Revealing the concealed: an investigation of presupposition triggers in Meghan and Harry's T.V. interview

Abstract EN

In communication, more is being understood and assumed than is explicitly said.

during conversations, speakers make assumptions based on what is true or already known by the listeners.

this is done with the help of certain lexis and grammatical structures employed to send and give rise to certain messages.

this study is an investigation of the presupposition triggers employed by Meghan and Harry in their television interview with Oprah Winfrey opening up, for the first time, on leaving their roles as royals.

the framework used is the one inspired by Liang & Liu (2016) and based on Levinson’s classification of triggers (1983).

in this study triggers are divided into two major categories, lexical and syntactic.

this investigation is done with the aim of analyzing the triggers that give rise to certain presuppositions and consequently send certain messages.