“Again, Dozens of Refugees Drowned”: A Computational Study of Political Framing Evoked by Presuppositions

Abstract

Earlier NLP studies on framing have focused heavily on shallow classification of issue framing, while framing effect arising from pragmatic cues remains neglected. We put forward this latter type of framing as pragmatic framing. To bridge this gap, we take presupposition-triggering adverbs such as 'again' as a study case, and investigate how different German newspapers use them to covertly evoke different attitudinal subtexts. Our study demonstrates the crucial role of presuppositions in framing, and emphasizes the necessity of more attention on pragmatic framing in future research.