Study On The Logic Reasoning Of Stories Of Sherlock Holmes Based On The Theory Of Pragmatic Presupposition

The term presupposition was first put forward by the German philosopher andmathematician Gottlob Frege in his On Sense and Reference (1892). Frege thought that,if one thing is mentioned by people, usually presupposition generates, namely thesimple noun or compound noun that mentioned by people has to refer to something. In1974, Robert C. Stalnaker introduced the theory of presupposition into the field ofpragmatics and explored the presupposition phenomena in language from the aspectsof speaker s attitude and context, which is known as pragmatic presupposition.Stalnaker believed that pragmatic presupposition was not only related to the context,but also to the speaker. Stories of Sherlock Holmes is one of the world s best sellingdetective novels so far, which has a long-term and far-reaching impact and accesses thelove of all levels of readers. Up to the present, this book is still attractive. Based on theappearance and details of life and with imagination, experience, meticulous andimpeccable logical reasoning the novel gets credible and stunning inferences. Theauthor Conan Doyle is regarded as the father of the British detective novels for makinggood use of human observation and logical reasoning to the extreme.There are many people studying this classic detective novel at home and abroad.But most of the researches belong to literature, which are mainly on its style, narrativepattern, Chinese translation etc. There are few researches about the novel from theperspective of pragmatic presupposition. However, in Stories of Sherlock Holmespragmatic presupposition is extremely important because it helps the detectiveSherlock Holmes go reasoning and have cases uncovered. Thus, this thesis attempts toanalyze the strict logic reasoning in Stories of Sherlock Holmes based on the theory ofpragmatic presupposition.The thesis analyzes Stories of Sherlock Holmes from the four aspects of pragmaticpresupposition theory, namely personal presupposition, context presupposition,background presupposition and addressee presupposition. Through specificconversations in Stories of Sherlock Holmes, the thesis attempts to illustrate how thenovel s logic reasoning is embodied through the four aspects of pragmaticpresupposition. From the analysis, following conclusions are obtained:(1) There are large numbers of pragmatic presuppositions in Stories of Sherlock Holmes.(2) Pragmatic presupposition is the prerequisite of logic reasoning in the novel aswell as the key link between the novel and readers. The use of pragmaticpresupposition in the novel can help readers reveal the hidden message.(3) The use of pragmatic presupposition in the novel not only makes the novel slogic reasoning concise as well as avoids the expressions tedious, but also keeps thenovel s plots coherent, which make the novel more attractive to readers.