A Study of Pragmatic Presupposition in the Courtroom Inquiry Scenes in the American Drama The Practice 美剧《律师本色》庭审询问场景中的语用预设研究文献综述

 2023-04-21 09:11:45

文献综述

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundPresupposition was put forward by German philosopher Frege in 1892. It refers to the assumption made by the speaker when speaking a sentence, that is, the premise that the speaker must meet in order to ensure the appropriateness of the sentence (Frege, 1892). In linguistics, presupposition is divided into semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition. In 1952, British scholar P. F. Strawson put forward the concept of semantic presupposition. He believed that when a sentence is formed, presupposition has been contained in the meaning of the sentence, which has nothing to do with the change of context. The meaning of sentences is always related to their specific use (Strawson, 1952). Therefore, the semantic research on the language phenomenon of presupposition is obviously not enough. Some scholars try to study presupposition from peoples specific speech activities and peoples use of sentences, which constitutes a pragmatic study of presupposition. In 1999, Robert Stalnaker put forward the concept of pragmatic presupposition. He believes that pragmatic presupposition is derived based on the meaning and structure of sentences and combined with context. The study of presupposition in logic is carried out at the propositional level and it is considered that presupposition has nothing to do with the truth or false of the statement (Stalnaker, 1999). In short, The study of presupposition in semantics is carried out at the sentence level, and presupposition is considered as a static linguistic phenomenon. The study of presupposition in pragmatics combines context, sentence, meaning and the information of speaker and listener.Legal drama is an important type of American TV drama, which has long been popular not only in the United States, but also under the background of global cultural exchanges, attracting the continuous attention of overseas audiences. The Practice is an American television series about a group of criminal defense lawyers, originally created by David Kelley and focused on legal investigation. It won fifteen Emmy awards, including two for best drama series. The reason why The Practice is so popular is not only because of its attractive plot, but also because of its dialogue design, which balances the professionalism of the legal profession with the drama of the show. This thesis aims to study pragmatic presuppositions in the script to enhance the understanding of dialogue and plot in the drama.1.2 Need for the studyFirstly, pragmatic presupposition is an important research topic in linguistics and has been widely used in daily communication. At present, researches on the role of pragmatic presupposition are mostly focused on the field of advertising. The role of pragmatic presupposition in court debate and line design is rarely mentioned, but pragmatic presupposition has also been widely used in these fields. Therefore, the study of pragmatic presupposition in the lines of American legal dramas is a supplement to the application of pragmatic presupposition.Secondly, as an outstanding legal drama, The Practice is worthwhile for us to study and grasp the ingenuity and effect of its dialogue design, so as to better grasp the information that the scriptwriter wants to convey to us. At the same time, it may have enlightening and reference significance for the development of domestic legal drama. Compared to the US, there is still a lot of room for the development of legal dramas in China.1.3 Research purposesThis thesis takes the lines of the trial inquiry scene in The Practice as the corpus, summarizes its pragmatic characteristics and rules, discusses how the characters in the TV series use pragmatic presupposition to achieve their goals in the special context, and discusses how the playwright uses pragmatic presupposition to design the lines and achieve the rhetorical goals of the drama.2.Literature review2.1 Previous studies on pragmatic presuppositionThe concept of presupposition originated from philosophy. Frege (1892) put forward the definition of presupposition. He believed that when people use a sentence to give a proposition, they must have an assumption. Russell (1905) proposed the principle of referential theory. He believed that referential phrases themselves have no meaning, but every proposition in which a referential phrase appears in a statement expression has meaning. He believed that a sentence could be true or false. Strawson (1950) challenged Russell by arguing that statements are not assertions, that statements are not true or false. Strawson (1952) pointed out that presupposition means that any meaningful sentence can lead to a background hypothesis proposition. Strawsons presupposition theory basically follows Freges ideas. Kennan (1971) argued that many sentences require certain cultural conditions or context, which must be met in order to be understood. These conditions are called presuppositions.Stalnaker (1974) believed that pragmatic presupposition includes not only the relationship between proposition and sentence, but also the relationship between proposition and participant of conversation, which is considered correct proposition unconsciously. From the perspective of communication, Yule (1996) believes that a simple word or phrase does not contain presupposition, only the speaker and listener have presupposition. He believes that presupposition is a concept dependent on the speaker and a series of assumptions made by the speaker before speaking. Presupposition is further divided into semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition, and the relevance to context has become an important criterion for judging. Gzadar (1979) proposed the potential presupposition. He believed that the presupposition obtained from semantic analysis is only a potential presupposition. Once the potential presupposition enters into the communicative context, there will be complicated and changeable situations, some of which are eliminated, while others become actual presuppositions. Gzadar wants to avoid conflict between semantics and pragmatics, but also want the two to be connected. Grundy (1995) proposed the shared assumption, arguing that information is exchanged in a certain context, in which the speaker and the hearer always have something in common. Scholars have further studied the properties of pragmatic presupposition. Levinson (2001) believed that pragmatic presupposition has appropriateness and mutual knowledge, which enable the speaker and listener to understand and communicate. According to He (2000), common information is usually chosen by speakers in the context of knowledge they are familiar with, and listeners interpret it to understand its meaning. He (1987) pointed out that suitability should be understood according to context, that is to say, presupposition and context are closely combined. In addition to the two basic properties mentioned above, Chen (1998) proposes three other properties of pragmatic presupposition, latency, subjectivity and unidirectionality.The study of presupposition in China is mainly the introduction, explanation and supplement of foreign theories in the early stage. Li (1981) introduced the study of presupposition in the Field of Russian, Shen (1986) introduced the theory of presupposition from the field of English, and Xu (1990) was the first to introduce the theory of presupposition in a special chapter of semantics textbooks. Since then, the research on presupposition has been paid more and more attention. In terms of the theoretical study of presupposition, Zhou (1994) creatively proposed a pragmatic presupposition rule based on Stalnakers definition and gave a pragmatic presupposition definition based on the rule. Domestic academic circles in the introduction of the theory of presupposition and English digest has done quite a lot of work, Shu (1989) discussed the theoretical problems of presupposition, Li (1990) thought about the relationship between presupposition and derivative, Xu (1993) made new thinking about presupposition and comparative study on the connection between presupposition and implicit implication, Liu (1995), Jiang (2000), Liu (2003) and others introduced the projection theory of presupposition, Yang (1997) introduced Gazdars presupposition theory, etc. These studies provide a rich theoretical basis for the study of linguistic presupposition in China.Since Frege put forward the concept of presupposition, the research on presupposition theory has been gradually enriched and developed. Scholars have conducted extensive and in-depth research on presupposition theory from philosophy, logic and linguistics.2.2 Previous studies on the American legal dramaAmerican TV series has a large audience in China, which is inseparable from its development in the United States. Since 1980, when the translation department of CCTV introduced American TV series for the first time, American TV series have been spreading in China for nearly 40 years. After a period of positive development in the United States, legal drama has become one of its main themes. The main features of the creation are as follows: first, it shows professional knowledge and professional spirit; second, narrative techniques and characters are quite distinctive; third, it positively guides the audiences values. At present, the domestic research on American legal drama mainly focuses on three aspects, namely the cultural differences between Chinese and American legal drama, the narrative research of American legal drama and the character image of American legal drama. Under the guidance of narrative theory, Shui (2018) analyzed specific cases and made detailed analysis on narrative content, narrative structure and narrative context, and expounds the narrative mode of American legal drama. Wang (2017) analyzed the negative and positive pragmatic functions of courtroom conflict discourse from the perspective of linguistic adaptation theory, using trial conversation in Boston Legal as corpus. Xue (2020) based on the theory of pragmatic presupposition, used qualitative analysis and content analysis to analyze how legal workers skillfully make pragmatic presupposition by taking dialogues in The Good Wife as corpus. Through the analysis of lawyers speech in Boston Legal, Meng (2012) explores the hidden relationship between language and ideology in legal discourse and shows how the producers of discourse communicate their will and characteristics through language choice. From the perspective of attributive clause, adverbial clause of time and question, Wang (2015) analyzed the strategies used by lawyers in trial questions by using the research method of painting analysis in pragmatics. From the perspective of pragmatics, she explores the invisible guiding role of pragmatic presupposition in court proceedings and the new direction of its application in the field of legal language. It can be seen from the research status that the research on pragmatic presupposition has been very in-depth. Scholars have studied pragmatic presupposition in many fields, especially its application in news and advertising, formed a rich theoretical system and achieved rich research results. However, the relevant literature and Research on the application of Pragmatic Presupposition in court dialogue are still relatively few, so this thesis develops and supplements in a new field on the basis of inheriting the existing theoretical framework.ReferencesCaffi, C. (2006). Pragmatic presupposition. Encyclopedia of Language ana, J. J. (2018). Pragmatic presupposition and unarticulated constituents. Lingua, 206, 112-126.Frege, G . (1892). On Sense and Reference. Oxford: Blackwell.Gazdar, G. (1979). Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition and Logical Form. New York: Academic Press.Keenan, E. (1971). Two kinds of presupposition in natural language. London and New York: Routledge.Levinson, S. C. (2001). Pragmatics. London: Cambridge University Press.Mazzarella, D., 681.Wilson, D., amp; Sperber, D. (1993). Linguistic form and relevance. Lingua, 90(1-2), 1-25.Xue, W. H. (2020). Analysis on pragmatic presupposition in the American drama, The Good Wife (Masters thesis). Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing.Yule, G. (1996). Pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.陈新仁 (1998)，论广告用语中的语用预设，《外国语》，（5）：4。

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