An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in English Journalistic Texts

Muthana Khaleel, Layth

	An Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in English Journalistic Texts
JOURNAL OF THE COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FOR WOMEN
Article 1, Volume 21, Issue 2, 2010, Pages 523-549
Author
Layth Muthana Khaleel
Abstract
The notion of presupposition and its triggers have been studied by many scholars, linguists and philosophers, but as far as the researcher knows, the investigation of presupposition triggers in journalistic texts has not been explored yet. Therefore, the present research tries to identify the main presupposition triggers used in English journalistic texts. It is hypothesized that there are many presupposition triggers in English journalistic texts. The steps to be followed in this study are exploring the concept of presupposition, investigating the semantic and pragmatic presupposition, and identifying the presupposition triggers used in the English journalistic texts according to a model proposed by the researcher based on Karttunen (n.d.), cited in Levinson 1983:181-184, and Yule 1996: 28. The study is designed to the presupposition triggers of six randomly selected English journalistic texts. These texts have been sampled from six different national and regional English newspapers representing a range of political and regional differences. The national newspapers include The Independent, The Guardian, and the Daily Mirror. The regional newspapers include Liverpool Echo, The Belfast Telegraph, and The Northern Echo. According to (Biber, et al, 1999:31), these newspapers represent different readership levels. The samples are arbitrarily selected from different issues published in 2009. The study is of importance to linguists, journalists, translators, teachers and students of linguistics and education. The analysis of the data has shown that English journalistic texts rely heavily on existential presuppositions (definite descriptions) whose ratio has constituted 57.7% of the studied sample. As to the lexical triggers, they have constituted 19.7% of the studied sample. The conventional items, iteratives, change of state verbs and factive items have recorded a frequency of occurrence 8, 7, 7 and 4 respectively, while no instances of other lexical triggers, like implicative verbs, verbs of judging and counter factual verbs, have been recorded. Finally, the ratio of structural presupposition triggers has been 22.7% of the studied sample. Adverbial clauses have recurred 17 times and therefore ranking first among the other structural triggers. The category of non-restrictive clauses has occupied the second position registering five occurrences in the studied sample, whereas comparative expressions have scored three occurrences. Cleft constructions and counter factual conditionals have both recorded two occurrences. Finally, wh-questions scored one occurrence.

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