Analysis of Presupposition in Cosmetics Advertisements

Pragmatic presupposition focuses on the study of the relationship between the speaker and the hearer at the time of communication and the language they used. It can effectively serve advertising language from the linguistic field. In other words, pragmatic presupposition can meet some of the requirements of the advertisements. Nowadays people confront a variety of commercial advertisements, such as food advertisements, drink advertisements, digital product and cosmetic advertisements, etc. In fact, advertising language is the core factor which determines the success or failure of one commercial advertisement. Most domestic and overseas scholars have studied advertising language through cooperative principles，rhetoric and systemic-functional grammar, etc. However, they do not pay enough attention to the pragmatic presupposition manifested in both Chinese and English cosmetic advertisements. Therefore, this paper conducts a comparative study based on previous studies of pragmatic presupposition with new data. The data analyzed in this study are taken from some major fashion magazines in America, United Kingdom and China, such as VOGUE, Cosmopolitan，Trends health，etc. These cosmetic advertisements were advertised in the recent 20 years. Through the analysis, it is found that there is no significant difference between Chinese and English cosmetic advertisements in terms of types of pragmatic presupposition manifested. Both Chinese and English advertisers mainly adopt four types of pragmatic presupposition: existential presupposition, factive presupposition, state presupposition and behavior presupposition, and state presupposition takes up the largest proportion. The present study provides a more comprehensive analysis of pragmatic presupposition and classification of it. In addition, the results of this study also could help advertisers and consumers increase their mutual understanding.