A pragmatic study of presupposition in Masoud Barzani’s speech ahead of the referendum

Abstract EN

The lexical presupposition is one of the primary concepts of pragmatics, and it is used to include a general class of pragmatic and semantic phenomena that have a fundamental impact on the apprehension of utterances.

The study aims at presenting a Pragmatic analysis of the former leader’s speech Mr.

Masoud Barzani about the event of referendum by detecting the lexical presuppositions and presupposition triggers and detecting the most frequent type usage.

A mixed approach is used to analyze the speech where the speech is analyzed qualitatively according to Yule’s (2010) and Levinsons’ (1983) classification of presupposition and triggers.

Besides, quantitative method is used to detect the most frequent use of the presupposition type.

The findings of the study show that factive presupposition has been used most frequently (64%) throughout the excerpt utilized in this study with Counterfactual and non-Factive presupposition being used the least (4% ).

Using factive presupposition as the most frequently shows the speaker’s intention for being direct in conveying messages and presenting facts to avoid any kind of misunderstanding or misinterpretation of his intentions in such an important event such as Referendum .