Context (linguistics)
In semiotics, linguistics, sociology and anthropology, context refers to those objects or entities which surround a focal event, in these disciplines typically a communicative event, of some kind. Context is "a frame that surrounds the event and provides resources for its appropriate interpretation".[1]: 2–3 It is thus a relative concept, only definable with respect to some focal event within a frame, not independently of that frame.
In linguistics
In the 19th century, it was debated whether the most fundamental principle in language was contextuality or
Neurolinguistic analysis of context has shown that the interaction between interlocutors defined as parsers creates a reaction in the brain that reflects predictive and interpretative reactions. It can be said then that mutual knowledge, co-text, genre, speakers, hearers create a neurolinguistic composition of context.[3]
Traditionally, in sociolinguistics, social contexts were defined in terms of objective social variables, such as those of class, gender, age or race. More recently, social contexts tend to be defined in terms of the social identity being construed and displayed in text and talk by language users.
The influence of context parameters on language use or discourse is usually studied in terms of language variation,
In linguistic anthropology
In the theory of sign phenomena, adapted from that of Charles Sanders Peirce, which forms the basis for much contemporary work in linguistic anthropology, the concept of context is integral to the definition of the index, one of the three classes of signs comprising Peirce's second trichotomy. An index is a sign which signifies by virtue of "pointing to" some component in its context, or in other words an indexical sign is related to its object by virtue of their co-occurrence within some kind of contextual frame.[4]
In natural language processing
In word-sense disambiguation, the meanings of words are inferred from the context where they occur.[5]
Contextual variables
Communicative systems presuppose contexts that are structured in terms of particular physical and communicative dimensions, for instance time, location, and communicative role.[citation needed]
See also
- Aberrant decoding
- Context principle
- Context-sensitive language
- Conversational scoreboard
- Deixis
- Opaque context
References
- ^ Goodwin, Charles; Duranti, Alessandro, eds. (1992). "Rethinking context: an introduction" (PDF). Rethinking context: Language as an interactive phenomenon. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 1–42. Archived from the original (PDF) on March 12, 2003. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
- ^ Janssen, T. M. (2012) Compositionality: Its historic context, in M. Werning, W. Hinzen, & E. Machery (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of compositionality, pp. 19-46, Oxford University Press.
- ISBN 978-9027255792.
- ISBN 978-9027250346. Retrieved February 19, 2017.
- ISBN 978-3-540-26924-3.
Further reading
- For a review of the history of the principle of contextuality in linguistics, see Scholtz, Oliver Robert (1999) Verstehen und Rationalität: Untersuchungen zu den Grundlagen von Hermeneutik und Sprachphilosophie