A Qualitative Analysis of Pragmatic Presuppositions in Taglines Used by Brands to Persuade Audiences

Abstract

In current advertising campaigns, brand slogans are vital linguistic tools in constructing public opinion and conveying the identity of a marketing industry. Given the extensive research on marketing language, the role of pragmatic presuppositions in trademark effectiveness remains unsearched, especially in Pakistan. The current study aims to bridge the gap by conducting a detailed examination of presuppositions involved in marketing taglines of five industrial lines: food, beauty, social media applications, home appliances, and clothing. Using Yule's (1996) paradigm of presupposition types: existential, factive, non-factive, lexical, structural, and counterfactual, the study looked into 25 taglines across the selected industries. In addition, the researchers make use of a content analysis methodology to analyze the selected data. The results showed that the existential presuppositions were present most frequently (88.0%), followed by lexical presuppositions at 36.0%, while the factive, nonfactive, structural, and counterfactual presuppositions appeared infrequently at 8.0%, 16.0%,
4.0%, and respectively. All these findings point to how firms leverage their assumptions to manipulate customers' perceptions and consumption behavior. This advances this research into the interdisciplinary field of linguistics, marketing, and communications studies through a practical insight into how businesses tend to use presupposition as a persuasive strategy. Future research on pragmatic presuppositions in brand taglines should expand to a diversified sample, use semantic analysis, and explore cultural differences, particularly in Pakistani
brands.