What linguistics is all about

Ce que parler veut dire

Of course human communication is much more subtle than what we are able to model by formal mechanisms. Often one uses indirect means, for politeness or other schemes. To the questions “Do you have the time?” or “Peux tu me passer le sel?” you do not answer yes or no. Thus pragmatics is often predominant in human communication - it is not so much what you say, but why do you say it, and its understatements.

Somewhere in between the straight contents of one sentence (le posé) and the understatement which is indirectly implied (le sous-entendu), linguistic turns have a way to presuppose contextual information (le présupposé). Le présupposé est une condition préalable pour que le discours fasse du sens, il ne peut être nié: “Jean a cessé de picoler.”

References. Oswald Ducrot. Le dire et le dit. Les Editions de Minuit, 1984.

Schopenhauer. L'art d'avoir toujours raison. Circé poche, 1999.

Marylin Manson. The Long Hard Road Out of Hell.