An Analysis Of The Use Of Pragmatic Presuppositions In Obama’s Inaugural Address

The present research adopts Zhi Yongbi’s (2010) theoretical framework of carrying out critical analysis of political discourse from the perspective of presupposition as source of reference. Based on relevant theories on presupposition triggers, nominalization presupposition, and evaluation of language as well as those on metaphor presupposition, the study constructs the theoretical framework of analyzing the use of pragmatic presuppositions in Obama’s inaugural address from two perspectives, namely, explicitly triggered pragmatic presuppositions and implicitly evaluative pragmatic presuppositions. The present research endeavors to develop a qualitative study of those two kinds of pragmatic presuppositions, in the hope of figuring out how Obama succeeds in achieving his political intentions through the use of them.Explicitly triggered pragmatic presuppositions refer to those triggered by the presupposition triggers put forward by Levinson in1983and those triggered by nominalization. Implicitly evaluative pragmatic presuppositions are presuppositions elicited by all explicitly and implicitly evaluative language resources apart from explicit triggers and by pragmatic and cognitive factors such as discourse and context. Detailed analysis of explicitly triggered pragmatic presuppositions in Obama’s inaugural address has been carried out at both lexical and syntactic levels. Analysis of implicitly evaluative pragmatic presuppositions has been developed from linguistic and metaphorical dimensions. It is found that in his inaugural address, at lexical level, Obama employs explicit pragmatic presuppositions triggered by restrictive expressions, change of state verbs, iterative verbs, iterative particles and nominalization. At syntactic level, Obama chooses cleft sentences and comparison and contrast structures to explicitly trigger certain presuppositions. As for implicitly evaluative pragmatic presuppositions, by linguistic dimension at lexical level, Obama applies evaluative nouns, evaluative verbs and evaluative adjectives to express implicit pragmatic presuppositions. At syntactic level, Obama exploits subjects with no definite reference, negative structures to transmit implicit evaluation. By metaphorical dimension, Obama employs nature metaphors and journey metaphors to indicate certain presuppositions. With these two kinds of pragmatic presuppositions, Obama succeeds in achieving his political purposes of arousing the public’s sense of crisis, in calling on them to regain confidence and hope and to carry forward their national traditions to get over the financial crisis together with the government. He also achieves his goal of promoting the new policies of his administration and that of winning support and advocacy from the public.The present study makes the research perspectives on Obama’s inaugural address more multi-dimensional and deepens people’s understanding of it. Meanwhile, it enriches the traditional presupposition theory and broadens its studying and applying field. The research is also instructive to daily life. To public speakers, they can take advantage of pragmatic presupposition strategy to make their speech more vivid and persuasive. To the audience, their knowledge on pragmatic presupposition can facilitate them to have a better understanding of the speeches.