论文总字数：32417字

摘 要

广告作为信息时代的重要媒介，在人们生活中的随处可见，广告已然成为信息传播的重要话题，来自不同领域的学者都曾从不同的角度研究过广告。语用学是研究语言在日常生活中是如何运用的，而广告的目的就是通过短短的几句广告词来说服消费者购买产品，因此广告本身就是对语用学运用。本文主要是应用语用学理论来对广告进行系统的分析。

本文主要围绕两个问题展开分析：

1. 英语广告中的语用预设有哪些种类,及它们的使用频率分别如何？
2. 语用预设在不同种类广告中是如何使用的？

在完成广告语料的收集后，首先计算出语用预设出现的百分比，再对广告语分类并分别对存在预设，事实预设，状态预设，信念预设及行为预设的频率进行分析。然后对不同的预设在不同种类的广告中的应用进行分析。

通过研究分析，发现语用预设在广告中有着非常高的占比，为英语广告教学提供了参考。同时，有利于最大化广告的效果，为广告语的撰写提供方向。

关键词：预设; 语用研究; 英语广告

Contents

Acknowledgments ii

ABSTRACT

中文摘要

Chapter One INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background of this study 1

1.2 Aims of the study 1

1.3 General organization of the study 2

Chapter Two LITERATURE REVIEW 3

2.1 Presupposition 3

2.2 Pragmatic presupposition 4

2.3 Previous studies 4

2.3.1 Previous linguistic studies in the advertisements 4

2.3.2 Research on presupposition in advertisements 5

Chapter Three METHODOLOGY 7

3.1 Research questions 7

3.2 Data collection 7

3.3 Data analysis 7

Chapter four DISCUSSION AND RESULTS 9

4.1 Distributions and analysis of presupposition and its sub-types 9

4.1.1 Presupposition in advertisements 9

4.1.2 Sub-types of presupposition in advertisement 9

4.1.3 Summary 12

4.2 Analysis of presupposition in classified advertisements. 12

4.2.1 Product advertisement 13

4.2.2 Brand advertisement 13

4.2.3 Concept advertisement 14

Chapter Five CONCLUSION 15

REFERENCES 16

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background of this study

With the incessant development of the commercial activities, there appears the commodity production and commodity exchange in the human society. The definition of the advertisement is changing and deepening because of the development. In fact, there had existed some advertising activities about commodity production and commodity exchange earlier in several famous ancient countries of the world, such as Babylon, India, Rome and China. But advertising, as a foreign word, appears in China very late, which connotes the meaning of “claiming widely and loudly”. Most scholars think that “advertising” originates from the Latin word “adverture” and has the meaning of attracting and inducing somebody. Between about 1300 and 1745, the word “adverture” evolves into the Middle English word “advertise”, which means that somebody concentrates on something. Then, the meaning is transmitted into appealing to somebody and informing somebody something. With the development of human society, the connotation and denotation of the advertising keeps changing and developing endlessly. So far, researchers from all over the world have studied advertisements from many different aspects. And this paper mainly focuses on reviewing and analyzing the researches about pragmatic study of English advertisements.

1.2 Aims of the study

This study not only demonstrates the author’s own view, but also bravely investigates the distribution of presuppositions and its sub-types in the advertisements. There are three aims in this study. Firstly, this study can be very useful for the foreign teaching, especially for the English advertising teaching; secondly, this study can help to strengthen the advertisers’ understanding to the nature, specialty and function of this theory; thirdly, this study can deepen the businessman’s consciousness of applying pragmatic theory correctly, promote the exchange of commerce of different nations and achieve the commercial goal efficiently.

1.3 General organization of the study

The first chapter is about the introduction of this thesis. It mainly discusses three questions: the background of the study, the aims of the study and the general organization of the study. The second chapter is about the literature review of this study abroad and at home. It can help the author to find a new perspective to compose the thesis. In the third chapter, the author uses the theory to analyze the pragmatic function of this theory in advertisements. The forth chapter is about investigation of presupposition in advertisements, which includes the statistical analysis and sample analysis. The fifth chapter is a conclusion about the whole thesis. It shows the main findings of this study and the suggestions of the author to the later study, hoping this study can make some meaningful contribution to the later study in the future.

Chapter Two

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Presupposition

Since the presupposition theory was proposed, it has been a hot topic among linguistic scholars, logicians and philosophers. Different linguists hold different opinions about the definition of presupposition. During the daily communication, presupposition refers to the information that is known by the two parties of the conversation or can be inferred according to the context; such information will not be stated but will be counted as a part of the utterance. There are two terms can be used to describe the two different perspectives of this kind of information: “presupposition” and “entailment”. A presupposition (Yule, 2001) is something that the speaker take for granted during the conversation. It is the speaker, not the sentence, has presupposition. An entailment is something asserted in the conversation logically. It is the sentence, not the speaker, has presupposition.

As Levinson (1893) pointed out, presupposition has two basic concepts: common ground and appropriateness. The first one is called common ground or mutual knowledge. For example, “I got up late, my clock is broken ”. In this example, it is clear that the listener can understand what the speaker is saying; because they all know the fact that the speaker has a watch and what a watch is for. It means presupposition is a knowledge-store of both speaker and listener. Only the same knowledge basis, can the consumers understand the meaning of the advertisement well. The second one is appropriateness which refers to a speech act performing based on the conditions of appropriate use of sentences. It means presupposition must be closely linked up with context.

Presupposition can be divided into semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition basically. These two analyze presupposition from the aspects of semantics and pragmatics respectively. Pragmatic presupposition will be applied in this paper mainly, so the author will make a concise introduction about it below.

2.2 Pragmatic presupposition

Since pragmatic presupposition came into the linguists’ eyesight, varied theories of pragmatic presupposition have been put forward. However, in early days, a few kinds of definition about pragmatic presupposition came into being. In spite of different approaches, these early definitions of pragmatic presupposition are always alike with each and all based on two particular concepts: appropriateness and mutual knowledge. With the study proceeding further, more and more definitions of different linguists emerged. Noting the above definitions, it is easy to find that pragmatic presupposition deals with the relation between what is said and what is not said.

In scholar He Zhaoxiong’s opinion (2000), there exist three kinds if definition about pragmatic presupposition in all. The first one is that pragmatic presupposition refers to a kind of hypothesis produced by the addressers before the communication; the second one is that pragmatic presupposition pays close attention to appropriate condition for doing something; the third notion is the most ordinary and easiest one to master, which refers it as one kind of shared knowledge between speakers and listeners.

Although these three types of notions about pragmatic presupposition are various, they at least have one thing in common: pragmatic presupposition is tightly associated with the proposition of the speaker. In other words, pragmatic presupposition can be treated as the common knowledge or shared knowledge on which the speakers can communicate with the listener fluently. To sum up, pragmatic presupposition is treated as the presupposition of speakers, which deals with the relation between utterance and assumption, not the presupposition of the sentences.

2.3 Previous studies

2.3.1 Previous linguistic studies in the advertisements

Researchers and scholars from home and abroad have studied advertisements from different aspects. A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain (Leech 1966) shows a detailed description of the linguistic devices used by advertisers. This analysis is a major contribution that Leech made to advertising language in the book. Then he shows the features of advertising language from the perspective of pragmatics, semantics and stylistics.

Some researcher not only have studied linguistic forms but also their content in print advertising in the book. In the point of view of linguistic form, they have expanded the range of previous advertising to the discourse level and have highlighted several issues of the textual structure such as cohesion and coherence, information structure and so on. As for the advertising content, they pay attention to the explicit messages in advertising.

2.3.2 Research on presupposition in advertisements

There are two main functions of advertisements: information and persuasion. The informative function is used to show the effect, advantage and idea of the advertised commodity. And the persuasive function means attracting and encouraging the potential consumers to purchase the product. Some scholars hold the opinion that these two functions are not important equally. The reason is that advertising language is aimed at promoting commercial activities but not widening their horizon of knowledge of the world.

A piece of successful advertisement is not a simple sentence combined by several words and phrases, but should be convincing and logical. Many linguists find out that presupposition plays an important role in advertisements. The Language of Advertising written by Goddard (1998) studies the language use in advertising from sociolinguistic aspect. Also, Goddard states that presupposition is be great importance in advertisement. Peccei (1999) indicates in Pragmatics that presupposition is essential to advertising and is useful for serving advertising language. Nevertheless, neither of them analyze the presupposition in advertising at length.

In China, researchers pay much attention to the study of presupposition in advertising language. Semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition are studied by them respectively.

Those scholars mainly focus on presupposition when they study semantic presupposition. In The Analysis of Presupposition Triggers of English Advertising Language, Wang Shuxia make an analysis of the presupposition triggers in English advertisement, but his methodology is similar to the idea of Levinson (1983).

The studies about pragmatic presupposition are more comprehensive and extensive because pragmatic presupposition is the study of actual use in language, it is meaningful and practical to research this kind of presupposition in different aspects. Chen Xinren (1998) firstly divides pragmatic presupposition into four types: fact presupposition, belief presupposition, state presupposition and behave presupposition. Later, many scholars make some supplement to Chen’s finding and research results. For example, Wei Zaijiang (2002) supplements cultural presupposition and pun presupposition in his work, which are about cross culture and rhetoric area accordingly.

Pragmatic presupposition is very common in English advertisements. And a large amount of studies related to these two things have been carried out. Most of them focus on studying what kind of pragmatic presupposition applied in advertisements. However, a research gap of the frequency of different kinds of pragmatic presupposition still exists.

Chapter Three

METHODOLOGY

3.1 Research questions

As the advertisements are on their way into people’s lives, the advertisers attempt to use all kinds of ways to attract consumer’s interest about their products or services. The advertising language of pragmatic presupposition can make the advertisements more effective, so this paper mainly analyzes pragmatic presupposition in detail. The questions of this paper are:

1. What types of pragmatic presupposition are employed and how frequently they are used in English commercial advertising?
2. How different pragmatic presuppositions are employed in different English advertising?

3.2 Data collection

The goal of this paper is to analyze the pragmatic presupposition in English advertising language. As for advertising language, the author chooses 100 advertisements from some English webs and some famous newspapers such as People and Times. The reason why author chooses these webs and newspapers is that they are in their great fame, high circulation and the broad influence.

3.3 Data analysis

In this paper, the author will adopt both qualitative method and quantitative method. The qualitative method is the main method while the quantitative method is the complementary method. The analysis of the classifications and characteristics of pragmatic presupposition in English advertising language belong to the qualitative study. The statistical analysis of the frequency and distribution of pragmatic presupposition belong to the quantitative study. Specifically, the author will discuss two parts in term of research procedure. First of all, these English commercial advertisements will be divided according to the types of pragmatic presupposition—fact presupposition, state presupposition, belief presupposition, behavior presupposition and cultural presupposition, and each type of presupposition has corresponding analysis of advertising. Secondly, the author will take the quantitative analysis of distribution and frequency of pragmatic presupposition in English commercial advertising.

Chapter four

DISCUSSION AND RESULTS

4.1 Distributions and analysis of presupposition and its sub-types

In this part, the author gives her own view about the reason why these presuppositions emerges such a distribution. Even though the statistical result may be not very scientific, yet it is deduced from the analysis of a large amount of examples, which is also meaningful to the study of presupposition in advertisements.

4.1.1 Presupposition in advertisements

The author embodies the distribution of presupposition which is shown as follows.

请支付后下载全文，论文总字数：32417字