A Pragmatic Approach To The Functions Of Presupposition In Print Advertising Language

Advertising as a kind of persuasive language has the goal of informingconsumers of the advertised products or services, and persuading them to takepurchase action. Designing attractive, motivating and persuasive advertising languageinvolves successful manipulation of communicative, linguistic, and psychologicalstrategies. As an important linguistic phenomenon, presupposition possesses someunique properties: it is the shared background knowledge, the set of conditions thathave to be satisfied in order for the intended speech act to be appropriate in thecircumstances. Presupposition can survive negation and it is the speakers'assumption.Therefore, presupposition is one-sided, subjective, deceptive and misleading. Suchcharacteristics can serve the strategies employed in designing successful advertisinglanguage. This thesis attempts to explore the possible functions of presupposition in printadvertising language to find out the positive roles played by presupposition in helpingadvertising achieve its persuasion goal. It may help advertising practitioners obtain abetter understanding of how presuppositions work and thus consciously employ sucha linguistic strategy. Chapter One introduces the rationale and purpose of this study, the theoreticalbasis, the language data and research methodology employed in this thesis, as well asthe organization scheme of the thesis. Chapter Two is literature review. It traces the historical origin and generaldevelopment of theories on presupposition, as well as discusses different types ofpresupposition and its unique properties. This chapter also briefly reviews previousstudies on presupposition in print advertising language. It provides theoretical supportto the case analysis in the next two chapters. Chapter Three and Chapter Four are chapters of case analysis. Fifty or moreadvertisements, culled from English newspapers and magazines, are analyzed toexamine the positive roles that presupposition plays in advertising language. Onaccount of the characteristics of presupposition, Chapter Three carefully explores howpresupposition works in communicating information in advertisements.Presupposition is the shared background knowledge, thus new information can beeasily conveyed based on the presupposed mutual information with fewer words andless space. With some presupposition-carrying linguistic items, certain information inadvertisements can be emphasized and hence become information centers to drawattention from the readers. Presupposition-triggers are of great importance in servingthe brevity and diversity of advertising language. A thorough examination with theanalysis of language data is made to show how these presupposition-triggerscontribute to the economy of the words and the variety of language in advertising. Since advertisements are designed to attract consumers'attention, arouse theirinterest, stimulate their desire, create conviction and finally persuade them to takepurchase action, the manipulation of consumer psychology becomes very important inthe process of designing successful advertising texts. Different functions ofpresuppositions in manipulating consumer psychology are scrutinized in Chapter Four,for example, misleading, concealment, and persuasive functions. With the linguisticdevice involving presupposition, the advertisers can easily create emotional intimacywith the potential consumers, win their favor, change their attitudes and beliefs, leadthem to accept the presupposed facts, and finally persuade them to take purchaseaction. These two chapters prove and highlight the important role that presuppositionplays in helping advertising achieve its persuasion goal. Chapter Five is the concluding part of the thesis, including a general summary ofthe whole thesis, possible significance of the study, and the limitations of this research,as well as suggested further research possibilities.