Literature Review In this chapter, the literature review consists of three sections. Section 2.1 and section 2.2 introduce the concepts and characteristics of semantic presupposition and pragmatic presupposition accordingly. Section 2.3 is mainly about previous studies about pragmatic presupposition in the advertisements and points out the gap based on the following studies. 2.1 Semantic Presupposition Since the presupposition theory was proposed, it has been the hot topic among the linguistic scholars, logicians and philosophers. A great amount of researches were made about it. To be simple, semantic presupposition can be defined as an obscure meaning implied in the sentence and usually be related to the specific words of the sentence. However, it is not the same with conversational implicature. For the sake of getting the readers have a rough understanding of presupposition; the author will make a concise introduction about it next. Presupposition, as a special kind of pragmatic inference, is a little bit different from conversational implicature generated by violating the four maxims of CP. It seems that presupposition does be based more closely on the actual linguistic structure of sentence; so it is easy to make people consider this kind of inference is gained from the literal meaning. However, it is wrong; presupposition is also very sensitive to contextual factors in some ways. In other words, presupposition is a kind of inference tightly connected with the words and grammatical structures which are actually used in our communication or the utterances; that is to say, presupposition seems like entailment which seems free of contextual factors anyhow. At the same time, it is also associated with the contextual factors. Due to this, presupposition is very sneaky. It seems that presupposition lies at a boundary of a division. Thus, the linguists have employed two theoretical approaches to analyze presupposition: one is from the semantic scope in which linguists named it semantic presupposition amenable to a truth-relations approach; the other is from pragmatic scope in which linguists named it presupposition, which requires a contextual support. Therefore, the author will also discuss presupposition from two different perspectives: semantic perspective and pragmatic perspective. By this way, the author can explain the presupposition completely and meticulously. 2.2 Pragmatic Presupposition Since pragmatic presupposition came into the linguists#8217; eyesight, varied theories of pragmatic presupposition have been put forward. However, in early days, few kinds of definitions about pragmatic presupposition came into being. In spite of different approaches, these early definitions of pragmatic presupposition are always alike with each other and all based on two particular concepts: appropriateness and mutual knowledge. This ides suggested that there are still some limitations on the use of sentences so that they can be used correctly and properly in the context if it is supposed that propositions indicated by the presupposition triggers are true. But with the study proceeding further, more and more definitions of different linguists emerged. Noting the above definitions, it is easy to find that pragmatic presupposition deals with the relation between what is said and what is not said. In scholar He Zhaoxiong#8217;s opinion, there exist three kinds of definitions about pragmatic presupposition in all. The first one is that pragmatic presupposition refers to a kind of hyperbola, which is produced by the addressers before the communication to guarantee it to undertake fluently; the second one is that pragmatic presupposition pays close attention to appropriate condition for doing something; the third notion is the most ordinary one and easy to master, which refers it as one kind of shared knowledge between the speakers and the listeners. Although these three types of notions about pragmatic presupposition are various, they at least have one thing in common: pragmatic presupposition is tightly associated with the proposition of the speaker. In other words, pragmatic presupposition can be treated as the common background or shared knowledge on which the speakers can communicate with the listener fluently. To sum up, pragmatic presupposition is treated as the presupposition of speakers, which deals with the relation between utterance and assumption, not the presupposition of the sentences. As Levinson (2001) pointed out, presupposition has two basic concepts: common ground and appropriateness. Based on these two features, some scholars found several other features of pragmatic presupposition in their researches. These features are subjectivity, latency and unidrectionality. The author will make an introduction about these five features with several examples to give readers a deep understanding. The first one is called common ground or mutual knowledge. For example, ”I got up late, my clock is broken”. In this example, it is clear that the listener can understand what the speaker is saying; because they all know the fact that the speaker has a watch and what a watch is for. This feature is also the theoretical basis for the new type of presupposition. It means presupposition is a knowledge-store of both speaker and listener. Only have the same knowledge basis, can the consumers understand the meaning of the advertisements well. Look at the following advertisement: America#8212;a nation on the wheel, gasoline#8212;blood of America. -----America gas committee. This is an advertisement for gas. It tells a fact: the wheel can not run without gas. But at the same time, the readers should share the common knowledge with the advertisers: America has many cars, buses or vehicles; they work on gas. So gas is very important. Why is gas compared to blood? Because blood is very important to human being, without it, people would die at once. On the basis of this common knowledge which the readers know too, they can get the deep meaning of this advertisement. The second one is appropriateness which refers to a speech act performing based on the conditions of appropriate use of sentences. It means presupposition must be closely linked up with context. 2.3 Previous Studies in the Advertisements This section is mainly about previous studies about pragmatic presupposition in the advertisements and points out the gap based on the following studies. By now, advertisement has been a hot topic of many fields which linguistics belongs to. Linguists regard advertisement as a special variety of language all the time. So the author mainly studies advertisements from the linguistic perspective. But here, this report introduces several other theoretical approaches to advertisements, such as semiotic, stylistic, discourse, sociolinguistic to give the readers an direct impression to advertisements. Because the study of advertisements from pragmatic perspective is the issue of this paper, so this report will not introduce pragmatic study in details. The first introduction about advertising is from the semiotic perspective. Barthes, in French, first began to research advertising from the perspective of semiotics made a great contribution to the semiotic analysis of advertisements. With The Rhetoric of the Image (1964), he thought that advertisement shows the obscure meaning by the visual semiotic of language information and non-language communicated method. By analyzing a great number of advertisements and its pictures, Bathes pointed out that advertising language can imply two kinds of information: non-coded information and coded information. Non-coded message refers to a kind of meaning or image showed by the ”real” objects; and the coded information refers to obscure meaning implied in the advertisement and can not be shown by the object; it is another meaning based on the first level. Later, he gives another two novel definitions to the coded information and non-coded information: denotation and connotation. The major contribution of his research is to claim that different readers can get different information from a same advertisement. However, there are still some shortcomings in Barthe#8217;s work. For example, he could not give a definite distinction between denotation and connotation; in addition, and he cannot explain the phenomenon of the usage of pun in advertising language. The second famous person who studied advertisements is Judith Williamson. In the book Decoding Advertisements (1983), she proposed that there is a gap between the decoded message and the message which the readers actually receive. What can fill the gap is the readers existing general knowledge. However, how the readers knowledge influences the way in which the information is obtained? And do they work differently according to different people? Judith herself cannot give a satisfactory answer. Stylistic about advertisements are always round these several aspects: from phonological perspective, they produced advertising by making beautiful and interesting sounds; from lexical perspective, they composed advertising by using some new words, such as compounds, borrowing words and coined words; and from syntactical perspective, they make advertising by employing disjunctive sentence or grammar wrongly sentence. In 1966, in Great Britain, Goffrey N. Leech published his book English in advertising: A Linguistic study of Advertising which was the first book to study advertising from stylistic aspect. In this book, he systematically studied advertisements and provided a detailed analysis about different constituents in terms of grammar, words, structures and even the rhetoric in advertisements. In addition, he also took several functional factors into account. Put the advertisement which it stands aside，he adopted the linguistic theories of his time to analyze advertisements. What#8217;s more, he also made a graph to show how stylistic aspects are applied to attract the consumers. However ,there were also some shortcomings in his research for it cannot give a satisfactory reason why the advertiser has such motivation to use those linguistic devices. His work is very popular in china and it inspires many Chinese scholars to devote themselves into this field. With the development of various types of media, advertisement has gradually become an important part of people#8217;s lives. The plane advertisement on both sides of the station square and the road highly erected, with its huge area, it makes the person can not be avoided. Advertising exists in newspapers, magazines, television, radio, posters, signs, light box body, etc. The dynamic ”sensual advertising” is the impact on people#8217;s vision which includes television, radio and web site. Therefore, there is no doubt that advertising influences people#8217;s life. Geoffrey. N worked on advertising language from a strictly linguistics view. A Linguistic Study of Advertising in Great Britain shows a detailed description of the linguistic devices used by advertisers. This analysis is a major contribution that Leech made to advertising language in the book. Then he shows the features of advertising language using the linguistic theories. The Language of Advertising wrote by Vestergaard and Schroder#8217;s studies the language use in advertising from sociolinguistic aspect. Some researchers not only have studied linguistic forms but also their content in print advertising in the book. In the point of view of linguistic form, they have expanded the range of previous advertising studies to the discourse level and have highlighted several issues of the textual structure such as cohesion and coherence, information structure and so on. As for the advertising content, they pay attention to the explicit messages in advertising, and also they have further dive into the hidden social motivations implied in advertising.