Getting a grip on context as a determinant of meaning

Abstract

The significance of context to the proper interpretation of texts has been known for millennia; it is implicit in some of Aristotle’s recommendations in Rhetoric and Quintilian’s in Institutes that rhetoric should ideally be appropriate to what was, post Augustine, called its context. Malinowski wrote that a stick may be used for different purposes in different contexts, e.g. digging, punting, walking, fighting. Exactly the same is true of language expressions, e.g. a word which is an insult in one context may be an expression of camaraderie or endearment in another (and vice versa). Stalnaker’s claim ‘context [is] a body of available information: the common ground’ (Stalnaker 2014: 24, an idea that goes back to Stalnaker 1978) is nearly, but not quite, right. I define common ground as in Allan 2013b. The speaker/writer/signer makes presumptions about common ground which may properly be called presuppositions, but I argue that utterances carry pragmatic entailments rather than presuppositions, such that where A pragmatically entails B, B cannot – given A – be denied without creating a paradox, absurdity, or contradiction. I distinguish three aspects of context: $C1$, $C2$, and $C3$. $C1$ is the world (and time) spoken of, which is largely identified from co-text; to oversimplify, it captures what is said about what at some world (and time). $C2$ is the world (and time) spoken in, the situation of utterance; it captures who does the saying to whom, and where and when this takes place. $C3$ is the situation of interpretation, the circumstances under which the hearer/reader/viewer interprets what the speaker/writer/signer said, and these may be very different in space and time from $C2$, which may impact the interpretation.