Study On The Application Of Presupposition Triggers In American Presidential Inaugurals

The concept of presupposition was first put forward by Frege in the field of philosophy and later came into linguistics. With the deepening of the study on presupposition, scholars found out that presuppositions are related to some particular words or aspects of surface structures. That means some particular words and structures can trigger presuppositions. These words and structures are called presupposition triggers. When introducing and discussing presupposition triggers, scholars at home and abroad prefer to take advantage of the 13 kinds of presupposition triggers collected by Levinson. After a thorough examination of Levinson's 13 kinds of presupposition triggers, the author reclassifies presupposition triggers into three levels: lexical (semantic) level, syntactic level and phonological level. Lexical presupposition triggers are some words which can induce presuppositions, and the presupposed information is included in the meaning of such words. Syntactic presupposition triggers are some syntactic structures which can produce presupposition. Presupposition trigger at phonological level refers to the prosodic means of changing the sentence's tone focus to emphasize a certain component of the sentence.This thesis makes a statistic analysis of presupposition triggers in American presidential inaugurals—the special genre, at lexical, syntactic and phonological levels, and analyzes the functions of presupposition triggers in the American presidential inaugurals as well. Presidential inaugural is a typical subcategory of political public speech. As far as the genre is concerned, it has the dual characteristics of both spoken and written discourse. As far as the content is concerned, it is in close connection with the time when the presidents are elected. As far as the effectiveness of persuasion is concerned, it relies mainly on language skills and emotional appeals to the audience to make a hit and to obtain the anticipated aims. American Presidential inaugurals play an important role in American history, politics and literature, even in history, politics and literature of the world, and have long been the research subject which interest historians, politicians and linguists. Therefore, understanding and analyzing the presupposition triggers and their functions in American presidential inaugurals can help us comprehend the American presidential inaugurals more thoroughly. What's more, the practical study on functions of presupposition triggers in a typical genre and a tentative reclassification of presupposition triggers on the basis of their functions will do much help to understand presupposition better.The paper is composed of 6 chapters. Chapter 1 gives a brief introduction to American presidential inaugurals, and covers the purpose and significance of the research as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter 2 summarizes the definition, semantic and pragmatic notions of presupposition. Previous researches on presupposition triggers are introduced and summarized. And a three-level model for analysis is proposed. Chapter 3, 4 and 5, the main body of the thesis, analyze the presupposition triggers at lexical, syntactic, phonological levels according to the model. The study finds out that presupposition triggers play a very important role in simplifying language, changing topic, projecting the information focus, in linking up the context, in emphasizing the presupposed information, in making texts or discourses more coherent and cohesive, and so on. Chapter 6 draws a conclusion of the thesis.