Context
The context in which an utterance or usage event is situated is central to the cognitive explanation. This is particularly true for word meaning, which is protean in nature. This means that word meaning is rather changeable. While words bring with them a conventional meaning, the context in which a word is used has important effects on its meaning. Furthermore, ‘context’ can mean a number of different things.
One kind of context is sentential or utterance context. This relates to the other elements in the string. Consider example (2), where we are focusing in particular on the meaning of the preposition in:
These examples involve spatial scenes of slightly different kinds, where in reflects a spatial relationship between the figure and the reference object. In (2a) the figure, the kitten, is enclosed by the reference object, the box, so that the spatial relationship is one of containment. However, in the other two examples, in does not prompt for quite the same kind of meaning. In (2b) the flower is not enclosed by the vase, since it partly protrudes from it. Equally, in (2c) in does not prompt for a relationship of containment, because the crack is on the exterior of the vase. As these examples illustrate, the meaning of in is not fixed but is derived in part from the elements that sur round it.
A second kind of context relates not to the other elements in the utterance itself but to the background knowledge against which the utterance is produced and understood. Consider example (3):
If said by one caver to another in an underground cavern, this would be afactual statement relating to the absence of light in the cavern. If uttered by a linguistics professor to a student who happened to be sitting next to the light switch in a poorly lit seminar room, this might be a request to turn the light on. If uttered by one friend to another upon entering a brilliantly lit room, it might be an ironic statement uttered for the purpose of amusement. As this range of possible meanings demonstrates, the context of use interacts with the speaker’s intentions and plays a crucial role in how this utterance is interpreted by the hearer. One consequence of the role of context in language use is that ambiguity can frequently arise. For example, given the cave scenario we sketched above, example (3) might reasonably be interpreted as an expression of fear, a request for a torch and so on.
In order to distinguish the conventional meaning associated with a particular word or construction, and the meaning that arises from context, we will refer to the former as coded meaning and the latter as pragmatic meaning. For example, the coded meaning associated with in relates to a relationship between a figure and a reference object in which the reference object has properties that enable it to enclose (and contain) the figure. However, because words always occur in context, coded meaning represents an idealisation based on the prototypical meaning that emerges from contextualised uses of words. In reality, the meaning associated with words always involves pragmatic meaning, and coded meaning is nothing more than a statement of this prototypical meaning abstracted from the range of pragmatic (situated) interpretations associated with a particular word. According to this view, pragmatic meaning is ‘real’ meaning, and coded meaning is an abstraction.
