A TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF PRESUPPOSITION AND GRICE’S MAXIMS IN CLINTON’S TESTIMONY AND HIS SPEECH AFTER THE TRIAL

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to aluminate the misconceptions that are frequently preoccupied the concerns of various scholars and researchers in relation to the so-called pragmatic term presupposition. According to Saeed (1997:93), when one presupposes something, he/she assumes it. People often do not realize that when they are saying something actually, they assume something for the listener. Consequently, the paper comes to achieve certain objectives that are (1) Recognizing the use of pres. in Clinton’s court language and the interview of Clinton after the trial, and (2) Highlighting the relationship between Pres. and Grice’s maxims concerning Clinton's trial's speech, and pinpointing the different types of Pres. in his speech. In view of the preceding aims, it can be hypothesized that there is a reason behind using certain types of pres. by Clinton. There is a difference between Clinton’s trial speech and his speech after the trial, as far as the use of pres. is concerned. Clinton’s trial and his interview after the trial are used as a data analysis while Grice’s maxims and Yule's theory are used as a model of analysis. As far as the types of maxims used, the results show that there are many types used in Clinton’s testimony, most of which are being violated for the sake of presupposing certain aims, such as factitive and existential pres. which are the most frequently used. The article has reached numerous conclusions, the most important of which are: Pres. means when one presupposes something, he/she assumes it. Pres. plays an important role in the production and comprehension of speech acts. The study of pres. occurs simultaneously with the development of pragmatics as a sub-discipline of linguistics, and its significance for pragmatics is found in the fact that it seems to be at the division between semantics and pragmatics. Pres. is defined from different points of view, each of which is similar to each other in some way or another. Pres. is something assumed or presupposed to be true in a sentence, which involves information. Grice argues that oral exchanges do not consist of a series of disorganized remarks only.