The Application Of Pragmatic Presupposition Triggers In US Presidential Debates

The US presidential debates, due to their social and political specialties, perform adecisive role in the general campaign. So during these debates, advocates of presidency willtry their utmost to maximize their strength and minimize their weakness, so as to acclaim newpolicies, attack opponents, defend themselves and persuade the voters as well as gain theirsupport (Benoit and Harthcock, 1999). This being so, advocates'profound debate languageand excellent debate strategies have been a focusi of many linguistic researches for a longtime. However, it should be noted that most of the previous studies on the US presidentialdebates are longitudinal researches conducted from rhetorical approach, traditional linguisticapproach and functional approach, few has ever adopted the pragmatic approach to do asynchronic research.Therefore, the present thesis would like to analyze 2008 US presidential debates from theperspective of pragmatics. It would like to penetrate deep into how pragmatic presuppositiontriggers are applied in these debates. And the reasons should be twofold. On the one hand, the2008 US presidential debates are special and typical. Obama, the first African Americancandidate, challenged McCain, the vice president on a series of hot issues, such as theunprecedented global economic crisis, the leftover problems of Iraq War, the taxes and healthpolicies, etc. On the other hand, both Obama and McCain employ pragmatic presuppositiontriggers at high quality and quantity, but their usage is of great difference. According toLevinson (2001: 180), pragmatic presuppositions are"the background assumptions againstwhich the main import of the utterance is to be assessed", and"the main point of an utterancemay be to assert or to deny or to question some proposition". To this extent, pragmaticpresuppositions are helpful for the advocates to achieve their desired communicative purposes.And pragmatic presupposition triggers are the linguistic items that can effectively inducepragmatic presuppositions or that help identify the existence of these presuppositions in aconcrete context. Briefly, specific pragmatic presupposition triggers can be used to generatespecific pragmatic presuppositions so as to meet the advocates'pre-designed communicative purposes and improve their debate language.In short, this research conducts a qualitative analysis on the application of pragmaticpresupposition triggers by Obama and McCain in 2008 US presidential debates, making useof the inductive and comparative methods. And it would like to figure out how Obama andMcCain use specific pragmatic presupposition triggers to induce specific pragmaticpresuppositions so as to acquire their desired communicative goals. Based on theclassifications of pragmatic presupposition triggers of Yule (2000), Vershueren (2000), and HeZiran (1992), the author attempts to reorganize Levinson's (2001) thirteen typologies ofpragmatic presupposition triggers at lexical level, syntactic level and phonological level, andconstruct a tentative research framework for the present study. Also with the help of the smartcomputerized program Antconc 3.2.1 w (w 2007 version), a statistic analysis would be madeas well.With a detailed investigation, it is found that specific pragmatic presupposition triggerscan help the advocates achieve specific communicative purposes and modify their debatelanguage. And the major findings of this research shows that descriptive verbs, factive verbs,proper names or a noun phrase with a definite article, cleft sentences, questions,non-restrictive relative clauses, implicit clefts with stressed constituents are suitable andeffective for acclaiming, while change of state verbs, verbs of judging, iterative adverbs,temporal clauses, and counterfactual conditionals are useful for attacking. Also, iterative verbsare of great help for defending as well. To this extent, all the presupposition triggers cancontribute to advocates'ultimate goal of persuading their audience. Besides, presuppositiontriggers can help to raise facts (descriptive verbs, temporal clauses, and non-restrictiverelative clauses), construct context (counterfactual conditionals and questions), arousesuspense or change topics (cleft sentences and iterative verbs), cultivate modesty andpoliteness (factive verbs and verbs of judging), strengthen emphasis (iterative adverbs), aswell as gain brevity or conciseness (change of state verbs and proper names or a noun phrasewith a definite article). With the help of these pragmatic presupposition triggers, advocatescan consciously modify their debate language, making their wordings more persuasive, morepowerful, and more easy understanding. By doing so, they can better convince their audience and gain a favorable stand in the debates.To sum up, this research is original and of great pedagogical importance. It is hoped thatthe findings of this research can enlighten the students and help them better understand howto consciously use pragmatic presupposition triggers to improve their debate language anddebate skills.