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Context

The document discusses context and its importance in discourse analysis. It defines context as the conditions under which discourse is produced and interpreted. Researchers have conceived of different types or "layers" of context, including linguistic, social, sociocultural, and cognitive contexts. Key contexts identified are situational, social, cognitive, and cultural. An understanding of how language functions within its context is essential for understanding the relationship between what is said and what is understood.

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318 views2 pages

Context

The document discusses context and its importance in discourse analysis. It defines context as the conditions under which discourse is produced and interpreted. Researchers have conceived of different types or "layers" of context, including linguistic, social, sociocultural, and cognitive contexts. Key contexts identified are situational, social, cognitive, and cultural. An understanding of how language functions within its context is essential for understanding the relationship between what is said and what is understood.

Uploaded by

nour
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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context

Definitions

Gee

Context is “the totality of conditions under which discourse is being produced, circulated
and interpreted” Blommaert (2005, p. 251)

Context is “the mental models and representations speakers use to make their contribution
appropriate to the situation in which they find themselves”. Van Dijk (2009)

Types

Researchers have conceived of context in terms of “layers.” Fetzer (2004), distinguishes


between “linguistic context” (genre, intonation, preceding utterances), “social context”
(participants, roles, situations, physical and psychological dispositions), “sociocultural
context” (organizational dimensions, sociohistorically constituted institutions), and
“cognitive context” (memory, prior knowledge, mental representations, etc.).

According to DeVito (2010), contexts have four aspects: physical context, the social context,
social-psychological context and temporal context. However, according to Jinadu (2006),
four types of relevant contexts that are often identified by discourse analysts are situational
context, social context, cognitive context and cultural context. Haliday claimed that context
has only two aspects context of culture and context of situation

 The context of culture is what the members of a community can mean in cultural
terms; that is, we interpret culture as a system of higher-level meanings (see
Halliday, 1978)
 Situational context is the part of a discourse that surrounds a language unit and helps
to determine its interpretation. People will know how to interpret what someone
says from the situation they are in.

Importance An understanding of how language functions in context is essential to an


understanding of the relationship between what is said and what is understood in spoken
and written discourse.
we could thus state that identity is in many cases interpreted as 'people's sense of what, who or where they belong
to'.

'We are what we are because they are not what we are' (Tajfel & Forgas 1981:124)

It is language that gives us the tools to construct and reshape our identities. In their positioning theory

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