An Inquiry Into The Contextual Foundation Of Meaning

The study of contextual foundation of meaning serves as the central theme for the present dissertation, which aims to provide a systematic research into the achievements made in the study of the relationships between meaning and context by pragmatic and Hermeneutic contextual researchers in the field of contemporary western philosophy of language. By critically absorbing their fruitful discoveries, we can make it possible to construct Marxist linguistic theory of practice. 1. Preamble In the course the up-to-now development of philosophy, a lot of effort has been invested to find the final unity between man and the world, thinking and being subject and object. But there is no simple correspondence within each the pair, for they are under the strong influence of language, meaning, ways of meaning practice and such elements as society, culture, history, ways of human existence, and so on, which are al loaded in our language. This is the reason for the fact that the study of meaning represents, the main trend of modern Western philosophy of language. In our diachronic investigation of meaning, context and the relationship between them, many problems and puzzles are found to exist in defining certain concepts, researching methods and routes of thinking. There is a very obvious and important cause for this. The innate complexity in meaning and context themselves makes it rather difficult to carry out explicit and scientific studies. This, in turn, causes many problems remaining unsolved, the solution to which can only be found by referring to language practice itself. II. The Trend of Contextualization in the Contemporary Study of Meaning With the philosophical turn to language in the West, meaning became the focus of philosophy. Determinate Meaning has always been the aim in pursuit of truth, and logical correspondence between a word and its referent has been highly stressed not only in Frege's sense and reference theory and Russell's description theory, but also in Wittgenstein's theory of language pictures meaning. But most of these pursuits confine themselves within traditional epistemological frame, with the effort to clarify and delete traditional philosophical issues the obvious fault they have run into is that they have failed to provide a dialectical and historical examination of the meanings and contexts of propositions, their focus has seldom been put in discussing the variations of meanings of words that appear between the two ends: words and their referents. This method has neglected the vividness of ordinary language use because of its isolated and static ways of thinking. To the philosophers of ordinary language, the ideal language ambition through logical language analysis is both unnecessary, and impossible. They believe that ordinary language is self-sufficient in itself, which leads to no misconceptions in philosophy, which are caused, in fact, mainly by the violation of the rules in the use of ordinary language. The traditional philosophical misuses of language can be wiped out if systemic attentions are paid to the meaning, scope, content, grammar and function of ordinary language, with the introduction of Wittgenstein's language games and Austin's speech-act theory, a pragmatic turn in linguistic philosophy was made in the study of meaning in relation to such pragmatic elements as language, languageusers and contexts. Grice's conversational implicature, Searle's extension of speech-act theory, etc., have enhanced the base of the study of meaning in view of contexts. In this process, language users are placed at the center. Following this trend, the two-extreme divisions between man and world, man and language, language and the world have become invalid, while the triangle connections among the world, language and man have been finally established. Philosophical studies of meaning made by European continental philosophers began with Heidegger's language existentialism. He believes that the reliance of meaning on contexts, and the constraint on meaning in contexts, originate from the different connections among being, language, the meaning of being and the living contexts for Dasein, which have formed the original conditions for the meaning language. Following his suit, Gadamer established Hermeneutics, insisting that in the origin of meaning, there exists the appeal to existential and Hermeneutic elements. Gadamer had tried to unify contextual elements involved in the understanding of the meaning in texts, in which man, language and the world can be related together in his Hermeneutic contexts. The rationality of language practice involved in Hermeneutics can be clearly seen in its deletion of language instrumentalism, which used to be believed to have the power to clarify meaning. Hermeneutics has deepened the humanistic care in its meaning-context relation. The contextual pursuit of meaning has become an important theoretical task for both pragmatic analysis and Hermeneutics. III. Integration of Pragmatic and Hermeneutic Contexts in Meaning Practice As the subject of practice, man acts as the medium between meaning and contexts in language communication. Out of his dynamic humanistic nature, man has denied the absolutedeterminacy of meaning in context, leading the study of meaning to the features of dialogue, growth, opening and differentiation. Man's subject roles shown in his pragmatic and Hermeneutic acts have formed the foundation for the study of meaning in language practice. If the essential human nature lies in his practice, practical viewpoints, and his way of thinking, it naturally means the refutation of the traditional ways of philosophy. The practical thinking mode is a way of contradictory unity among the humanistic elements. Meaning, once born and understood in the contexts of language use, will step into a dynamic process of language practice. Context, as a dynamic and developing whole, will extend its range when connections among its components occur and reoccur. Pragmatic context directs its pursuit mainly on how meaning appear and can be understood in language use, while Hermeneutic context stresses how understanding of meaning is possible in the historical contexts. Each of the two has its own emphasis and defects. The fact is that expressing and understanding of meaning should be taken as a unified whole in which mutual reliance exists. The practical structure of context is established on the basis of the connected while body in language practice. The precondition for the integration of pragmatic and Hermeneutic contexts lies in the process of language practice, which embodies the whole stages from meaning production to meaning interpretation. The integration should be done by establishing dynamic, rather than static or isolated, connections between the two entire bodies of pragmatic and Hermeneutic contexts. Such connections are only feasible within the whole of language practice, through which the integration between the two types of contexts can come true. From Marxist practicalism, we can finally find a bright new angle for the establishment f language practicalism. IV. The Ontological Features and Practical Implications of Contexts The original purpose of the linguistic turn in modern Western philosophy was not to find a new linguistic ontological entity to substitute the traditional entity. It was believed that any effort to pursue an ontological entity in philosophy was misleading and mistaken. Instead, logical truth should be highly valued and be found via logical and conceptual analyses of a proposition. The pragmatic turn that occurred within the philosophy of language has based meaning researches on contexts. But as the basic conditions of meaning, the position of contexts is rather difficult to define. Is it reasonable to pre-settle the meaning as an ontological entity, with contexts as its affiliations, or to pre-decide context as an ontological entity, with meaning as its by-product? In our opinion, either way misses the point. The recognition of context as the basis of meaning does not naturally mean that context is the ontological entity in the traditional philosophical but means that it has ontological significance when meaning is being discussed. This shows a great step forward in philosophy, for it can not only eradicate the traditional ontological pursuit, but also can refute the cognitive way of thinking advocated by logical positivists as well. The result is that there exists nothing in any concepts or language forms or meanings that can be taken as the only ontological being. If any, it is nothing more than the dynamic process of language practice itself, in which language use is located. The innate connections between context and language use bears the fruit of the determinacy of meaning. From the perspective of context and the process of language practice, the determinacy of meaning can only be effective in its relative sense, implying that no absolute determination of meaning is acceptable, and that only appropriateness of meaning stands to reason. The methodological significance of contextual way of thinking in the study of meaning lies mostly in its refutation of and constrains on the former formalapproaches into meaning. This provides a methodological basis for the integration of the two kinds of scientific researches: humanistic and natural sciences, between which a dynamic balance should be kept. By doing so, the horizons of context can be reasonably enlarged. This has become an important issue in contemporary linguistic philosophy, and our feasible suggestion is to get us involved in dialectical reflections and find ways to build up a bridge between humanistic and natural scientific ways of thinking with reference to the achievements brought forth in the correspondence among syntactic, semantic and pragmatic aspects by taking the advantage of contextual mode of thinking. To understand contextualism as a way of thinking, we have to rely on holism in language practice. The practical nature of the relationship between meaning and context is determined by the correct understanding of the nature of language practice. Contextual mode of thinking is a reflection way of logical thinking rather than a cognitive way. It can be seen that Hermeneutic mode of contextual thinking has its holist nature and ontological significance. Whereas, pragmatic analysis of context reflects the natural scientific characters, which must be regulated from Hermeneutic horizons of context. It is without doubt that, in this process, contextual thinking mode contributes greatly to the extension of the linguist theory of practice. From the perspective of pragmatics and Hermeneutics, researches of meaning in current and historical contexts in themselves have formed powerful refutation to the correspondence theory of truth that only bears cognitive value in discussing the relations between language and the world, as well as meaning and object. The dialectical movement of context in meaning practice shows the theoretical value of Marxist dialectical thinking mode in the construction of Marxist language theory of practice, which can be realized only by critically absorbing the achievements made in pragmatic philosophy and Hermeneutics.A possible way to get closer to the deep meaning of language practice theory is to start from the theoretical discoveries made in pragmatics and the Hermeneutic holist context. In this way, we can reasonably extend the whole frame work of language practice theory, which includes such important points as meaning practice, the present and historical contexts of practice, the integration of pragmatic and Hermeneutic contexts, and so forth. The inevitable result, obtained from the perspective of Marxist communication theory of practice, is that the relationships between practice and meaning, as well as practice and context, have formed a dialectical unity. In the study of Marxist Practice Theory, previous efforts have been put mainly on its epistemological aspects and the epistemic implications they have, with little attention to raise its position to the level of the core of philosophy in the theoretical and methodological modes. Yet, there is one thing commonly agreed upon: to understand the complete system of Marxism from practical viewpoints. Problems of language, in fact, are not in conflicts with Marxism. For speaking and doing cannot be separated. Whenever we speak a sentence, we do a thing. In doing so, we are involved in speech acts. The significance of language Practicalism has formed the last interpretation of man of language, because the purpose of our investigation of the contexts, where production and interpretation of meaning happen, is to combine language issues with the current and historical situational in man's existence. This is the ideal breakthrough point for Marxist Theory of Practice to achieve in the philosophy of language.