An Analysis Of Pragmatic Functions Of Presupposition Triggers In Obama's Address At 2014 APEC CEO Summit

Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation,which is shortened for APEC,is the most influential official forum for economic cooperation in the Asia and Pacific region.It plays an important role in developing the region's economy and improving people's life.Therefore,the annual meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Organization plays an important role in accelerating economic globalization.As the highest level meeting of APEC Summit,the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting has played a key role.In 2014,the APEC Summit was held in Beijing,including a series of meetings,such as Economic Leaders' Meeting,Ministerial Meeting and Senior Officials Meeting.The Economic Leaders' Meeting,hosted by President Xi Jinping,was held in Lake Yanxi,Beijing on November 10 th and 11 th.The APEC CEO Summit was held during the ELM and U.S.President Barack Obama attended both meetings.What's more,he made an important address of Sino-US economic cooperation at the APEC CEO Summit,aiming to help develop the economy of China and US.So it is important to analyze Obama's address from the perspective of linguistics.As one of the important research topics in linguistics,the study of presupposition has been conducted for a long time.In 1892,the famous German philosopher Frege put forward the term “presupposition” for the first time,and then more and more scholars paid attention to this term.Later it was introduced into the field of linguistics and grew into an important research subject.With the gradually in-depth research of presupposition,linguists found that presupposition is always reflected through some specific structures of language,words and sentences,which are called “presupposition triggers” by linguists later.In this thesis,the author plans to analyze Obama's address at 2014 APEC CEO Summit systematically from the perspective of presupposition triggers.On the basis of different scholars' classifications of presupposition triggers,the author reclassifies presupposition triggers.Then by using the new classification of presupposition triggers,the author analyzes the presupposition triggers and the presupposed information in Obama's address,and then accounts the frequency of different presupposition triggers used in the address.Finally,the author tries to analyze the functions of these triggers.The result shows that the most frequently used presupposition triggers at lexical level in Obama's address are definite descriptions and factive verbs.And the most frequently used syntactic presupposition triggers are comparisons and contrasts.All the presupposition triggers play an important role in providing information,making the address concise and coherent,stressing the information,beginning a new topic and expressing emotion.The author intends to prove that presupposition triggers are used widely in the addresses about economy,which play an important role in success of address.The conclusion of presupposition triggers' functions can not only help readers understand addresses easily,but also give readers some suggestions about writing skills and speaking skills.