Meaning and Context

1、the role of context in interpretationcontext is an important concept in language understanding analysis we often use this term to mean environment, circumstances or context in which language is used. narrowly it refers to co-text. “the meaning of any single word is to a very high degree dependent on

2、 context” language only makes sense when interpreted within its context. .any analytic approach in linguistics which involves contextual considerations necessarily belongs to that kind of language study pragmatics. in a narrow sense,-linguistic context- the language that surrounds or accompanies the

3、 piece of discourse under analysis-i.e the it refers to the words, clauses,sentences, in which a word appears.in a broad sense-non-linguistic extralinguistic or experiential contexts within which the discourse: it includes: the type of communicative event; the topic; the purpose of the event; the se

4、tting, including location, time of the day, size of the room, arrangement of furniture); the participants and the relationships between them; the background knowledge and the assumptions underlying the communicative event.(culture, people, time, place)(huzhaunlin)three kinds of context: linguistic c

5、ontext(co-text);situational context （语篇产生是的周围情况，事件的性质，参与者的关系，时间，地点，方式等。 ;cultural context（说话人或作者所在的语言社团的历史、文化和风俗人情。e.g. we ca use different linguistic form to address the same person: mr. /professor smith, sir .my lord, peter, pete, mate, these form should be used according their respective context

6、which is suitable or their use. that is, their style is different. the speaker should know which one to choose.john lyons thinks context is realized by knowledge: three kinds of knowledge: 1.backgorund knowledge 2) situational knowledge 3) mutual understanding between the speaker and hearer. backgro

7、und knowledge refers to commonsense, encyclopedic knowledge: if you are ill, you know you have to see a doctor. if you have to be in hospital that means it is quite serious. a: hows he?b: a couple of pills will cure him.a: hows he?b: he will be hospitalized.a: hows he?b: an ambulance must be sent fo

8、r at once.situational knowledge: refers to the knowledge related to the specific situation of in which communication occurs: time, place, topic, formality of the occasion, relation between the participants and their relative status etc.mutual knowledge: shared knowledgelevinson has described this sh

9、ift from a more technical-linguistic point of view:.as knowledge of the syntax, phonology and semantics of various languages ahs increased, it has become clear that there are specific phenomena that can only naturally be described by recourse to contextual concepts.in interpretation, some of the ter

10、m should be taken up, which has been quite fully explained in pragmatics: reference, presupposition,implicature,inference.mey thinks context is dynamic- it is an environment that that is in steady development, prompted by the continuous interaction of the people engaged in language use, the users of

11、 the language. reference:presupposition is defined in terms of assumption s the speaker makes about what the hearer is likely to accept without challenge. (givan)presuppositions are what are taken by the speaker to be the common ground of the participants i the conversation.9stalnaker)a. sam has sto

12、pped beating his wife.b. sam has not stopped beating his wife.c. sam was beating his wife.d. c is the presupposition of a,b.presupposition is of vital importance in successful communication: a:i was just going to set down to my essay when john came in. he said he gad just bought a new record, an alb

13、um of his favorite singer. and next moment,he was playing it on the turntable. and then he started to ding ande. b: wait a minute. who is this john youve been talking about all the time? a: dont you know john? john gregory? im sorry. i thought you knew him. hes staying with his parents now just for

14、a visit. he is always so self-centred,just like his dad.george got his arm stuck in the drain cover, so the fire-bridge was called in.fillmore (1977:119): the task is to determine what we can know about the meaning and context of an utterance given only the knowledge that the utterance has occurred

15、i find that whenever i notice some sentence in context, i immediately find myself asking what the effect would have been if the context had been slightly different.(yule 35)a) speaker: a young mother, hearer: her mother-in-law, plalce:park,by a duckpond,time:sunny afternoon in september 1962.they ar

16、e watching the young mothers two year-old son chasing ducks and the mother-in law has just remarked that her son, the childs father was rather backward at this age. the young mother says: i do think adams quick( quick-developing)b) speaker : a studedent,hearers: a set of students, place: sitting rou

17、nd a coffee table in the refectory, time:evening in march 19980.john, one of the group, has just told a joke. every one laughs except adam.then adam laughs. one of the students say:i do think adams quick(opposite of its literal meaning)lexical contextlexical context and grammatical contextlexical co

18、ntext: the words that occur together with the words in question. the meaning of a word is its use. dynamic view.“paper”“do”grammatical contextthe meanings of a word may be influenced by the structure in which it occurs. become adi become pronounthe role of context1) eliminating ambiguityreason: polysemy and homonymygrammatical structure can also lead to ambiguity.i like mary better than jean.flying planes ca