A Study Of Pragmatic Presupposition In The Practice

Forensic linguistics has already become an independent discipline,which includes not only knowledge of law but also knowledge of linguistics.Originating from the field of philosophy,presupposition has become a crucial research object in the field of linguistics,which plays a vital role in courtroom discourse.In the process of court proceedings,lawyers make full use of linguistic skills to ask the witnesses and defendants searching for beneficial information.And pragmatic presupposition is one of them.Lawyers tactfully hide the misrepresentations in interrogations,making defendants or witnesses fall into the traps of presupposition to get assertive evidence.Dramas related to law provide data for the study of forensic linguistics,which have attracted many scholars.This thesis will take the first and second seasons of The Practice as the research object,and analyze the triggers,features as well as functions of pragmatic presupposition.The analysis is a combination of a qualitative study and a quantitative study,with the qualitative one being the main approach.The author collects all the pragmatic presupposition used in these two seasons and a total of 165 is found.Then the author randomly chooses three to five examples to elaborate each of them according to different classifications of presupposition trigger.The studies of presupposition triggers,presupposition features as well as the functions accomplished belong to qualitative analysis while the statistical studies of the distribution and frequency of pragmatic presupposition triggers belong to quantitative research.After analyzing,the author finds that pragmatic presuppositions are frequently adopted in The Practice.The triggers of presupposition can be divided into three levels: phonetic,lexical as well as syntactic,from which questions at syntactic level take up the largest percentage（24.8%）.In addition,the author systematically analyzes the features and functions of pragmatic presupposition in The Practice.After analyzing,the author finds that the main features presented in this legal drama are: defeasibility,subjectivity and invisibility.And the functions that are achieved by pragmatic presupposition are: conveying information to hearers,setting background information,highlighting information,as well as concealing information.This thesis can help readers deepen their understanding of pragmatic presupposition,so they can immediately discover the statements hidden in the questions,which has a positive effect on helping people avoid falling into presupposition traps set by attorneys.At the same time,this study provides a lot of language skills that can help lawyers have a deeper understanding of pragmatic presupposition,which may have a positive effect on their further development.