A Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Chinese Cell Phone Messages Of Humorous Good Wishes

A presupposition, namely precondition, is an important topic which has beenheartily discussed by philosophers and linguists. Presuppositions can be classifiedinto semantic and pragmatic presuppositions. Semantic presupposition focus on thestudy of the value-based relations between two sentences, while pragmaticpresupposition is the precondition which is closely related to the context as well asthe speaker’s brief, attitude and purpose.Pragmatic presupposition is usually regarded as the shared knowledge betweenthe communicative parties. Therefore, its most distinctive feature is the mutualknowledge. However, when the utterance is not in line with background knowledgeor common sense, the presupposition will evaporate accordingly. It is the defeasibleproperty of a presupposition. Besides, pragmatic presupposition also has theproperties of subjectivity and latency, which make the message languages more vivid,interesting and attractive.This thesis, from the angle of pragmatic presupposition, adopts the qualitativeand quantitative methods to analyze properties of pragmatic presupposition inChinese cell phone messages of humorous good wishes and its functions. Based onthe previous studies and properties of pragmatic presupposition, the thesis discussesfive characteristics of pragmatic presupposition in Chinese cell phone messages ofhumorous good wishes and divides different presuppositions into six types:1.Existential;2. State;3. Cultural;4. Fictitious;5. Metaphor and simile;6. Punpresuppositions. And a quantitative study of their frequency and percentageemployed in messages is conducted as well. The data analysis shows that existentialpresupposition appears in the highest frequency, cultural presupposition follows，fictitious and simile and metaphor presupposition rank the third and share the samepercentage, state presupposition comes after and pun presupposition is employedthe least. Pragmatic presupposition, as one of the most effective strategies incommunication, plays a positive role in sending best wishes to the reader in blessingcell phone messages. It has economical function, humorous function, creative function, informative function and emotional function. In the end, it is hoped thatthis thesis can provide a different light on studying Chinese cell phone messages andhelp the message sender create more good messages.