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Chapter 4 Functions of Pragmatic Presupposition in EBLs

As a pragmatic phenomenon, presupposition surely has its own functions.However, there have been not so many scholars who have conducted research on thisaspect by now. Zhu and Miao(朱永生、苗兴伟，2000) discuss the discourse pragmaticfunctions of presupposition. They think that pragmatic presupposition plays animportant part in discourse organization and discourse coherence. Seuren(2000:280)only discuss that the function of presupposition is to save time and energy in linguisticcommunication. Wei(魏在江，2002) holds that presupposition has many functions frompragmatic perspective, such as economy function, persuasion function, informationfocus protrusion function and discourse organization function. In this chapter, on thebasis of the studies of these scholars and the above analysis, the author will analyze thepragmatic functions of presupposition in EBLs from three levels, namely language level,discourse level and information level, in order to find out some other pragmaticfunctions of presupposition as well as the functions already discussed by them.
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Conclusion

With the help of Leech’s Politeness Principle and Hjelmslev’s Principle ofEconomy of Language, the thesis has made efforts to explore the application ofpragmatic presupposition and the possible functions in EBLs. It is expected that thisstudy will facilitate the research on the application of presupposition in written literaturefrom a perspective of pragmatics and be helpful in improving the writing ability ofbusiness Englishlearners. The major findings of the study can be summarized asfollows:
(1).Presupposition phenomenon is very common in business letters. The thesistreats presupposition as a pragmatic subject and holds that presupposition coverseverything that the addresser assumes to be in existence or true prior to making anutterance.
(2).The author concludes the properties of presupposition. For one thing,presupposition is treated as the addresser’s assumption about the context ofcommunication; for the other thing, it is thought to be the common knowledge orbackground information of communication.
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