In this chapter, we discuss historical, methodological, and social issues pertaining to the relationship between context and language learning and assessment in first, second, and heritage languages (henceforth, L1, L2, and HL, respectively). We begin with an overview of the contextual factors that shape L1 development and discuss issues of language policy in formal L1 educational contexts. In the second and third sections, we briefly review the development of the fields of L2 learning and assessment, with attention to contextual happenings and trends that have affected them, and discuss psychological, social, cultural, and literacy-based approaches to language learning. In the fourth section, we examine the case of HL learners as an example of how context affects the development and maintenance of the HL in both informal (e.g., how young children acquire the HL) and formal settings (e.g., how current L2 teaching methods are not adequate to teach HL learners). The chapter concludes with a discussion of what we see as possible future trends and directions in the fields.

This chapter explores the role of context in the computation of implicit pragmatic meanings (implicatures). In the classic view of Gricean and neo-Gricean pragmatics, conversational implicatures are triggered by the Cooperative Principle and the maxims of conversation, and are defined as non-contextual, with the exception of particularized conversational implicatures (PCIs). On the other hand, it is assumed that generalized conversational implicatures (GCIs) and conventional implicatures (CIs) are not contextual, although GCIs can be defeated by the context or denied by the speaker. This non-contextual approach to pragmatics (the Gricean turn) has given rise to a default approach to implicatures. The second purpose of this chapter is to tackle the contextual dimension of neo-Gricean pragmatics, which has been developed by exponents of neo-Gricean pragmatics. Their approaches to pragmatics, limited to GCIs as scalar implicatures, are based either on pragmatic principles, the Q-Principle and R- or I-principle (Horn, Levinson), or on the reformulation of conversational maxims and reasoning (Gazdar, Chierchia, Fox). It is argued that the focus on GCIs, although it should minimize the role of context in the generation of implicatures, demonstrates on the contrary the pervasive function of context, which is not limited to implicature cancellation.

Context is everywhere. Context is everything. Context is whatever contributes, consciously or unconsciously, to the understanding of reality to facilitate language processing in human interaction. We continuously construct and constrain context in our minds to understand and be understood. The Cambridge Handbook of Language in Context describes how context interacts with language across different traditions and theories, and the chapters in the volume will answer some critical questions in context studies that have been puzzling linguists and scholars from other related fields, such as how much context goes into a specific linguistic model or what facets of contextual information are indispensable in a specific theory.

To answer some of these burning questions, the volume brings together some of the most influential scholars in linguistics and provides a comprehensive guide to language in context from a multifaceted perspective.

The chapter gives a state-of- the-art overview of the themes and issues in corpus pragmatics and describes new directions in the field represented by empirical corpus studies where synchronic pragmatic variation and change are analyzed in a broader social and cultural perspective. The interaction between corpora and pragmatics implies both challenges and possibilities. Corpora are ideal for studying the relationship between form and function.This is illustrated by studies using corpora for the purpose of investigating the functions of pragmatic markers, interjections, address forms, and pauses. Nowadays there is also a great deal of interest in finding strategies, making it possible to study the linguistic realisations of functions such as speech acts, hedging, and politeness. Pragmatic annotation systems are expected to be interesting from this perspective. New developments in corpus pragmatics are characterized by alliances between corpus pragmatics and other fields such as variational pragmatics and sociopragmatics with a shared interest in the influence of context on language. Pragmatic markers are, for example, now studied on the basis of corpora with respect to macro-sociolinguistic variables such as region, genre, and the age, gender, and social class of the speakers. Attention is also given to a new discipline of historical corpus pragmatics emerging at the intersection between historical linguistics, pragmatics, and corpus linguistics.

While linguistic creativity is an essential feature of those who actively create instances of verbally expressed humor (VEH), awareness of context is equally indispensable. Humor is primarily cognitive, so it follows that language is the lowest common denominator between speaker/writer and receiver, in order for a joke, pun, quip, etc., to achieve its goal and, above all, to be recognized as being humorous in intent. However, over and above familiarity with the formal rules of a common language between interactants, successfully transmitted humor is also context dependent. Context involves both adherence to pragmatic rules and the recipient’s sociocultural encyclopedia. And if these two elements were not sufficient, humor also embroils the issue of sense of humor and the moral closeness/distance of our recipient to the object of our humor in order for it to be considered benign.

The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) is an approach to studying linguistic meaning in isolation, as well as in context. Relying on Leibniz’s hypothesis about the existence of undefinable and irreducible further meanings in language, the approach proposes a set of 65 semantic primitives and their universal syntactic properties. The primitives and their universal syntactic properties have been identified by trial and error in the process of designing definitions of words from multiple lexical domains and have been tested in about three dozen related and unrelated languages. The primitives are used to construct semantic explications as representations of meaning and cultural scripts. The chapter discusses the main NSM theoretical concepts, such as semantic primitive, universal syntax, semantic molecule, semantic explication, cultural keyword, cultural script, Minimal Language. It illustrates the possibilities of applying NSM in the analysis of linguistic meaning at a conceptual level and in cultural context. It demonstrates how NSM can be applied to studying “formal” linguistic context, through studying lexical meaning and conceptual inter-connections and constructing semantic explications. Cases of multiple types of context influencing meaning are also illustrated. The chapter concludes with the description of recent developments of the NSM approach and the concept of Minimal Language.

This chapter explores how scholarly thinking on context has informed research and disciplinary discourses in translation and interpreting studies. It begins with an historical overview of the contribution that linguistics made to the emergence, development, and consolidation of translation and interpreting studies as a self-standing discipline between the late 1940s and the late 1980s. Since the early 1990s, previous theorizations of translation and interpreting as forms of mediation positing the essential determinacy of meaning have been superseded by a range of academic perspectives that study how translators and interpreters exercise their professional judgment in context. These range from cognitive approaches exploring how participants in each communicative encounter come to share and make use of a given set of contextual assumptions, to conceptions of context as a field of power play where participants’ identities are dynamically negotiated. This exploration is illustrated with examples from different domains of translation and interpreting research to foreground the breadth of theoretical and methodological orientations that converge within the discipline.

Language is paradigmatically a human activity, largely consisting of speakers saying things in order to inform, warn, misinform, threat, sell, and so on. Language is important because it is a system for doing things. This suggests that the philosophy of action should be a part – a very important part – of the philosophy of language. To a certain extent it is. And, in consequence, the focus has moved from sentences to utterances. It has moved, but not entirely. Not because philosophers and logicians are unaware of utterances, but because the working assumption is that semantics should focus on what all utterances of an expression or sentence have in common, due to meaning, and not on how they differ, due to the particular facts of the utterance. In this chapter we first consider how this assumption has been challenged and express some reservations about alternatives. Then we turn to our own theory, the reflexive-referential theory, which takes utterances as basic to the semantics and pragmatics of natural language.

This chapter reviews recent developments that reflect a convergence of work in various branches of linguistics and psycholinguistics around the implications of the incremental sequencing of speech units for understanding grammar and the cognitive processing that underlies the production, comprehension, and interpretation of utterances. Notions from Functional Discourse Grammar are used to present a view of syntactic structure as arising from the incremental extension of holophrases, i.e. minimal utterances. By prioritizing the timecourse of language processing, the chapter interprets syntactic hierarchy as arising from chunk-and-pass operations supported by predictive processing. Spoken dialogue is identified as the primary arena for these processes, with grammaticality subordinated to situational appropriateness. Linguistic data are seen as protocols of joint action aimed at the incremental co-creation of meaning. All of these notions make essential reference to context as constantly active, prior to and during the utterance of the linguistic signal, and as a crucial component of the operations and processes that take place in verbal interaction.

Within a cyberpragmatic framework rooted in cognitive pragmatics (Yus 2011), context is basically information that is brought to bear in turning the schematic coded input (e.g., spoken, written, or typed words) into interpretations. Although it is undeniable that contextual information may stem from different sources, eventually what is at stake in contextualization is to mentally assess and select the appropriate quality and quantity of information that allows us to reach meaningful interpretations. Regarding the specificity of social media and internet communication overall, several challenges for pragmatic analysis arise, some of which will be addressed in this chapter. Specifically, what interests most in an analysis of context online are: (a) the role of the interfaces in favoring/limiting the contextualization of utterances; (b) the role of the physical-virtual interface in today’s internet-mediated communication; and specially (c) the differentiation of the user’s personal, interactive, and social contexts managed in everyday virtual communication.

This chapter considers the treatment of context in relevance theory, a cognitively oriented pragmatic theory which sees human communication and cognition as governed by the search for relevance. Utterance interpretation crucially relies on context, and a central question for pragmatics is about how hearers find the right contextual information to use in interpreting an utterance, and thus succeed in identifying the speaker’s meaning. According to relevance theory, utterances raise precise and predictable expectations of relevance which guide the hearer in every aspect of utterance interpretation, from disambiguation and reference resolution to the choice of contextual information and the derivation of implicatures (i.e. intended implications). After outlining the main assumptions of Relevance Theory, the chapter illustrates with examples how these different aspects of interpretation fit together, and compares Relevance Theory’s treatment of context with some alternative treatments discussed in the pragmatic literature, including those based on a notion of “common ground.”