A Study Of Fictitious Pragmatic Presupposition In Government Press Conference

Politics is in close relationship with the use of language, and studies on political language have long attracted the attention of linguists. While there are many tactics and techniques in political language, the theories in linguistics provide foundation for the analysis of these phenomena. As a special genre of political discourse, the language used in government press conference has its own typical features. It is found that the foreign journalists often use the technique of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in their questions to achieve their special purposes. However, few studies have explored systematically and thoroughly the use of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the foreign journalists’ questions of government press conference.Fictitious pragmatic presupposition is a supernormal phenomenon of pragmatic presupposition. While pragmatic presupposition is the mutual knowledge between the two" parties of communication, fictitious pragmatic presupposition transfers the non-mutual knowledge between the two parties of communication, which is unknown or unacceptable because of controversy at least by one party. The generation of fictitious pragmatic presupposition may not be on purpose (objective fictitious pragmatic presupposition), or may be on purpose (subjective fictitious pragmatic presupposition). The focus of the; current study is on the subjective fictitious pragmatic presupposition, that is, the foreign journalists in the government press conference use the technique of fictitious pragmatic presupposition deliberately for certain purposes. Relying on the theories of presupposition, fictitious pragmatic presupposition and critical discourse analysis, the study establishes theoretical framework to analyze the use of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the foreign journalists’questions of government press conference. Specifically, it focuses on the purposes of the foreign journalists for the use of fictitious pragmatic presupposition, the realization of these purposes through fictitious pragmatic presupposition and the main features of the use of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the special context of government press conference; at last a critical analysis of the ideologies in the discourse of government press conference is conducted.Taking the example of the regular press conference held by Chinese Foreign Ministry, the present study analyzes the data for a whole year in 2014. The methodology used in this study is mainly qualitative, with some quantitative statistics where necessary. The results show that the foreign journalists often use the technique of fictitious pragmatic presupposition to raise questions in the government press conference. More often than not, the foreign journalists who make such remarks with fictitious pragmatic presuppositions are mostly with ulterior motives and special purposes. In the special context of government press conference, the use of fictitious pragmatic presuppositions has the purposes of misleading the public, defaming the Chinese government and fabricating the’China Threat’. Therefore, if such fictitious pragmatic presuppositions are not broken up timely, they would bring about negative influence on the image of Chinese government. These purposes of the foreign journalists are usually realized through five types of fictitious pragmatic presuppositions, i.e. making groundless accusations, substituting the fake for the genuine, creating something out of nothing, distorting the fact and drawing false analogy. The type of distorting the fact and making groundless accusations take the highest proportion among the five types of fictitious pragmatic presupposition. Among the thirteen categories of presupposition triggers, eight types can be found in the foreign journalists’ questions, with the types of definite descriptions and implicative verbs being the two categories most frequently used to trigger presuppositions. The critical analysis of the ideologies embedded in the foreign journalists’questions shows that the foreign journalists often use some words with derogatory connotations to make groundless accusations of the Chinese government, which is a reflection of the different ideologies between the foreign journalists and the Chinese spokespersons. The foreign journalists and the Chinese spokespersons represent the voice and ideologies of their own countries respectively. While the foreign journalists try to use the fictitious pragmatic presupposition to dig out more information for their media and countries, the Chinese spokespersons have to break up such fictitious pragmatic presupposition timely so as to maintain the national interests and the image of China. Besides, the journalists often quote the opinions of some government leaders or the remarks of some authoritative institutions to support their views. More often than not, they have similar ideologies.The study is expected to enrich the theories of pragmatic presupposition especially fictitious pragmatic presupposition, and to deepen the understanding of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the foreign journalists’ questions of government press conference. It will be helpful for the government spokesperson and people in related areas to know the foreign journalists’ purposes, the realization of these purposes through fictitious pragmatic presupposition and the main features of the use of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the special context of government press conference as well as the embedded ideologies in the discourse, thus to maintain the interests and image of China.