AN ANALYSIS OF PRESUPPOSITIONS IN THE DRAMA PYGMALION

Abstract

This research aims at identifying and classifying presuppositions as reflected in the drama Pygmalion, and portraying intention of each presupposition. Presupposition is a notion or assumption that speakers have in their utterances when they are speaking. In analyzing data of this study, the writer uses qualitative method. Some theories are employed to analyze the data, such as Yule (1996) and Cutting (2002). The results of the research show that six types of presupposition that are categorized by Yule the writer found: (1) existential presupposition, (2) factive presupposition, (3) lexical presupposition, (4) structural presupposition, (5) non-factive presupposition and (6) counterfactual presupposition, but counterfactual presupposition is more dominant in the data. Afterwards, existential presupposition and lexical presupposition dominate the data and influenced by situational context, background knowledge context and co-textual context.
Keywords: presupposition, types of presupposition, intention, context