Discourse attitude is a preliminary term to designate the relations that the producer of a discourse contracts with entities of the universe of discourse. These entities are referents and propositions.

Attitudes to propositions may be of the following kinds (cf. Waltereit 2006):

• amazement and surprise
• uncertainty and concern
• negative attitudes
• relations between what is being said and previous propositions: consequence, restriction (with the exception of interpropositional relations)
• modal attitudes like supposition
• emphasis