What is Propositional analysis?

[rachelk72]

I need to analyse a dialogue based on pragmatics issues. Actually, I'm not sure what pragmatics should include. Does it include propositional analysis, presupposition, implicature, cooperation principles and politeness? How can I do the propositional analysis in a dialogue?

[Dr. Jamshid Ibrahim]

Originally Posted by rachelk72

I need to analyse a dialogue based on pragmatics issues. Actually, I'm not sure what pragmatics should include. Does it include propositional analysis, presupposition, implicature, cooperation principles and politeness? How can I do the propositional analysis in a dialogue?

Pragmatics is not only part of linguistics but psychology as well since it reflects human bliefs, feelings and attitudes. Propositional analysis is analysing the writer's attitude ie modality and intentions (belief, desire and command). Verbs which show our attitude and feelings like wish, hope, desire, intend, believe....different attitudes towards propositions. These verbs are often embedded by a that....clause. In advertising (not embedded) there is unique selling proposition (USP) telling you a product is uniques ie different from all the others. See Direction-of-fit (the mirror) refelct the world- express it- or (the lamp) influence it impress it-:

Direction of fit - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
What a proposition is, is one thing. How we feel about it, or how we regard it, is another. We can accept it, assert it, believe it, command it, contest it, declare it, deny it, doubt it, enjoin it, exclaim it, expect it, imagine it, intend it, know it, observe it, prove it, question it, suggest it, or wish it were so. Different attitudes toward propositions are called propositional attitudes, and they are also discussed under the headings of intentionality and linguistic modality. when the departure of assertion from belief is intentional, we usually call that a lie. In logic, the formal properties of verbs like assert, believe, command, consider, deny, doubt, hunt, imagine, judge, know, want, wish, and a host of others that involve attitudes or intentions toward propositions are notorious for their recalcitrance to analysis. For example, a verb like 'believe' discharges two semantic or 'thematic' roles: an AGENT-role and possibly a PROPOSITION-role, the former corresponding to the believer, and the latter corresponding to the proposition that is believed.


For implicature see an article I wrote in Memeber area articles or here:
http://www.usingenglish.com/forum/ge...plicature.html