An ICM Study On Presupposition In English Headlines

Presupposition refers to the perception made by a speaker who assumes some preconditions to guarantee the felicity of discourse in literal interaction Common background knowledge is required due to the correlation between presupposition and context. The Idealized Cognitive Model (ICM) is a kind of knowledge structure formed after the observation of objective world. With the characteristics of being idealized and gestalt, ICM provides appropriate precondition or background knowledge. In addition, due to the characteristics:felicity, mutual knowledge and subjectivity, presupposition is often used in headlines to heighten effects to achieve the functions of being concise but informative and attractive.This thesis studies presupposition in English headlines from the perspective of ICM and attempts to interpret the cognitive models and cognitive mechanism in the process of understanding presupposition by analyzing the triggers and functions of presuppositions in headlines. Based on the English headlines selected from China Daily, from the metaphorical structure of ICM, the qualitative approach is used to explore the cognitive mechanism of presupposition triggers from the lexical, syntactic and contextual level and their functions in cognitive understanding of headlines. The research aims to help readers understand the metaphorical model of presupposition and find out the implicit information to improve cognitive and communicative efficiency.This study demonstrates that the precondition of presupposition in English headlines is that both sides (the writers and readers) have common cognitive environment. Only on the condition of common cognitive knowledge can presupposition trigger common cognitive models to integrate same ICM to make readers understand exactly the presupposed meaning. The headline writers tend to set pragmatic presupposition with image schemas and metaphors to make readers understand headlines and accordingly interpret information about politics, economy, sports and people’s livelihood efficiently.