Role of Context

doi:10.1017/9781108884303.007

6 - Role of Context

from Part II - Key Issues in Intercultural Pragmatics Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022

Anita Fetzer

Edited by

Istvan Kecskes

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Istvan Kecskes: Affiliation:
State University of New York, Albany

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Summary

The concept of context has undergone some fundamental rethinking in the scientific community. Rather than being considered an external constraint on linguistic performance, context is analyzed as a product of language use and thus as an interactional achievement, which is negotiated and co-constructed, imported and invoked. Context and contexts are analyzed from the perspectives of interlocutors, considering contextualization, recontextualization and decontextualization, and entextualization. The complexity, multilayeredness and dynamics of context have far-reaching implications on its role in intercultural pragmatics with interlocutors from different linguistic backgrounds having diverging meaning-making processes, diverging contextualization conventions, and thus diverging constructions of context. Intercultural pragmatics thus calls for context-sensitive particularizations of the fundamental premises of cooperation, contextualization, meaning-making process, and negotiation of discourse common ground.

Keywords

discourse contextualization communicative analysis conversation analysis cognitive domains negotiated meaning recontextualization

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Handbook of Intercultural Pragmatics , pp. 139 - 163

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108884303.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2022

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