The Study Of Context As A Pragmatic Constraint On Meaning Production

This thesis is dedicated to the study of contextual constraint on meaningproduction and interpretation. It is doubtlessly in the sphere of pragmatics, andpragmatics takes the study of contextual meaning as its focus. According to the NewOxford Dictionary (2001), context refers to the circumstances that form the setting foran event, statement or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood andassessed. Context can also refer to the parts of something written or spoken thatimmediately precede and follow a word or passage and clarify its meaning. Thuscontext is of crucial importance in meaning production and interpretation. This thesisaims to provide an illustration of the contextual constraint on meaning productionfrom four prominent contextual factors on the basis of Subjectivity and Objectivity ofcontext proposed by Professor Wang Dechun and the Adaption theory by Verschueren.This thesis consists of five parts. In the first part, the author states the researchpurpose, perspective of the study and the significance of the thesis. In the second partthe author recalls the relevant research conditions both at home and abroad and laysthe foundation for the current thesis. In the third part the author discusses meaningand context respectively and hence reveals the profound and close relation betweenmeaning and context—meaning produced and interpreted in context. In the fourth part,the author provides a detailed illustration and elaboration of the contextual constrainton meaning through four contextual factors as follows: the physical factors, the socialfactors, the cultural factors and the psychological factors. The physical factors ofcontext are such as time and location of the communicators, for in different time andlocation the speaker will choose different ways to express himself or herself and thehearer will perceive the meaning accordingly. And then the author illustrates theconstraint of the social identity of participants; people of different social statuses areinclined to give different wordings in communication and some unique social identitypossessing the special power will produce the phenomenal effect in speaking, thusleading to meaning change. Thirdly the author gives an account of the cultural factors of context; different cultural tradition will make both the speaker and hearer perceivethe meaning from their own cultural belief and thus may shape the meaningproduction and interpretation. Finally the author gives an elaboration of thepsychological factors of context which also exert some constraint on meaning.Evidently the communicators share some common knowledge due to life experience.The speaker will usually make his or her communicational intention explicit for thehearer to infer in the specific circumstances. Speakers with different communicationalpurposes will employ different ways to express themselves and make the meaningtotally different.This thesis adopts a pragmatic perspective. For the author holds such a firmbelief that context is one of the main concerns of pragmatics and its foremost functionis to explicate meaning and ensure the utterance properly conveyed and interpreted.Due to the inclusiveness and expansiveness of context, the author mainly focuses onfour contextual factors related to subjective and objective context to discuss theirconstraint on meaning, with the hope to provide some references to those whoseacademic interest is the studies of context.