Blog post 4- Samantha Rhynard

Presupposition is a versatile word, in that its definition can be used to cover a wide variety of things that all vaguely fall under its definition. Breaking apart the word from its prefix lends it to be pre- and supposition—supposition being defined as an uncertain belief/idea. Together, it can be construed that presupposition means having a prior belief, idea, or knowledge of something. In literature, it is often that the author assumes the reader knows something, and therefore does not explain it. A quite simple example of this is what I used in this very paragraph; I listed the prefix pre-, without providing a definition for it, because it is a very common prefix, and almost anyone who has either read anything or been through any amount of schooling should be able to define the prefix pre-. There are other ways presupposition operates in literature, but this knowledge-of-something is a very common one. In some more mature novels, the author assumes the reader will know a bit of another language—usually French. This presupposition can either pay a compliment to the intelligence of the readers, or—if they are like myself, and have no French vocabulary besides Bonjour and baguette, if that even counts—it can be frustrating, because the reader would have to either look up the French (which is harder with paper books because there is no copying or pasting the text into Google, and instead one has to try to input all of the elaborate French words correctly into a translator), or deal with the fact that they just can't read the text and move on, slightly annoyed (I personally tend to choose the latter).

Other interpretations of presupposition stem from a similar route as this, but there is a slightly different take on this usage. James Porter, in his article on "Intertextuality and the Discourse Community" states that the definition of presupposition "refers to assumptions a text makes about its referent, its readers, and its context-to portions of the text which are read, but which are not explicitly 'there'"(3). Later in his essay, he takes this into the context of an article released after the Kent State University shooting, and goes in-depth on his analysis of the phrase used by the journalist: "Four students at Kent State University, two of them women"(Porter 6). Porter argues that the statement, "two of them women" assumes that the reader has a misogynistic presupposition that the act of people dying is worse if it is women or children—in this case, specifically women. In this instance, presupposition is closer to a belief that the reader is expected to hold than a knowledge the reader should possess, which more closely relates to the official definition of supposition. And it fits here, too; the reader is supposed to believe the things the journalist believes, not just know the same things the journalist knows. This could be a theory of mind slight on the behalf of the journalist—meaning they could be oblivious and think that everyone should feel the way they do about this—or it could be something intentional—Porter supposes it is—that is meant to appeal to the readers, in that while the journalist may not hold that bias, they presuppose that the readers do.