PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS IN ARTICLES OF TOASTMASTERS MAGAZINE

The objectives of the study were to find out: (1) the types of presupposition
triggers in articles of Toastmasters magazine (2) the process of presupposition
triggers in articles of Toastmasters magazine (3) the reasons for using
presupposition triggers in articles of Toastmasters magazine. The study was
qualitative. The source of data was Toastmasters magazine online website. The
data of the study were the words, phrases, clauses or sentences, which triggered
the presupposed meaning in articles. The data were identified, analyzed, and
categorized based on Yule (1996) Levinson’s theory (1983). The findings of the
study showed that: (1) fourteen presupposition triggers were suggested by Yule
(1996) and Levinson (1983) found in articles namely: definite description, factive
verb, implicative verb, change of state verbs, verbs of judging, counter factual
verbs, conventional item, iterative item, cleft construction, questions, adverbial
clause, comparative sentence, counterfactual conditional clause and nonrestrictive clause. In addition, additive particles, discourse particles, manner
adverbs, quantifiers and discourse connectives were the new presupposition
triggers found in this study. (2) The process of presupposition triggers in articles
of Toastmasters magazine was realized by constancy under negation test. (3) The
reasons why the authors used presupposition triggers in articles of Toastmasters
magazine were a) describe an experience, event, person, or place, b) present an
opinion or balanced argument, c) compare and contrast, d) provide information, e)
offer suggestion and f) offer advice. Based on the findings, the use of factive
verbs, which was found the most dominant occurrence among the other triggers,
was signed the way of authors to present more their background assumption or
information based on fact. This aimed to present opinion or balanced argument in
articles. Some suggestions are directed to those who are interested in
understanding presupposition in any discourse especially journalistic text.