an advertising strategy oftenadopted by car advertisers. Presupposition phenomenon in advertising language hasalso aroused the interest of great many scholars in linguistics.This thesis focuses on English auto advertising in social life and collects autoadvertisements from English newspapers of New York Times, The Washington Post,ect., English professional auto magazines like Car and Driver, Automobiles,Volksworld etc. and English official automobiles websites from BMW,Mercedes-Benz, Buick, Cadillac etc. By adopting the qualitative analysis methods andcase study methods, this thesis explores the presupposition phenomenon in autoadvertisements based on the classification and analysis of the collected data. Byconstructing the theoretical explanatory framework based on Relevance Theory, thethesis proposed that ostension-inference, optimal relevance and relevance contextprovide strong explanatory force for the interpretation of pragmatic presupposition inauto advertisements.First and foremost, this thesis analyses the three aspects that are involved in autoadvertising from the ostensive-inferential process and optimal relevance based onRelevance Theory, namely, ostension given by the auto advertiser, inference made bythe audience and optimal relevance in the auto advertisement itself. This thesis holdsview that, auto advertisers provides basis for audience’s inference by offeringostensive signs in specific auto advertisement context with presupposition in autoadvertisements to offer cognitive assumptions to audience so as to alter the audience’scognitive environment, so as to make the utterance to achieve optimal relevance andto achieve the target for brand publicity and to accomplish the auto-selling communication. Meanwhile, the thesis discusses the functions on pragmaticpresupposition of different categories in auto adverting based on ostensive-inferentialcommunication from five aspects, namely existential presupposition, factpresupposition, belief presupposition, state presupposition and behaviorpresupposition. This thesis holds view that these five pragmatic presuppositionsobtain different pragmatic function; appropriate employment can get twice the resultwith half the effort.Furthermore, this thesis analyses pragmatic presupposition effects in relevancecontext for auto advertising. This thesis explores and analyses pragmaticpresupposition in relevance context in auto advertisements from three understandingperspectives respectively, i.e., pragmatic presupposition as propositional attitudes, asrelevance felicity conditions and as mutual knowledge. Finally, this thesis discussescontextual effects of pragmatic presupposition in relevance context. Through analysis,the thesis proposes that pragmatic presupposition can enlarge the advertisinginformation, enhance the advertising effects in specific cognitive context of autoadvertisements. Under appropriate employment, pragmatic presupposition can conveymore information with brief description, and thus can enhance the advertisingpromotions.Through analysis, this thesis finds that ostensive-inference communication modeland optimal relevance and cognitive context in Relevance Theory can be used toreveal the process about pragmatic presupposition interpretation and analysis.Presupposition is a kind of pragmatic inference which is inseparable with humancognition. Studies on presupposition can help people obtain a more clearunderstanding on the cognitive mechanism. Besides, this thesis also hopes to providesome guidance and help for the design of auto advertisement through the studies onthe pragmatic presuppositional strategies in auto advertising.