Presupposition triggers: A linguistic analysis of the 2004-2020 U.S. presidential victory speeches

Language is a tool used for numerous considerable aspects such as communicating, conveying our experiences, solving problems, and cultural exchanges with other countries. In the modern world, humankind can persuade, inform, deceive, comfort, negotiate with others, and convey implied meanings with language. The listener must look for the meaning of the word and the intention of the speaker to comprehend the implied meaning. In addition, to obtain the correct interpretation in terms of meaning is to make a presupposition (Yule, 1996, p. 3). Yule states that a presupposition is anything the speaker supposes to be true before making a statement (1996, p. 25). It is significant to examine the functions of presupposition triggers in presidential victory speeches, which is a type of political discourse, and to investigate their effect on the formation of discourse. The main purpose of this study, utilizing Yule's (1996) presupposition classification, is to analyze presupposition triggers in presidential victory speeches of the presidents-elect in the U.S. between 2004-2020 and to look over the functions of presupposition triggers in conveying presuppositional meanings. In this study, the descriptive qualitative research method was applied to determine the presupposition triggers in the presidential victory speeches. The sample of this research comprises the 2004-2020 U.S. presidential victory speeches -George Bush (2004 elections), Barack Obama (2008), Donald Trump (2016), and Joe Biden Jr. (2020)-. The data was obtained from the home page of The New York Times news site. This study also carried out content analysis which deals with the analysis and interpretation of written documents. Since the victory speeches are audio-visual material, transcriptions have been checked by considering their context. After the transcripts were prepared, the data were analyzed and interpreted by searching for different types of presupposition triggers. The data were given in the form of percentages to clarify the frequency of presupposition triggers and to make findings valid. It was concluded that most presupposition triggers were used in all presidential victory speeches, with existential presupposition triggers being the most common type. The fact remains that, politicians appear to use presupposition triggers primarily for persuasion, among other uses in political discourse. Additionally, it has been found that presupposition triggers are considered as a linguistic strategy by politicians to impose certain ideological frameworks on the audience.