The Concept of Context in Linguistic and Discourse Theories

Abstract

The paper provides an overview and critical examination of the concept of context as itdeveloped in various theories of linguistics and discourse analyses. The presented approachesto context belong to two main directions, i.e., social and cognitive. Socially oriented approachesto context do not develop a detailed and coherent theory of context that wouldbe broadly accepted; they even avoid giving its definition, claiming that it is too complex.Cognitive approaches, on the other hand, develop explicit theories of context, but they arecriticized for having numerous deficiencies and therefore cannot be accepted as generallyapplicable.