Lecture 7. Language and context
1. Context in general.
Sociolinguistics deals with two types of context: verbal and social. Verbal context refers to a surrounding text or talk of expression (word, sentence, conversational turn, speech act, etc.). The idea is that verbal context influences the way we understand the expression. Since contemporary linguistics takes texts, discourses or conversations as its objects of analysis, the modern study of verbal context takes place in terms of the analysis of discourse structures and their mutual relationships, for instance the coherence relation (i.e. being logically or aesthetically consistent to form a harmonious whole) between sentences.
Traditionally, in sociolinguistics social contexts were defined in terms of objective social variables, such as those of class, gender or race. Recently, social contexts tend to be defined in terms of social identity interpreted and displayed in text and talk by language users, i.e. by circumstances or events that form a social environment within which something exists or takes place. By social environment scholars understand identical or similar social positions and social roles as a whole that influence the individuals of a group. The social environment of an individual is the culture that he or she was educated and/or lives in, and the people and institutions with whom the person interacts. A given social environment is likely to create a feeling of solidarity amongst its members, who are more likely to keep together, trust and help one another. Members of the same social environment will often think in similar styles and patterns even when their conclusions differ.
T. A. van Dijk rejects objectivist concepts of social context and shows that relevant properties of social situations can only influence language use as subjective definitions of the situation by the participants, as represented and ongoingly updated in specific mental models of language users. The influence of context parameters on the language use or discourse is usually studied in terms of language variation, style or register. The basic assumption here is that language users adapt the properties of their language use (such as intonation, lexical choice, syntax, and other aspects of formulation) to the current communicative situation.
Language, like other forms of social activity, must be appropriate to the speaker using it. Speech behaviour does not only have to be appropriate to the individual, it must be suitable for particular occasions and situations. For example, to give a boxing commentary using the language of the Bible would be either a mistake, or a rough joke! Language varies not only according to the social characteristics of the speakers (such as social class, ethnic group, age and sex) but also according to the social context in which the speakers find themselves. The same speaker uses different linguistic varieties in different situations and for different purposes. The totality of linguistic varieties used in this way by a particular community of speakers can be called the linguistic community's verbal repertoire.
Many social factors can come into play in controlling which variety from this verbal repertoire is actually to be used on a particular occasion. For example, if the speakers are talking to the people they work with about their work, their language is likely to be rather different from that they will use, say, at home with their families. Linguistic varieties that are linked in this way to occupations, professions or topics have been termed registers. In stylistics register is defined as any of the language varieties that a speaker uses in a particular social context. The register of law, for example, is different from the register of medicine, which in turn is different from the language of engineering. Registers are usually characterised solely by vocabulary differences: either by the use of specific words, or by the use of words in a particular sense. For example, bus-company employees are much more likely to call buses with two decks as deckers, while lay people will generally refer to them as double-deckers.
Many other factors connected with the situation, over and above occupations, will also have a linguistic effect. All languages vary, for example, according to whether they are written or spoken. Other things being equal, written English tends to be more formal than spoken one. In French the simple preterite (past historic) tense il donna - 'he gave', is used in the most popular detective fiction, but is rarer in speech, where the perfect form il a donne is normally used instead.
Similarly, the subject matter too will have an effect on the language. Topics such as molecular biology or international economics are likely to produce linguistic varieties, which are more formal than those used in ladies’ chattering or roller-skating. The physical setting and the occasion of language activity will also have some consequences. For instance, academic lectures and ceremonial occasions require to select a relatively formal language than, say, public-house arguments or a family breakfast talk. Linguistic varieties that are linked in this way to the formality of the situation can be termed as styles, and can range from formal to informal.
Styles and registers are in principle independent. The register of football, for example, could co-occur with a formal style (as in a report in a high-status newspaper), or with an informal style (as in a discussion in a pub). Often, however, as in the case of international economics or roller-skating, they will be linked.