Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1Background of The Study
Presupposition was first put forward by philosopher Frege (1982), then itattracted attention of many other philosophers and linguists. They analyzepresupposition from different perspectives: the philosophical approach, the semanticapproach and the pragmatic approach. Pragmatic presupposition is not only aneffective way of understanding language but also a common phenomenon in everydaylife. In addition, pragmatic presupposition in advertisements is often discussed inacademic study. However, the previous researchers pay more attention to theapplication of pragmatic presupposition in advertisements, they merely draw attentionto the interpretations of pragmatic presupposition based on the cognitive theories.Cognitive Reference Point (abbreviated as CRP) is a basic cognitive abilitywhich is ubiquitous in everyday experience. Langacker (1993) describes this modelsystematically, listing the essential components: conceptualizer (C), reference point(R), target (T), domain (D) and mental path. Human beings’ cognitive process followstwo prominent properties of Cognitive Reference Point: salience and dynamics.People tend to select a prominent entity as the cognitive reference point to activate thenon-prominent entity, and once the target is found, the initial reference point wouldrecede into the background. Meanwhile, the target turns into a reference point forlooking for another target.
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1.2Significance of the Study
As mentioned above, though scholars, at home or abroad, have made a greatcontribution to pragmatic presupposition study and cognitive reference point study,but the study of cognitive mechanism of interpreting pragmatic presupposition isrelatively few. No matter from the theory angle or from the application angle can wefind that it is of great significance to carry on research in pragmatic presupposition inadvertisements under the framework of Cognitive Reference Point.Therefore, firstly, making an attempt to analyze pragmatic presupposition inadvertisements in the view of Cognitive Reference Point will be beneficial to fill theprevious gap. This research will attract more concern about probing into the cognitivemechanisms depending on Cognitive Reference Point.Secondly, in the process of understanding pragmatic presupposition of cosmeticadvertisements, applying Cognitive Reference Point to explain pragmaticpresupposition used in cosmetic advertisements will be a great help to discoverconsumers’ cognitive mechanism, to reveal human beings’ cognitive effect onpragmatic presupposition understanding, to provide better strategies for theadvertisers in designing advertising slogans and to remind consumers of falling forthe pragmatic presupposition in advertisements.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Previous Studies of Presupposition
The definition of Presupposition is given by Levinson, Stephen. C. (2001) in hisPragmatics:A Presupposition is background belief, relating to an utterance, that must bemutually known or assumed by the speaker and addressee for the utterance tobe considered appropriate in context generally will remain a necessaryassumption whether the utterance is placed in the form of an assertion, denial,or question, and can generally be associated with a specific lexical item orgrammatical feature in the utterance.（p.180）Presupposition has attracted attention in both philosophical area and linguisticarea, especially in pragmatic study. It is the philosophers first put forward the notionof presupposition, which focuses on the debates about the nature of referringexpressions and reference (Frege, 1892; Russell, 1905; Strawson, 1952). Since 1960s, presupposition has been studied in linguistics and has become a hot topic in semantics.However, because presupposition is very dependent on context, semantics can notexplain the phenomenon of presupposition successfully. Thus some linguists turned topragmatic presupposition which concerns more about appropriateness, mutualknowledge, etc. In recent years, linguists realize that presupposition can be interpretedby some cognitive theories, such as Idealized Cognitive Model, Figure and GroundTheory.
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2.2 Pragmatic Presupposition
Keenan (1971) contends that presupposition is not about sentences orpropositions, but is connected with context including the speaker and the hearer.Pragmatic presupposition is not influenced by the truth condition, but it is therelationship between the speaker and the appropriateness of the utterance in context.British linguist Geoffrey Leech (1980) thinks pragmatic presupposition can be: whenthe speaker says X, he has treated Y to be true and known information. Yule (1996)pides pragmatic presupposition into six parts: potential presupposition, structuralpresupposition, existential presupposition, lexical presupposition, factivepresupposition and counter-factual presupposition. Stalnaker (1973) gives a definitionof pragmatic presupposition as follows:“A proposition P is a pragmatic presupposition of a speaker in a given contextjust in case the speaker assumes or believes that P, assumes or believes that hisaddressee assumes or believes that P, and assumes or believes that his addresseerecognizes that he is making these assumptions, or has these beliefs.” (p. 451)This definition explains clearly the relationship between context and thespeaker, which are two important parts of pragmatic presupposition. Besides, heestablishes the fact that in order to be correctly interpreted an utterance needs acontext and it is also relates to the truth or falsity.
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Chapter 3 Theoretical Basis and Research Methodology..... 19
3.1 Theoretical Basis ............ 20
3.2 Research Methodology............. 25
Chapter 4 A CRP Approach to Pragmatic Presupposition ......... 29
4.1 Analysis of Pragmatic Presupposition in Chinese Cosmetic Ads......... 29
4.2 Cognitive Functions of Pragmatic Presupposition in Cosmetic ...... 45
Chapter 5 Conclusion .............. 53
5.1 Major Findings .......... 53
5.2 Implications of This Study ............ 54
5.3 Limitations of This Study.............. 55
5.4 Suggestions for Further Research............ 56
Chapter 4 A CRP Approach to Pragmatic Presupposition in Chinese Cosmetic Advertisements
In the above chapters, the author reviews the relative literature of pragmaticpresupposition and cosmetic advertisement at home and abroad, and points out theresearch status and directions, which paves a way in further development of thisthesis.In this part, a proposed Cognitive Reference Point Model will be adopted toanalyze pragmatic presupposition used in cosmetic ads from a cognitive-pragmaticangle to reveal human being’s cognitive mechanism during the process of interpretingpragmatic presupposition. This section will pide pragmatic presupposition used inChinese cosmetic advertisements into existential presupposition, fact presupposition,state presupposition, belief presupposition and behavior presupposition, analyze thesefive pragmatic presuppositions in detail based on Cognitive Reference Point, andpresent the cognitive functions in understanding pragmatic presupposition in cosmeticadvertisements. Because people’s psychology plays an important role in understanding pragmaticpresupposition, a deeper research on cognitive mechanism of pragmaticpresupposition is of necessity. Thus, interpreting human being’s cognition processbased on CRP Model provides a new perspective to view pragmatic presupposition incosmetic advertisements.
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Conclusion
In this thesis, the author selects pragmatic presupposition as the research object.In the second section, a brief review of presuppositional notions is introduced fromphilosophical, semantic, pragmatic and cognitive approaches. Interpreting pragmaticpresupposition is a process of cognition and there are so many studies on pragmaticpresupposition, so the author decides to choose a less studied cognitive field and triesto explain pragmatic presupposition based on CRP. CRP is a basic cognitive abilitywhich has a strong power in almost every kind of linguistic phenomenon. Therefore,it is significant and reasonable to study pragmatic presupposition from the perspectiveof CRP. The first finding is that CRP has a powerful explanation for pragmaticpresupposition. The cognitive reference point provides clues for comprehendingpragmatic presupposition. As long as taking this clue, pragmatic presupposition iseasier to be understood. Pragmatic presupposition is dynamic, changeable anduncertain in context. The reader follows a mental path from the reference point to findthe target pragmatic presupposition. Thus, cognitive reference point is one of the bestways to determine pragmatic presupposition, which agrees with the properties ofpragmatic presupposition.
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References (omitted)