An Analysis Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Chinese Cosmetic Advertising Language

Advertising is an important socia l phenomenon in globa l economy andinformation age. Advertising as a persuasive la nguage has the goal of informingconsumers of the advertised products or services, and persuad ing them to makepurchase. Designing attractive and persuasive advertising la nguage involvessuccessful ma nipulation of communicative, linguistic, and psychological strategies.As more and more people realize the importance and necessity of advertisement,economists, artists and psychologists all pay much attention to the study ofadvertisement. Linguists, too, attach great importance to the la nguage ofadvertisement quantitatively and qualitatively. To study advertising la nguage from theperspective of presupposition is a new approach in recent years.In this thesis , a lot of printed cosmetic advertisements are used as the materia lsfor the present investigation. They are collected from major Chinese newspapers andma gazines published in recent years as the cosmetic advertisements are moreappealing tha n other advertisements, especia lly for women. Since the samplescollected here are comparatively sma ll, a qualitative analysis will be ma inly adoptedin order to find out the functions of pragmatic presupposition in advertising la nguage.The present study revea ls that Chinese commercia ls contain a large amount ofpresupposition resources, which are deployed by advertisers in attempt to persuade orentice potentia l consumers to purchase products or services.It is hoped that this study can give theoretica l guida nce to applica tion ofpragmatic presupposition in cosmetic advertising la nguage and help designers createmore scientific and attractive advertisements. At the same time, it might shed light onconsumers' identifying credibility of information in advertising and making theirchoice of products and services properly. The study is implicationa l both practica llyand theoretica lly. Practica lly, this study can give theoretica l guida nce to the applyingof presupposition in advertising la nguage and help advertisers create more scientificand attractive designing of advertisements in order to achieve their fina l goal ofpersuad ing the potentia l consumers to buy the products or services advertised. Theoretically, it might shed light on the significa nce of presupposition, and enhancethe understa nding of presupposition and the study of advertising la nguage.