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.