A Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In Advertisements From The Perspective Of Cognitive Reference Point

Since it comes into being,presupposition has been a hot topic in both the philosophical area and the linguistic area,especially in the pragmatic study.Pragmatic presupposition arouses many scholars' attention and it has been studied from the philosophical approach,the semantic approach,the pragmatic approach and the cognitive approach.However,the previous research focuses on the application,the studies on cognitive mechanism of pragmatic presupposition are few.Therefore,the study aims to analyze pragmatic presupposition in advertisements from the perspective of Cognitive Reference Point.Cognitive Reference Point(CRP)is an important cognitive theory which reflects the fundamental mental process of human's cognition.There is a close connection between Cognitive Reference Point and pragmatic presupposition.This research uses a collection of TV commercials for 12 specific products from the1980 s to the present,a total of 200 as corpus.It applies both quantitative and qualitative methods,aiming to answer the following three questions:(1)What are the frequency and distribution of pragmatic presupposition in advertisements?(2)In what way is pragmatic presupposition realized in advertisements by means of Cognitive Reference Point?(3)How does pragmatic presupposition function cognitively in advertisements?The results revealed that:(1)Pragmatic presupposition is widely used in advertisements,in which state presupposition is the most frequently employed one,followed by factive presupposition,behavior presupposition,belief presupposition,cultural presupposition and emotional presupposition;(2)Cognitive Reference Point has a powerful explanation for pragmatic presupposition.Cognitive Reference Point offers clues for the conceptualizer to establish mental path to look for the target,which is the hidden pragmatic presupposition;(3)There are three cognitive functions of pragmatic presupposition set in advertisements based on Cognitive Reference Point,namely shortening the psychological distance between the advertisements and the consumers,grasping the consumers' psychological pursuit and realizing rhetorical effect.The study has both theoretical and practical significance.Theoretically,the study combines pragmatic presupposition with Cognitive Reference Point,which expands the research scope of both pragmatic presupposition and Cognitive Reference Point to some extent.Besides,this study tentatively classifies pragmatic presupposition into six types: factive presupposition,belief presupposition,behavior presupposition,state presupposition,cultural presupposition,and emotional presupposition.Practically,the study is expected to shed some light on the design of advertisements in a more persuasive way.