Literature Review

In this chapter, the literature review has three parts. The first part introduces the presupposition theory, including the general idea, different classifications and features. The second part focuses on the relevant studies both on the general and presupposition analysis on news headlines. There is also a research gap explanation in this part. The final part is the conclusion part.

2.1 Presupposition Theory

2.1.1 General Introduction

Presupposition is an important topic of language philosophy, also it is a very common language phenomenon. Gottlob Frege brought presupposition to the notice of the world when he published the article ”On Sense and Reference” in 1892. That is to say, if anything is asserted, there is an obvious presupposition that the names used have a reference.

2.1.2 Different classifications of presupposition

Presupposition can be divided into semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. When researchers pay attention to semantic presupposition, they find that semantic presupposition has the feature of stability and relative variability. It relies more on vocabulary meaning and sentence structure. It only considers the internal factors of a sentences, thus it has certain limitations, only explaining the simple sentence rather than complex sentence. It overlooks the pragmatic factors such as context, speakers, background information and communicating rules. With the development of pragmatics, linguists find that presupposition is closely related with context. So they begin to notice the importance of pragmatic presupposition.

There are different ways to explain pragmatic presupposition. The most common way is: the speaker#8217;s imagination of the context of his words. Also, we can also understand pragmatic presupposition by thinking it is the common background of the both bodies of the communication. Based on this background, the speaker can talk to the listener and he thinks the listener will understand the words correctly.

When compared to these two presupposition, researchers find semantic presupposition is objective, non-contextual and stable, while pragmatic presupposition is subjective, contextual and dynamic. However, it#8217;s must be clear that these two kinds of presupposition are not contradictory. On the contrary, they are closely related. Semantic presupposition is the base of pragmatic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition is the development of semantic pragmatic presupposition.

There is another way to divide pragmatic presupposition. It can be divided into three parts: existence presupposition, fact presupposition and generic presupposition. In our daily life, existence presupposition is the most common way. When people are talking about something, they always presuppose that the thing exists. Fact presupposition means that both parties have the same background, while the background is only known by specific people, not all of them. Generic presupposition means that when people are talking, there is a common background and this background has been accepted by others. In other words, this common background is a principle.