A Brief Introduction To Contextual Strategy

As the condition and background of verbal communication, context restricts the participants. The participants’ adaptation to the context, to which the linguists have paid much attention, represents one aspect of the relations between the context and the participants. In the thesis we deem that the adaptation is only one side of the coin and that the other side, i.e. the aspect of the contextual strategy needs to be explored as well.The thesis consists of four parts. The first part reviews the previous researches on contextual strategy accomplished by linguists and then brings forth a comparatively exact definition of the contextual strategy. It is defined as the following:the communicators construct the contextual factors, or make those prominent that are in favor of the realization of the communication aim, adjust or shield those that will obstruct the course of the communication in order to achieve the communication aim or the expected effects, in the light of the two kinds of characteristics of the context system:dynamic creation characteristic and the imbalanced function characteristic of the factors.The second part of the thesis reveals the basic principles and the significance of the contextual strategy. Pertinency and validity form the principles. Meanwhile the significance lies in three aspects. The feasibility and the necessity of such research are discussed in the third part. Being a system and open lays the basis to the feasibility; while the selection/adaptation theory in Darwinism provides the methodology. The need for the best communication effect makes the research necessary.Based on the theory of context and combined with the real intercommunication examples, a panorama of the contextual strategy has been investigated on linguistic context, non-linguistic context and participants’ context respectively. As to linguistic contextual strategy, we have studied the phonetic-contextual strategy, semantic-contextual strategy, discourse topic strategy and presupposition strategy. As to non-linguistic contextual strategy, we have investigated socio-cultural contextual strategy, appellation strategy, natural setting-and-scene strategy, time-and-place strategy and concomitance contextual strategy. For the participants’ contextual strategy, we have probed into the discourse role strategy and communication distance strategy.