DOCSLIB.ORG

Language Use in Context

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Language Use in Context Language use in context Janyce Wieb e Graeme Hirst and Diane Horton THIS IS NOT THE FINAL VERSION Authors addresses Wieb e Department of Computer Science and the Computing Research Lab oratory New Mexico State University Box Dept CS Las Cruces NM email wieb ecsnmsuedu phone fax Hirst Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto Ontario Canada fax MS A email ghcstorontoedu phone Department of Computer Science University of Toronto Toronto Ontario Canada Horton MS A email dianehcstorontoedu phone fax Despite the new emphasis on applicationdriven research in computational linguistics much fundamental research remains to b e done In this pap er we describ e recent computational work investigating language use in context This means rst going b eyond sentence b ound oursetreating texts or dialogues as wholes comp osed of interrelated aries and pro cessing disc parts rather than merely as sequences of isolated sentences Any piece of discourse establishes a linguistic context against which subsequent utterances must b e understo o d Second b eyond articipatory context A sp eaker or writer directs an utterance or the linguistic context is the p text toward a hearer or reader and do es so with a particular intent or purp oseto inform to amuse to collab orate in a task p erhaps The form and content of the utterance are chosen accordingly and the listener or reader must infer this intent as part of understanding We will discuss the comprehension and pro duction of language lo oking at b oth texts and dialogues A text to b e pro cessed might b e for example a newspap er or magazine article o d or that is b eing translated into another language or whose content is to b e understo gue to b e pro cessed might abstracted in an information storage and retrieval system A dialo b e a conversation sp oken or typ ed b etween a human and a computer in service of some collab orative task Many of the problems that we shall describ e b elow o ccur in b oth kinds of discourse We will use the terms speaker and writer almost interchangeably and similarly he arer and reader The underlying goal of the research describ ed in this sp ecial issue is to move b eyond toy systems and come to grips with real language While the research describ ed in the other pap ers in this issue fo cuses on robustly pro cessing massive amounts of text the work describ ed here fo cuses on understanding in computational terms the complexities and subtleties of language as p eople really use it In a pap er of this length we cannot hop e to describ e all of the recent imp ortant work addressing language use in context For example we will not discuss work on pronoun reso lution ellipsis metaphor or many asp ects of b elief ascription STR UCTURE BEYOND THE SENTENCE BOUNDARY Discourse segmentation Discourse has a rich structure Sentences group together and there are a variety of ways in which they might b e related to one another Understanding what a discourse means requires determining how the various pieces t together Consider the following excerpt from the intro duction to a textb o ok on programming in C { One of the central goals of this text is to enable teachers to manage Cs inherent complexity Managing complexity however is precisely what we do as programmers When we are faced with a problem that is to o complex for immediate solution we divide it into smaller pieces and consider each one indep endently Moreover when the complexity of one of those pieces crosses a certain threshold it makes sense to isolate that complexity by dening a separate abstraction that has a simple interface The interface protects clients from the underlying details of the abstraction thereby simplifying the conceptual structure { The same approach works for teaching programming To make the material easier for students to learn this text adopts a librarybased 1 approach that emphasizes the principle of abstraction When a p erson reads this excerpt he or she gets more from it than just the meanings of e relationships among the individual sentences Understanding the rhetorical or coherenc pieces of the text is an imp ortant asp ect of understanding the text as a whole For example sentences give sp ecic details that expand on what is said in sentence Moreover text has relationships at many levels for example not only are sentences related to sentence but they have relationships among themselves as well Fortunately there are sometimes cue phrases or textual markings that help the reader gure out the relationships in sentence for and in sp oken dialogue intonation can help to o The word however instance signals some sort of contrast with what was said in Readers have to recover the structure of a discourse not only so that they can infer the rela tionships among the pieces but also b ecause the structure constrains other essential asp ects of understanding such as guring out what a pronoun refers to Consider this conversation A Sheila wants you to call her ab out the bicycle Has she found a ro ommate yet B A Yeah Her old friend Linda is moving here from Waterlo o to start a new job She moves in next week Anyway you should phone her to day The pronoun her in sentence clearly refers to Sheila even though it was Linda who was just referred to by she in the previous sentence The structure of the dialogue can help the reader to identify the correct referent Sentences interrupt what was under discussion in but sentence returns to the topic of Notice that the cue phrase anyway p ossibly accompanied by a small pause or change in pitch patterns gives a strong hint of this structure The structure constrains the p ossible referents for the pronoun her in the referent is more likely to come from sentence than from In fact the p erception of the structure of the discourse and the interpretation of pronouns constrain one another In addition to relationships concerning the content of the text there are relationships concerning the writers or sp eakers intentions and the two are closely linked In example the author had a reason for writing sentences p erhaps to clarify for the reader what was written in The details given in serve this purp ose of the author There is evidence that p eople do p erform this kind of segmentation of discourse during understanding For example P assonneau and Litman and Hirschb erg and Grosz found 1 Eric S Rob erts The Art and Science of C A LibraryBased Introduction to Computer Science Addison Wesley page xv statistically signicant agreement among sub jects who were asked to p erform a discourse segmentation task How might a computer p erform such segmentation or pro duce language from which such segments can b e recovered In their study Hirschb erg and Grosz also investigated the relationship b etween features of intonation such as pitch range and timing and the structure of the discourse They found that at b oth the lo cal and global levels of discourse there are statistically signicant correlations b etween certain features of discourse structure and certain intonational features Another imp ortant kind of indication is cue phrases such as anyway however wel l stil l example and now which often provide explicit information ab out the structure of a for discourse For example now can b e used to intro duce a new subtopic But many words that serve as cue phrases also have other usesfor example now can simply mean at this time To see how these ambiguities could b e resolved Hirschb erg and Litman studied cuephrase usage in sp eech and develop ed a metho d for disambiguating cue phrases by means of intonational features of sp eech They also discovered textual features of transcrib ed sp eech such as punctuation that are relatively easy to extract from transcriptions and can b e used as additional aids in cuephrase disambiguation Much computational work in discourse pro cessing has assumed that cuephrase disambiguation is feasible Hirschb erg and Litmans ndings provide empirical supp ort for this assumption The research describ ed ab ove has obvious applications in b oth sp eech generation and sp eech understanding Sp eech generation systems can use intonation and cue phrases as p eo ple do to help to break the discourse into appropriate segments thereby assisting the listener in accomplishing other tasks that are crucial to understanding sp eech such as determining the referents of noun phrases and recognizing the rhetorical and intentional relationships b etween segments And sp eech recognition systems can use intonational features and cue phrases and p erhaps also textual features if the sp eech has b een transcrib ed to help p erform segmentation and infer relationships b etween segments In fact ATT Bell Lab oratories TexttoSp eech System based on Hirschb erg and Litmans work do es b oth it disambiguates cue phrases in text on the basis of textual features and then generates cue phrases in such a way that the intonational features suggest how the cue phrases are b eing used Relationships within discourse segments We now turn to some recent work that investigates the structure within discourse segments Hobbs et al and others have suggested that during understanding p eople make de feasible assumptions that is assumptions that are consistent with what they b elieve but which can b e later overridden by contrary evidence Such assumptions lead them to a plau y and Jensen apply this approach sible coherent interpretation of the discourse Zadrozn holistically to paragraphs with the goal of nding interpretations of individual
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Logophoricity in Finnish
    Open Linguistics 2018; 4: 630–656 Research Article Elsi Kaiser* Effects of perspective-taking on pronominal reference to humans and animals: Logophoricity in Finnish https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2018-0031 Received December 19, 2017; accepted August 28, 2018 Abstract: This paper investigates the logophoric pronoun system of Finnish, with a focus on reference to animals, to further our understanding of the linguistic representation of non-human animals, how perspective-taking is signaled linguistically, and how this relates to features such as [+/-HUMAN]. In contexts where animals are grammatically [-HUMAN] but conceptualized as the perspectival center (whose thoughts, speech or mental state is being reported), can they be referred to with logophoric pronouns? Colloquial Finnish is claimed to have a logophoric pronoun which has the same form as the human-referring pronoun of standard Finnish, hän (she/he). This allows us to test whether a pronoun that may at first blush seem featurally specified to seek [+HUMAN] referents can be used for [-HUMAN] referents when they are logophoric. I used corpus data to compare the claim that hän is logophoric in both standard and colloquial Finnish vs. the claim that the two registers have different logophoric systems. I argue for a unified system where hän is logophoric in both registers, and moreover can be used for logophoric [-HUMAN] referents in both colloquial and standard Finnish. Thus, on its logophoric use, hän does not require its referent to be [+HUMAN]. Keywords: Finnish, logophoric pronouns, logophoricity, anti-logophoricity, animacy, non-human animals, perspective-taking, corpus 1 Introduction A key aspect of being human is our ability to think and reason about our own mental states as well as those of others, and to recognize that others’ perspectives, knowledge or mental states are distinct from our own, an ability known as Theory of Mind (term due to Premack & Woodruff 1978).
    [Show full text]
  • Context Pragmatics Definition of Pragmatics
    Pragmatics • to ask a question: Maybe Sandy’s reassuring you that Kim’ll get home okay, even though she’s walking home late at night. Sandy: She’s got more than lipstick and Kleenex in that purse of hers. • What is Pragmatics? You: Kim’s got a knife? • Context and Why It’s Important • Speech Acts – Direct Speech Acts – Indirect Speech Acts • How To Make Sense of Conversations – Cooperative Principle – Conversational Maxims Linguistics 201, Detmar Meurers Handout 3 (April 9, 2004) 1 3 Definition of Pragmatics Context Pragmatics is the study of how language is used and how language is integrated in context. What exactly are the factors which are relevant for an account of how people use language? What is linguistic context? Why must we consider context? We distinguish several types of contextual information: (1) Kim’s got a knife 1. Physical context – this encompasses what is physically present around the speakers/hearers at the time of communication. What objects are visible, where Sentence (1) can be used to accomplish different things in different contexts: the communication is taking place, what is going on around, etc. • to make an assertion: You’re sitting on a beach, thinking about how to open a coconut, when someone (2) a. Iwantthat book. observes “Kim’s got a knife”. (accompanied by pointing) b. Be here at 9:00 tonight. • to give a warning: (place/time reference) Kim’s trying to bully you and Sandy into giving her your lunch money, and Sandy just turns around and starts to walk away. She doesn’t see Kim bring out the butcher knife, and hears you yell behind her, “Kim’s got a knife!” 2 4 2.
    [Show full text]
  • Arxiv:2106.08037V1 [Cs.CL] 15 Jun 2021 Alternative Ways the World Could Be
    The Possible, the Plausible, and the Desirable: Event-Based Modality Detection for Language Processing Valentina Pyatkin∗ Shoval Sadde∗ Aynat Rubinstein Bar Ilan University Bar Ilan University Hebrew University of Jerusalem [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Paul Portner Reut Tsarfaty Georgetown University Bar Ilan University [email protected] [email protected] Abstract (1) a. We presented a paper at ACL’19. Modality is the linguistic ability to describe b. We did not present a paper at ACL’20. events with added information such as how de- sirable, plausible, or feasible they are. Modal- The propositional content p =“present a paper at ity is important for many NLP downstream ACL’X” can be easily verified for sentences (1a)- tasks such as the detection of hedging, uncer- (1b) by looking up the proceedings of the confer- tainty, speculation, and more. Previous studies ence to (dis)prove the existence of the relevant pub- that address modality detection in NLP often p restrict modal expressions to a closed syntac- lication. The same proposition is still referred to tic class, and the modal sense labels are vastly in sentences (2a)–(2d), but now in each one, p is different across different studies, lacking an ac- described from a different perspective: cepted standard. Furthermore, these senses are often analyzed independently of the events that (2) a. We aim to present a paper at ACL’21. they modify. This work builds on the theoreti- b. We want to present a paper at ACL’21. cal foundations of the Georgetown Gradable Modal Expressions (GME) work by Rubin- c.
    [Show full text]
  • Semantics and Context-Dependence: Towards a Strawsonian Account∗
    Semantics and Context-Dependence: Towards a Strawsonian Account∗ Richard G Heck, Jr Brown University Some time in the mid-1990s, I began to encounter variations on the following argument, which was popular with certain of my colleagues and with students who had fallen under their influence. (i) Semantics is about truth-conditions. (ii) Only utterances have truth-conditions. (iii) Hence, a semantic theory must assign truth-conditions to utterances. (iv) Only a theory that incorporated a complete theory of human rationality could assign truth-conditions to utterances. (v) So there is no such thing as a semantic theory (in anything like the usual sense). The argument need not be formulated in terms of truth-conditions. The first premise could equally be stated as: Semantics is about the expression of propositions. The rest of the argument then adapts smoothly. So (i) is meant to be obvious and uncontroversial. With regard to the second premise, it is important to appreciate the force of the word “only”: (ii) asserts that (perhaps with a very few exceptions, such as statements of pure mathematics) sentences never have truth-conditions; only utterances do. So what underwrites (ii) is not just the existence of context-dependence but, rather, its ubiquity. As has become clear over the last few decades, it is not just the obvious expressions—like “I”, “here”, “this”, and the like—whose meaning seems to vary with the circumstances of utterance. All of the following sentences seem as if they could express different propositions on different occasions, due to context-dependence connected with the italicized expressions: • No-one passed the test.
    [Show full text]
  • Lexical Semantics Ling571 Deep Processing Techniques for NLP February 23, 2015 What Is a Plant?
    Lexical Semantics Ling571 Deep Processing Techniques for NLP February 23, 2015 What is a plant? There are more kinds of plants and animals in the rainforests than anywhere else on Earth. Over half of the millions of known species of plants and animals live in the rainforest. Many are found nowhere else. There are even plants and animals in the rainforest that we have not yet discovered. The Paulus company was founded in 1938. Since those days the product range has been the subject of constant expansions and is brought up continuously to correspond with the state of the art. We’re engineering, manufacturing, and commissioning world-wide ready-to-run plants packed with our comprehensive know-how. Lexical Semantics So far, word meanings discrete Constants, predicates, functions Lexical Semantics So far, word meanings discrete Constants, predicates, functions Focus on word meanings: Relations of meaning among words Similarities & differences of meaning in sim context Lexical Semantics So far, word meanings discrete Constants, predicates, functions Focus on word meanings: Relations of meaning among words Similarities & differences of meaning in sim context Internal meaning structure of words Basic internal units combine for meaning Terminology Lexeme: Form: Orthographic/phonological + meaning Terminology Lexeme: Form: Orthographic/phonological + meaning Represented by lemma Lemma: citation form; infinitive in inflection Sing: sing, sings, sang, sung,… Terminology Lexeme: Form: Orthographic/phonological + meaning Represented by lemma Lemma: citation form; infinitive in inflection Sing: sing, sings, sang, sung,… Lexicon: finite list of lexemes Sources of Confusion Homonymy: Words have same form but different meanings Generally same POS, but unrelated meaning Sources of Confusion Homonymy: Words have same form but different meanings Generally same POS, but unrelated meaning E.g.
    [Show full text]
  • Person, Context and Perspective
    To appear in Rivista di Linguistica – Italian Journal of Linguistics in 2005. Person, Context and Perspective Ken Safir, Rutgers University ABSTRACT: It is argued that the indexicality of first person pronouns is arises from a restriction on the pronouns themselves, as opposed to any operator that binds them. The nature of this restriction is an asyntactic constant function that picks out individuals to the context of utterance (following Kaplan, 1989)). Constant function pronouns do not require an antecedent, neither an operator nor an argument, although this does not prevent them from participating in bound readings if an appropriate antecedent is introduced. The notion that agents of contexts and agents of propositional attitudes are versions of the same operator-variable relation is thus rejected, along with certain less fine-grained versions of the nature of de se interpretation. Consequently, indexical pronouns such as first person ones contrast with logophoric pronouns, which are necessarily operator-bound by perspectival operators introduced by propositional attitude verbs. Scope-sensitive properties of operator-binding and the perspectival interpretations that are imposed on logophoricity distinguish the latter from constant function phenomena, which are sensitive neither to scope, as it is usually treated, nor perspectival shifts. Constant function phenomena are also detectable as restrictions on third person forms, and two such examples are lightly explored: the English generic pronoun one and the proximate/obviative distinction in languages like Fox. 1.0 Introduction In this essay I defend the thesis that the indexicality of first person pronouns is a restriction on the pronouns themselves, as opposed to any operator that binds them.
    [Show full text]
  • Pragmatics Context Deixis
    Llinguistics 3rd Year College of Education for Women / Tikrit University English Department Lecturer: Dr. Israa Burhanuddin Abdurrahman Pragmatics The study of what speakers mean, or 'speaker meaning', is called Pragmatics. Pragmatics is the study of invisible meaning or how we recognize what is meant even when it is not actually said. Speakers depend on a lot of shared assumptions and expectations. You use the meanings of the words, in combination, and the context in which they occur, and you try to arrive at what the writer of the sign intended his message to convey Context • We have got two kinds of contexts. 1- one kind is best described as linguistic context, also known as cotext. • The co-text of a word is the set of other words used in the same phrase or sentence. • e.g. I get to the bank to cash a cheque. • Bank is homonym. By looking at other words in the sentence we know which type of bank is intended. 2- another type of context is described as physical context . Our • understanding of what we read and hear is tied to the physical context, particularly the time and place. • e.g. The word bank on the wall of a building in a city. Deixis • There are some words in the language that cannot be interpreted at all, unless the physical context is known. “here, there, this, that, now, then, yesterday, come” , pronouns, such as “I, you, him, her, them”, e.g. You will have to bring that back tomorrow, because they are not here now. This sentence is vague.
    [Show full text]
  • Indexicality and Context-Shift François Recanati
    Indexicality and context-shift François Recanati To cite this version: François Recanati. Indexicality and context-shift. Workshop on indexicals, speech acts and logophors, Nov 2004, Harvard University. ijn_00000552 HAL Id: ijn_00000552 https://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/ijn_00000552 Submitted on 29 Nov 2004 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Indexicality and context-shift François Recanati Institut Jean Nicod/Harvard University Workshop on Indexicality, Speech Acts and Logophors Harvard University, November 20th, 2004 1. Preliminaries 1.1 Indexicality and semantic under-specification Indexicals are expressions whose semantic value systematically depends upon the context of utterance, and whose linguistic meaning somehow encodes this dependency upon the context of utterance. Thus I do not count as indexical in the strict sense those expressions whose semantic value depends upon the context merely because they are semantically under- specified and function as free variables to which a value must be contextually assigned. Whenever an expression
    [Show full text]
  • Context Effects and Lexical Ambiguity Processing: an Activation-Based Account Frazier Orgain
    University of Richmond UR Scholarship Repository Master's Theses Student Research 5-2002 Context effects and lexical ambiguity processing: an activation-based account Frazier Orgain Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.richmond.edu/masters-theses Recommended Citation Orgain, Frazier, "Context effects and lexical ambiguity processing: an activation-based account" (2002). Master's Theses. Paper 810. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Research at UR Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Master's Theses by an authorized administrator of UR Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Project Name: ~~\V\,__ f yo..,:t;t/( Z,OO "Z- Date: Patron: Specialist: ~/l'l//S \)\ \) ~iL Project Description: N~tt,r Tke!~ Hardware Specs: CONTEXT EFFECTS AND LEXICAL AMBIGUITY PROCESSING: AN ACTIVATION-BASED ACCOUNT By Frazer Orgain B.S., Virginia Military Institute, 1999 A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Richmond in Candidacy for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS m Psychology May, 2002 University of Richmond, Virginia I certify that I have read this thesis and find that, in scope and quality, it satisfies the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. Ping Li, Thesis Advisor Jane M.~ ~ &wi Beth Crawford · 11 Abstract Many studies have been conducted to test the effects of ambiguous words in sentence processing. There are two views: the modularity hypothesis and the interactive hypothesis that dominate this field of study. The effect of ambiguity has been tested in many ways, including gating, cross-modal priming, naming, and self-paced reading.
    [Show full text]
  • Knowledge Frames and Speech Act Comprehension * Teun A. Van Dijk
    CONTEXT AND COGNITION: KNOWLEDGE FRAMES AND SPEECH ACT COMPREHENSION * TEUN A. VAN DIJK This paper is about the cognitive foundations of pragmatic theories. Besides the fact that the usual appropriateness conditions for speech acts, which are given in cognitive terms, such as S knows/believes/wants ... (that) p , require empirical investigation, a sound theory of prag- matics must also explain how certain utterances in certain contexts are actually understood as certain speech acts. Speech act comprehension is based on rules and strategies for so-called context analysis , in which (epistemic) frames play an important role in the analysis of social context, social frames, and interaction type. Results of context analysis are then matched with those of pragmatic sentence analysis, viz. the illocutionary act indicating devices. Finally, some results from the cognitive analysis of discourse processing are applied in a brief account of the comprehension of speech act sequences and macro-speech acts. 1. The foundations of pragmatics The philosophical and linguistic study of pragmatics requires an analysis of its foundations. This basis of pragmatic theories is on the one hand conceptual, e.g. in the analysis of action and interaction, and on the other hand empirical, viz. in the investigation of the psychological and social properties of language processing in communicative interaction. One of the crucial components in an integrated theory of communicative inter- action by natural language is constituted by a cognitive theory of language use. Such a cognitive theory will not only provide insight into the processes and structures involved in the actual production, comprehension, storage, reproduction * This paper is intended as an introductory survey of some problems in the interdisciplinary domain of pragmatics and cognitive psychology.
    [Show full text]
  • Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language Muminat Kerimova Florida International University
    Florida International University FIU Digital Commons MA in Linguistics Final Projects College of Arts, Sciences & Education 2017 Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language Muminat Kerimova Florida International University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/linguistics_ma Part of the Linguistics Commons Recommended Citation Kerimova, Muminat, "Long-Distance Reflexivization and Logophoricity in the Dargin Language" (2017). MA in Linguistics Final Projects. 3. https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/linguistics_ma/3 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in MA in Linguistics Final Projects by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida LONG-DISTANCE REFLEXIVIZATION AND LOGOPHORICITY IN THE DARGIN LANGUAGE A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in LINGUISTICS by Muminat Kerimova 2017 ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS LONG-DISTANCE REFLEXIVIZATION AND LOGOPHORICITY IN THE DARGIN LANGUAGE by Muminat Kerimova Florida International University, 2017 Miami, Florida Professor Ellen Thompson, Major Professor The study of anaphora challenges us to determine the conditions under which the pronouns of a language are associated with possible antecedents. One of the theoretical questions is whether the distribution of pronominal forms is best explained by a syntactic, semantic or discourse level analysis. A more practical question is how we distinguish between anaphoric elements, e.g. what are the borders between the notions of pronouns, locally bound reflexives and long-distance reflexives? The study analyzes the anaphora device saj in Dargin that is traditionally considered to be a long-distance reflexivization language.
    [Show full text]
  • "Context in the Analysis of Discourse and Interaction" In: The
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Open Repository and Bibliography - Luxembourg Context in the Analysis of Discourse and Interaction INGRID DE SAINT-GEORGES Context is a central concept in the analysis of discourse and interaction in all the major research traditions in applied and sociolinguistics. Early linguistics did not display much sensitivity to it (Scollon, 1998, p. 80) and tended to study utterances in isolation and with- out reference to context. Today, however, there seems to be a general consensus around the idea that we understand utterances because they fi t or make sense within particular situations. Studies of discourse and interaction include some orientation to context, if nothing else because “language is always produced by someone to someone else, at a particular time and place, with a purpose and so forth” (Blommaert, 2005, p. 39). Beyond general agreement that “context should be taken into account” (Jones, 2004, p. 22), however, researchers often disagree about what should count as context, or how much context should be taken into account in the analysis. It could be argued that the way context is treated is in fact what usually sets apart and distinguishes different approaches and research traditions (Tracy, 1998). Conversation analysts, for example, often described as interested in identifying universal conversational rules, usually advocate limiting the study of context to those elements which are evoked in the sequential unfolding of the text or the interaction. Institutional context, social background, gender of the participants, and so on therefore should only be attended to by the analyst if they show up in the interaction and are made relevant to the ongoing exchange by the participants.
    [Show full text]