On The Functions Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Advertising Language

Advertising is an important social phenomenon in the global-economic time and information age. They are closely connected with social economy, enterprise development, market exploitation, foreign trade and people's daily life. The language of advertising is basically persuasive. Therefore, all possible means, linguistic or non-linguistic, have been adopted by advertisers to serve the purpose of advertising. As a very important topic in linguistics, especially in pragmatics, presupposition is frequently employed in order to enhance the effects of persuasion in advertisements because of its own special properties and characteristics. This dissertation gives a tentative analysis of pragmatic presupposition in advertising language by referring to the historical background and theoretical background of the study of presupposition. Due to the complex relations between presupposition and advertising language, the author adopts a qualitative method to expound and analyze the functions that pragmatic presupposition has in advertising language from four macroscopic angles: presupposition and the form of advertising language, presupposition and the discourse of advertising, presupposition and the information of advertising, presupposition and the market strategies of advertising. The study shows that pragmatic presupposition is closely connected with these four aspects and has both linguistic and pragmatic functions, which are presented as following: 1) Pragmatic presupposition leads to the brevity and diversity of advertising language. 2) Pragmatic presupposition perfects the macrostructure and contributes to the coherence of advertising discourse. 3) Pragmatic presupposition enriches the advertisement information and enhances the quality of advertisement information communication. 4) Pragmatic presupposition serves the implementation of the market strategies of advertising in that it has leading function, concealment function, self-protection and euphemism functions and that it can make the advertising language humorous and shorten the distance between advertisers and the advertisement recipients. Presupposition is an important component of the overall message in advertising and plays an irreplaceable part in fulfilling the ultimate purposes of advertising. The study is implicational both practically and theoretically. Practically, this study can give theoretical guidance to the applying of presupposition in advertising language and help advertisers create more scientific and attractive designing of advertisements in order to achieve their final goal of persuading the potential consumers to buy the products or services advertised. Theoretically, it might shed light on the significance of presupposition, and enrich the understanding of presupposition and the study of advertising language.