Pragmatic Presupposition In Chinese Consumer Advertising On Television

This paper aims to make a tentative analysis on Chinese consumer advertising on television from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition. It proposes two new concepts of presupposition: metapragmatic presupposition and lingual pragmatic presupposition. Metapragmatic presupposition is one level up from the object lingual pragmatic presupposition and refers to the background knowledge built up in the speaker's mind by culture-bound and group-bound action frames. It is activated by the hearer's same or similar background knowledge. Lingual pragmatic presuppositions are assumptions which are linked with certain linguistic items such as words and grammatical structures and can be triggered to become actual ones in a linguistic context. Furthermore 15 categories of Chinese presupposition-triggers are summarized through the analysis of 110 Chinese consumer advertisements on television.It also refines Gazdar's canceling mechanism to make it more suitable for the analysis of advertisements, and points out that metapragmatic presupposition is the first one to be added into the context. Chen's classification is revised by the use of presupposition's illocutionary force in advertising. It is suggested that presupposition can be divided into five types: euphemism presupposition, resonating presupposition, flattering presupposition, self-praising presupposition and informing presupposition. The functions of presupposition in advertising are claimed that it can guarantee the coherence in a discourse and help advertisers shirk legal responsibilities.