Presupposition Triggers in the Royal Address of His Royal Highness the Sultan of Selangor

Public controversies involving socioreligious sensitivity, community welfare, and environmental responsibility require institutional responses that are firm, measured, and socially calibrated. This study examines presupposition triggers in selected royal address texts of His Royal Highness the Sultan of Selangor concerning the issue of pig farming activities in Selangor. Specifically, it investigates how presupposed meanings are linguistically embedded and how they function within royal institutional discourse. Using a qualitative content analysis approach, the study analyses three official royal address texts published by the Selangor Royal Office. The analysis is guided by Huang’s framework of presupposition triggers, focusing on definite descriptions, factive predicates, change-of-state predicates, iteratives, implicative predicates, temporal clauses, cleft sentences, and counterfactual constructions. The findings reveal that presupposition in the selected texts operates mainly at the lexical level. Definite descriptions emerged as the most dominant trigger, followed by iteratives and implicative predicates, while cleft sentences and counterfactual constructions were absent. These triggers presuppose the existence of a specific public issue, prior royal directives, ongoing concern, administrative responsibility, and the need for resolution. More importantly, the presuppositions do not merely convey implied meanings; they organise the issue as an existing and unresolved matter that requires moral, administrative, and civic response. The study concludes that presupposition functions as a strategic pragmatic resource in Malaysian royal discourse by enabling the Sultan’s address to assert authority, assign responsibility, and guide public conduct with linguistic restraint. This article contributes to pragmatic studies by showing how royal institutional discourse constructs authority and social order through controlled implicit meaning in a multicultural Malaysian context.

presupposition triggers, royal address, Sultan of Selangor, pragmatics, institutional discourse, Malaysian royal discourse, socio-religious discourse

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