Analysis Of Presupposition In English Advertising Language

Presupposition, an important issue in linguistics, is a speaker’s assumptionwhen giving an utterance. Presupposition should be studied from the micro andmacro perspectives in order to fully understand and apply presuppositioninformation in utterances. Against the background of globalization andinternationalization, English advertisements become an effective medium. Becauseof the characteristics of presupposition such as felicity, common ground, and so on,its combination with English advertisements produces concise and persuasiveeffects. Therefore, the study of presupposition in English advertising languagewith presupposition triggers can help to enrich the theories of presupposition andadvertising language, to enhance the guidance effect of presupposition, and toincrease the creative level of English advertising language.This thesis makes a quantitative and qualitative analysis about Englishadvertising language with the theories of semantic and pragmatic presuppositionand the methodology of text-based analysis.187pieces of tangible and intangiblecommercial and public advertisements are collected and analyzed, includingBritish and American advertisements and English versions of Chineseadvertisements. Meanwhile, the thesis clarifies the types of presupposition and itsdistribution frequency in English advertising language and analyzes the influenceof semantic and pragmatic presupposition on the effect of advertising languagewith presupposition triggers. Presupposition is applied with a high frequency inEnglish advertising language. According to people’s social psychology, this thesisclassifies the presuppositions in English advertising language into five types:existential presupposition, fact presupposition, state presupposition, behaviorpresupposition, and belief presupposition among which existential presupposition accounts for the highest frequency, followed by fact, state, behavior, and beliefpresupposition. Different types of presupposition are touched off by differentpresupposition triggers, therefore this thesis analyzes the above five types ofpresupposition and their influence on English advertising language with thepresupposition triggers on phonological, semantic, and syntactic levelsrespectively, namely, increasing the persuasive power of advertising language andthe amount of information that it conveys.It is found in the study that presupposition plays an important role in Englishadvertising language. It makes the advertising language so concise that consumerscan understand advertising content more easily. It makes the advertising languagemore vivid and lively and enhances the interest of advertising language. Besides,presupposition highlights the important information in advertisements and leaves adeep impression on the audiences. At the same time, it is concluded thatpresupposition triggers can make presupposition enhance the persuasive effect ofadvertising language, and provide theoretical guidance for the design ofadvertising language as well.