Analysis of Presupposition Triggers in English Reading Textbooks: Learners’ Familiarity

Year 2018, Volume: 1 Issue: 1, 1 - 10, 08.10.2018

Savaş Gençtürk

Abstract

This study aimed
to investigate the presupposition usage in English reading textbooks and
students’ familiarity with them. 14 reading texts in a reading book were
analyzed to see the amount of presupposition triggers used and 34 B2 level
students were included in the study to find out to what extent they are
familiar with presuppositions used in their reading textbook. The reading texts
were analyzed based on Yule’s (2006) categorization of presupposition triggers consisting
of six different categories: existential, factive, lexical, structural,
non-factive and counter-factual (pp.30). The students were given a survey
consisting of randomly chosen six sentences from the readings representing each
presupposition category and asked to choose ‘yes’ if they are familiar with the
presuppositions or ‘no’ if they are not familiar with the presuppositions. The
results clearly showed that the presuppositions are not widely used in the
reading texts. Lexical and existential presupposition triggers are the most
commonly used types among all the triggers. The results also indicated that
students’ familiarity with the content and presuppositions will help them
understand the content better.

Keywords

pragmatics and presuppositions, presupposition triggers

References

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