The Function Of Context In Discourse Interpretation

The study of context originated from the study of language meaning. What is 'meaning'? This is the question scholars have been trying to answer for a long time. In the course of their study, scholars realized that the explanation of meaning could not be done without a fuller understanding of context. Early in ancient Greek and Rome scholars began realizing the close relationship between a piece of language used in a particular situation and certain features of the situation. However, after that time the fact that language is closely associated with its context had not been attached importance to until 1923 when the Polish anthropologist B. Malinowski first explained it in the supplement of the book The Meaning of Meaning. It is he who has oriented later linguists to study meaning in a new direction. Context has aroused wide interest in linguistic circles since then and different aspects of context have been studied. These linguists' studies are of great contribution to the research of context. However, there still are some limitations in their studies.This dissertation first makes a review of the researches on context. It discusses the development of scholars' studies of context, and classifies their views into static views and dynamic views. Scholars with the former views generally think context consists of various factors; context is given and static; context plays a great role in the use of language. However, none of them mentions the dominant role of language users. Scholars with the latter views claim that context is not static but dynamic; and context is not given before verbal communication but constructed by language users in the course of verbal communication. Most important of all they claim that context is manipulated by language users. In comparison, dynamic views are more useful to deal with the meaning of language in context in the course of dynamic verbal communication.After the literature review, this dissertation presents the author's view on context. First it discusses the nature of context and gives a definition, then it discusses various contextual factors and their classification, and it also discusses the dynamic propertiesof context. In the course of verbal communication, various factors influence the production and the interpretation of a discourse. A group of relevant factors constitute a particular context. So context is a pragmatic category and the author attempts to define it as a collection of various objective and subjective factors that function in the production and the interpretation of a discourse in verbal communication through language users' manipulation. According to the sources of its factors, contexts can be classified into linguistic contexts and non-linguistic contexts. The former can be approached from four aspects: phonological, lexical, grammatical and textual, and the latter can be classified into situational contexts and cultural contexts.Context is dynamic. The dynamic property of it manifests itself in three aspects: (i) Context is not out there before verbal communication but is constructed in the process of it. (ii) Context is not static but changing in the process of verbal communication, (iii) Context is not universally the same but different from one to another.Context plays a great role in the comprehension of a discourse. Its function can be shown from both its external manifestation and its internal functioning mechanism. Its external function can be classified into the explaining function and the restrictive function. The former refers to the fact that context may offer explanations for the interpretation of a discourse. In order to understand the total meaning of a discourse, a receiver should not only acquire the literal meaning of it, but also analyze and infer the implied meaning according to the context. The latter refers to the restriction being imposed by context on the selection and determination of the intended meaning of a language unit in a discourse. Every language unit, no matter how many meanings it has, when used in an appropriate si...