16-Chapter 8 Meaning and Context.docVIP

Chapter 8 Meaning and Context Without context, there is no way to determine the very sense of the word that the speaker intended to convey; whereas with context there is generally no danger of misinterpretation, for meaning lives in context and the context defines meaning. 8.1 Types of Context In a narrow sense, it refers to the words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears. This is known as linguistic context . In a broad sense, it includes the physical situation as well. This is called extra-linguistic or non-linguistic context, which embraces the people, time, place, and even the whole cultural background. 8.1.1 Extra-linguistic Context Brown and Yule (1983: 36) invented two situations to illustrate the effect on the meaning of the word quick: 1.speaker: a young mother, hearer: her mother-in-law, place: park, by a duckpond, time: sunny afternoon in September 1962. They are watching the young mother’s two-year-old son chasing ducks and the mother-in-law has just remarked that her son, the child’s father, was rather backward at this age. The young mother says: I do think Adam’s quick. speaker: a student, hearer: a set of students, place: sitting around a coffee table in the refectory, time: evening in March 1980. John, one of the group, has just told a joke. Everyone laughs except Adam. Then Adam laughs. One of the students says: I do think Adam’s quick. In 1, ‘Adam’ is compared favourably with his father. Quick can be interpreted as meaning something like ‘quick in developing’. It is used in contrast to backward. In 2, ‘Adam’ is compared unfavourably with the set of other students. Therefore, quick must be interpreted as meaning something like ‘quick to understand/react/see the joke’. In this case, quick is used ironically to mean the opposite ‘slow’. The word landlord affords another example. In Chinese culture, landlord is usually understood as referring to someone who owned a lot of land and collected money by renting la