Presupposition as a Pragmatic Inference toward a New Conceptualization of the Term

Abstract

Abstract The paper glosses the pragmatic inference of presupposition in a way different from what has been mentioned elsewhere in the previous researches. All researches conducted on this inference viewed it as an internally linguistic system. To have figured it that way, the writer of This paper thinks that is the main reason which made a linguist like Levinson(1983) to consider it as partially understood after Frere's (1952) remarks on the subject . Basing its data on some authentic texts taken from media besides making use of the English philosopher François Bacon's Four Idols, the writer of this paper has contributed on the field by considering this inference as an external and cultural linguistic item which can always help extend the discourse analysis of interlocutors. Many current studies have described linguistics pragmatics as to read into or compute out from a particular utterance meanings which truth conditional semantics could not captured. It is believed, however, that there is a paradox here to describe linguistic pragmatics as such, and at the other extreme to describe presupposition as a pragmatic inference which triggers its meaning from the internal system of language. Drawing on some literature on the subject, the writer of this paper has attempted to reconcile between these two extremes. The difference which makes the differences among pragmatics inferences of deixis, implicature, speech acts and presupposition has clearly shown in this paper. It has been observed that the literature on these inferences has described them as if they were one inference, however, they are different in the job they do to linguistic pragmatics. The present work illustrates these differences.