NOTION OF CONTEXT

(PART 2)
Firth and the context of situation
The influence of Malinowski’s view about the context of situation is also visible in the work of J.R.
Firth. He adopted Malinowski’s notion but in his linguistic theory the context of situation was the
whole cultural setting in which the speech act was embedded, more than the context of human
activity concurrent with, immediately preceding, and following the speech act.
According to Firth, the categories brought into relation by the context of situation are:
1.The relevant features of participants: persons, personalities.
• The verbal action of the participants.
• The non-verbal action of the participants.
2.The relevant objects.
3.The effect of the verbal action.
The following text taken from Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress (1998) can be analyzed according to Firth:
Susan’s Volvo sedan rolled to a stop in the shadow of the ten-foot-high, barbed Cyclone fence. A young
guard placed his hand on the roof.
‘ID, please,’
Susan obliged and settled in for the usual half-minute wait. The officer ran her card through a
computerized scanner. Finally he looked up. ‘ Thank you, Ms Fletcher.’ He gave an imperceptible sign,
and the gate swung open.
Half a mile ahead Susan repeated the entire procedure at an equally imposing electrified fence. Come on,
guys ... I’ve only been through here a million times. As she approached the final checkpoint, a stocky
sentry with two attack dogs and a machine gun glanced down at her license plate and waved her through.
She followed Canine Road for another 250 yards and pulled into Employee Lot C. Unbelievable, she
thought. Twenty-six thousand employees and a twelve-billion- dollar budget; you’d think they could make
it through the weekend without me. Susan gunned the car into her reserved spot and killed the engine.
The relevant features of participants (persons, personalities):
1. Susan Fletcher, NSA (National Security Agency) head cryptographer
2. Young guard
3. Stocky sentry
(i) The verbal action of the participants: ‘ID, please’ ... Thank you, Ms Fletcher ...
(ii) The non-verbal action of the participants: Susan’s Volvo sedan rolled to a stop ... A young
guard placed his hand on the roof ... He gave an imperceptible sign ... a stocky sentry with two attack
dogs and a machine gun glanced down at her license plate and waved her through .
The relevant objects: ten-foot-high barbed Cyclone fence ... her card ...
equally imposing electrified fence ... final checkpoint ... machine gun
The effect of the verbal action: Susan obliged and settled in ...
According to Firth’s theories, the meaning of what is going on is clear when all these features are
analyzed and considered together.
Task: Analyze the text according to categories of Firth:
AN EXCITING VISIT TO ASIA
Liz was excited. She was going to Asia with her mom. Neither of them had ever traveled out of the United States before. They
were going to fly to Hong Kong. After staying in Hong Kong for three nights, they would travel on their cruise ship to Shanghai
and Beijing.
"Beijing is inland, so we have to take about a two ‐hour bus ride to get there from the port. I forget the name of the port.
Anyway, we're going to see the Great Wall, the Tiananmen Square, and the Forbidden City. It's going to be so cool!" she told
her neighbor Jane.
From China, the cruise ship would go to Pusan in South Korea, and finally to Tokyo. From Tokyo, they would catch a flight
back to Los Angeles.
"The trip is going to last three weeks. It's only going to cost us $2,800 each, IF we can control our urge to shop," she laughed.
"I hope your trip is more fun than mine was," said Jane. "I took a cruise to the Bahamas, but almost all the passengers got sick.
I caught some kind of virus that made me throw up for almost three days. They gave us a discount that we could use on a future
trip. Ha! No more cruising for me."
"We've heard about those disasters," said Liz. "Mom and I are going to be washing our hands every 30 minutes, and we're
bringing surgical masks with us."
 SOCIAL ROLES AND CONTEXT
What Firth strongly believes in is that any social person in the multiplicity of roles they take in their
life and in the multiplicity of contexts of situation they find themselves in, is not free to say what
they want.
This reinforces the relevance of the context in the identification of the meaning of an utterance: since
the linguistic events and the roles we perform in given situations influence the language we use, each
utterance has to be considered in the context in which it is produced.
An example of how we change our language according to the role we are performing is provided
below. Let us suppose we realize that the overcrowded room we are in would need some fresh air. A
friend of ours is close to the window. We may verbalize our feeling this way:
- It’s so hot in here! Open the window, please.
However, if we suppose that we are in a public place (school, university, office, ...) and we want to
ask someone we do not know for permission to open the window, our request would sound as:
- Excuse me, would it be possible to open the window, please? The room would need some fresh air.
These examples show the strong relationship between the language we use and the role we perform in context:
to do an exam, to take an exam, and to sit an exam have different levels of formality and, as a consequence, clearly
reflect the statuses and roles of the people participating in the verbal action.
What do the following examples indicate about the level of formality?
Yours sincerely vs Kisses
Would you like a cup of coffee? Vs Do you fancy a cup of coffee?
Let me introduce ….. Vs This is Mike, a pal of mine.
TASK: Give your examples of social roles you acquire in different contexts and how they influence the way you
speak.
This view of language also has important implications in the study of language: if language is systemic, that is to
say if a specific situation attracts a range of words and phrases we are very likely to use, the linguist may identify
scientifically the features of the repeated linguistic events and classify them ( formal/informal: a comrade – a pal,
guy, slang/standard: a chick – a girl, colloquial/academic: memo-memorandum; to scribble – to take notes, a task –
an assignment; British/American: an autumn – a fall etc.)
Give your examples
 HALLIDAY AND THE CONTEXT OF SITUATION
Halliday takes up both Malinowski’s and Firth’s ideas. In order to describe the importance of the
context of situation in communication, he makes us think about the way in which we communicate.
He says:
What is remarkable is how often people do understand each other despite the noise with which we
are continually surrounded. How do we explain the success with which people communicate? The
short answer, I shall suggest, is that we know what the other person is going to say. We may be partly
surprised; but the surprise will always be within the framework of something that we knew was
going to happen.
For example: a noisy bar and a bartender addressing you,
a person with a map in the street,
a clerk in the airport
Halliday says:
The text is an instance of the process and product of social meaning in a particular context of
situation. Now the context of situation, the context in which the text unfolds, is encapsulated in the
text through a systematic relationship between the social environment on the one hand, and the
functional organization of language on the other.
In order to show the systematic relationship existing between language and the social environment
he provides his vision of the context of situation, adapted below:
• the field of discourse, that is to say what is going on (topic, event), the nature of the social action;
• the tenor of discourse, which refers to the participants, their statuses and roles, their permanent
and temporary relationships;
• the mode of discourse, that is to say the role language is playing, the symbolic organization of the
text, its status, its function in the context, and the channel and specific vocabulary.
 FIELD OF DISCOURSE
The variable of the field of discourse, which refers to the topic of the language event, operates a
constraint on the lexis and expressions available for use.
For example:
absolve and acquit. Both mean «звільняти» in Ukrainian. However, the first of these two verbs
belongs to the set of lexis and expressions of a religious register and is likely to occur with words
such as confessional, priest, go in peace, let us pray, church. Conversely, acquit is used in the legal
register and will co-occur with items such as charge, court, law case, not guilty.
The word depression may co-occur with different items and may have different meanings depending
on the register in which it is included. In the language of medicine it co-occurs with suffer from
whereas in the language of economics it is included in expressions such as periods of economic
depression. Thus, it will be translated differently into a target language.
Task: Think about the field of discourse for the pairs of words:
pure/clean
pair/couple
to book/to order,
solution/decision,
assessment/estimation/evaluation;
prescription/recipe;
to cheat/betray;
answer/reply
Task: How can the words “solution”, “spirit”, “plaster, “glass”, “gown”, “minister’, “director” ,bill”
be translated depending on different fields they may be used in?
 TENOR OF DISCOURSE
The variable of the tenor of discourse, referring to the participants, constrains the degree of formality of a
language event.
Levels of formality are formal, neutral (semi-formal), and informal.
As already said above with the example of to do an exam and to sit an exam, formality depends on the
statuses of the participants. May I borrow your pen, please? Could you give me your pen, please? and
Give me your pen! clearly exemplify a different relationship between the participants of the two language
events. The first example has a more formal style and presupposes that the participants do not know each
other (or do not know each other well). In the second example, the use of “could” shows less formal
relationships, while the imperative form and the absence of expressions such as please reveals the high
degree of familiarity between the interlocutors.
Task: How can modals shall, may, could, can show different degree of formality?
 MODE OF DISCOURSE
The variable of the mode of discourse refers to the medium (written, spoken), channel (e-mail, article, essay, ...) and as well
as the rhetorical mode (expository, instructive, persuasive, etc.) chosen for the language used. The constraints operated on
language by this variable include the differences between spoken and written language and the format that different
genres should have.
For example: In English, contractions should not be used in formal written texts, and newspaper headlines have got no
auxiliaries and articles used etc.
Task: Define peculiarities of mode of discourse (specific language units, words, phrases) for:
Media language (newspapers, magazines)
Application letters and CVs
Songs
Presentations and public speech
Reviews
For and against essays
Social networks
 MODE OF DISCOURSE OF MEDIA TEXTS
• 1. Short Words
• Headlines often use very short words to make an impact. These are sometimes violent words e.g. Thugs
battle. A thug is a violent person and a battle is a fight (it is a noun and a verb). This headline could also
read Some thugs have been fighting, however this does not have the same impact as the short headline
above.
• 2. Omitted Words
• Headlines often don't include verbs and articles, for example, More MP resignations over expenses row. If
we put this into spoken English then the sentence would read More MPs have resigned over the row about
expenses. This means that Members of Parliament have left their jobs because of the disagreements over
what they should be able to claim on expenses.
• Another example would be New flood alert. This means that there have been warnings that there could be
more flooding.
• 3. Word Play
• A key part of newspaper language is word play. Words with two different meanings in
English can be used in an amusing and entertaining way. This is called a pun. For
example, Short-staffed. This headline plays with the word short. Short-staffed means that
there are not enough staff to do the job. However, this article refers to the fact that all the
staff at the factory were short because of their height (all of them are shorter than 1.7m)!
• Another example would be Police found drunk in street. This headline plays with the
word drunk.
One meaning is that the Police were found drunk in the street. The second meaning is
that the Police found a drunk man in the street.
• 4. Noun Strings

It is also common to have a row of nouns in a headline. For example, Prime Minister's traffic
headache. This means that the Prime Minister has had some sort of problem with traffic.
Another example would be Teenage pregnancy increase. This means that there has been an
increase in teenage pregnancy.
• 5. Alliteration

Alliteration is when a sound is repeated. It is often used in poetry as well as newspapers.

Newspapers use it to attract the eye and make it more memorable. For example, Media makes
Madonna Mad. The 'm' is repeated 4 times.
• 6. Ambiguity
• Headlines are often ambiguous making the reader look at the article. If we take the above headline the
word 'mad' is ambiguous because it could mean insane or it could mean very angry.
• 7. Verb Changes
Verbs are often changed in headlines. The simple tense is used instead of the continuous or perfect tense and
the infinitive is used for the future. For example, Brown resigns. This is used instead of Brown has resigned.
Another example would be PM to visit USA. This is used instead of The Prime Minister's going to visit the
USA.
8. Omission of articles and auxiliaries in headlines.
9. A lot of acronyms (NASA, NATO etc.), neologisms (to google, crowdsourcing, paywall, chill out,
staycation etc.), phrasal verbs (to put off, to look up to smb, to fall out with etc.)
Situation 2. In a bar
I’d been complaining to a coworker, Amy, about having to move to the burbs for my job. She said that there were plenty of things to do outside of the city and
invited me to a bar she likes.
…
Amy: Hey, there you are.
Mykhailo: Hey, so this is the famous McQ’s you’ve been talking about.
Amy: This is it. What would you like to drink? They have several beers on tap and pretty good well drinks.
Mykhailo: I think I’ll get a couple of shots.
Amy: On a Wednesday night? You guys do party hard in the city.
Mykhailo: I’ve had a really rough week and I welcome any excuse to let my hair down. That said, I won’t be getting stinking drunk on a school night. You
were right. This place is nice. It even has a dance floor.
Amy: On the weekends, there’s a live band or a DJ, although there’s also a cover charge on Fridays and Saturdays.
Mykhailo: So you do know how to party in the burbs.
Amy: Didn’t I tell you?
Mykhailo: But for me to get a thorough impression of the burbs, I’ll have to come here to check it out this weekend. What are you doing Saturday night?
Amy: Actually, I plan on coming here.
Mykhailo: Want some company?
Amy: Sure, why not!
 TASK: ANALYZE TWO TEXTS IN TERMS OF FIELD OF DISCOURSE, TENOR OF DISCOURSE AND MODE OF DISCOURSE

Clifford Green
1 Main Street, New Cityland, CA 91010
Home: (555) 322-7337
example-email@example.com
RE: ESL Teacher, August 17, 2014
Dear Ms. Barnes,
As a highly skilled ESL Teacher, I read your posting for a new ESL Teacher with interest. My experience aligns well with the qualifications you are seeking at
Fairfield Academy, in particular my role as an ESL Teacher at Spring Hill High School, and I am certain I would make a valuable addition to your organization.
With more than 11 years’ experience as an ESL Teacher, I am adept in learning style assessments and Individualized Lesson Plans (IEP’s). Moreover, while my
on-the-job experience has afforded me a well-rounded skill set, including first-rate communication and analytical skills, I am:
fluent in Spanish
goal-oriented
focused
committed
In addition to my experience and personal qualities, I have a solid educational foundation and a passion for education.
Please review my attached resume for additional details regarding my expertise and career achievements. I will follow up to request an appointment to discuss
how my experience and background meets your needs.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Clifford Green