INVESTIGATING PRESUPPOSITION TRIGGERS IN PAKISTANI POLITICAL MEMOIRS

Abstract

Perception and interpretation of presupposition triggers depend on the use of pragmatic context. For some decades, many researchers have explored these triggers to reveal the implicit meanings of utterances. This article explores the types and functions of presupposition triggers used in Pakistani political memoirs. Two Pakistani political memoirs, Pakistan: A personal history by Imran Khan and In the Line of Fire: A memoir by Pervaiz Musharaf, were explored according to the model of George Yule (1996). A corpus pragmatic approach with mixed method research was selected for the present study, and through AntConc 3.5 the types of presupposition triggers were selected. The functions of these triggers were analyzed qualitatively. The findings revealed that both writers pointed towards different political events through different presupposition triggers. The results also showed that existential and factive presupposition triggers were used at the maximum level in both memoirs. Counter factual conditionals, lexical presupposition triggers, structural presupposition triggers, and non-factive items were used in descending order. It was found that functions of these presupposition triggers in political memoirs aroused different assumptions. At the same time, a few differences were also found in both of the memoirs; however, they were not very significant. Mainly they trigger political and personal functions in the texts.