A Comparative Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Different Genres

Pragmatic presupposition,as a powerful communicative strategy,serves the construction of texts and has increasingly attracted linguists' attention in recent years.A number of scholars have made theoretical and practical studies on it with great effort,but most of the studies are confined to only one single genre of text.Thus it is of great significance to do a comparative study of pragmatic presupposition in different genres and find out the presupposition features of each text.On the basis of text typology theory and pragmatic presupposition theory,the essay attempts to do a comparative study of pragmatic presupposition in three genres,namely,informative,vocative and expressive texts,and tries to answer the following questions: Firstly,is pragmatic presupposition largely used in all three kinds of text? And why is it so? Secondly,are the distributions of five kinds of presupposition different in three genres? Are there any regular patterns? Thirdly,what are the relations between pragmatic presupposition and different text genres?To ensure the objectivity and validity of the research results,two typical sub-types have been chosen for each genre,which are news text and documentary for the informative text,speech and advertisement for the vocative text,and prose and autobiography for the expressive text.Altogether 36 pieces of discourses are selected as analysis data.Statistics are clearly presented in the form of tables and charts.On the basis of quantitative analysis,the study tries to qualitatively find out the similarities and differences in the application of presupposition in three genres,to analyze reasons and finally summarize the relations between pragmatic presupposition and three genres of text.Result shows that the use of pragmatic presupposition depends on various communicative purposes of texts,and in turn helps texts to achieve purposes better.Pragmaticpresupposition is largely used in all three genres and five kinds of presupposition(existential,fact,belief,behavior and state presupposition)are applied in all texts.The application of pragmatic presupposition helps a text to follow economy principle better,to achieve cohesion and coherence and to gain other particular effects such as making language more polite,more euphemistic or more humorous.The distributions of five kinds of presupposition are different in three genres,which are in compliance with their textual functions and communicative purposes.Existential and fact presuppositions are largely used in informative text.Belief,state and behavior presupposition are favored by vocative text.The application of presupposition in expressive text is closely related to the specific functions and features of each text since the textual features are not as distinctive as the other two genres.For example,belief presupposition is favored by lyric texts like prose while existential and fact presuppositions are largely used in descriptive or narrative texts like autobiographies.Also,among all five kinds,the proportions of existential presuppositions and fact presuppositions are the largest in all three genres.The application of pragmatic presupposition is closely related to communicative purposes of texts.Knowing the presupposition features of a text can help to construct and understand texts better and also improve the quality of communication.