Context

Context is a notion used in the language sciences (linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, semiotics, etc.) in two different ways, namely as Verbal context refers to surrounding text or talk of an expression (word, sentence, conversational turn, speech act, etc.). The idea is that verbal context influences the way we understand the expression. Hence the norm not to cite people 'out of context'. Since much contemporary lingu... more

Context is a notion used in the language sciences (linguistics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, semiotics, etc.) in two different ways, namely as Verbal context refers to surrounding text or talk of an expression (word, sentence, conversational turn, speech act, etc.). The idea is that verbal context influences the way we understand the expression. Hence the norm not to cite people 'out of context'. Since much contemporary linguistics takes texts, discourses or conversations as its object of analysis, the modern study of 'verbal context' takes place in terms of the analysis of discourse structures and their mutual relationships, for instance the coherence relation between sentences. Traditionally, in sociolinguistics, social contexts were defined in terms of objective social 'variables', such as those of class, gender 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... less