Understanding the Importance of Context in Linguistic Interpretation

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Linguists have increasingly recognized the significance of context in interpreting sentences since the 1970s. Contextual features, as discussed by scholars like Firth, Hymes, and Lewis, play a crucial role in understanding utterances within specific social and communicative settings. Co-text and the expanding context further influence linguistic analysis and interpretation.

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1 THE CONTEXT OF SITUATION Brown & Yule ch2 Presented by MA candidate Taghreed Abdulsalam

2 The context of situation Since the beginning of the 1970s, linguists have become increasingly aware of the importance of context in the interpretation of sentences. 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, and what it would mean if the context was slightly different?

3 Features of context Firth (1957) was concerned with embedding the utterance in the social context and to generalise across meanings in specified social context. His view was that the context of situation is best used as suitable schematic construct to apply language events. A context of situation for linguistic work bring into relation the following categories: A- the relevant features of participants( the verbal and the non-verbal action of participants). B- the relevant object. C- the effect of the verbal action.

4 EXAMPLE

5 Features of context Hymes (1964) views the role of context in interpretation as limiting the range of possible interpretations and as supporting the intended interpretation. Like Firth, he seizes first on the persons participating in the speech event. Hymes features constitute essentially a checklist which abstracted the following roles: Addressor, addressee, audience, topic, setting, channel, code, event, key, purpose.

7 Features of context Lewis (1972) provided an index to the co-ordinates which a hearer would need to have specified in order that he could determine the truth of a sentence. His interest lies, not in the general features of a communicative event, but with those particular co-ordinates which constitute a package of relevant factors, or an index and which characterise the context against which the truth of a sentence is to be judged. The co-ordinates of the index are specified as follows: A- possible world co-ordinate B- time co-ordinate C- place co-ordinate D- speaker co-ordinate E- audience co-ordinate F- indicated object co-ordinate G- previous discourse co-ordinate H- assignment co-ordinate

8 Co-text Co-text refers to linguistic material in the surrounding text. The interpretation of utterances within a discourse is constrained by co-text.

9 The expanding context A problem for the discourse analyst must be to decide when a particular features is relevant to the specification of a particular context and what degree of specification is required?

10 The spatio-temporal deictic expirations Here Now

11 The spatio-temporal deictic expirations

12 The Principles of Local Interpretation and of analogy Principles of Local Interpretation , this principle instructs the hearer not to construct a context any larger than he needs to arrive at an interpretation. The principle of analogy Will provide a reasonably secure framework for interpretation for the hearer and for the analyst most of the time.