CHAPTER TWO
PRAGMATICS, DISCOURSE & POETRY
2.1 Preliminaries
The language of poetry is full of linguistic forms and devices,
one of these forms is tautology. Tautologies can be found in poetry just as
it is found in everyday speech, in both English and Arabic languages. Such
constructions usually consist of two similar or identical phrases or words
and often combined by logical connectives, and they are always true based
on their logical forms (Leech, 1969). Other forms may consist of a single
sentence conjoined with another sentence, via logical words (Cuddon,
2013). Tautologies are found in poetic discourse, and they exhibit different
syntactic patterns as well as have pragmatic meanings. This opens the
debate for a comparison between the two languages based on the different
types of tautologies identified in English and in Arabic poems. In addition,
the analysis of the meanings of these tautologies that are derived through
inferencing and implicating, are the core of this study. This chapter is an
introduction to general concepts as well as any related concepts.
2.2 The Language of Poetry
Poetic language is a language that is recognizably different from
everyday language. As Leech (1969, p. 5) states, “although there is no firm
line that divides ‘poetic’ from ‘ordinary’ language, and that it is not simple
to state the relation between ‘poetic language’ and ‘ordinary language’” p.
5. He maintains that the two are related in that the first derives from the
second (Leech, 1969, p. 5). Leech (1969, p. 5-6) states three aspects of this
relation:
1. In the language of poetry, poet can violate the standard rules of the
language in several ways, which may either be obvious or subtle (Leech,
1969, p. 5-6).
2. Distinctly from other users of the language, the creative poet is fond of
a 'unique freedom' to make use of every communicative resource of the
language without considering the social or historical context in which it
occurs (Leech, 1969, p. 5-6). In other words, poets can use old English for
example, and as is the case with other languages, or borrow features from
other non-literary use of language. In some of the poems of T. S. Eliot and
Ezra Pound for instance, the English of banal and prosy conversations were
used (Leech, 1969, p. 5-6).
3. Most of the characteristics of literary language as in the use of tropes
such as metaphor and irony, have their roots in the everyday uses of the
language and can be studied with reference to such everyday uses and to
their origins (Leech, 1969, p. 5-6).
Similarly, Most (1993, p. 551) emphasizes the existence of
language of poetry by saying that “there is indeed such a thing of a
language which can be recognized from ordinary discourse” (p. 551).
According to Most (1993, p. 551- 555), there are apparent linguistic
markers which are prominent and frequent in poetic language. These
markers play a role in characterizing a text as poetic. To the poet, the
selection, or the options available and his choices are governed by his
culture, and by his individuality (Most, 1993, p. 551- 555). These markers
are classified in the following:
1. Lexical: A general planned selection is done by the poet out of the
established lexicon of his specific language, choosing certain lexical items
and favoring them over other lexical items (Most, 1993, p. 551). However,
the choice of these lexical items varies from one language to another,
therefore, it is not a decisive factor of poetic language, but the concept of
a poem written totally in its language, means that a poet may employ words
that are not used before (Most, 1993, p. 551). As a result, a different form
of poetry makes different strategies of choosing from among the whole
varieties of the lexicon of the language in use (Most, 1993, p. 551).
2. Phonetic: In poetry, there is a tendency of privileging certain structures
based on their easily distinguishable repetitious units. These repetitive
units are usually arranged or composed in poetic meter, based on factors,
such as (1) length of vowels, (2) pronouncing the stress, and (3) number of
occurred syllables (Most, 1993, p. 552). This provides a criterion for
recognizing poetry in the narrow sense, that it is identified by verses.
However, in the wider sense, these forms vary according to cultural and
structural differences, as is with "free" verse. Therefore, this feature, as
Most (1993) argues, is not always determinant, nor always a sufficient
marker for poetic discourse as well (Most, 1993, p. 552).
3. Semantic: there are semantic features in the language which tend to
appear more frequently or be utilized more prominently in the language of
poetry than in other discourse modes. For example, the use of figures of
speech are not restricted to poetry, they are sometimes used in everyday
speech, even advertisers make use of them, but none of the figures of
speech in poetry are identical with the ones used in ordinary discourse,
because an ordinary speaker prefers to use them unreflectively, without
presenting them with their figurative nature (Most, 1993, p. 552).
4. Syntactic: there are features that occur in every mode of discourse,
which tend to occur in poetry more frequently and prominently. An
obvious example can be provided by the violation of grammatical rules.
Within limits, poets can violate freely if they want to achieve a certain
effect, for instance, when Greek accusative structures used in Latin. But
usually, poetry tends to employ and vary the syntactic norms instead of
violating them (Most, 1993, p. 553).
5. Pragmatic: In oral cultures, poetry tends to be uttered in specific social
events. At this point, the participants are in fact aware that the activities
which they share on such occasions, differ from their ordinary lives (Most,
1993, p. 553). In traditional cultures, for example, poetry is associated with
religious institutions. The pragmatic dimension is important here, because
at this very level, the potential function(s) intended behind the poetic
discourse can be revealed (Most, 1993, p. 553).
Poetic features make each other more prominent; together they
deliver not just their meanings, but also convey the meaning that
characterize poetry. But this also means that "poetry" is an interpretative
category, being a literary text is by no means an objective quality of
specific texts, independent of the reader's interpretation of these texts, but
rather, it is a quality obtained by the readers. As a result, the use of language
in poetry, is not merely to express content, but to symbolize meaning and
content as well (Eagleton, 2007, p. 69).
2.3 Pragmatics
The linguistic level that deals with analyzing meaning(s)
intended by the speaker and how the hearer understands them is
pragmatics. Pragmatics is known as the study of human interaction and
communication where speakers make choices to express their intended
meaning and hearers draw inferences from an utterance in the context of
its use (Allan and Jaszczolt, 2012, p. i). Stalnaker (1972) defines
pragmatics as “the study of linguistic acts and the contexts in which they
are performed” (p. 383).
From a different perspective, pragmatics studies those aspects of
meaning that depend on the implied meaning and on the context and are
systematically abstracted away from the construction of logical form (Horn
and Ward 2006: xi). In any case, an organized account of the use of
language facilitates a more sophisticated and more straightforward
description of the structure of a particular language (Stalnaker, 1972, p.
383). Pragmatics aims at characterizing the features of the context of
speech, which contribute to determining the expressed proposition by a
given sentence. Functionally, the sentence meaning is the function
established from the context into a proposition, this proposition holds a
function in the real world, and its validity is determined by truth value. In
other words, the interaction between the context of an utterance and the
interpretation of the elements within that utterance is the pragmatic
meaning (Stalnaker, 1972, p. 383).
Grice's (1989, p. 30-31) view of pragmatics is that it is the study
of utterances meaning, it accounts for what the speaker means by what he
says, and how what he says is interpreted by the hearer. Grice (1975) puts
it simply, that it studies the meaning intended by the speaker. He further
distinguishes between “what is said” and “what is meant” and argues that
what is implicated is either conventional because of the meaning of certain
words or phrases, or non-conventional, which falls out of the frame of the
conventional meaning of words (Grice, 1989, p. 30-31).
Levinson (1983, p. 9) defines pragmatics as the study of relations
between the context and the language which are encoded in the
grammatical structure of the language. It is defined by Yule (1996, p. 3) as
the field concerned with the study of the meaning communicated by a
writer or speaker and how this meaning is interpreted by a reader or a
listener. Mey (2001, p. 6) argues that pragmatics involves the study of
language use in actual human communication which is governed by social
conditions and by functions related to the purpose of the exchange.
Pragmatics studies language at the very substantial level because it deals
with actual use of language in real situations (Leech, 1983, p. 14). The
pragmatic view that is most consistent with this study is Grice’s, because
establishing the meaning(s) and interpretations from tautologies depend on
what is said and why the poet chose certain words over other synonymous
alternatives, and these choices of expressions determine the potential
meanings intended by the poet and how the hearer or reader interpret them.
2.4 Pragmatics and Poetry
Poetic language sometimes communicates more effectively than
everyday language, as Goodman (1972) puts it: “one has to give in to it to
get something out of it” (p, 220). Several studies have been conducted on
the compatibility of literary works with the theory of pragmatics, in a study
by Emmanuel Ngara (1990) for example, in which he views literary works
as “communicative utterances” that the writer produces and then those
utterances are received by the reader or listener. He notes that poems are
not like ordinary speech, particularly the way they are patterned and
organized to make a deeper impact by its communicative effects. He
further observes that the effectiveness of a poem derives from the poem as
a whole and from the power of the combination of its message with its
emotional, intellectual, and imaginative aspects (Ngara, 1990, p. 14-15).
In a similar vein, Dijk (1977) holds that the importance of the
structures of any literary texts, equally important are the functions,
processing, reception and production thereof. Therefore, a pragmatic
account of literary communication involves the texts as well as the
interpretation and production of those texts which are seen as social
actions. Such a cognitive analysis of poems as literary communication
gives insights into the emotional effects of the literary interpretation which
involve feelings, wishes, needs, desires and interests (Dijk, 1977, p. 246-
247).
According to Preminger et al. (1974, p. 36), a pragmatist is
mainly concerned with the relations between the instrumental and intrinsic
value in the poem, which means how the poets achieve their goal to interact
through the poem. In recent studies, it is simply the concern with poems as
forms of communication. They further argue that, in a pragmatic theory
perspective, a defining feature of poetry is that it is an art that affects the
reader or listener; this feature, however, contradicts with the
communicative effect of a poem, "Poetry," is said to be a feeling, which
reflects the poet’s intended meaning, and makes an impression on the
reader or listener’s mind (Preminger et al., 1974, p. 643).
Moreover, the concept of poetry as emotive expression was
adapted to refer to a pragmatic or communicative frame. This means that
poetry is an emotional communication, which is a basic principle in the
earlier writings of I. A. Richards 1, as he asserted that an emotive language
1
Ivor Armstrong Richards (26 February 1893– 7 September 1979), known as I. A. Richards, was an
English educator, literary critic, and rhetorician. His work contributed to the foundations of the New
Criticism, a formalist movement in literary theory which emphasized the close reading of a literary text,
especially poetry, in an effort to discover how a work of literature functions as a self-contained and
self-referential object.
is one used to affect the emotions and attitudes, and he further describes
poetry as the superior form of emotive language (Preminger et al., 1974, p.
644).
2.5 Implicating and Inferencing
Implicature is a property of the speaker meaning, it is only
implied (Horn and Ward, 2006, p. 3). Sometimes it is easy to detect,
sometimes it can be extremely difficult, as in the case of poetic language
because of its manipulative nature (Horn and Ward, 2006, p. 3). In other
words, what is meant by a sentence is implied and is not part of what is
said, and what the speaker actually means or his communicative intention
is a lot more than what the speaker directly expresses; at this point, the
linguistic meaning underdetermines the conveyed and understood message
(Horn and Ward, 2006, p. 3). As a result, the speaker (henceforth, S) tacitly
utilizes pragmatic principles to bridge this gap and depends on the hearer
(henceforth, H) to invoke those pragmatic principles in order to arrive at
the utterance interpretation. (Horn and Ward, 2006, p. 3). Levinson (2000,
p. 11) identifies a generalized conversational implicature as a default
inference, one which captures the perception about a favored or most
predictive interpretation of an utterance, a sentence, a conversation, or any
text.
According to Grice (1975), conversational implicatures are
essentially connected with certain general features of discourse, and those
features include specific expectations that are mutually shared by the
participants (Grice, 1975, p. 45). The knowledge about those expectations
enables the speaker and the hearer to draw inferences about each other’s
messages of behavior in communication which Grice believes is always
purposive (Senft, 2014, p. 34). So, as Levinson (2000, p. 14) argues, what
is conversationally implicated is not explicitly coded, rather it is inferred
based on some basic assumptions about the reasonable nature of the
conversational activity.
Grice (1975) contends that all conversational implicatures are
defeasible or cancellable, non-detachable, non-conventional, not fully
determinable, and calculable. Lakoff (1995) notes that the property of
calculability, for instance, is closely related to tautologies, in that the
relation between the utterance which invokes the implicature, and its
maxim-observing equivalent, is specifically and accurately expressed in
the example “Boys will be boys”. Lakoff claims that to understand this
superficial tautology in a non-tautologous way, some calculations are
required, i.e., as boys generally share certain distinguishable behavioral
features (Lakoff, 1995, p. 193).
An inference is an action of drawing a conclusion from a set of
premises, data or evidence. A good or valid inference is such that its
premises justify its conclusion (Williamson and Russo, 2010, p. 37). The
significance of inferences is that they are important to determine
implicatures, and to fix propositions which are expressed directly by
utterances (Mey, 2009, p. 372). Tautologies can be very useful because
they define logically valid rules of inference at the pragmatic level
(Kroeger, 2019, p. 65). Lyons (1977) points out the role of inferences in
relation to tautologies, when observing what hearers do upon hearing a
tautological utterance, after the addressee hears and understands a
tautologous utterance, the hearer wonders why the speaker would tell the
hearer what the speaker knows that the hearer knows to be true, and what
could that reason be (Lyons, 1977, p. 417).
2.6 Discourse Analysis
In linguistics, ‘discourse’ refers to a ‘stretch of language’ that is
larger than a single sentence. Essentially, it features the understanding of
language as utterances and therefore, involves ‘subject(s)’ i.e., the
speaker(s) and writer(s), who presupposes ‘objects’ referring to the readers
and listeners. Discourse might include any mode of utterance in a social
practice. Those modes are recognized through their intention(s). Therefore,
discourse may be prose or poetry; discourse may be a poem, a
philosophical article, a political pamphlet, a biblical elucidation, a speech
on the electioneering, a funeral sermon, an argument, a discussion in
deconstructive criticism, etc. (Cuddon, 2013, p. 207).
More recently, the term has covered much broader implications
and meanings. It may refer to a particular kind of language and a set of
problematic issues which define and restrict a field, as in ‘medical
discourse’ or ‘philosophical discourse’. Cuddon (2013) further argues, the
word ‘discourse’ in Mikhail Bakhtin’s 2 work (on the philosophy of
language) may refer to an utterance, a language or the words in their
physical sense and actual production. Essentially, it takes the form of a
conversation, which means it is always interactional.
Similarly, Baldick (2001, p. 68-69) argues that discourse deals
with language units which are longer than the individual sentence;
discourse analysis is the study of cohesion and other relationships between
sentences in written or spoken discourse. The term has been used in modern
cultural theory to refer to any coherent and comprehensible body of
communicative statements which produces a validating account of reality
by defining a particular object and generating concepts about it, to analyze
it; such objects of attention are medical discourse, legal discourse and
aesthetic discourse, etc. (Baldick, 2001, p. 68-69). In general, the term
Mikhail Mikhailovich Bakhtin (16 November 1895 – 7 March 1975) was a Russian philosopher, literary 2
critic and scholar who worked on literary theory, ethics, and the philosophy of language.
‘discourse’ covers both modes of language, written and spoken (May,
2009, p. 1076).
Though sometimes used synonymously with the concept
‘discourse’, the concept ‘text’ is described as the actual object of language;
it is composed of token of words; exhibiting syntactic rules in English as
well as in Arabic. In poems, the text is arranged in a unique way, but it is
a useless and inactive object, unless the reader engages with the text, to
unravel meanings in relation to it. The process of acquiring meanings from
that text is what is called discourse. In this sense, discourse is the pragmatic
attainment of the meaning with reference to texts (Guido, 1994, p. 57).
Widdowson (2007, p. 4) describes a text as the actual use of
language, while a sentence is viewed as an abstract unit of linguistic
analysis. Poetic texts manifestations of the literary register are more
difficult in accessing meaning, people face difficulty especially when it
comes to texts of poetry. This difficulty increases when non-native
speakers are dealing with foreign language texts. So, when people fail to
derive the correct interpretation from texts in general, and from poetic texts
in particular; they tend to change the text itself by simplifying it,
paraphrasing it, and in this way, creating parallel texts from the original
texts to get the right interpretation (Guido, 1994).
In text linguistics, the ‘text’ and ‘discourse’ are taken as the basic
entities; the term "discourse" directly refers to a set of texts which are
directed to one another, usually in dialogues or conversations. A text is an
interactive event that has the quality of an actual operating system. Part of
the function of any element in the text system is determined by its function
as an abstract unit, and the other part is determined by the functions of the
co-occurring elements in the context (De Beaugrande, 1993, p. 430).
2.7 Poetic Discourse
Poetic discourse is defined as an occasional mode of
communication, which means it is not how poets write or talk all the time,
but it is the product of a process activated only on certain occasions, a
process that is both conscious and creative. At the same time, there is
always a considerable input which is mainly unconscious linguistic habits
from poets’ everyday life (Coleman, 1999, p. 26).
Cantarino (1975, p. 93) maintains that poetic discourse is that
which is neither argumentative nor sophistic nor demonstrative nor
rhetorical, and that while poetic statements were false, they were also
analogical, and differed from sophistic statements, which were deliberately
misleading (Cantarino1975:93, as cited by Meisami and Starkey, 1998, p.
782). Ibn Sina (d.428/1037) drew attention to the imaginative nature of
texts and statements that are used in poetic discourse, emphasizing that
they are more effective than ordinary and rational statements, and effective
in promoting “poetic assent” ( )ﺗﺼﺪﯾﻖ ﺷﻌﺮي3. Ibn Sina’s views influenced
2F
later critics like Hazim Al-Qartajanni, who established the idea that poetry
is characterized by its status as creative and imaginative discourse, and not
by its truth or falsehood (Meisami and Starkey, 1998, p. 782).
Poetic discourse is also defined as a literary kind of
communication, by which the expression of thoughts, ideas, feelings,
descriptions of people, past events or places, that are expressed with special
intensity through the use of unique diction which involves rhyme, rhythm
with metrical composition, imagination and style (Pearsall and Hanks
2001, cited in Chan 2003). Newmark (1988, p. 163-164) characterizes
poetry as a personal and an intensive form of discourse that does not
3
For the sake of clarity, the researcher has written this phrase into Arabic letters because it is
mentioned in the book source in English transcription form (tasdiq shi' ri).
include redundancy, and without phatic language, and in which a word as
a unit, has greater significance than in other ordinary type of text, and he
maintains that “poetry presents the thing in order to convey the feeling, in
particular, and however concrete the language, each represents something
else, a feeling, a behavior, a view of life as well as itself.” (p. 163-164).
King’s (1998, p. 14-15) remarks on poetry is that it adopts
powerful terms and phrases to deliver ideas, emotions, and moods. The
selection of the words is unique and difficult, but in the usual sense, these
words are ordinary but exploited in an unusual way. Sometime the reader
must add his own thoughts, reactions and ideas to establish full
interpretation of the poet’s intention. Further, he makes clear the process
by which poetry is formed, noting that in writing poems, writers “choose
words for their meanings, for the emotions they create, and for the sound
they make” (p. 16).
Easthope (1983, p. 141) points out that "what we have as the
poem is the message itself." Interpretation of poetry as discourse, however,
is not as easy as it sounds. Widdowson's (1992, p. 113) idea is that engaging
with a poem, just like with any other text, is an interactive process, to him,
there is always a reaction implicature of the sort: ‘what does the poet mean?
why so? so what?” and in this way, the poem stimulates the pragmatic
process, and the text activates the discourse.
2.8 Characteristics of Modern English Poetry
The modern period of poetry began with a pursue to tackle more
important aspects in life, and as modern poets pursued to renew their
writing and the way of presenting poems, several distinctive characteristics
have been found in modern literary works. For starters, poets preferred to
use the free verse and open form over the classical fixed forms of poetry
which were favored by the classical poets (Bollig, 2015, p. 286). Modern
poets challenged the conventional ideas of traditional poetry because these
ideas are passed on to them from their ancestors who practiced the classical
forms of poetry, seeking originality (Tate, 1940, p. 264).
Another characteristic of modern poetry is that it is highly
intellectual, which means it is written from the poet’s mind to address the
reader’s mind, as in the poems of T. S. Eliot. In addition, modern poems
are also characterized by the heavy use of allusion. Modern English poetry
largely deals with politics, realistic vivid situations and subjects like crime
and prostitution as in the poems of Allen Ginsberg. Modern poetry appeals
to readers at every time and everywhere because it tackles real problems in
the world. Another important characteristic of modern poetry is
experimentation, in which the poet tries to create new forms and new ways
of expression. The structure is irregular, in that it is written without rhyme,
scheme and meter, and there is irregularity of form in that most of the
poems are written in free verse (Albert, 1979, p. 508).
The language of modern poems is sophisticated, this
sophistication is a result of the modern age, as in the "The Waste Land" by
T. S. Eliot. The modern poem is also characterized by fragmentation of a
sequence of scenes and images; as modern people experience
unpredictable shifts which are not even experienced by their ancestors;
thus, fragmentation constitutes a central part of modern poetry (Chinitz,
1995, p. 237). This feature is also found in Eliot’s poetry, particularly in
"The Waste Land".
Modern poets see poems as a medium to challenge their readers
and to interact with them at a highly intellectual level (Petrino, 2010, p.
84). Furthermore, interpretation of poetry becomes difficult for readers
when poets touch on the previous works that were written by the classical
poets. Therefore, readers are challenged intellectually when read modern
poems, contrary to when they read classical poems, which are simpler and
easier to interact with, and relate to the poet at the emotional level (Petrino,
2010, p. 85).
2.9 Characteristics of Modern Arabic Poetry
The shift of modern Arabic poetry, especially the poem, from the
classical form ‘qasidah’ to the diverse modern forms of modern poetry has
pursued various endeavors to escape and stand out from the classical
restraints. Arabic poetry is an essential part of the Arabic language, which
is called “The language of the poets” by the Arabs. Diwan al-Arab is a
collection of poems (Meisami and Starkey, 1998, p. 606).
The interest towards the Arabic literary genre of poetry can be
viewed by considering the literary heritage which is bestowed on the
Arabic language legacy (Allen, 1998, p. 217). Modern poets have a strong
bond to classical poets, and poetry, in the twentieth century at least, was
the most popular and most important literary medium to the Arabs, and it
is the literary mode which “best reflects the Arabs sense of self-identity,
history and cultural values” (Allen, 1998, p. 217). The most prominent
features of Arabic poetry are the classical “qasīda”, diwan al-Arab and the
classical poems which are strictly structured and represent the peak of the
classical Arabic literature (Jansson, 2010, p. 5).
During the time of the Arabic classical poetry, the poem was
characterized by the use of irregular rhyme schemes, with the use of
heterometric lines, and instead of using whole metres, a single type of feet
was used as a basic prosodic unit (Jansson, 2010, p. 5). The nature of the
classical poems was rather paratactic in which short and simple sentences
without conjunction, where each line formed a syntactic as well as
semantic units, were favored (Jansson, 2010, p. 5). Whereas, in modern
poetry, the poem exhibits more hypotactic qualities, with a degree of using
incomplete syntax at the end of the lines, and the meaning flows from one
poetic line to another, this is called “enjambment” which applies in both
meaning and syntax over the one line (Jansson, 2010, p. 5).
Although many characteristics may separate the conventions of
the classical Arabic poem from the modern Arabic poem, there are shared
elements which the two have in common (Jansson, 2010). Even the Free
Verse Movement of the modern poetry is still attached or somehow related
to the classical Arabic poetry conventions (Jansson, 2010). The “qasidah”
of the neo-classical time was really prominent and stood out, more
strongly, when compared to the famous qasidah practice as given
throughout Al-Jawahiri’s work, he was described as the role model of a
literary classical tradition (Al-Musawi, 2006, p. 68-69). Furthermore, the
role of modern poetry in expressing resistance to imperialism resulted to
the political nature of modern Arabic poetry (DeYoung, 1998, p. 161).
2.10 Logic in Language
Logic is the study of arguments in general. More specifically, it
studies the relationships among propositions, and the ways of representing
the contents of propositions formally. Logic also accounts for the process
of propositional calculuses in drawing correct inferences from a set of
propositions (Brown and Miller, 2013, p. 272).
An important reason for logic as part of language study, is that it
provides a formal theory of uniformity in representing propositions. This
uniformity is essential, and it extends to all semantic aspects of linguistic
communication between humans. This applies not only to individual
sentences but to longer stretches of texts and discourses as well (Seuren,
2010, p. 1). Another reason for logic in the study of language is that the
syntax of the formulas of the different ‘predicate-logic’ systems, is exactly
the same as the semantic analysis (SA) that is used with sentences. (Seuren,
2010, p. 1).
2.11 Propositions
The concept of proposition originally belongs to the fields of
logic and philosophy. In the studies of discourse, propositions are used in
the wider sense to refer to the smallest unit of meaning, it consists of a
verb, a predicate which is the core as well as arguments that are related to
the predicate (Renkema and Schubert, 2018, p. 102). A proposition is the
conceptual aspect of an utterance or sentence meaning, which shows and
determines the truth or falsity and that enters into logical relations with
other propositions. Propositions are distinct from utterances and sentences.
In this way, utterances are evaluated relative to certain felicity conditions
and contexts. ‘John is next to Jane’ and ‘John is next to Jane’, as utterances
(which are spoken at different times, possibly in two different contexts and
for different purposes) are said to be two different utterances. Sentences
are evaluated relative to a certain grammar. ‘John is next to Jane’ and ‘John
is next to Jane’, as sentences, that is, as sequences of words in a certain
order, and presumably with a specifiable constituency, are the same
sentence. The sentences ‘John is next to Jane’ and ‘Jane is next to John’
are different sentences (because different word orders are in play).
Propositions are evaluated relative to certain truth conditions (Cummings,
2010, p. 357).
Propositions have truth values in classical logic, propositions are
either true or false, depending on the actual existence of the state of affairs
which they affirm. The proposition that “grass is blue” is false, whereas the
proposition that “Baghdad is the capital city of Iraq” is true. Propositions
are distinct from interrogatives and imperatives, in which the latter do not
have truth values. A proposition is the abstract meaning of the concrete
sentence, just as numbers are regarded as the abstract referents of numerals
(Williamson and Russo, 2010, p. 84-85).
2.12 Propositional Logic
In formal semantics, propositional logic deals with the kinds of
arguments that depend solely on the meaning of the words ‘if’, ‘then’,
‘and’, ‘or’, ‘not’ for its validity. In terms of logical form, the letters p and
q stand for the sentences in the argument, which are called the propositional
variables; and the words ‘and’, ‘not’ and ‘or’ are the logical connectives
(Williamson and Russo 2010, p. 59). Tautologies can be found in
propositional logic, and they are always true based on their logical forms,
also known as logical propositions. (Tomassi, 1999, p. 34).
With negation, two common symbols are used, the hoe (¬), or
the swung dash (∼). In more formal systems, distinguishing between the
two kinds is necessary, sometimes, this distinction is illustrated by using
both (∼) and (¬). With disjunction, the symbol (∨) is used to represent
inclusive disjunctions. A conjunction is symbolized with the symbol (∧),
which means ‘and’, the latter is a counterpart to the symbol of disjunctions
(Magnus, 2014, p. 140-141).
Although logical representations of tautologies are beyond the
scope of this study, it would be useful to illustrate how tautologies are
represented in propositional logic. The following are demonstrated by
Goranko (2016, p. 11):
• The tautology (P ∨ ¬ P): in every proposition, P is a proposition that is either
true or false. This reflects the principle of excluded middle, which states that
any proposition can either be true or its negation is true (so, in the case of ‘¬
P’ it is necessarily true).
• The tautology ¬ (P ∧ ¬ P): this is the case where P and ¬ P cannot be both true.
This is called “the law of non-contradiction”, this principle states that
contradictory propositions cannot both be true with the same meaning and at
the same time (e.g. It is raining and it is not raining).
• The tautology (p ∧ q) → p: by the meaning of this proposition, it is always true
and based on truth table of ‘∧’.
• The tautology P → (P ∨ Q): by the meaning of this proposition, it is always true
and by truth table of ‘∨’.
The tautology ((P ∧ (P → Q)) → Q): this proposition indicates the implication
meaning, if (P) is true, and that (P implies Q) is true, then (Q) is true (Goranko, 2016,
p. 11)