Presupposition in news discourse

This study analyses five news articles extracted from three Ethiopian newspapers published in the English language in order to examine the type of knowledge journalists presuppose in news discourse and, in Relevance Theoretic terms, the amount of processing effort that readers are required to invest in accessing and/or activating what has been presupposed. The article also aims to reveal the existence of possible ideological reasons behind journalists’ use of ‘fair’ or ‘unfair’ presuppositions in their texts. This analysis indicates that some news article writers unfairly presuppose different types of knowledge in news discourses and add an aura of mystification to certain issues which, in turn, might be for political/ideological reasons. It is thus argued that in producing news articles containing unfair presuppositions, journalists obscure certain issues and put their readers in a situation where they have to invest excessive processing efforts to achieve the required cognitive effect of the articles.