The Concept Of Context: Its Origin, Definition And Uses

Context is one of those linguistic terms that are constantly used in linguisticstudies but never get clearly defined. As a key concept in linguistics, context has acomparative short history, beginning from its formal presentation by Malinowski in1923to the present day. Nevertheless, it serves as the cornerstone of languagemeaning interpretation. It has attracted a great deal of interest and attention fromgenerations of scholars and researchers. The research of context has gone far beyondthe domain of linguistics, which makes context an engaging topic in interdisciplinarystudies.Context plays such a crucial role in language activity that it would never bepossible to understand certain words, phrases or sentences without taking it intoconsideration. Not only can it help understand what underlines sentences, but also canit disambiguate meaning in understanding. But what discourages all scholars who areinterested in the study of context is that no agreement has been made so far as to whatcontext is. Historically, the study of context in the western world dates back to theancient Roman and Greek times, but in China it dates back to the pre-Chin dynastywarring times. Its research is amazingly prolific, but unfortunately, it is still at apreliminary stage, indicating that there is lack of a systematic account in terms of itsdefinition, components and classification. Therefore, it is quite necessary to provide adiachonic review of the development of context studies for further research.This paper, by taking a literature comparative analysis, attempts to explore theadvancement of context studies from a diachronic perspective. It aims to inquire thequestions that scholars of different times confronted with and the solutions theyconceived in addition to their contribution and limitations. Furthermore, it is intendedto provide a reference for further understanding the nature of context and itsfunctioning mechanism, and offer relevant research literature for future studies.