Pragmatic Presupposition Account of the Multiple Symbolic Meanings in MOBY DICK

MOBY DICK is the masterpiece of Herman Melville, a famous American novelist of t he 19th century, who uses the symbolic methods in the novel and creates the perm anent artistic charm and literary value beyond time and space. Pragmatic presupp osition theory has a strong explanatory force on multiple symbolic meanings. Fro m the perspectives of multi-dimensions of contexts, concealment, pragmatic pres upposition in culture and quantity of pragmatic presupposition, this paper makes a tentative analysis in the four aspects respectively: MOBY DICK, the Pequod, c aptain Ahab and the voyage itself, and then argues that pragmatic presupposition theory provides the effectiveness of construction and account of multiple symbo lic meanings in literary language.