pragmatics presupposition

PRAGMATICS PRESUPPOSITION ON TELEVISION COMMERCIAL

ASSIGNMENT

This is arranged to fulfill the assignment of Pragmatics on English Department

Faculty AdviserH. Hendar, Drs., M.Pd.

Created by

Citra Nissa Aldina

0711U022

Vivi Nursovi

0711U023

Riani Anggia Dewi

0711U029

Floretta Gavra

0711U031

ENGLISH DEPARTMENTLANGUAGE FACULTY

WIDYATAMA UNIVERSITYBANDUNG

2014

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The writer would like to acknowledge our countless thanks to the Most Gracious and the Most Merciful, God who always gives us all the best of this life and there is no doubt about it. This paper is presented to fulfill the assignment of Pragmatics on English Department.

The writer would like to take opportunity to express deep and sincere gratitude to the following H. Hendar, Drs., M.Pd. as our advisor who has guided the writer patiently and invaluable teaching experience. We also thank to anyone that can not be mentioned directly or indirectly who has helped the writer in completing this paper. We appreciate any opinion, and suggestion for the improvement of this paper.

Bandung, April 2014

The writer

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT……............................................................................. i

CONTENTS............................................................................................................ ii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION........................................................................... 1

1.1 Background of the Study................................................................. 1

1.2 Research Question……………………………………..…………..… 1

1.3 Purpose of the Study………......................................................... 1

CHAPTER II REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE................................... 2

2.1 Pragmatics………......................................................................... 2

2.2 Presupposition ………………....................................................... 2

2.3 Indicator of Potential Presupposition............................................... 4

2.4 Context……………....................................................................... 6

2.5 Television Commercial……………………………………………… 7

CHAPTER III DATA ANALYSIS....................................................................... 8

3.1 Existential Presupposition………………………………………….. 8

3.2 Counterfactual Presupposition……………...……………………… 8

CHAPTER IV CONCLUSION…………………………………………………… 8

BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................... 9

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Language decides on how the advertisements can attract the consumer.

Advertisements have to promote their products to the consumer. They need their products

more well-known to the consumer. To know the advertisements goals, we can also use

pragmatic approach. It can be used for analyzing the advertisement’s promotion way. Toko

bagus is one of shop online in Indonesia. The Toko Bagus television commercials have

frequently appeared on television. The advertisers promote their products using non-direct

persuasive advertising. It makes the advertisers produce an interesting and unique

advertising.

The Toko Bagus’s brand advertisers have to persuade the consumer with a creative

way. They deliver not only an attractive visualization, but also an attractive utterance. The

attractive utterance is used for attracting potential consumers' attention, interest, awareness,

and action to achieve the product’s messages.Theutterances should be fortified with a same

assumption of shared knowledge by speaker and hearer. The similarity of these assumptions

is precondition assumption of utterances, so the utterances do not need to be explicitly

communicated. Since the correlation between these assumptions have an important role in

creating a purpose of advertising, the writer tries to analyze utterance on Toko Bagus’s brand

television commercial use pragmatic presupposition approach.

CHAPTER II

REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1 Pragmatics

Semantics and pragmatics are the two main areas of linguistic study that look at the

knowledge we use both extract meaning when we hear or read, and to convey meaning when we

speak or write. Within linguistics itself, the dividing line between these two disciplines is still under

considerable debate. SEMANTICS concentrates on meaning that comes from purely linguistics

knowledge, while PRAGMATICS concentrates on those aspects of meaning that cannot be predicted

by linguistic knowledge alone and takes into account knowledge about the physical and social world.

2.2 Presupposition

Since not all utterances consist of full declarative sentences, presupposition can be a

useful concept when analyzing speaker meaning. Some definitions of presupposition are very

broad and speaker oriented: anything the speaker assumes to be true before making utterance.

Others are much more narrow and sentence oriented: a necessary precondition for the

sentence to be true. Presuppositions are interferences that are very closely linked to the words

and grammatical structures actually used in the utterances, but they come from our

knowledge about the way language users conventionally interpret these words and structures.

2.3 Indicator of Potential Presupposition

Indicator of potential presupposition is Yule’s theory to divide presupposition type,

which can only become actual presupposition by considering the contexts. Yule (1996:27-30)

divides the presupposition types into six based on the indicator of potential presupposition.

a. Existential Presupposition

Existential presupposition is not only assumed to be present in possessive

constructions, but more generally in any definite noun phrase (Yule, 1996:27).

b. Factive Presupposition

This presupposition derived from some verbs that can conclude a fact follows. The

verbs have an exact meaning that can be treated as a fact (Yule, 1996:27).

c. Lexical Presupposition

The use of one form with its asserted meaning is conventionally interpreted with the

presupposition that another (non-asserted) meaning is understood (Yule, 1996:28).

d. Non-factive Presupposition

Examples of non-factive presuppositions associated with a number of verbs in

English. A non-factive presupposition is information that assumed not to be true

(Yule, 1996:29).

e. Structural Presupposition

This presupposition is associated with the use of certain words and phrases. In

structural presupposition, certain sentence structures have been analyzed as

conventionally and regularly presupposing that part of the structural already assumed

to be true (Yule, 1996:28).

f. Counterfactual Presupposition

A counterfactual presupposition has a meaning that what is presupposed not only not

true, but it is the opposite of what is true, or ‘contrary to facts’(Yule,1996:29).

2.4 Context

In which presuppositions are assumed to be true we have only considered context

(Yule, 1993:29). According to Widdowson (2007:19-26), context is aspects of extra-

linguistic reality that are taken to be relevant to communication. Context is the common

knowledge of the speaker and the hearer involved in a conversation.

2.5 Television Commercial

The television commercial elements are not well fulfilled without attractive script.

Text has a role to influence the attractive script. Advertisers will deliver text sometimes in

spoken text or written text, or in both of them. To study them, we need discourse analysis of

advertising. According to Bolen (1984) in Adiel (2009) discourse analysis of advertising

contains three structures as forming element based on their own proposition steps to achieve

the goal. They are :

a. Headline

It has function to attract audience’s attention.

b. Body

It has function to attract potential consumer’s interest and awareness to the product.

c. Closing

It gives another information of the advertising topic. The closing of advertising

structure has function to change the consumer action.

CHAPTER III

DATA ANALYSIS

3.1 Existential Presupposition

There are television commercials that contain existential presupposition. Here are the

examples of existential presuppositions in Toko Bagus.com.

(1) Mobil yang dijual itu punya bapa? (Is that your car, Sir?)

Iya pa itu mobil saya pa (Yes Sir, that’s mine)

Bagus ya, mau berapa lama lagi di depan toko saya, pindahin (Great, how long will your car park in front of my store?)

Susah mau jual mobil, jual saja di tokobagus.com (hard to sale your car, sale it in tokobagus.com)

The utterance (1) above may contain the following presuppositions:

a. The speaker A has a car that will be soldb. The speaker B has a storec. The A’s car has been parked in B’s store for long

The using of word ‘your and my’ makes it a definite noun phrase and triggers this very basic kind of presupposition. Notice that possessives lead to a particularly strong presupposition about the existence of the car and store, and in addition lead to presupposition that A has a car and B has a store.

(2) Barang tak terpakai bikin susah, jual saja di tokobagus.com. Kalau bisa jadi uang kenapa

ngga (Unused goods, troublesome, sale in tokobagus.com, if those can be money, why

not)


a. There exists unused goods.

b. The unused goods trouble you.

c. Instead of becoming trouble, making money by selling those goods

d. Tokobagus.com can sale the unused goods.

The noun phrase ‘unused goods’ acts as an indicator of existential presupposition that

becomes a subject of the sentence. The word ‘unused’ which means ‘never having been used’

explain that the goods are useful and it should be got rid of because those are troublesome.

The advertisers derive existential presuppositions ‘money’ to make audience want to sale

their unused goods in tokobagus.com.

In this case, existential presuppositions describe the existence of unused goods which

can be sold in tokobagus.com to be messages in the headline of this television commercial.

The audience’s attention especially who have unused goods will be attracted by the

existential presuppositions occurred in the commerce.

(3) Tokobagus.com cara tepat jual cepat (Tokobagus.com the right way to quick sale)

The utterance (3) above may hold some presuppositions below:

a. There is a right way

b. Tokobagus.com has the right way to quick sale.

It assumes that there is a way which is precisely to sale your unused goods quickly

and it is in tokobagus.com. The advertiser derives existential presuppositions ‘right way’ to

inform audience that tokobagus.com has solution for your problem to sell your staffs,

especially unused goods; and persuade you to advertise it in tokobagus.com.

(4) Tokobagus.com situs no 1 jual beli di Indonesia (Tokobagus.com, the number one trade

site in Indonesia)


a. There exists the number one trade site.

b. Indonesia has the number one trade site.

The using of article ‘the’ in the phrase ’the number one trade site’ acts as an indicator

of existential presupposition. The advertisers derive existential presuppositions to make

audience believe to ‘the existence of the number one trade site that exists in Indonesia.

Presupposition ‘there exists the number one trade site’ will attract the audiences (potential

consumers) who want to sell or buy things in tokobagus.com. While presupposition

‘Indonesia has the number one trade site ‘ will make the audiences believe that they will

access tokobagus.com.

3.2 Counterfactual Presupposition

The writer found one television commercial that contained counterfactual

presupposition. It is found in Tokobagus.com Unused goods, everywhere version. Here is the

example of utterance that contains counterfactual presupposition.

(4) Coba dari dulu dia denger kata saya, pasti sekarang dia udah jadi direktur

(If he heard my advice, he would be a director now)

The utterance (4) above may convey some presuppositions below:

a. Her husband does not hear her advice.

b. There was an advice

c. The speaker’s husband is not a director.

The presupposition (a) above comes from indicator of counterfactual presupposition

‘if’. The form of if clause presupposes that the information in the if-clause is not true at the

time of utterance. Meanwhile the presupposition (b) comes from indicator of existential

presupposition ‘my advice. The speaker conveys presuppositions above to make audiences

believe that ‘her advice exists, and also derived the information that her husband is not a

director.

The speaker wants to inform audiences about her family condition situation that has

not good economy. The advertiser delivers sentence (4) from conversation between woman,

her friend. The advertisers deliver nonfactive presupposition to make audiences get non-

factual precondition information of ‘the speaker’s husband is not wealthy’. The advertiser

deliver those presuppositions to show the kind of family economics condition. The advertiser

indirectly asserts that by selling the speaker’s unused goods will help her economy little bit.

This commercial television will be affected on audiences’ awareness and interest to sale their

unused goods.

CHAPTER IV

CONCLUSION

4.1 Conclusion

The writer found tokobagus.com’s brand television commercials published in 2013-

2014. From tokobagus.com’s brand television commercials, the writer found utterances

which contain indicator of potential presuppositions. There is also one utterance that may

contain two presupposition types since the writer found two different indicators of potential

presupposition. The findings of the research are existential and counterfactual. Existential is

often applied since the tokobagus.com’s brand advertisers prefer to deliver existential

presuppositions to make audiences believe of the existence of something become the sign of

the site offered.

We can probably see that presupposition has a great deal of the importance in

persuasive language, particularly in the courtroom and in advertising. Advertisers are not

allowed to directly assert claims about their products or their competitors for which they have

no evidence. However, they can generally get away with making indirect assertions via

presuppostitions.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Peccei, Jean Stilwell. 1995. Pragmatics. Routledge: London and New York.

Yule, George. 1996. Pragmatics. Oxford:Oxford University Press.

pragmatics presupposition

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