Analysis Of The Pragmatic Presupposition In Criminal Minds

Presupposition is a concept which is proposed by Frege in On Sense and Reference.With the development of the theory,Stalnaker introduces the concept of presupposition into the field of pragmatics.Since then,the pragmatic presupposition in language has been discussed from the perspective of speaker's attitude and context.This thesis is aimed at analyzing the uses of pragmatic presupposition in American classic crime drama Criminal Minds from the perspective of pragmatics based on properties of pragmatic presupposition and 13 subdivisions of presupposition triggers by Levinson.Criminal Minds has been quite a few good repercussions since broadcast and has won various awards which include People's Choice Award,ASCAP Award,Primetime Emmy Awards and so on.This TV play adds many psychological factors which differ from other crime dramas.So it is essential that we know how to understand these seemingly irrelevant conversation forms from the aspect of discourse in understanding the plot and exploring its success.The functions and properties of pragmatic presupposition can analyze this from the aspect of discourse,besides,the abundant data information in this TV play suit for this kind of analysis.At the same time,the case setting of this TV play is aimed at the safety problems that are helpful to the safety education of the public.There are 14 seasons in this TV play,the author downloads 13 seasons from CBS website and extracts the captions with the tool of MKVToolnix.The author combines the qualitative and quantitative research methods to analyze the data and summarize the properties and functions of pragmatic presuppositions.The author of this thesis draws the following conclusions: Pragmatic presupposition mainly exists in three parts of Criminal Minds,the process of the case deduction,the interrogation,and the narration;the properties of pragmatic presupposition plays an important role in the process of case inference.It cannot only achieve information sharing but also deduce the logical loophole of suspect's language.It is beneficial to the development of the cases;the functions of pragmatic presupposition make the language of this TV play concise,and at the same time,they preserve the coherence of the language.The previous studies of criminal dramas only from the aspect of language,and the deep research which from language to logical deduction is deficiency.The pragmatic presupposition can provide a useful perspective for us to understand the logical deduction.Additionally,this TV play can not be only analyzed from the aspect of the narrative and semeiology because of the intervention of psychological factors.Therefore,the author chooses perspective of linguistic presupposition in order to provide a reference for other types of American TV dramas.