SOFT AND HARD TRIGGERS OF PRESUPPOSITION IN THE HORROR STORY “HERBERT WEST ‒ REANIMATOR”

Abstract

This paper examines the phenomenon of “presupposition” based on Howard Phillips Lovecraft’s horror story “Herbert West – Reanimator” and provides several different concepts that will help to separate the meanings of “soft” and “hard” triggers of presupposition. The general idea of the presupposition, as such, allows the reader of any work of art to obtain additional data as part of the information layer, which either does not require further explanation in general or is a common socio-cultural or template-axiom concept that annihilates the need for clarification as such.

The work aims to demonstrate the fundamentally different concepts of soft and hard presupposition in the key of the three main classes and the level of accommodation of the recipient to each of the structures. The result of differentiation was obtained by isolating textual structures from the general layer of the work, as a combination of semantic and pragmatic understanding of the expression and demonstration of the importance of each element as a whole and highlighting a more significant component in each example. The work of scientists who have already studied a similar phenomenon on the example of other intertextual formations and expressed their opinion on the significance of the considered aspects and the significance of the difference between them was taken as a basis. In particular, not only the fundamental difference between soft and hard triggers but also ignoring the difference between them at the level of suspension of the specified value in the context of the formation to which a certain structure is embedded.

Results. The paper reveals several problems that prevent a clear distinction between triggers that indicate presupposition. Among them are the wide functionality of lexical units within the context-meaningful information message and the diversity of translation in the adaptation to the understanding of foreign recipients. Thus, the phenomenon of the inconsistency of trigger behavior is considered, which significantly prevents the error-free identification of the presupposition. Ultimately, this leads to emphasizing the urgency of the formation of a single concept of presupposition and the creation of a systematic empirical interlinguistic theory of methods for verifying presuppositions.

Conclusions. As a result, the work demonstrates examples of soft acceptance of alternative constructions as a logical consequence of the contextual influence of certain structures on the overall picture described in the work. Conditions are considered that do not affect the integral functioning of individual structures in the text, showing a direct dependence on the context. All these constructions are an integral part of the formation of the overall picture perceived by the recipient (listener or reader), and this emphasizes the fact that the contextual load of each trigger depends on the means of their implementation and functioning not only within the text but also the genre.