A Linguistic Study of Presupposition in Hart and Kaufman’s Play “You Can’t Take It with You”

Abstract

As a kind of linguistic study, the study of presupposition in the drama is one of the captivating topics to explore, because of the capability of this topic to make people perceive the presupposition differently. Presupposition is one of the most important concepts in linguistics. It refers to the implicit inferences made in communication between people. These inferences are necessary to understand the utterances correctly. The research particularly endeavors to focus on the linguistic constructions that activate presupposition. To this stage, it aims at: analyzing and identifying the types of presupposition, and the forms of presupposition triggers employed in the American play ‘You Can’t Take It With You’ according to an eclectic model based upon Yule (1996), Levinson (1983:181-184), and Van Der Sandt (1988). The main results of the analysis have evidently shown that ‘Structural Presupposition’ is the outstanding types in the language of the American play, whereas ‘Counterfactual’ is the unremarkable presupposition in the play under study. Further, most of the conversation and utterances in the American play are stated by ‘Yes-No Question’ form of presupposition triggers.