A Cognitive Pragmatic Study of Presupposition in the Language of Press Coverage of Wagner’s Coup against Russia in English and Arabic TV Channels

Abstract

The present study is concerned with the projection problem of presupposition from the cognitive linguistic perspective. The study addresses the projection problem in terms of spaces in the light of Fauconnier’s mental space theory. It is argued that presuppositions lie in spaces that float to the reality space or other spaces that are contextually true. If these spaces do not match the reality, they transfer to lower spaces like hypotheses and postulations as well as spaces of speakers’ perspectives. So, the study moves on with two aims: first, investigating the relationship between spaces and presupposition triggers, and, second, examining the extent to which the theory of mental spaces interpret the projection problem of presupposition in contrast with the traditional pragmatic views.The data includes a number of videos from both English and Arabic TV news channels. These videos are concerned with Wagner’s coup against Russia in 2023. The English channels involve the BBC and the CNN News Channels, while the Arabic ones involve Al-Hadath and Al-Jazeera Channels. As a contrastive study, the research is concerned with the comparison and contrast of English and Arabic languages in terms of floating and transferring of spaces. The study concludes that transferring and floating of spaces are contextually affected in the English videos, whereas they are structurally affected in the Arabic videos. Mental space theory is more principal and general in its interpretation of the projection problem of presupposition than the traditional pragmatic views.