Context and Its Significance To Pragmatics
Context and Its Significance To Pragmatics
Context and Its Significance To Pragmatics
ABSTRACT: After examining the different expressions of context, this paper proposes that context is the
interaction between all the elements about language communication activities, including the intra textual
co-text, the environment in which communication occurs and the mutual interaction of the shared information,
culture, background and world knowledge of the participants. Therefore, context is dynamic. Then, this paper
illustrates theories of pragmatics, including the speech act theory, the indirect speech act theory, the
cooperative theory and the relevance theory. Finally, it discusses about the significance of context to pragmatics
from the perspectives of narrow context and narrow pragmatics, and dynamic context and generalized
pragmatics.
Keywords: context, pragmatics, function
I.
INTRODUCTION
Context is important and indispensable for the study of pragmatics. For a long time, scholars have been
discussing the pragmatic meaning from the perspective of context, or studying context from the perspective of
pragmatic function. With the intensive study on pragmatics, scholars have examined the concepts of context,
and obtained a more profound understanding. The study of context transfers from the traditional internal and
external perspective to the dynamic perspective, and exposes the dynamic process of context and dynamic
pragmatic meaning, and indicates the clear path for peoples correct understanding the relation of the context
and pragmatics and how context controlling pragmatic meaning. This paper expounds the relationship between
context and pragmatics, reveals pragmatic meaning of context and importance of pragmatic studies, and
provides evidence for the research of pragmatics and pragmatic teaching.
II.
THEORIES OF CONTEXT
Since Malinowski, a British anthropologist, first proposed the concept of context in the early 20th century, many
linguists, sociologists and anthropologists have proposed various definitions of context; however, the united and
of scientific definition has not been formed due to the limitation of different disciplines and their different
perspective. The definitions can be summed up as the following:.
1. Internal context and external context
Some linguists divide context into the internal context and the external context of language, and they think the
internal context of language refers to the co-text of the discourse, and the external context refers to the shared
information of both communicators, including the background, culture and precondition.
2. Cultural context and situational context
Malinowski proposed the concepts of Cultural Context and Situational Context in the 1930s. The former refers
to the cultural background of the communicative participants, and the latter refers to the objective context which
is directly related to the communicative activities of language.
3. Linguistic factors and non-linguistic factors
This is Firths point of view, who divides the context into the co-text consisting of language factors and
situational co-text consisting of non-linguistic factors
4. View of register
Halliday, systemic functional linguistics school founder, regards context as register. He argues that Register is
context, register includes field, tenor and mode of discourse, and these three aspects together is equivalent to
the context (Halliday, 1973)[1]. In addition, the situational context also belongs to "register", which can be
revealed by register which includes field, tenor and mode of discourse. The field of discourse refers to the
content of the text, which is embodied by the concept function in the discourse. The tenor refers to the
relationship between the two parties, which is embodied by the interpersonal function in the discourse. The
mode is communicative approach, which is embodied by the textual function in the discourse.
Thompson,1996/2000:36)[2].
www.ijhssi.org
17 | Page
III.
PRAGMATIC THEORIES
With the deepening of pragmatics research, linguists have put forward some pragmatic theories, such as speech
act theory, indirect speech act theory, the cooperative theory, and relevance theory and so on. In these theories,
language scholars closely link context to pragmatic meaning and the context being regarded as an important
variable element in the complex process of language communication (Huang, 2000)[6].
www.ijhssi.org
18 | Page
www.ijhssi.org
19 | Page
IV.
No matter from the linguistic perspective or from the illocutionary point of view, no matter from the static view
or from the dynamic one, context has great significance to pragmatics. It can be said that, it is impossible to talk
about pragmatics without context. Therefore, it is not surprising that some scholars believe that pragmatics is
the study of context.
1. Narrow context and narrow pragmatics
The narrow context refers to the traditional view of context, or static context in the third part we mentioned
before, including communicators language knowledge, co-text of the discourse, participants world,
knowledge, social and cultural background, time and place of communication, and situational factors consisting
of communicators way of speaking. Traditional pragmatics regards that pragmatics, just like phonetics,
phonology, and semantics, as a branch of linguistics to study and discuss the use of language, such as deictic
words, speech act, presupposition, pragmatic inference and conversational implicature, etc. Ran Yongping calls
it as the narrow pragmatic view, which has been the mainstream in the study of pragmatic for a long time. See
the following analysis of deixis (1, 2), conversational implicature (3, 4), the premise (5) and speech act (6).
(1) Ill tell about it this afternoon.
(2) Please wait for me in that place tomorrow.
When we read or hear these two sentences, we must know the information of the person deictic words I, it, me,
the time deictic words this afternoon and tomorrow, place deictic words that place in the specific context to
understand the true meaning of the utterance. Otherwise, we can only get the literal meaning.
(3) A: Lets climb the hill this morning.
B: Well have the math exam this evening.
(4) Its cold here.
In (3), B did not directly accept or reject As invitation, but through presenting the implication of the information
we cannot go hiking in the morning, because there is the math exam tonight. In (4), if the speaker is in the
room, then He/she might have implied. Close the window, please, Please close the door or Please turn on
the air conditioner and so on. If the speaker is outside, possibly, he/she have the meaning of "want to go
home". If the speaker and the listener are lovers, this sentence may have the meaning of "want to
hug". Obviously, these words can have different meanings in different contexts.
(5)
Hi!
When the speaker issued a Hi!, it meant he wanted to r maintain friendly relations with the listener (ACT).
This gesture of friendship will undoubtedly have a certain effect on the listener. If both sides are normal, the
effect may be less obvious. If the relations between the two sides are a bit strained, one says a simple Hi!,
which may make a great changes in their relationships, because the listener may accept such a friendly gesture,
and make peace with the speaker. If the listener has prejudice against the speaker, he may put the friendly way
as vanity, on the contrary, a greeting makes their relationship worse. Although this is not the speakers intention,
but this is indeed the perlocutionary act (Ren, 2010)[4].
2. Dynamic context and generalized pragmatics
Language communication is a complex and dynamic process, and communication can not be separated from the
context. Peoples understanding of context is also changed from static to dynamic. Here we discuss the
significance of cognitive context to cognitive pragmatics.
The view on dynamic context of relevance theory puts the focus of pragmatic research to cognition, which,
therefore, is known as cognitive pragmatics in the west. What is the cognitive pragmatics? The definition has
not been recognized, but we cannot deny its existence. For example, the communicative meaning of pragmatic
phenomenon such as speech acts and premise is beyond the encoded information of language, the meanings of
which are generated by the cognitive effort, which all cannot do without the information processing process, and
reasoning is a cognitive process. Therefore, Xiong Xueliang argues that gradually fixed relations between the
symbol and communicative intention, during the diachronic process, should be taken as the semiotic
www.ijhssi.org
20 | Page
V.
CONCLUSION
Context is the basis for the existence of language, and all the factors that influence and restrict existence,
development and changes of language belong to the category of context. It is because of the certain context that
can provide language with the particular meaning. That is, pragmatics with specific contextual meaning must
rely on contextual information processing. No matter how it develops, no matter how it changes, pragmatics
cannot get rid of the effect that context restrict it.
VI.
REFERENCES
[1].
[2].
[3].
[4].
[5].
www.ijhssi.org
21 | Page