On The Pragmatic Functions Of Presupposition In Advertisements

Advertisements are an important social phenomenon in the global-economic time and the information age. They are closely connected with social economy, enterprise development, market exploitation, foreign trade and people's daily life. In fact, advertisements are permeable and they become an inseparable part of modern life. Due to their importance, advertisements attract more and more experts and scholars' attention. What is more, they attract the attention of linguists. Some linguists make studies on advertising language, one of the most important elements of advertisements, aiming at finding out the basic rules of advertising language, hence to give theoretical and scientific guidance for the designing of advertisements, and to help advertisements achieve their goals.To study advertising language from the perspective of presupposition is a new approach in recent years. Jean Stillwell Peccei points out in his Pragmatics that there exist some relations between presupposition and advertising language. Chen Xinren, a Chinese scholar, holds the same point of view. He has a thesis that gives a categorization to the presuppositions in advertisements. Their studies lay good foundation for this dissertation. However, the author of this dissertation thinks that the relations between presupposition and advertising language are of a complex subject matter. Since the studies on this subject matter have just been started, the published works on this subject matter are far from enough and far from perfection when the complexity of the subject matter and the importance of advertisements in present-day society are taken into consideration. Therefore, the author of this dissertation further points out that presupposition has pragmatic functions in advertisements. Due to the complex relations between presupposition and advertising language, this dissertation expounds and analyzes the pragmatic functions that presupposition has in advertisements from three macroscopic angles:presupposition and the form of advertising language, presupposition and advertisement information, presupposition and psychology and market strategies of advertisements. This dissertation features with its comprehensive, incisive and detailed studies on the subject matter, and it features with its vast amount of advertising data in the process of analysis. The author of this dissertation hopes that this dissertation can give theoretical guidance to the applying of presupposition in advertisements, and she hopes that it can help advertisements achieve their actual goals.This dissertation consists of the following main parts.Part 1 discusses the definitions and the features of presupposition. Presupposition is originated in the field of philosophy and logic. However, it gradually involves the studies of language forms, structures, usage and functions. That is to say, the pure philosophical and logical studies turn into semantic and pragmatic studies. Presupposition keeps some features. It is the shared background knowledge; it is the set. of conditions that have to be satisfied in order for the intended speech act to be appropriate in the circumstances, or to be felicitous; it can not be simply denied; it concerns the speaker's attitude and intention; it is made by the speaker; it is mutually understood by the two sides of communications. There are some different ideas as to whether presupposition belongs to semantic field or pragmatic field, but the author of this dissertation regards it as a pragmatic phenomenon. Though it closely connects with semantics, its semantic features serve its pragmatic functions. In this dissertation, the author does not take the semantic features of presupposition as something distinctly separated from the pragmatic functions, but takes them as the component parts of the pragmatic functions that serve advertisements.Part 2 makes a brief review of the main functions of advertisements. Advertisements are to give information, to arouse interest, to cause attention, to stimulate desire, to convince potential customers an...