On the notion of context

• Authors: Tatrai Sz.
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

AThe background of this paper is what is called the pragmatic perspective. The notion of context as referring to the communicational circumstances of utterances has a crucial role in this approach to pragmatics, too. The notion of context stands for both the system of knowledge related to the communicational circumstances of an utterance and the process of putting that knowledge to use, i.e., it has both structural and procedural aspects. The paper discusses the components of context as well as the process of creating context. The components of context are approached by a double system of complementary criteria: on the one hand, as an intellectual domain including one's knowledge of the situation, of the action, and of the topic; and on the other hand, as a system of relationships that involves the physical, social, and mental worlds of the participants. In discussing the process of creating context, the author claims that context is not a previously given piece of reality independent of the utterance, hence its creation requires constructive contribution of the participants, their mental effort. Also, it is pointed out that the creation of context may involve modifications of one's previous view of the context.

Keywords

EN

CONTEXT; PRAGMATICS

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Committee on Hungarian Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Magyar Nyelvor (Hungarian Language Guardian)
• Year: 2004
• Volume: 128
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 479-494
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Tatrai Sz.

• Sz. Tatrai, no address given, contact the journal editor

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

06HUAAAA01042412