Leech, G. (1983). Principles of pragmatics. London: Longman.

PI: THE SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION (OR LOGICAL FORM) OF AN

UTTERANCE IS DISTINCT FROM ITS PRAGMATIC INTERPRETATION. 19
According to the PERFORMATIVE HYPOTHESISevery sentences S in a language is in
its deep or semantic structure a performative sentence roughly of the form I
state/declare/ask/etc. S. 19
P2: SEMANTICS IS RULE-GOVERNED (GRAMMATICAL);
PRAGMATICS IS PRINCIPLE-CONTROLLED (RETHORICAL) 21

GENERAL

P3: THE RULES OF GRAMMAR ARE FUNDAMENTALLY CONVENTIONAL; THE

PRINCIPLES OF PRAGMATICS ARE FUNDAMENTALLY NON-CONVENTIONAL,
ie MOTIVATED IN TERMS OF CONVERSATIONAL GOALS. 24
That a promise is recognized as a promise not by means of rules (except in so far as rules
are required in determing sense), but by means of a recognition of ss motive; and that
Searls rules apply only to the exent that they specify contitions wich will normally follow
from that regonition. 24
What is conventional is the semantic fact that a sentence of the syntactic form Ill pay you
back tomorrow expresses a proposition describing a particular future act by the speaker.
That is, the sense is conventional, in that it is deducible from the rules of gramar (amog
wich I here include lexical definitions); but the force is arrived at by means of motivated
principles such as the CP [Coperative Principle]. 24
P4: GENERAL PRAGMATICS RELATES THE SESNSE (OR GRAMMATICAL
MEANING) OF AN UTTERANCE TO ITS PRAGMATICS FORCE. THIS
RELATIONSHIP MAY BE RELATIVELY DIRECT OR INDIRECT. 30
the sense can be described by means of a SEMANTIC REPRESENTATION in some
formal language or notation. The force will be represented as a set of implicaturesWe
cannot ultimately be certain of what a speaker means by an utterance. The observable
conditions, the utterance and the context, are determinants of what s means by the utterance
U; it is the task of h to diagnose the most likely interpretation. 30
the pramatic force is motivated by general principles or rational and social behaviourand
second, to give a rough otline of the postulated interpretative process wich may, however,
be to a greater or lesser degree automatized. 32
P5: GRAMMATICAL CORRESPONDECES ARE DEFINED BY MAPINGS;
PRAGMATIC CORRESPONDENCES ARE DEFINED BY PROBLEMS AND THEIR
SOLUTIONS.
P6: GRAMMATICAL EXPLANATIONS ARE PRIMARILY FORMAL; PRAGMATIC
EXPLANATIONS ARE PRIMARILY FUCTIONAL. 47

P7: GRAMMAR IS IDEATIONAL; PRAGMATICS IS INTERPERSONAL AND

TEXUAL. 56
A linguistic act of communication (an utterance) is described as constituting a transaction
on three different planes: as (a) an interpersonal transaction, or DISCOURSE; as (b) an
ideational transaction or MESSAGE-TRANSMISSION; and as (c) a textual transaction or
TEXT. But these are ordered such that the discourse includes the message, and the message
includes the text. 59
The discourse is the whole transaction(The term discourse is used in preference to
illocution or illocutionary act which would also be an appropriate term for the whole
transaction. But discourse suggests that the field of activity in fact contains a sequence of
illocutions. I do not, that is, wish to limit the value of Fig. 3.3 by suggesting that it only
applies to single utterances. On the other hand, I do not wish to embark upon the particular
problems of analyzing continuing discourse a task which is best left to discourse
analysts59
We should have to recognize that a text is in itself a phenomenon which unfolds in time,
and that all the components of Fig. 3.3 can themselves undergo temporal progression. 61
P8: IN GENERAL, GRAMMAR IS DESCRIBABLE IN TERMS OF DISCRETE AND
DETERMINATE CATEGORIES; PRAGMATICS IS DESCRIBABLE IN TERMS OF
CONTINUOUS AND INDETERMINATE VALUES. 70
The terms DECLARATIVE, INTERROGATIVE, and imperative are typically used for
syntactic categoriesThey are conventionally distinguished from corresponding semantic
or speech-act categories, referred to by such terms as assertion, question, and
command [assertion, asking, impositive] 114
There is common ideational content that may be shared by propositions, questions, and
mands, and which has been variously described as a propositional content, predication,
or sentence radical [nota 9, p. 129: Propositional content is Searles (1969) term.
Kempson (1975:43-4) adopts Steniuss (1967) term sentence-radical.]. For instance, You
will sit dawn, Will you sit down, and (You) sit down! All share a common propositional
content X, describing a sitting down of h in the future. They differ in terms of logical form,
but I shall want to use a simple term, PROPOSITIONAL, to apply to all three types of
sentence sense. 115
The bottom line of Fig. 9.1, corresponding to the text in Fig. 3.3, p 59 can appropriately
receive the label phonetic, following Austins term phonetic act for the actual physical
execution of the utterance. 200
Speech-act verbs: 214 (199: definitions).