Abstract: This paper is initiated by a study on the concept of “prior intention” in philosophy. The existence of prior attitude is presumed here and how to analyze it in the discourse is studied. The hypothesis of existence of prior attitude in the discourse is based on studies of John Searl’s speech act and intentionality. This hypothesis is verified in theoretical frameworks of M.A.K. Halliday’s systematic functional linguistics and J. R. Martin’s appraisal theory. The hypothesis is valuable in a discourse analysis.