%A Varol Akman
%J Journal of Pragmatics
%T Rethinking Context as a Social Construct
%X This paper argues that in addition to the familiar approach using
formal contexts, there is now a need in artificial intelligence to
study contexts as social constructs. As a successful example of the
latter approach, I draw attention to `interpretation' (in the sense of
literary theory), viz. the reconstruction of intended meaning of a
literary text that takes into account the context in which the author
assumed the reader would place the text. An important contribution
here comes from Wendell Harris, enumerating the seven crucial
dimensions of context: knowledge of reality, knowledge of language,
and the authorial, generic, collective, specific, and textual
dimensions. Finally, two recent approaches to interpretation, due to
Jon Barwise and Jerry Hobbs, are analyzed as useful attempts which
also come to grips with the notion of context.
It must be noted that there has been a considerable body of
contributions connecting linguistic structure with social context. For
example, anthropological linguistics, from Bronislaw Malinowski
onwards, has underlined the cultural context of discourse as essential
to meaning. This viewpoint became prominent with the emergence of the
ethnography of speaking in anthropology. Thus, conversation analysis
represents a consistent formal effort to contribute to an analysis of
the nature of context. While this paper emphasizes and reviews the
literary theory approach, it makes various contacts with works of the
latter kind (e.g., the landmark contributions of Erving Goffman, John
Gumperz, William Hanks, John Heritage, Dell Hymes, et al.) in order to
deliver a more balanced and complete study of the dimensions of
context.
%N 6
%K (situated) context, interpretation, belief system,
genre, literary theory, anthropological linguistics
%P 743-759
%E Jacob L. Mey
%V 32
%D 2000
%I Elsevier
%L cogprints960