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摘 要

随着社会步入信息时代，新闻已经成为人们了解社会动态的重要途径。而新闻的标题更是最重要的部分，它起到了给读者提供信息以及吸引读者的作用。新闻标题通常是简洁明了的，那么作者就必须试着用最简短的标题来给读者提供必要的信息，同时又要能吸引读者的目光。此时语用预设就在新闻标题中起到了极为重要的作用，那就是语用预设可以赋予新闻标题更多潜在的信息，这也是语用预设被广泛应用于新闻标题的原因。但是，作者为了通过新闻标题在第一时间吸引读者，有时会使用一些错误的语用预设来引起人们的兴趣，这就是本文将重点讨论的语用预设的误导作用。本文所研究的的所有新闻标题都选自十分具有代表性的报刊“纽约时报”，通过研究这些误导现象，希望给新闻的编撰者一些启发，从而使其在日后的工作中尽量避免一些误解，同时也希望读者能更清晰地意识到语用预设的误导作用，以免在阅读新闻时轻易地就掉进语用预设误导的“陷阱”之中。

关键词：语用预设；新闻标题；误导

Contents

Acknowledgments ii

Abstract

摘要

Chapter One Introduction 1

1.1 Introduction of news and news headlines 1

1.2 Introduction of New York Times 1

Chapter Two Literature Review 3

2.1 Presupposition Theory 3

2.1.1 General Introduction 3

2.1.2 Different classifications of presupposition 3

2.1.3 Features of pragmatic presupposition 4

2.2 Relevant studies 6

2.2.1 Former research on news headlines 6

2.2.2 Studies on presupposition in news headlines 6

2.3 Summary 7

Chapter Three Methodology 8

3.1 Research questions 8

3.2 Corpus for research 8

3.3 Research methods and procedures 8

Chapter Four Results and Discussion 10

4.1 Presupposition misleading phenomenon 10

4.2 Different types of presupposition misleading 11

4.2.1Presupposition misleading in vocabulary 11

4.2.2 Presupposition misleading in punctuation 11

4.2.3 Presupposition misleading in rhetorical devices 12

4.3 Quantitative analysis of types of presupposition misleading 13

Chapter Five Conclusion 15

References 16

Chapter One

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Introduction of News and News Headlines

As the development of the society, information spreading has become a very important part in our life. A lot of effective and timely information can be obtained from newspaper, so newspaper is still a common way to help people know the changes of the world. There are often different kinds of news such as political news, economic news, sports news, entertainment news and social news. No matter what kind of the news is, they all have same features: timeliness, authenticity and conciseness.

News can be divided into three parts: the headline, the lead and the body. The lead is to use some concise sentences to point out the most important or interesting fact in the news, but usually the lead can be omitted. The body is the specific facts of the news. This paper will focus on the headline of the news as the headline is always the ‘eye’ of the news. Readers always see the headline at the first sight, so headline will give the first impression to readers. It’s very necessary to pay attention to the headlines because a good headline can attract readers’ interests and transmit effective information to readers. A good headline should be authentic, concise and precise. These features can help readers understand what the writer wants to convey within the shortest time. As we all know, when readers are scanning the newspaper, they are trying to find some topic they are interested in, so it’s important for writers to learn how to analyze the headlines, helping them write better headlines.

1.2 Introduction of New York Times

This paper will analyze the headlines from New York Times. New York Times is published in the United States and spreads all over the world. Sometimes people call it the times for short. As we all know, the United States is a media free country, so its newspaper can be a very typical example to analyze. New York Times has considerable influence in America and all over the world with good credibility and authority for a very long time.

Its style is classical and serious, so sometimes people call it “The Gray Lady”. Its original name is “The New York Daily Times” and the founder is Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones. The influence of the New York Times in the United States is huge and far-reaching. It is an indispensable part of life in the United States. Every morning before working, paying $2 for a New York Times from the metro station has become a part of many people’s life in the United States. If it first reports an event, the reliability of this report is very high. So many news writers will directly use the information from New York Times. Most of the public libraries in the United States provide a copy of the New York Times so it enjoys the reputation of reliable source of news. In fact this newspaper receives articles from many different authors and we can see various points of view from this newspaper. This is the reason why I choose New York Times as the object of the study.

Chapter Two

LITERATURE REVIEW

In this chapter, the literature review has three parts. The first part introduces the presupposition theory, including the general idea, different classifications and features. The second part focuses on the relevant studies both on the general and presupposition analysis on news headlines. There is also a research gap explanation in this part. The final part is the conclusion part.

2.1 Presupposition Theory

2.1.1 General introduction

Presupposition is an important topic of language philosophy, also it is a very common language phenomenon. Frege brought presupposition to the notice of the world when he published the article “On Sense and Reference” （Gottlob，1952）. He writes: “If anything is asserted or compound proper names used have a reference.” That is to say, anything has its reference while the reference is not presented directly in the sentence.

2.1.2 Different classifications of presupposition

Stalnaker has the view that presupposition can be divided into semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition according to if the presupposition depends on the context (Robert, 1980) When researchers pay attention to semantic presupposition, they find that semantic presupposition has the feature of stability and relative variability. It relies more on vocabulary meaning and sentence structure. It only considers the internal factors of a sentences, thus it has certain limitations, only explaining the simple sentence rather than complex sentence. It overlooks the pragmatic factors such as context, speakers, background information and communication rules. With the development of pragmatics, linguists find that presupposition is closely related with context. So they begin to notice the importance of pragmatic presupposition.

There are different ways to explain pragmatic presupposition. The most common way is: the speaker’s imagination of the context of his words. Also, we can also understand pragmatic presupposition by thinking it is the common background of the both bodies of the communication. Based on this background, the speaker can talk to the listener and he thinks the listener will understand the words correctly.

When compared to the two presuppositions, researchers find semantic presupposition is objective, non-contextual and stable, while pragmatic presupposition is subjective, contextual and dynamic. However, it must be clear that these two kinds of presupposition are not contradictory. On the contrary, they are closely related. Semantic presupposition is the base of pragmatic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition is the development of semantic pragmatic presupposition.

There is another way to divide pragmatic presupposition. It can be divided into three parts: existence presupposition, fact presupposition and generic presupposition. (Allwood, Anderson, and Dahl, 2006) In our daily life, existence presupposition is the most common way. When people are talking about something, they always presuppose that the thing exists. Fact presupposition means that both parties have the same background, while the background is only known by specific people, not all of them. Generic presupposition means that when people are talking, there is a common background and this background has been accepted by others. In other words, this common background is a principle.

In accordance with the explanation of pragmatic presupposition, it can be related to news headlines. Although headlines are usually very concise, it can convey a lot of information to the readers and catch their eyes at the first sight. So there must be some common background between the writer and the reader, which is the meaning to analyze the pragmatic presupposition in news headlines.

2.1.3 Features of pragmatic presupposition

When it comes to the features of pragmatic presupposition, there are different points of view. The most common view is that it has three features: unidirectional, subjective and elusive（he and chen, 2004）. Pragmatic presupposition is unidirectional means that when speakers are talking, the presupposition is made from himself without the communication with the listener. Before his words are handled by the listener, these words only exist on the background of the speaker.

The subjective feature means that it’s not necessary for the presupposition to be true or correct. For example, if the speaker believes that his words are true, then these words can be presupposition. The listener can accept the presupposition only for communication need, even though the presupposition itself is false. Pragmatic presupposition is elusive means that a lot of information can be hidden in the words rather than speak out. The listener may accept the presupposition carelessly. For example, A asks B: Where will we meet tomorrow night? B’s answer is: In the park. Here the presupposition is they will meet tomorrow night, while B accepts it unconsciously. So this feature often makes presupposition fraudulent.

There is another theory about pragmatic presupposition’s feature:

Felicity and mutual knowledge.（He, 1988）Mutual knowledge means the presupposition is the common background for both parties of the communication. It may not be concluded in the words while implied beyond the words. Felicity means the presupposition is consistent with our common sense and both parties have the ability to do.

Studies not only pay attention to the definition, types and features of presupposition, but also its functions. The function of presupposition can be concluded into three points. The first is to transmit information in an elusive way so that it’s unnecessary for the speakers to speak out all the words. He can omit some information that the listener has known. The second is to convey what the speaker is thinking. Sometimes people’s feelings can be suggested by presupposition rather than words. The third function is to help people communicate. If the background isn’t known by the listener, it may be misunderstood. On the contrary, proper presupposition can help people communicate more effectively.

2.2 Relevant Studies

2.2.1 Former research on news headlines

Scholars from home and abroad have analyzed news headlines from different perspectives. For example, some of the studies focus on the features of news headlines. They find that news headline is always the ‘eye’ of the news. Readers always see the headline at the first sight, so headline will give the first impression to readers. It’s very necessary to pay attention to the headlines because a good headline can attract readers’ interests and transmit effective information to readers. A good headline should be authentic, concise and precise. These features can help readers understand what the writer wants to convey within the shortest time. Also, some studies have shown great interests in the translation of news headlines. A lot of translation strategies can be used in the translation of news headlines. They find it’s very important to use the appropriate translation strategy for better information transmission between the writer and foreign readers.

2.2.2 Studies on presupposition in news headlines

Some former studies have analyzed news headlines from the presupposition perspective. They find pragmatic presupposition has been widely used in news headlines. The application of pragmatic presupposition can make the headline concise because presupposition has the function to enlarge the background information and can enhance the attraction of news at the same time. There are a lot of factors affecting the effectiveness of presupposition, for example, the context, the attitude of the reporter, the intention of the communication and the background of the readers. Scholars have listed the functions of presupposition in news headlines which can be concluded as: conciseness, information enlargement, attraction, euphemism, humor and misleading. The main functions of conciseness, information enlargement, attraction have been widely discussed because of the word limitation of the news deadlines. It’s the necessary ability for reporters to catch people’s eyes by using the news headlines.

After analysis on the relevant studies, I find that most former studies have shown great interest in the functions of pragmatic presupposition in news headlines. Scholars mainly analyze the positive functions of presupposition such as conciseness, information enlargement, attraction, euphemism, and humor. However, when focusing more on the attractiveness of the news headlines, sometimes the reporter ignores the truth and objectivity of the news headlines, which leads to the misleading function of presupposition. There is little research on the deep analysis because the aim of the news is to tell people the truth and misleading is usually not the real intention of the reporter. However, it’s inevitable that some misleading presupposition will occur in the headlines. We should not neglect the misleading function of presupposition. It’s important for us to try to identify the misleading of presupposition and find out the reasons why it fails to have an appropriate presupposition function to guide people in the news headlines. Only in this way can we try to avoid the presupposition misleading when writing a report.

2.3 Summary

Pragmatic presupposition is very common in news headlines and former studies have combined these two things together. Most of them focus on the types and functions of the pragmatic presupposition in news headlines. However, there is still a research gap in the misleading function of pragmatic presupposition in news headlines.

Chapter Three

METHODOLOGY

In this chapter, an analysis on the misleading phenomenon in news headlines has been conducted. The research questions are discussed first. The next part is the corpus for research and the final part is the research methods.

3.1 Research Questions

This paper will focus mainly on three questions:

1. What’s presupposition misleading phenomenon in news headlines?

2. What are the main types of presupposition misleading?

3. How often different types of presupposition misleading occur in news headlines?

3.2 Corpus for Research

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