Context & Its Application In Reading Comprehension

Context is a significant notion in the field of pragmatics. Correct understanding of the deep meaning of language is next to impossible without taking contextual factors into account. Context actually serves as the basis for the proper comprehension of language and particularly attaches vital importance to clear understanding of internal meaning of language since people always express their particular inner feeling by using utterances under different circumstances or certain cultural background. However, many people are still unfamiliar to the concept of context and usually consider context to be involved in everything. Actually, the majority of linguists and scholars come to no agreement on the issue of context because their research progresses from the viewpoint of their own. In other words, they examined context theory from different perspectives. Considering such a dilemma, the author of this thesis carries through a detailed investigation about the historical development, role and functions of context, analyzes the nature of context and gives a definition about context, discusses various contextual factors and categories, and finally contends that context is closely related to the practical employment of language and it is dynamic and changing in the course of communication. More important, it plays an active and significant part in correctly understanding the target reading materials.This thesis tentatively categorizes context into two different contexts, namely, linguistic context and non-linguistic context. The former refers to the inner-linguistic factors which influence the meaning of language, including words, clauses, sentences or even paragraphs in which a word appears while the latter mainly refers to the extra-linguistic factors which affect the practical use of language, embracing the people, time, place, customs, culture and value. Linguistic context can be further categorized into phonetic context, grammatical context, lexical context and semantic context; as for the non-linguistic context, it can also be classified into situational context, cultural context and cognitive context. Similarly this thesis centers on the nature of reading comprehension and five processes of reading comprehension and analyzes how readers are able to achieve better understanding of the target materials in the course of five processes of reading comprehension by employing the theory of context. Each of the five processes is closely related to context, and only with the help of context can...