2. Levels of contextual abstraction.

What is meant by “context”? Three levels of abstraction can be suggested: the

Immediate situation of utterance, the context of utterance and the universe of discourse. The relationship between situation, context and universe are related in exactly the same way as utterance is to sentence and sentence to proposition, i. e. the situation is contained in the context and context in the universe of discourse. Thus:

3. Types of contexts.

The above-mentioned observations allow us to distinguish between the macro context (global context), communicative context and micro context (local context), i. e. the context of a particular utterance. In practice interpreters deal with these three types of overlapping contexts each time they have to perceive, understanding and translate messages of the SL speaker. These overlapping contexts are shown on the scheme below:

4. Contextual relationships.

We have assumed that messages “operate” within three types of contexts mentioned above or, to be more precise, communicative and macro contexts “surround” each

particular message in space and in time. Therefore, elements of meaning of each message have to be related to these surrounding contexts in some way. It is generally assumed that such contextual relationships of messages may be of three kinds:

a)anaphoric or “backward” relationships, when the meaning of an element becomes clear through the reference to the preceding elements of the micro or communicative context,

e. g. :

China’s President continues his visit to former Soviet republics - this time to Ukraine.

It’s the first official visit by China’s leader to the independent Republic.

(Euro News),

where the meaning of the independent Republic is determined by the lexical element Ukraine in the previous sentence.

b) cataphoric or “forward” relationships, when the meaning of an element becomes clear through the reference to the oncoming, “expected” elements of the micro or communicative context, e. g.:

Russian and American troops have been taking part in “Peacekeeper-94” - the first Russian-American joint military exercise

(Euro News),

where the meaning of “Peacekeeper-94” become clear from the rest of the utterance.

c) exophoric or “outward” relationships, when the meaning of an element becomes clear through the reference to the macro context, i. e. to the background knowledge, cultural and subject field competence of the addressee and to the knowledge about “the world”, e.g.:

Veteran Nazi hunter Simon Weisenthal has been awarded one of Poland’s top decorations by President Walesa. The 85-year old Auschwitz death camp survivor is in Poland at Walesa’s invitation

(Euro News),

where general cultural competence will help to translate Auschwitz death camp as табір смерті Освенцім.