A Study On Presuppositions In English News Headlines From The Perspective Of Conceptual Blending Theory

A news headline, as “the eye of news”, attracts the readers or not largely decides whether they read the whole text. Therefore, news headlines have aroused the attention of many scholars from mass media and most of them study the language phenomenon, writing features and skills. However, among those researches, few refer to the presuppositions, to attract readers, which are widely used to realize the economy of language and highlight the theme of news content. Although the presupposition has been researched from various perspectives, including the pragmatic functions, rhetoric features and the translation strategies and skills of the presupposition in advertisements, humors, debates, translation works and detective fictions, they are mainly from the perspective of the expression with little attention paid to the acceptance.Based on Conceptual Blending Theory(CBT) in cognitive linguistics, the present paper, adopting qualitative and quantitative methodologies, analyzes meaning construction of presuppositions collected from China Daily, Shanghai Daily, Shenzhen Daily and The Times. It attempts to give a reasonable account of how presuppositions in English news headlines make sense, and then further to explore the cognitive mechanisms of successful interpretation of presuppositions and their cognitive functions in English news headlines.The major findings of the paper can be summarized as follows:1. Presuppositions are widely used in English news headlines and the most widely used are the presuppositions triggered by restrictive expressions, change-of-state verbs, temporal expressions, nominalization and comparisons and contrasts.2. Presupposition triggers, conceptual blending and context are the cognitive mechanisms of meaning construction of presuppositions in English news headlines.3. Presuppositions can not only enhance the succinctness of news headlines and enlarge information content but also highlight the theme of news and increase the attractiveness of news.The present paper applies CBT to analyze meaning construction of presuppositions in English news headlines, hoping not only to contribute to the interpretation of presuppositions in news headlines but also to promote studies on cognitive science.