Your Problem is Our Campaign: Presupposition in Political Parties’ Campaigns in Thailand’s 2023 General Election

Abstract

This article aims at analyzing the presupposition triggers and the pragmatic function of presupposition in political parties’ campaigns in the 2023 Thailand general election. The data were collected from campaigns which were published on the Facebook fan pages of 5 political parties, i.e., Move Forward, Phue Thai, Phumjai Thai, Palang Pracharath, and United Thai Nation from March 20 to May 13, 2023, totaling 603 texts. The result indicates that political parties used 4 presupposition triggers in their campaign: 1) referring expressions imply that there are problems in society, something that hasn’t happened yet, or policies that have already been implemented; 2) change of state verbs implying that various states must be improved, modified, or eliminated; 3) implicative verbs implying the state quantity or feature; and 4) iteratives implying that there is something that used to happen, or existed in society, but now no longer exists. These presupposition triggers imply that the problems existing in society will be solved by the political parties that propose policies in the elections. The results also show the function of presupposition plays a role in manipulating as well as persuading voters to follow and vote for a party which will create legitimacy for the political party’s entry into power.