2 Presupposition

2.1 Definition of Presupposition and Its Development 

Presupposition is also called “premise” in the field of logic. Different scholars have made various studies about presupposition. 

Stalnaker (1974:197-213) pointed out that people need a concept like presupposition, so that when they are involved in a certain discourse, they will not simply focus on the meaning of a single word or sentence. Instead, they will explore intensions when words or sentences are conveyed. Jonathan Culler (1976:1380-1396) had a much simpler explanation. He thought that presupposition is a pre-context, which is a expression conveyed before the real context. Keenan (1998) considered presupposition a relationship between language and its environment, or the necessary conditions if people want to say something appropriately. American scholar Fellmore thought that presupposition is the necessary condition to perform an illocutionary act. Peccei (2000) pointed out that presupposition is a inference process, which makes words and grammar connect closely together. Verschueren (1999:78) regarded presupposition as a relationship between expression form and hidden meaning which can be gained through pragmatic inference. 来~自^751论+文.网www.751com.cn/

As a result, when it comes to news headlines, presupposition can lead the readers to a certain direction and cause resonance in order to form a guidance of public opinion. As Song (2003) and Huang (2003) have stated, “The main purpose of presupposition in news is to covey as much information as possible.” According to this, news headlines not only simply state the facts about certain events, but also carry as much implied information as possible. Through critical analysis discourse of presupposition of news headlines, we will be able to explore the deeply-rooted meanings, such as media purposes or ideologies.

2.2 Presupposition Trigger

Unlike many other pragmatic inferences, presupposition is based on some single words and sentence. Therefore, it is a complex question what kind of words or expressions which form the whole sentence structure fulfill the role of presupposition. According to Levinson (1983:181-184), there are thirteen kinds of presupposition triggers: definite descriptions, factive verbs, implicative verbs, change of state verbs, iteratives, verbs of judging, temporal clause, cleft sentence, implicit clefts with stressed constituents, comparisons and contrasts, non-restrictive clauses, counterfactual conditionals as well as questions. As a whole, despite those subtle differences in their function, the general of these thirteen kinds of presuppositions is to enable readers to discover hidden meanings and intentions by their own inference.