An Analysis Of Trap-setting In Chinese Debate Tournaments

Peccei (2000: 19) argues that pragmatic presuppositions are "inferences that are very closely linked to the words and grammatical structures actually used in the utterance, but they come from our knowledge about the way language users conventionally interpret these words and structures". Then she goes further to point out that pragmatic presupposition can be applied in the study of persuasive language. Chen Xinren (1998:54-57) believes that this is because pragmatic presupposition has two main features of subjectivity and implicitness. Based on these previous studies, this thesis made a qualitative study of trap-setting in 19 episodes from 10 complete Chinese intercollegiate debate tournaments from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition. From this research, two findings have been got: (1) some presupposition-triggers, like some lexical words, yes/no questions, alternative questions, wh-questions, if-clauses, and a series of definite expressions and interrogative questions, are used by debaters to set language traps. (2) Pragmatic presupposition traps can be set in the different levels of presupposition-triggers, such as the lexical level, the sentential level and the discourse levels. This study hopes that the two findings, to some extent, will help to improve the debate skills of both sides in debates. First, they can be helpful for both sides to make full use of pragmatic presuppositions to set language traps in debates. Second, once knowing the different ways of pragmatic presupposition trap-setting, the side lured into the traps can have a better chance of thinking of effective methods to jump out of this kind of traps. And this dissertation, combining studies on inference in thought and language in use, goes further to wish that the study could reflect the guiding function of linguistics, especially pragmatics in practice.