Analyzing Presuppositions in Ali Ahmad Bakthir’s Mismar Juha based on Yule’s Theory of Pragmatics

Pragmatics is a major branch of linguistics that deals with a speaker's implied meanings in an utterance.In fact, the addressee can recognize and interpret these meanings using register.One of the main concepts in pragmatics is presupposition which refers to the shared background between the speaker and the addressee in a conversation.In other words, the speaker communicates with the addressee based on what is already assumed, and these assumptions can be decoded with the help of the register.George Yule divides presupposition into six types, namely, existential, factive, lexical, structural, non-factive, and counter-factual.Comic plays are closely related to the realities of the society due to their satirical criticism of the dominant order and social issues.In his Mismar Juha, Ali Ahmad Bakthir uses the character of Juha (as well as verbal humor) to unveil the problems of the Arab society and encourage people to stand against the oppression of English colonialism.The present study which follows a descriptive-analytical method based on linguistic pragmatics seeks to explain different kinds of presupposition and their role in creating verbal humor in Mismar Juha.The findings suggest that the author makes use of all the six types of presupposition.He utilizes different techniques including violation of speaker's presupposition, satirical use of presupposition, and conversion of one type of presupposition into another in order to create verbal humor and criticize the social conditions.Existential presupposition is the most frequent type in this play whereas counter-factual presupposition is the least frequent type.