Presupposition in Kevin Hart's Stand up Show Titled “Let Me Explain” in 2013: A Pragmatic Study

Abstract

The purpose of this paper lead to analyze and describe the type of presupposition and its meaning regarding the data taken from Kevin Hart's stand-up show entitled "Let Me Explain" in 2013. This paper used qualitative and descriptive methods based on theories from Sugiono (2009). In analyzing data, presuppositions by their type and meaning. The theories are withdrawn from Yule (1996) and Pateda (2010), both discussing presuppositions and their meaning. The data are taken from the stand-up show's subtitle, and the data consist of 30 data. The data are divided into three main sections of presuppositions; existential, factual, and lexical. The meaning that will be interpreted in the utterances of Kevin Hart's stand-up comedy show is the denotative and connotative meanings. The meaning that can be understood in the lexical presupposition contained in the utterance is the grammatical meaning of which the composition of the utterance. Based on the analysis, existential presuppositions were found in 15 data, factual presuppositions are 7 data and lexical presuppositions are 8 data. Based on these findings, it could be inferred that the stand-up show by Kevin Hart contains existential presuppositions; which means that the assumption of the existence of the entities named by the speaker commonly appears within the show.