The Concept of Context in Linguistic and Discourse Theories

The paper provides an overview and critical examination of the concept of context as itdeveloped in various theories of linguistics and discourse analyses. The presented approachesto context belong to two main directions, i.e., social and cognitive. Socially oriented approachesto context do not deve...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Verdonik, Darinka
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:Slovenian
Published: Slavistično društvo Slovenije 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://srl.si/ojs/srl/article/view/COBISS_ID-17578006
Description
Summary:The paper provides an overview and critical examination of the concept of context as itdeveloped in various theories of linguistics and discourse analyses. The presented approachesto context belong to two main directions, i.e., social and cognitive. Socially oriented approachesto context do not develop a detailed and coherent theory of context that wouldbe broadly accepted; they even avoid giving its definition, claiming that it is too complex.Cognitive approaches, on the other hand, develop explicit theories of context, but they arecriticized for having numerous deficiencies and therefore cannot be accepted as generallyapplicable. V prispevku pregledamo, kako se je koncept konteksta razvijal po različnih področjihjezikoslovja in analize diskurza, ter kritično pretresemo opredelitev različnih teorij do tegavprašanja. Predstavljene poglede združimo v dve smeri, družbeno in kognitivno. V družbenousmerjenih teorijah analize diskurza ne razvijejo širše, splošno sprejete teorije konteksta in secelo izogibajo sami definiciji pojma kontekst, češ da je prekompleksen. V kognitivno usmerjenihteorijah najdemo bolj obširno izdelane definicije in teorije konteksta, vendar jim očitamovrsto pomanjkljivosti, da bi bile splošno veljavne.