Subjective Context And Foreign Language Learning

This dissertation aims at studying subjective context and its enlightening function in foreign language learning. Context is the most important notion in pragmatic study. It plays a vitally important role in the production and interpretation of utterances, judging the felicity of them. The traditional notions of context have drawbacks of assumption of the objective nature of context and of ignorance of language users. Therefore, a concept of subject context is proposed in this dissertation. Subjective context is the main aspect of context, since language users are the focus in communication. Without the functioning of their minds, there is no communication. Language users embrace their own perspectives in their communication with others. In this way, it can be seen that subjective context is the main aspect of context.Chapter One is an introduction of the aim, the method, the extent and the theoretic basis of my research. Chapter Two is an overview and analysis of the traditional context study. Trough analysis, I find that different research approaches present different views of the scope of context and focus on some selected elements of context and exclude others, and they assume the objectivity of the notion of context. In Chapter Three, I first introduce the Adaptation Theory and Relevance Theory and their views on context. Through analysis of these two theories, I prove the importance of subjective context. With this proof as the basis, I put forth my view of context, regarding subjective context as the main aspect of context. Language users are the focal point in communication. Without the functioning of their minds, definitely there won't be any language use. Language users are all unique in this world. When they take part in communication, they take their own individual perspectives. That is to say, interactants all make their own individual contributions to the contextual potential of linguistic interaction. Objective contextual factors can only be activated by language users to play a role in communication. So I suppose that subjective context is the main aspect of context. Then I go further to propose a contextual framework of subjective and objective contexts consisting of respectively the cognitive-affective-conative system and the physical- social- cultural system, with the emphasis on subjective context. Besides, the necessity of...