Pragmatics and rhetoric for discourse analysis: some conceptual remarks

Longas são as estradas da Galileia e curta a piedade dos homens. (Eça de Queiróz, O suave milagre.) This paper focuses on discourse analysis, particularly persuasive discourse, using pragmatics and rhetoric in a new combined way, called by us Pragma-Rhetoric. It can be said that this is a cognitive approach to both pragmatics and rhetoric. Pragmatics is essentially Gricean, Rhetoric comes from a new reading of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, extending his notion of discourse to meso- and micro-discourses. Two kinds of intentions have to be considered: first, communicative intention, and, then, persuasive intention. The fulfilment of those intentions is achieved by a successful persuasive-communicative action. The psychological, philosophical and logical aspects derived from the pragma-rhetorical perspective are crucial in view of its applications in several practical domains.