Language Action And Context

The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity, especially to rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However, until the end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be consigned to the pragmatic, that is rhetoric, wastepaper basket and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration.It can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830 in Britain, but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early 'conceptions' of pragmatics are described in the first part of the book.The second part of the book looks at pragmatic insights made between 1830 and 1880, when they were once more relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly spiritualised philosophy on the other.In the last part the period between 1880 and 1930 is presented, when pragmatic insights flourished and were sought after systematically. This was due in part to a new upsurge in empiricism, positivism and later behaviourism in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Between 1780 and 1930 philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and linguists came to see that language could only be studied in the context of dialogue, in the context of human life and finally as being a kind of human action itself.

The roots of pragmatics reach back to Antiquity, especially to rhetoric as one of the three liberal arts. However, until the end of the 18th century proto-pragmatic insights tended to be consigned to the pragmatic, that is rhetoric, wastepaper basket and thus excluded from serious philosophical consideration. It can be said that pragmatics was conceived between 1780 and 1830 in Britain, but also in Germany and in France in post-Lockian and post-Kantian philosophies of language. These early ‘conceptions’ of pragmatics are described in the first part of the book. The second part of the book looks at pragmatic insights made between 1830 and 1880, when they were once more relegated to the philosophical and linguistic underground. The main stage was then occupied by a fact-hunting historical comparative linguistics on the one hand and a newly spiritualised philosophy on the other. In the last part the period between 1880 and 1930 is presented, when pragmatic insights flourished and were sought after systematically. This was due in part to a new upsurge in empiricism, positivism and later behaviourism in philosophy, linguistics and psychology. Between 1780 and 1930 philosophers, psychologists, sociologists and linguists came to see that language could only be studied in the context of dialogue, in the context of human life and finally as being a kind of human action itself.

The phenomenon of context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as hetergenous. It is especially evident in the case of the difference between context dependence as understood in the philosophy of language and context dependence as understood in the philosophy of mind. One of the aims of the present volume is to show that as varied as the phenomenon of context dependence is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. More importantly, as evidenced in a number of papers presented on the subsequent pages of this volume, a broad perspective on the phenomenon of context dependence helps us to re-apply theories devised for one of the subfields of philosophy to the other subfields. Since the connections and analogies between many uses of contextualism may not be initially obvious, keeping an open perspective and the willingness to learn from the work of others may sometimes be crucial for finding new, satisfactory solutions.

The phenomenon of context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as hetergenous. It is especially evident in the case of the difference between context dependence as understood in the philosophy of language and context dependence as understood in the philosophy of mind. One of the aims of the present volume is to show that as varied as the phenomenon of context dependence is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. More importantly, as evidenced in a number of papers presented on the subsequent pages of this volume, a broad perspective on the phenomenon of context dependence helps us to re-apply theories devised for one of the subfields of philosophy to the other subfields. Since the connections and analogies between many uses of contextualism may not be initially obvious, keeping an open perspective and the willingness to learn from the work of others may sometimes be crucial for finding new, satisfactory solutions.

Context dependence is so multifaceted that it is tempting to classify it as heterogenous. The present volume shows that as varied as the phenomenon is, the similarities between its different manifestations are profound and undeniable. Contributions

In the humanities and social sciences, context is one of those terms which is frequently used and frequently referred to, but hardly made explicit. This book proposes a model for describing the multifaceted connectedness between language and language use, and between cognitive context, linguistic context, social context and sociocultural context and their underlying principles of well-formedness, grammaticality, acceptability and appropriateness. Combining a range of theoretical frameworks in linguistics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, discourse analysis and philosophy of language, Fetzer goes beyond the unilateral conception of speech and argues for a dialogue outlook on natural-language communication based on dialogue principles and dialogue categories. The most important ones are cooperation, joint production, micro and macro communicative intentions, micro and macro validity claims, co-suppositions, dialogue-common ground and communicative genre.

This volume suggests a novel treatment of context in the analysis of everyday interaction. On a theoretical level, it advocates a switch of focus from 'context' as a preestablished, monolithic category which constringes co-participants' verbal and nonverbal behaviour, to an active notion of 'contextualization' in order to make oneself understood, participants have to establish and maintain those shared contextual frames which in turn are relevant to the local interpretation of their verbal and nonverbal activities. On an empirical level, the volume contains exemplary analyses that show how participants employ 'contextualization cues' of prosodic (rhythm, intonation, tempo, etc.) or nonverbal (gaze, gesture, etc.) nature in order to 'achieve context'.The volume is also an appraisal of the theory of contextualization developed by John Gumperz. In their contributions, researchers from various schools of research, such as conversation analysis, micro-ethnography, phonetics/phonology and metapragmatics, relate their work to this theory.