Pragmatic Presupposition Research Articles

A Study of Verbal Humor in This is Going to Hurt from the Perspective of Pragmatic Presupposition

A Study of Verbal Humor in This is Going to Hurt from the Perspective of Pragmatic Presupposition

An Analysis of Pragmatic Presuppositions in Political Newspaper Articles

This study investigates the underlying presuppositions present in a newspaper article published in The Telegraph, a British daily. The newspaper article is authored by Con Coughlin, the foreign and defense editor of the newspaper. This article critiques the Russian war, characterizing it as an unjust conflict aimed at countering Islamic radicals who are carrying out attacks on Russia. The study seeks to examine the various types and triggers of presuppositions employed in the essay to accurately depict and illustrate Putin's misguided military campaign. An eclectic pragmatic model is utilized to examine the types and triggers of presuppositions in the selected article. Finally, the study concludes that the Telegraph mainly depend on lexical and existential presuppositions, with a minor role of structural presuppositions, to convey thoughts in the process of vilifying Russia.

Analysis of Pragmatic Presupposition of Characters in Disney's Luca Film

Bahasa memiliki peran penting dalam komunikasi. Artikel ini menyelami ranah wacana sinematik dengan melakukan analisis pragmatis presuposisi dari film animasi "Luca". Dengan mengacu pada prinsip-prinsip pragmatika, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengungkap dan menguji presuposisi yang terkandung dalam dialog dan interaksi karakter, memberikan pemahaman tentang asumsi implisit yang membentuk narasi. Dengan pendekatan kualitatif, penelitian ini mengeksplorasi bagaimana presuposisi berkontribusi pada pemahaman penonton tentang karakter, dinamika plot, dan elemen tematik dalam film tersebut. Analisis juga mempertimbangkan nuansa budaya dan kontekstual yang dapat memengaruhi interpretasi presuposisi dalam konteks sinematik. Melalui eksplorasi ini, ditemukan total 177 data jenis presuposisi. Diantaranya, presuposisi faktif menyumbang 74 data (42%), sedangkan presuposisi struktural mencakup 49 data (28%). Presuposisi eksistensial ditemukan dalam 33 data (19%), diikuti oleh presuposisi non-faktif dengan 14 data (8%). Selain itu, presuposisi leksikal diamati dalam 4 data (2%), dan presuposisi kontrafaktual merupakan 3 data sisanya (1%). Presuposisi faktif sering muncul dalam film ini karena seringnya narasi film bergantung pada kebenaran yang sudah jelas dan asumsi-asumsi dalam ceritanya. Language plays a crucial role in communication. This article delves into the realm of cinematic discourse by undertaking a pragmatic presupposition analysis of the animated film "Luca." Drawing on the principles of pragmatics, this study aims to uncover and examine the underlying presuppositions embedded within the characters' dialogues and interactions, shedding light on the implicit assumptions that shape the narrative. By employing a qualitative approach, the research explores how presuppositions contribute to the audience's understanding of the characters, plot dynamics, and thematic elements in the film. The analysis also considers the cultural and contextual nuances that may influence the interpretation of presuppositions in the cinematic context. Through this exploration, a total of 177 data types of presuppositions were identified. Among these, factive presuppositions accounted for 74 data (42%), while structural presuppositions comprised 49 data (28%). Existential presuppositions were found in 33 data (19%), followed by non-factive presuppositions in 14 data (8%). Additionally, lexical presuppositions were observed in 4 data (2%), and counter-factual presuppositions constituted the remaining 3 data (1%). The most used type of presupposition found in this movie is factive presupposition as evidenced by the frequent reliance on established truths and assumptions within the narrative of this film.

The Integrated Cognition of Pragmatic Presupposition and Dexis

The Integrated Cognition of Pragmatic Presupposition and Dexis

Presuppositions cross-linguistically: A comparison of soft and hard triggers in Chinese and German

Abstract Presuppositions are typically considered as projective inferences that are triggered by certain expressions and taken for granted. Whereas Simons (Simons, Mandy. 2001. On the conversational basis of some presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 11. 431–448) observes that expressions with a similar semantic content belonging to the same language give rise to the same presupposition, this has not been investigated in a systematic way for semantically equivalent expressions from different languages. Furthermore, more recent research has shown that different presupposition triggers are characterized by differing projective strength, therefore, a distinction of highly projective hard triggers and less projective soft triggers has been proposed (Abusch, Dorit. 2002. Lexical alternatives as a source of pragmatic presuppositions. Semantics and Linguistic Theory 12. 1–19, Abusch, Dorit. 2010. Presupposition triggering from alternatives. Journal of Semantics 27(1). 37–80). Here, we present an experiment comparing four classical presupposition triggers from German and their counterparts in Chinese (cleft sentences, win, factive predicates regret and discover) in order to a) investigate the cross-linguistic stability of their projective strength and b) to verify the heterogeneity of these triggers in both languages. Our results show that the projective behavior and the heterogeneity of presuppositions can be considered cross-linguistically stable, at least when suitable equivalences for both languages can be found. Furthermore, our data suggest that the group of soft triggers has to be more heterogeneous than previously assumed. More precisely, whereas hard triggers behave the same way, it is possible that each soft trigger might be soft in its own way. In sum, our experimental investigation aims to improve the understanding of presuppositions, the underlying triggering process and their projective behavior across different languages.

Pragmatic Presupposition in the Headlines on WeChat Official Accounts from the Perspective of the Adaptation Theory

The research data for this paper is the headlines of official accounts on WeChat, and the author will analyze the pragmatic presupposition in these headlines from the perspective of the theory of adaptation. The paper tries to present how pragmatic presupposition adapts to the linguistic context, the mental world, the social world and the physical world, and based on this, the writer further discusses the functions of pragmatic presupposition in the headlines of the WeChat official accounts. It is found that presupposition has both positive and negative functions. On the one hand, positive functions are mainly presented from the two aspects of the passage itself and the readers. To be more specific, the main positive functions for the passage itself include simplifying headlines, and setting a suspense, and positive functions for the readers mainly include shortening the distance between the readers and the author, and creating a sense of humor for readers. On the other hand, one of its major negative functions is that pragmatic presupposition can sometimes mislead readers.

Споры о невозможном: прагматические пресуппозиции и цели

The aim of the article is to explore a class of debates where subject is an impossible state of affairs or an impossible action. We argue that the choice of position in such a debate is based on agent’s pragmatic presupposition, which is a set of assumed causal relations within the fragment of the world accompanied by the idea of agency. The content of pragmatic presupposition and its relations with known pragmatic presuppositions of other parties determines for each participant a set of her indirect aims of the dispute. In the model we use, there are three stages of debates: a dispute about agenda, a discussion of the merits of the case, and a deliberation about the action. Within each of these stages, the parties may have a separate set of indirect aims. For the first stage of the debate, the most typical indirect aim of each of the parties is to declare themselves. For the second stage of the debate, the dominant indirect aim is to influence the audience and maintain one’s own authority in its eyes. Finally, for the third stage of the debate, the most typical indirect aim is to achieve any positive consequences even if there is obviously no possibility of realizing what is being discussed.

A Study of Pragmatic Presupposition in the Third Season of Desperate Housewives

A Study of Pragmatic Presupposition in the Third Season of Desperate Housewives

Presupposition in the Discourse of Political Reconciliation The Case of Obama's Speech to the Islamic World from Cairo University

The current paper investigates the use of presupposition in the discourse of political reconciliation implied in Obama's Cairo University speech. Semantic presupposition triggers are identified in the speech as establishing the taken-for-granted human values shared by the speaker and his audience in Egypt and the Islamic world. Pragmatic presupposition is at play to call upon the common mental images between America and the Islamic world and hence setting a basis for reconciliation as something inevitable between the two conflicting sides (America and The Islamic World).

A PRAGMATIC STUDY OF IRONY IN SOME BRITISH AND IRAQI TV COMIC SHOWS

Lots of comic shows have been largely displayed on various TVchannels and social media. The presenters of such shows talk aboutdifferent issues such as political, social, economic etc. This study aimsat identifying the most common pragmatic strategies used to issue ironyin the two comic shows which are Last week tonight and Al-Basheerare chosen. . Also, it aims at showing the differences between Britishand Iraqi comic shows in these aspects. To test out the validity of thesehypothesis, eight comic videos are selected-four from each show. It ishypothesized that: (i) the presenter of comic shows may employdifferent pragmatic strategies to achieve irony; and (ii) pragmaticaspects such as speech act, pragmatic presupposition and context have avital role in determining the ironic meaning in British and Iraqi comicshows. The model adopted in this study is a pragmatic one. Its maincategories are: Grice's cooperative principle and implicature(1975),Yule's inference (2006), Mey's pragmatic presupposition(2001), Searl'sspeech act theory (1979), and Leech's (1983) maxims of politeness.The most important conclusions the study reached at are: (i) pragmaticaspects such as speech act, pragmatic presupposition and context have adecisive role in determining the ironic meaning in British and Iraqicomic shows;(ii) irony can be used as a tool of criticism in comicshows.

The Reason Why Antecedent Negation Works

In the first-order logic, previous studies demonstrate that the negation of the antecedent is invalid to negate the consequent in sufficient conditionals. This paper justifies some particular cases of it with a concrete example "If I have enough money, I will buy a car." by using the semantic presupposition theory, the pragmatic presupposition theory and the Cooperative Principle. In this example, sufficient conditional can be proven sufficient and necessary so that the denial of the original condition can work effectively. Then this paper discusses that there are limitations to this method. It is demanding and can become unworkable by even only changing one verb. Only if there is a unique and biconditional relationship between the antecedent and the consequence can it be proven that the negation of the antecedent works. In addition, this paper expands on this, using the relevance theory in linguistics to try to eliminate some of the strict constraints of the biconditional relationship. Sometimes the particularly strong cause will exceed the other weak causes so that the case will be temporarily viewed as a biconditional case, which is limited to daily conversations. Therefore, it is able to be applied to the main argument.

What’s so bad about being a manageress?

ABSTRACT A feminitive is a noun which restricts its extension to women/girls. They have a long history of use within English (e.g. princess, temptress), as well as more recent additions to English (e.g. manageress, hostess). The desirability of introducing feminitives as a device of feminist language reforms is controversial. While some are a helpful tool for raising the visibility of women in traditionally male roles and environments, some seem counterproductive because they reinforce the assumption that the default referents of the original term are men. We argue that this dual aspect of feminitives follows from observations about their semantic content. Our proposal is that feminitives are a useful opposition to expressions which semantically exclude women, but a harmful reinforcement of pragmatic presuppositions about the denotations of semantically gender neutral expressions. We suggest an interesting parallel with feminist language reforms which directly modify the grammatical gender of certain nouns in Russian.

Functions of Pragmatic Presuppositions in Advertisements: Promoting Cosmetics on Instagram

Presuppositions as pragmatic strategies have been a much-discussed topic, yet there need to be more studies on the pragmatic presupposition in advertisements on social media platforms. The present study explores the distribution and functions of different types of presuppositions in cosmetics advertisements on Instagram to fill the gap. Fifty advertisements posted by the ten most-followed beauty brands on Instagram were chosen as samples. It is found that advertisers prefer fact presupposition over other types of presuppositions since it is helpful when it comes to persuading customers to buy a particular product. This paper contributes to studies on presuppositions in ads on social media platforms and advances our understanding of the functions of pragmatic presuppositions.

Pragmatic Presupposition of Netizen Comments on Instagram Related to Teddy Minahasa Case

One form of information and communication media that is very popular at this time is Instagram. This media can be used as a place to share videos and photos with each other. Not only that, there are also various features for users to interact with each other. One of them is the comment feature, which is a place for Instagram users to express their opinions. Therefore, there are many forms of presupposition in Instagram comments, and they are very diverse. With the various forms of speech contained in Instagram, there are also forms of preponderance. George Yule also divides the types of presupposition into six namely existential (existenziell), factive (faktiv), non-active (nichtfaktiv), lexical (lexikalisch), structural (strukturell), and counterfactual (kontrafaktisch) presuppositions. This analysis aims to describe the presuppositions in the comments contained in Instragram comments about Teddty Minahasa. The source of the data in this analysis is comments from Instagram netizens regarding the case of Teddy Minahasa. The results of the analysis found pragmatic presuppositions based on the types of presuppositions namely; factive presuppositions and lexical presuppositions. In this analysis it was found that there were 3 factive presupposition data and 5 lexical presupposition data.

The Application of Pragmatic Presupposition in Developing Critical Thinking of Writing

Abstract This study aims to explore whether developing critical thinking ability from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition can help non-English majors improve their writing achievements. This empirical study employs tests as the instruments. 126 non-English majors from a key university of Shandong Province participate in the study. The results of the Ennis-Weir Critical Thinking Essay Test indicate that most subjects (95%) have inadequate or limited critical thinking ability, which leads to digression, repetitive and lengthy description, and unconvincing arguments, as well as illogical or incoherent structures in writing. After a ten-week teaching instruction from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition, students in experimental group improve their writing achievements, indicating that the instruction of critical thinking ability from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition may have certain effects on their writing performance. The study will promote the application of pragmatic presupposition to writing teaching and offer some implications for the teaching of English writing.

Fighting the COVID-19 pandemic with words: an investigation of pragmatic presuppositions in Chinese anti-pandemic slogans

AbstractSlogans play an important role in Chinese society. Numerous slogans have been created and used in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. As an eye-catching linguistic phenomenon, anti-pandemic slogans have sparked heated debates not only among the general public, but also in the academic sector. This study is focused on the pragmatic presuppositions in Chinese anti-pandemic slogans. By adopting a mixed approach (quantitative and qualitative), it finds that six types of pragmatic presuppositions are used in Chinese anti-pandemic slogans. Among them, the behavioral presuppositions rank first in frequency of use, factive presuppositions second, stative presuppositions third, belief presuppositions fourth, cultural presuppositions fifth and emotional presuppositions sixth. The pragmatic presuppositions of these slogans can serve four major functions, which are persuading people to act properly, spreading scientific knowledge, warning people against wrongdoings and bolstering people’s confidence. However, there are sporadic occurrences of misusing pragmatic presuppositions in the so-called “hardcore” slogans. This study concludes that knowledge of pragmatic presuppositions is essential to a correct understanding and a proper creation of Chinese anti-pandemic slogans.

Fictitious Pragmatic Presupposition in Pompeo’s China Policy Address: A Critical Discourse Analysis

Politics and language are intimately intertwined, and politicians excel at using language tactics and techniques to achieve certain political purposes. Fictitious pragmatic presupposition is a special phenomenon of pragmatic presupposition, which transfers non-mutual knowledge that is disputed, unacceptable or, at least, unknown to one party of the communication. This paper aims to provide a critical discourse analysis of fictitious pragmatic presupposition in the speech delivered by Mike Pompeo at the Nixon Library, July 23, 2020. This approach makes it possible to expose the purposes and the realization of fictitious pragmatic presupposition as well as the underlying ideologies embedded in the speech.

Features of Epidemiology as Discourse and Formation of Secondary Naming in Linguistics: Neuropragmatic and Comparative Aspects

The article partially deals with the peculiarities of epidemiological discourse and the creation of secondary names (COVID neologisms), which have not been covered much before. In particular, socially significant innovative phenomena are described: the total transition of COVID-neologisms to an active commonly used lexicon, semantic and structural changes of epidemiological discourse through destructive influence on doctors and ordinary citizens. It was found that the main reason for the rapid dynamics and specified structural-semantic changes of epidemiological discourse and the creation in its environment of secondary names is a regular negative neuro pragmatic stimulation of protective mechanisms of the human psyche in complementary external (situational) conditions. The methods for elucidating these patterns were sociological observations of live drug speech; word-formation, semantic, pragmatic and comparative types of analysis and establishment of neuro pragmatic presupposition by extrapolation methods. The study was conducted on a limited sample of physicians of two specialties contrasted by neuro pragmatic parameters (epidemiologists and dentists). A total of 18 respondents. Therefore, the results of the study are framework, demonstrative and require extension in the mode of lexicographic and discursological expeditions, followed by the analysis of a sufficient number of linguistic phenomena. The international significance of the article lies in the fact that the authors have chosen the almost undiscovered problem of metamorphosis of epidemiological discourse at the intersection of linguistics and neuroscience, which encourages scientists to pay attention to the complex causes of the hypertrophic development and spread of epidemiological vocabulary and discourse in general.

Presupposition According to Yule’s Perspective in Short Story

The Study is devoted to presupposition in short story. Based on Yule’s view the types of presupposition have been presented. In the study, the story of (Throne and Crown of Kwekha Homer-Taji Takhti kwekha Homar) has been chosen as a sample so as to investigate the types of presupposition according to Yule’s perspective, then, the percentage of pragmatic presupposition in the story are specified. Apart from the introduction, conclusion, appendix, and list of references, the study comprises of sections. First section deals with defining concepts, and types of presupposition whereas section two includes two parts. The first part focuses on the stylistics and the language of short story. Part two of section two is a practical section specifies the percentage of pragmatic presuppositions.

The Hungarian question tag mi? As characterized by dependent and independent commitments

Abstract The Hungarian question tag mi? is subject to more special contextual restrictions compared to ugye?. An utterance that features mi? i) tentatively commits the addressee as a source for the anchor proposition of the tag question, and ii) it commits the speaker as a source for the addressee's being a source for p, which is a pragmatic presupposition. A speaker is a source for a proposition p if that speaker's commitment to p does not depend on any other discourse participant's commitment (Gunlogson 2008). The results of an online survey of a minimal set of pragmatically relevant contexts support claim i), and indirectly, claim ii). The effect of mi? on the immediate context of the discourse is modeled on a conversational scoreboard (Farkas & Bruce 2010; Malamud & Stephenson 2015).