The Application Of Pragmatic Presupposition To The English In Advertising

We live in a world of advertisement. With the development of the technology and the diversity of the mass media, advertisement has influenced us pervasively in our daily life. It can be said that advertisement is everywhere.The language of advertisement must be persuasive and appealing to accomplish the purpose of the advertisement. It can attract the attention of the consumers, arouse their interests, stimulate their desires and finally persuade the consumers to buy the advertised product. Hence diverse linguistic means are employed by the designer to convey information effectively to potential consumers.Presupposition is subjective, deceptive and can survive under negation. Such characteristics can be used in the advertisement to enhance the effects of persuasion. Therefore presupposition is frequently employed by the advertiser as an effective tool to design the attractive and persuasive advertisement.Peccei points out that presupposition can serve language in advertising and gives examples to show this point of view in Pragmatics (2000:21). Chen Xinren, a Chinese scholar, expresses his similar ideas with Peccei in his thesis. Their research lays foundation for this thesis.The purpose of this paper is to give a systematic and comprehensive analysis of the function of pragmatic presupposition in the English in advertisement and use certain appropriate theories to interpret the results of analysis. It may help the designer of advertisement to understand the positive roles played by presupposition in the advertisement and create the appealing and successful advertisement by employing such a potent strategy consciously.The whole thesis contains five chapters. Chapter one gives a brief introduction to the purpose and necessity of this research and describes the organization of this thesis. Chapter two is a general description of presupposition theory. It presents a review of the studies on presupposition with the focus on two main theoretical approaches to presupposition. This chapter also discusses the types and the unique properties of presupposition and illustrates the distinction between conversational implicature and pragmatic presupposition. It is the theoretical foundation of case analysis in the paper. The previous study on presupposition in advertisement is mentioned at the same time.Chapter Three illustrates the definition of advertisement and features of language in advertisement in detail, that is, lexical features, syntactic features and rhetorical features. It also demonstrates the reasons for adopting presupposition and the classification of presupposition in the English in advertisement with the specific example.Chapter Four is the nuclear part of the thesis, which examines the concrete function of presupposition in the English in advertisement. It explores the positive roles of presupposition from two perspectives: the function of presupposition in designing advertisement and the function of presupposition in manipulating the psychology of consumer.Presupposition connects with the language of advertisement, the information of advertisement, the discourse of advertisement, the strategy of advertisement and the vagueness of advertisement closely. Presupposition is a prevailing phenomenon in advertisement. Presupposition triggers make the language in advertisement become concise and diverse. The advertiser can enlarge the amount of information in advertisement and stress some important information to attract the consumers'attention by adopting presupposition.Presupposition helps to construct a coherent and smooth discourse of advertisement and it is an effective strategy frequently employed by the designer. Presupposed vagueness in advertisement helps to convey information more efficient.The concealment, leading, persuasive and euphemistic function of presupposition is discussed respectively. These are different functions of presupposition in manipulating the psychology of consumer. The advertiser creates emotional intimacy with the potential consumers and wins the appreciation of them and finally persuades them to buy the product with the help of presupposition.Chapter Five is a general summary of the whole thesis. It puts forward possible theoretical and practical significance of the study, and the limitations of this research, as well as some suggestions for further research.The conclusion is accomplished on the basis of the case study and logical analysis. Presupposition, an effective technique, helps to achieve the persuasive function of advertisement and thus is regularly employed by the advertiser.