A Study On Pragmatic Presupposition In The Communication

Presupposition is originally advanced by Frege and developed by Strawson. It has long been the concern of linguists and philosophers. The significance and value of research on presupposition from multiple perspectives have been acknowledged by many scholars in the academic field. Presupposition has been previously studied as a kind of language phenomenon by linguists. It is initially studied as a kind of semantic issue because it seems to be based more closely on certain linguistic structures. Then with the development of pragmatics, linguists propose a series of pragmatic theories to explain presupposition and now it has become an important topic in pragmatics. In pragmatics presupposition is studied as a kind of inference which is part of human verbal communication.Based on the previous study on the presupposition, this thesis makes a study on the pragmatic presupposition in communication. As a kind of human cognitive activity, pragmatic presupposition studies the relationship between the human being and the propositions. It is the precondition for the appropriateness and smoothness of the flowing utterances and fulfils its functions of delivering and understanding information. Since presupposition is sensitive to context, one utterance may convey different presuppositions in different contexts. That is to say, the change of context has influence on what the addresser presupposes in making an utterance, hence influence on the addressee's interpretation and understanding of the utterance meaning. In the communication, pragmatic presupposition demonstrates felicity, common ground, subjectiveness, latency, and unidirectionality. During the delivery of information, it has the value of economy, informativeness, and coherence. The manipulation of pragmatic presupposition is also an effective role if employed by people to realize their communication intention. The analysis of the pragmatic presupposition in the communication will further improve the skill of using language and help people produce proper and efficient utterances to successfully achieve the intended communicative goal.