Abstract
This
paper examines the strategic use of presupposition in Atiku Abubakar's Facebook
campaign discourse during Nigeria’s recent presidential election cycle. As
political communication increasingly moves to digital platforms, linguistic
strategies embedded in short online messages have become vital tools for
persuasion and ideological framing. Drawing on Stalnaker’s (1974) Common Ground
Theory and Yule’s (1996) typology of presupposition triggers, this qualitative
discourse analysis looks at selected Facebook posts with particular focus on
presuppositional meaning. The findings reveal a systematic use of existential,
factive, lexical, structural, and counterfactual presuppositions to frame
economic decline, governance failure, youth marginalisation, and institutional
decay as shared realities, while also presenting the candidate as a viable
solution. Through these presuppositional strategies, political interpretations
are subtly transformed into an assumed consensus. The study contributes to
research on digital political discourse by extending pragmatic analysis of
presupposition to Nigerian social media campaign communication. It further
highlights how presuppositions serve as an ideological and persuasive resource
in online political narratives and underscores the importance of linguistic
studies in fostering critical digital literacy and democratic awareness.
Keywords: Presupposition,
Digital political discourse, Atiku Abubakar, Nigerian presidential election
2023, Pragmatics
DOI: 10.36349/alqajolls.2026.v01i02.014
author/Hadiza Abdullahi & Muhammad Muhammad
journal/AL-QALAM JLLS 1(2) | June 2026
