Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Daily Conversations

Presupposition has been studied by linguists as the language phenomenon in the past linguistic areas. Presupposition depends on certain linguistic structure, so it was first studied as a semantic phenomenon. With the emergence of pragmatics, linguists also proposed a series of pragmatic theories to explain the presupposition behavior, and the study of pragmatic presupposition is carried out with closely relation to human communication process. On the basis of previous studies, the thesis attempts to study pragmatic presupposition in daily conversations.The thesis introduces the theories related to presupposition, which contains presupposition as propositional attitude, presupposition as felicity condition, presupposition as mutual knowledge, and global cancellation. Through stating the process of human daily conversations, the thesis emphasizes the great importance of pragmatic presupposition on the speaker's utterance construction and the hearer's utterance interpretation. On the basis of cooperative principles proposed by Grice, the thesis puts forward the principles of using pragmatic presupposition (the sincerity maxim and the quantity maxim), and the properties of pragmatic presupposition in daily conversations are also analyzed—the felicity condition, the common ground, the subjectiveness, the latency and the unconventionality. Through discussing about conventional triggers and conversational triggers, the thesis proposes that the speaker can manipulate the pragmatic presupposition by using linguistic devices including phonological device, lexical device, and syntactic device, so as to achieve successful communication results. At last, the thesis summarizes the effects of pragmatic presupposition in daily conversations, namely, being economic, transmitting information and achieving special communicative intention.So, the rational use of pragmatic presupposition can help achieve effective conversations. Through studying the effects of pragmatic presupposition in daily conversations, this thesis aims to further improve people's ability to use language for effective communication and give people more inspiration to open up new horizons.