A Pragmatic Approach To Presupposition In Advertising Language

In contemporary society, advertising plays an important role in people's daily life. Advertising has a great power to influence consumers' purchasing behavior as well as their socio-psychological state. In order to reach their ultimate aim to promote the publicized products or services, advertisers try every possible means, linguistic or non-linguistic, to make their advertisements persuasive. Pragmatic presupposition, one of the most widely studied topics in linguistics, especially in pragmatics, is among the frequently adopted effective linguistic techniques applied in advertising language. Felicity conditions and mutual knowledge, which are essential to utterance understanding, are often attributable to pragmatic presupposition. However, there are other properties that characterize a speaker's pragmatic presupposition itself, notably unidirectionality, subjectiveness and latency. Proper exploitation of pragmatic presupposition proves to be strategic in communication. This is manifested in advertising language, as is revealed through systematic analysis and demonstration from different perspectives in this thesis.By means of theoretical analysis, case study and quantitative investigation, this thesis indicates the significance of pragmatic presupposition in advertising information, advertising discourse and the socio-psychology and market strategy in advertising. Chapter 3 indicates that pragmatic presupposition contributes a lot to advertising information. Its appropriate employment ensures indirect and implicit advertising information, which thereby invites consumers to infer some information and in turn leaves a deep and unforgettable impression on their minds. Through combination of presupposed information embedded in advertisements and asserted information, advertising information becomes loaded and enlarged, and simultaneously considerable space or time is saved and the costs of advertising are reduced. Different focal information is highlighted with the change of presupposition based on the actual needs and objectives of advertisements.Chapter 4 indicates that pragmatic presupposition plays a significant role in the organization of advertising discourse. Skillful application of pragmatic presupposition is responsible for an economical and concise advertisement. It ascertains a smooth, coherent and natural advertising discourse. It perfects the macro-structure of an advertisement and makes it well balanced. Proper exploitation of pragmatic presupposition in advertising discourse makes for its attractiveness and persuasiveness.Chapter 5 indicates that pragmatic presupposition serves the realization and fulfillment of socio-psychology and market strategy in advertisements. Pragmatic presupposition in advertisements is classified into four types, notably fact presupposition, state presupposition, belief presupposition and action presupposition, which demonstrate that consumers' psychology is closely related to advertising. Through quantitative investigation, the author finds that state-oriented presuppositions account for most of the cases, quite in conformity with the fact that advertisers tend to promise changes in the undesirable state of consumers. Subtle manipulation of presupposition enhances the credibility of advertisements. It protects advertisers from prosecution for certain indefensible claims. It helps to obtain euphemism and thus avoid consumers' unpleasant association and repulsion to the publicized products or services.This study is quite implicational both practically and theoretically. Practically, this study can help advertisers create more scientific and attractive designing of advertisements and achieve their goals. Theoretically, it might shed light on the significance of pragmatic presupposition, enrich the understanding of pragmaticpresupposition and modify the existing study of advertising language.