IMPLICIT VALUES IN THE PREAMBLES OF THE CONSTITUTIONS IN SERBIAN AND ENGLISH
A CRITICAL PRAGMATIC APPROACH
Keywords:
values, constitution, preamble, implication, existential/propositional/value assumption, ideology, discourseAbstract
Values are mostly not explicit in texts, but are assumed, i.e. implicit. From the perspective of critical pragmatics, this paper deals with implicit values revealing them by analysis of presuppositions, semantic implications, (pragmatic) implicatures, and related phenomena in the preambles of the constitutions of Yugoslavia 1963-1974, Serbia 1990-2006, the EU (signed 2004) and the United States of America. The identified values are associated to the corresponding discourses, which are based on the various sociopolitical ideologies. The preambles, as shown, have the pragmatic function of legitimation of the constitutions, wherein they rely on numerous existential, propositional and value assumptions (terms from Fairclough 2003) and related implications relevant for reproduction and inculcation of values. Through nominalisations and adjectivisations, the propositional assumptions (of actions, processes) are represented as existential assumptions (of entities, qualities), which we, analogously to grammatical metaphor (Halliday 1985), labelled “pragmatic metaphor”.
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