| Since Malinowski (1923) firstly put forward the notion of context and Firth (1957) developed it afterwards, it has gradually become one of the most widely used terms in all kinds of linguistic literature and hence played an increasingly essential and significant role in linguistic study. When pragmatics came into being, the notion of context eventually set up its dominant status in linguistic theories because pragmatics is considered as the study of language use in context. Cognitive linguistics, which is presently popular and has attracted vast interests, also shows great concern to the notion of context. The study of context was abundant in the past, but to some extent, segmental, one-sided, lacking in systematicity. In this thesis, a systematic and comprehensive study of context will be pursued primarily from a cognitive and pragmatic perspective.Cognitive linguists believe that the shared experience and knowledge of the world stored in the mind serves as some kind of context supporting our interpretation and understanding of language. They consider the notion of context as a mental phenomenon and define cognitive context as a cognitive representation of the interaction between cognitive categories (or mental concepts). Lingerer & Schmid (2001: 47) argue that the cognitive context does not remain an isolated mental experience, but is immediatelyassociated with the related knowledge in long-term memory.Pragmatics is undoubtedly the discipline which places the most importance on context. Context plays such a crucial role in the study of pragmatics that pragmatic meaning can hardly be interpreted without taking it into consideration. Pragmatic context includes all the componential factors that are helpful in interpreting the implied meaning of an utterance. The study of context from a pragmatic perspective will inevitably involve such conventional components as reference, speech act, implicature, presupposition, inference, etc., which are context-dependent. An approach to context from this perspective can never be neglected in a systematic and comprehensive study of context.This thesis is composed of six chapters.Chapter one provides a brief introduction of the background and purpose of writing the thesis. The notion of context is introduced by the analysis of a piece of current news, after which follows the necessity and feasibility of studying context systematically from a cognitive and pragmatic perspective.Chapter two is a literature review on context, which reviews the definition, classification, features, and some related terms of context from the points of view of various disciplines and schools. This serves as a foundation of further discussion of the following chapters.Chapter three conducts a profound study of context from a cognitive perspective. Cognitive context is discussed together with the relevance theory, and some major concepts such as cognitive model, cultural model, prototype, category, domain, frame, script, and schemata, etc. in cognitive linguistics.Chapter four studies the context from another perspective-pragmatics. Pragmatics studies language use and meaning in context. Pragmatic context is discussed with the conventional context-dependent notions such as implicature, reference, presupposition, speech act, inference, etc..Chapter five offers an integrated approach to context which studies the major componential pragmatic notions from a cognitive perspective and the other way round. A pragma-cognitive approach is put forward, trying to achieve an ideal and efficientapproach to the application of context to a successful understanding and interpretation of language.Chapter six is a conclusion, which draws a summary of what has been discussed in the previous chapters, and tries to put forward a left-right hand theory to contribute to the study of context.In a word, a comparably exhaustive study of, and an ideal approach to context are necessary. The organic combination of a cognitive and pragmatic approach, or a pragma-cognitive approach to context is po...
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