The Study Of Context And Its Application In The Teaching Of Reading

AbstractWith the development of aPplied lingUistics and functional teaching aPproach,the lingUistS have become more and more interested in the practical use of langUage.People's langUae activity can not be detached frOm its context, just as their breathcan't be detached frOm aiL Because of its close relationship with langUae, contexthas aroused great interest in lingUiStic circles."Context" was first used by MaIinowski in l923. He argues that lltterances andsitUaion are bound up inextricably with each other and the context of sitUation isindispensable for the underhanding of words. His "context" refers to the sitUation,Wthout consideration of the linguistic context. After him, many other scholars alsoprobe into this fie1d, such as HyInes, Lyons, Firth and Leech, etc. Although contexthas been intensiveIy studied fOr years, there are still many impobot theoretical andpractical problems remaining unsolved. On the one hand, there are contendingviews on the definition and classification; on the other hand, their focuses are on thenon-linguistic colltext, with insufficiefit attention to the lingUiStic context and itsinfluence on the meaning of langUage. This thesis, on the basis of a general study ofmany scholars' researches, tentatively classifies context into linguistic context andnon-linguiStic colltext. LingUistic colltext refers to the co-text; non-lingUisticcontext includes situational context, cult'Ural cofltext and cognitive context.As we know semanics and pragInatics are tWo branches of linguistics.Semamics focuses on the lexical mewhng of langUage while pragtnatics stresses thepractical use of langUage in paticular contexts. Both of them value colltext, so, thisthesis intends to stUdy the functions of context frOm semantic and pragmaticPersPectives resPectively. The functions of context in semantic field mainly refer tothe roles of the linguistic context in influencing and restricting the meaning in respect of semantic co-occurrence and disambiguation. The general principle for the semantic co-occurrence is the semantic consistency, that is to say, sentences must not only obey all the syntactic rules but also the semantic rules. Therefore, by the principle of the semantic co-occurrence, we can not only produce the correct sentences both grammatically and semantically, but also diagnose the semanticdeviance of sentences. Disanibiguation refers to the fact that context could providesemantic constraints on the possible choice of the meanings of linguistic units so that ambiguity can be eliminated. The study of functions of context from pragmatic perspective attempts to explore the roles of non-linguistic context in influencing the practical use of language in the particular context. We will use two terms to describe the major roles: selectional restrictions and interpretation. The roles of the context in determining the speaker抯 language selected as appropriate to the context will be termed as selectional restrictions; the roles of the context in supporting the hearer抯 inference of what the speaker relay means will be termed as interpretation.The meaning of language is influenced and restricted by its context, and the core problem of reading is to understand the meaning of the language, therefore, we can apply context in the teaching of reading. By making use of context, the students could solve their practical problems in reading and improve their reading efficiency.