Definition:
The words and sentences that surround any part of a discourse and that help to determine its meaning.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "join" + "weave"Observations:
- "In common use almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context."
(Alfred Marshall) - "I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether."
(Alfred North Whitehead) - "It is of interest to note that while some dolphins are reported to have learned English--up to fifty words used in correct context--no human being has been reported to have learned dolphinese."
(Dr. Carl Sagan) - "Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective."
(Kenneth L. Pike) - "For me context is the key--from that comes the understanding of everything."
(Kenneth Noland) - "Recent work in a number of different fields has called into question the adequacy of earlier definitions of context in favor of a more dynamic view of the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic dimensions of communicative events. Instead of viewing context as a set of variables that statically surround strips of talk, context and talk are now argued to stand in a mutually reflexive relationship to each other, with talk, and the interpretive work it generates, shaping context as much as context shapes talk."
(Charles Goodwin and Alessandro Duranti, "Rethinking Context: An Introduction," in Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, Cambridge University Press, 1992)
Pronunciation: KON-text
