A Study Of Pragmatic Functions Of Presupposition In American Televised Presidential Debates

Presupposition which has a history of more than one hundred years owns the unique property which conveys specific messages and intends to influence people's thinking and behaviors. The numerous researches show the linguists'interest in it. As the long tradition in philosophy and linguistics suggests, it is not difficult to draw the inspiration to further the study. But compared to the works on presupposition mainly in the advertising, few works have thrown light on the American televised presidential debates.The American televised presidential debate requires its language has a powerful influence over people and their behavior. How to convey the specific massages with the intention of affecting people is vitally important. Presupposition, a very important topic in linguistics, could complete the mission without any question because of its own special properties and characteristics of strengthening the effects of persuasion. The speakers who employ presupposition freely can control the process of the conversation and find their ways to survive and prosper quite easily. The elements above allow this thesis to expound the employment of presupposition and the main pragmatic functions that presupposition performs in American televised presidential debates. As the product of television era, the American televised presidential debate, emerged in 1960, has a very important effect on the election of the president. In order to extract more support; the candidates employ presupposition in designing their speeches. This thesis studies the 27 transcripts which are from the past ten American presidential elections from 1960 to 2008.Based on the presupposition theory and using qualitative study as the main method, the analysis of the past 27 debates has accomplished the aim that presupposition makes candidates'attacks more concealable and their words more polite and persuasive. The study first illustrates the existing studies of presupposition and American televised presidential debates, and then analyzes how presuppositions are embedded in the candidates'performance. Finally the study presents that the candidates not only make language concealable, self-protecting, succinct, humorous, and persuasive, but also present their ideas vividly by using presupposition, leading the audience to the world they intend to show and allowing the audience opportunities to appreciate the coherent discourses with good information structure.This thesis explores the pragmatic functions of presupposition in American televised presidential debates to expose the positive contributions made by presupposition. It can help debaters to obtain a better understanding of how presuppositions work and thus utilize this linguistic device to make their language more charming.