A Study of Presupposition in the English News Headlines from the Perspective of Adaptation Theory顺应论视角下英语新闻标题的预设研究开题报告

 2023-04-10 16:51:22

1. 研究目的与意义（文献综述包含参考文献）

1.Introduction1.1 Research backgroundAs the concise, vivid and accurate words for revealing, evaluating, and organizing news content, news headlines are an indispensable part of news discourses. Bell (1991) has defined news headlines as a sub-genre of news discourse, expressing the most important information in news content. Van Dijk (1988) has contended that the most prominent features of news discourse are embodied in news headlines. News headlines mainly achieve two pragmatic purposes: one is to provide news information quickly, the other is to attract readers' attention (Wu curiosity and interest in China Daily, which is beneficial to encourage readers to pay attention to the news report and then attach great importance to current affairs at home and abroad. Then people can broaden their horizons, understand national policies, share their own opinions with others, acquire knowledge from proper channels, spread Chinese culture to foreigners. Furthermore, the Adaptation Theory (Verschueren,1999) shows people can make negotiable choices from a variable range of possibilities to satisfy their need for communication. The presupposition inEnglish news headlines is a linguistic adaptation in nature, especially an adaptation of context, which includes communicative context and linguistic context. Therefore, it is necessary to study the presupposition in the English news headlines from the perspective of Adaptation Theory (Verschueren, 1999). For another, this paper is helpful for readers to understand the presupposition and Adaptation Theory (Verschueren, 1999) better, then the pragmatic functions of presupposition in news headlines and the nature of the strategical use of presupposition in news headlines. Moreover, the study can enhance readers awareness of news headlines research, which is still not abundant enough.1.3 Research purposesThe study aims to make a comprehensive study of the presupposition in the English news headlines from the perspective of Adaptation Theory (Verschueren, 1999). This thesis intends to explore the pragmatic function of presupposition in news headlines, and reveals that presupposition in news headlines is a linguistic adaptation in nature by corpus analysis. Whats more, this research mainly selects news headlines compiled on the cloud platform of China Daily as the research corpus, and studies more than 50 news headlines from January to February 2022, covering politics, economy, social science and so on. Specifically, this thesis answers two questions: What are the pragmatic functions of the presupposition in news headlines? What are the contextual factors motivating the use of presupposition in news headlines?1.4 Organization of the studyThe whole thesis is divided into five chapters. Chapter One introduces the background of this research, the need for the study, aims and organization of the study. The review of some theories relevant to the paper, the critical summary of the presupposition in news headlines and the study of news headlines based on Adaption Theory are illustrated in Chapter Two. Chapter Three shows research questions, data collection method and data analysis method. Chapter Four presents the results and discussion. Chapter Five illustrates major findings, the implications and limitations of the study, and provides some suggestions for future research.2.Literature review2.1 Definitions of presuppositionIt was Frege who first discussed presupposition as a specialized logical problem when he was exploring the differences between sense and reference (He, 2002), then Bertrand Russell, P.F. Strawson and others made further research on this problem. With the development of presupposition research, semantic and pragmatic perspectives have been formed. However, the semantic presupposition later received two harsh criticisms (Chen, 2004). One is that if you accept the definition of semantic presuppositions, then it logically follows that presuppositions are often true statements, but in fact presupposition is not. The other is that if the presupposition is semantic, it must be irreducible. But in fact presuppositions can be defeasibility (Cong U(FA) to listener H, S believes that the words, phases or things referred to by clause B exist, and S believes H also believes that the things referred to by B exist, if(I)(1) B is a proper noun, description, quantified noun (noun phrase) or unstressed part (i.e., an unstressed word, phrase or clause) in a narrative statement, or (2) B is a proper noun, description, quantified noun (noun phrase) or unstressed part in a statement deduced from a narrative statement, or (3) B is an abstract statement that is deduced from the interrogative statement or command statement under the principle of sincerity.(II)S believes that the words, phases or things referred to by B exist, and S believes H also believes that the things referred to by B exist. Different speakers say U(FA), or S obeys cooperation principle, or the factors c,c... in C believed by S are inconsistent.(I) is called the trigger condition of the presupposition rule. As long as one of conditions in (I) is satisfied, then (I) is satisfied. (II) is called the exclusion condition. When a word or phrase or clause B satisfies (I), we have to step forward to see if B also satisfies the exclusion condition. Only when B satisfies both the trigger condition (I) and the exclusion condition (II), can S believe in the existence of the things referred to by B and believe that H also believes in the existence of the things referred to by B.Zhou (1994) defines presupposition on the basis of presupposition rule: in a communicative context C, when the speaker S speaks a sentence U(FA) to the listener H, S presupposes words, phrases, the things referred to by clause "B" exist, if and only if (I) according to the presupposition rule, S believes that things referred to by B exist, and S believes H also believes that things referred to by B exist. (II) S believes H knows (I).This thesis adopts Zhou's definition of presupposition as the theoretical basis. Zhou's definition of presupposition is from the perspective of speakers and listener's assumption and belief. In addition, Zhou (1994) creatively proposes the presupposition rule, which determines the connection between one sentence and presupposition, and he applies the presupposition rule in the definition of presupposition, so as to avoid being too broad (Chen, 2004).2.2 Theory of Linguistic AdaptationVerschueren (1999) thinks the use of language in communication is a process of making choices, which is constant, conscious or unconscious, not equivalent, and evoke or carry along their alternatives. There are three related key notions needed to help understand the process of making choices: variability, negotiability and adaptability. Variability defines the range of possibilities that choices can be made; negotiability means that choices are not made based on strict rules, but rather on the basis of flexible principles or strategies; adaptability signifies people can make negotiable choices from a variable range of possibilities to satisfy the need for communication (Verschueren, 1999). Furthermore, theory of linguistic adaptation focuses on four tasks: contextual correlates of adaptability, structural objects of adaptability, dynamics of adaptability and salience of the adaptation process. Context includes communicative context and linguistic context. The former consists of material world, social world, psychological world, communicative parties, and the latter mainly refers to the words that come just before and after a word or statement; structural objects of adaptability refers to the adaptation of language factors including phonology, vocabulary, syntax, code, style, discourse, etc; dynamics of adaptability shows language adaptation is a dynamic process; salience of the adaptation process means some choices are virtually automatic, while others are highly motivated (Verschuren, 1999); salience of the adaptation process dominates the four tasks (Wang, 2015). In conclusion, Adaptation Theory is Verschuerens analysis on language and use of language from the philosophical level. Adaptability is the basic property of language reflected in the process of language use and the organic combination of language and mind. Moreover, the theory of linguistic adaptation is not put forward as an operational theory and its original intention is to help language researchers see rather than do(Guo Chen 2020).2.3 Review of relevant research Nowadays, a handful of researchers attach great importance to news headlines from the perspective of pragmatics based on presupposition. For instance, Yang (2021) analyzes the pragmatic features of English news headlines based on relevance theory and presupposition theory. She thinks the presupposition are closely related to the context in which a news headline is placed and the information presented in the form of headline language can implicitly stimulate readers' thinking. Whats more, the omission of words does not indicate a lack of information, but rather reflects the simplicity of language. However, from the perspective of Adaptation Theory, the presupposition is not only connected with the communicative context but also linguistic context. The former is made up of material world, social world, psychological world, communicative parties, and the latter mainly refers to the words that just come before and after a word or statement. Whats more, Bai (2016) makes a study on the Construction X ye (also) Y from the perspective of pragmatic presupposition based on the observations on the headlines of Chinese newspapers. The presupposition can be activated immediately with the word ye (also), which means ye (also) has an important pragmatic function in Chinese news headlines. But few studies pay attention to the similar words like ye (also) that can activate presupposition in English news headlines. From the perspective of the Adaptation Theory, the strategic use of presupposition in news headlines is a positive adaptation to the physical world of news, the psychological world of readers and the social world of newspaper media (Wu Chen, 2008). However, they ignore the communicative parties involved in communicative context. Besides, Wang and Chen (2015) make an empirical pragmatic study of the narrative Chinese newspaper headlines based on Adaptation Theory. The strategic use of narrative news headlines actively conforms to the physical world and the psychological world of readers, which is conducive to expanding newspaper sales and enhancing the popularity. However, they also ignore the other elements in the context, such as social world and communicative parties. 2.4 Research gap The previous research still exists limitations deserving improvement, although they make contributions to the development of news headlines.Firstly, few studies pay attention to the connection between the presupposition andcontextual factors involved in Adaptation Theory. Researchers study news headlines based on Adaptation Theory or the presupposition in news headlines. However, few research explores the relationship between the presupposition in news headlines and Adaptation Theory, like Bai (2016), Yang (2021). Hence, in this thesis, the author studies the presupposition in news headlines from the perspective of Adaptation Theory.Secondly, many researchers put emphasis on the adaptation of material world, social world, psychological world, but ignore communicative parties between the editors and readers, such as Wu and Chen (2008), Wang and Chen (2015). Therefore, the thesis will introduce four contextual factors involved in adaptation theory in news headlines: material world, social world, psychological world and communicative parties.ReferencesAlyssa, A. (2020). ALPHABET SOUP: Examining Acronym and Abbreviation Style in Headlines. Journalism Practice, 14(7), 880-895.Bell, A. (1991). The Language of the News Media. Oxford: Blackwell.Muhammad, A. L. et al. (2018). Textual and Rhetoric Analysis of News Headlines of Urdu and English Newspapers. International Journal of English Linguistics, 9(1), 324-324.Van Dijk, T. A. (1988). News Analysis: Case Studies of International and National News in the Press. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Verschueren, J. (1999). Understanding Pragmatics. London: Edward Arnold.Wu, X. Y. (2021). The Use of Punctuation Marks in JapaneseFocus on the News Headlines of Peoples Daily Online. Open Access Library Journal, 08(06), 1-8.白丽娜（2016），语用学视域下的X 也 Y构式 基于新闻标题语言的考察，《上海对外经贸大学学报》，23（1）：79-86。

陈道德（2004），简论周礼全先生的预设理论，《湖北大学学报》，31（4）：406-410。

丛日珍、仇伟（2016），语义预设与语用预设的重叠性和互补性，《现代外语（双月刊）》，39（5）：594-604。

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2. 研究的基本内容、问题解决措施及方案

The study aims to make a comprehensive study of the presupposition in the English news headlines from the perspective of Adaptation Theory (Verschueren, 1999). This thesis intends to explore the pragmatic function of presupposition in news headlines, and reveals that presupposition in news headlines is a linguistic adaptation in nature by corpus analysis. Specifically, the research questions are: What are the pragmatic functions of the presupposition in news headlines? What are the contextual factors motivating the use of presupposition in news headlines?Based on the presupposition and Adaptation Theory (Verschueren, 1999), this research mainly selects news headlines compiled on the cloud platform of China Daily as the research corpus, and studies more than 50 news headlines from January to February 2022, covering politics, economy, social science and so on.

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