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: logical negationand pragmatic negation, which can also be treated as Descriptive Negation (DN) andMetalinguistic Negation (MN). Otto Jespersen (1924) notices that negative operator“not” may have two opposite meanings: “less than” vs. “more than”. Jespersen,therefore, labels the meaning of “less than” as unmarked negation, while the meaning of“more than” as marked or special negation. By using the second negative meaning, theword after “not” should be stressed and the negated clause must be followed by anotherclause which is used to rectify or correct the negated content. For example:(5) His income is not two hundred a year, but at least three hundred. (Jespersen, 1924)From the second clause of (5), the word “not” has the meaning of “more than”rather than “less than”. Namely, his income is more than two hundred. By using thistype of negative meaning, the word after “not”, two hundred, should be stressed and thenegated sentence is followed by a rectification that provides the grounds for theobjection. Jespersen gives a relatively detailed description about scale meaning andnegation, but he only deals with the semantic meaning of negative operator rather thanconsiders the nature of it and material falling within the scope of negative operator.In 1975, Ducrot presents the concept of MN firstly which is used to explainpresupposition. Ducrot (1975) claims that Descriptive Negation (DN) mainly commentson facts, so it can reserve presuppositions. On the contrary, MN is used to judge onutterances whereby it can cancel presuppositions.
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2.2 Deferred Ostension
Deferred Ostension is a pragmatic method of inference, which is widely used in thediscipline of philosophy. It was raised by Paul Saka (2005) to explain a means oflanguage application and quotation. As a matter of fact, every use of language presentsmultiple ostension. Some are direct ostension and others are deferred ostension. Byusing deferred ostension, communicators express their inner ideas indirectly. Besides,this type of expression makes language more euphemistic and polite, which needspeople to analyze the context of it. From the context and situation, hearers deduce theimplicit meaning of speakers and then draw conclusion.Ostension is one realization of expression. By producing ostension, speakersassume what they provided are optimal relevance that is significant for hearers tounderstand language expressions. In terms of relevance theory, ostension createsexpectations of relevance by stimulus that is used to raise hearers attention, so as to payattention to the implicit meaning that are not embodied directly. Horn (1986) holds thatthe aim of producing stimulus is to express informative ostension and communicativeostension of speakers. Informative ostension attempts to present a series of assumptionsto hearers. While obtaining the informative intention of an expression is the intention ofcommunicative ostension.In terms of the type of ostension, there are direct ostension and deferred ostension.“Direct ostension associates a term with its referent by immediate experience, forexample, by showing of an item. On the contrary, deferred ostension associates with anabsent object by pointing at or describing something present that is saliently related toit”. (Saka, 2005) For example, by pointing at red scarf, Young Pioneer is indicated.Language has two distinct identifications, which is both the tool of cognition and theproduction of communication. Th