The Effect of Context

Abstract

• In what way does formatting a table resemble passing a ball? • Is “Press X” a definition of X? • Does it matter whether we know how to talk about maps? • Does learning always affect one’s language? • When should users hide something that does not exist? . . . “Context” is a word that is used freely and has many meanings. This chapter describes some of the different immediate contexts that apply to language. It shows the links between social conventions and meanings and how meaning is inferred. Visual and conceptual metaphors are investigated here, with emphasis on how we talk about metaphors. Context is then further explored in relation to professional preoccupations, situations, and tasks. This leads up to an important final section on verbal context, in which we look at how words form bonds with other words that surround them. . . . What Is Meant by “Context”? . . . The idea of context and its effect on meaning was briefly introduced in chapter 2, where the point was made that, out of context, a word may have a range of possible meanings, but that within a specific setting, one “actualized” meaning emerges. Put another way, context can help to resolve the ambiguity of word meaning. But it does not always resolve ambiguity. This is partly because there are typically a number of contexts to consider simultaneously. One perspective on this, which has been mentioned earlier, is to see context (in the sense of “reality”) as a set of concentric circles, with personal context at the center, surrounded by social, cultural, and intercultural contexts. Our main concern in this chapter is what might be referred to as the immediate context, which can be said to fall into three categories: situational, verbal, and visual. Visual context is treated again in chapter 7. Sometimes, if aspects of the immediate context are ill-defined or missing, ambiguity can persist. Halliday (1978) has written about the “context of situation” in these terms: . . . Language comes to life only when functioning in some environment. . . .