I´ve just come across this ad and I think it could be an example of the topic we dealt with last class. Watch this video and think what David Beckham presupposes.
As we have discussed in class, presupposition is what the speaker assumes to be the case prior to making an utterance and entailment is a relation between sentence meanings, or propositions. Presupposition can also be seen as a relation between propositions, although many linguists see this term as strictly pragmatic.
Presuppositions and entailments play an important role in determining the meaning of an utterance. They can be derived from appropriate logical representations of the uttered sentence, real world knowledge, and knowledge concerning conversational principles. Presuppositions are conjectural whereas entailments are deductive.
In this case, David Beckham presupposes that Jennifer López recognizes him and that she is going to say something like:"You are David Beckham, the famous footballer!” However, his presupposition is wrong since she tells him that he is sitting on her bag. Thus, we may assume that he is a bit conceited! Anyway. his beauty outweighs his vanity!
Have you ever made a wrong presupposition? Well, to tell you the truth I´ve made wrong assumptions thousands of times. I often anticipate to what the other person is going to ask me and I start my answer before the speaker finishes his question. Usually, this results in a communication breakdown.
Once I was at hospital waiting for a remiss - as I always travel with this company, I know most of the drivers- and a saw a bald man approaching to me and I thought to myself : “he can´t be the remiss driver, I´ve never seen him before”. He looked at me and asked: “Are you…?” and before he finished his question I replied:"No". After that, he made the question again: “”Are you Glenda?” So, I had to apologize and assert that I was his passenger!
domingo, 16 de mayo de 2010
Pepsi Ad
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