An Analysis Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Automobile Advertising Language

Nowadays, with the development of the automobile technology, the competitionamong the companies becomes fiercer. In order to promote sales of their products,producers will have to draw the potential consumers’ attention by the way of advertising.Presuppositions frequently occur in advertisement for it can convey necessary informationabout the products in a hidden way. In this research, we are going to study thepresuppositions in automobile advertisement.Pragmatic presuppositions are best described as a relation between a speaker and theappropriateness of a sentence in a context (Levinson,1997:177). Due to its typicalfunction that information can be communicated to audience in an indirect way, pragmaticpresupposition is frequently used by advertisers when designing automobileadvertisements. Based on the previous studies and presupposition theory, this researchaims to study how presupposition is used to convey the necessary positive information,and advertise the products in a hidden way.100automobile advertisements are collected from China Daily, People, and Timesfrom2012to2013. This thesis adopts qualitative and quantitative research to study thepresupposition in automobile advertisements. The author uses quantitative research toinvestigate the frequency and distribution of pragmatic presuppositions in automobileadvertisement, and uses qualitative research to describe and discuss the classification andfunctions of each kind of presupposition in advertisement.Data analysis reveals: first, in automobile advertisements, the highest frequency ofpragmatic presuppositions is state presupposition, which accounts for31%. Then beliefpresupposition and behavior presupposition account for23%and20%respectively. Factpresupposition and existential presupposition take up15%and11%, which is relativelylow. Second, pragmatic presupposition can make the automobile advertisement concise, humorous. Pragmatic presupposition has a relationship with the psychology of theconsumers, and it has a leading and concealment function in automobile advertisements.This thesis also reveals that pragmatic presupposition can be regarded as strategies andmarket strategies of advertising to promote the products.