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1. troduction of Context

1.1The Definition of In context

Context is defined as a unity of shared knowledge which affects a certain linguistic event in linguistic communication

Longman Dictionary in Linguistics defines it as message existing before and after the word, phrase, utterance, and text under discussion; it is helpful to the understanding of the specific meaning of the word, phrase, utterance, and text.

Contexts are alignments of reality along five different axes: linguistic, situational, interactional, cultural, and intertextual. Because language is at the intersection of the individual and the social, it both reflects and construes the social reality called…context?.

Context is the matrix created by language as discourse and as a form of social practice.

Context should be viewed not as a natural given, but as a social construct, the product of linguistic choices made by two or more individuals interacting through language. Broadly, the term “context” refers to all the different situations involved in language communication.

Context consists of any elements invoked by any participants, and consequently…participants? conceptions of each other?s mental contexts may be wrong or, more likely, only partially right … any physical set of circumstances could lend itself to an infinity of possible shared conceptions and relevance.

Context is not simply referred to the preceding linguistic text, or the environment in which the utterance takes place, but the set of assumptions brought to bear at the intended interpretation.

Context connects with one of the key problems in interpretation: recognizing the cultural relationships between what is referred to, as well as the linguistic relationships between elements in the linguistic system.

1.2History of studies on context

For the past thirty years at least, applied linguistic and teachers of English have talked about the importance of “understanding language in context”. It is often

unclear what is meant by …context?. In the 1960s, the fashion was to construct taxonomies of external features of context (such as speaker, hearer, place and time of utterance, genre, etc). More recently applied linguists have turned to the later theories which have attempted to show how features contribute to understanding language. As far as the importance of context in actual language use is concerned, London School initially made an exposition that language activities of human beings are composed of substance (i.e. sounds and written language signs), form (i.e. meaningful structure constituted of sounds and written language signs), and situation (i.e. various elements outside language activities), from which we get it clear that the meaning of language depends not only on lexicon and grammar but on certain language environment.

Firth, suggests that context contains not only linguistic co-text but also context of situation. He was the first to include in the context …not only spoken words, but facial expression, gestures, bodily activities, the whole group of people present during exchange of utterances and the part of the environment in which these people are engaged, and to call the totality of these factors …context of situation?. Generally, Firth defines context of situation as including the entire cultural setting of speech and the personal history of the participants rather than as simply the context of human activity going on at the moment. In detail, it first included the event, the participants as well as the interrelationship between them, but later he also added the factors in economics, religion, social structure, utterance type and function, etc. It could now include participants in speech events, the action taking place, other relevant features of the situation and the effects of the verbal action. These variables are amenable to linguistic analysis and are therefore useful in making statements about meaning. The situational approach requires that we analyze the typical speech situations as follows:

1. Interior relations of the text itself

(a) Syntagmatic relations between elements of structure considered at the various levels of analysis;

(b) Paradigmatic relations of terms or units that commute within systems to give values to the elements of structure.

2. Interior relations within the context of situation

(a) The text in relation to the nonverbal constitutes, with its total effective or creative result;

(b) Analytic relations between “bits” and “pieces” of the text (words, parts of words, phrases) and special constituents within the situation (items, objects, persons, personalities, events).

1.3 Function of Context

Japanese scholar XiZhenguangzheng points out in his article Context and Language Study that context has eight functions, i.e. Absolute function, restrictive function, interpretative function, design function, filtering and supplementary function, generative function, transformative function and acquisitive function. As a matter of fact, the basic functions of context are considered to be restrictive and interpretative functions from which the other functions are derived.

1.3.1 Restrictive Function

Restrictive function can be briefly defined as influence of context upon the linguistic application and study. It is this function that assists in selecting appropriate expressions according to specific context in communication. For example, all the following sentences be used to inquire the time.

a) Excuse me, could you tell me the right time, please?

b) What time is it, please?

c) What?s the time?

d) How much longer have we got?

However, they are employed in a variety of contexts. Sentence a) sounds rather formal. It can be used between strangers instead of intimate couple. Similarly, sentence d) can be used between people who live together, but it certainly turns out to be improper when used between the superior and the subordinate. Of course, the restrictive function of context is not absolute. Chances are that the contextual constraint in communication will be broken, which will give rise to license of context.

The specification of context (whether linguistic or non-linguistic) has the effect of narrowing down the communicative possibilities of the message. The restrictive function is shown in three aspects.

1. Eliminating Ambiguities

Context eliminates certain ambiguities or multiple meanings in the message. Ambiguities consist of lexical ambiguity and syntactic ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is mainly caused by the phenomenon of polysemy in English. In order to determine their exclusive meanings, word collocations are often taken into account in comprehending the discourse and selecting the equivalents. That is to say, the meaning of the words is usually interpreted according to its habitual collocation with other words in various specific contexts. For example: In a three-word sentence “pass the port”, “port” is ambiguous. Without context, we are not sure whether it indicates “harbor” or “a strong sweet wine”. If this utterance is produced near seaside, most probably, “port” means “harbor”. And the utterance should be rendered as “过港吧”。But if this utterance takes place in a bar or at home, then “port” means “a strong sweet wine”, and therefore the utterance should be rendered as “把那瓶葡萄酒给我拿过来”。Form this example we sense that the place of utterance has an effect on the exact interpretation and rendering of words.

Context is also helpful in eliminating syntactic ambiguity, which refers to ambiguity of sentence pattern or sentence structure. Supplying a context beyond the meaning of the original can eliminate the ambiguity of this kind. For example: They are flying plates.

Without context, we are not sure whether they refer to the people or the object involved. If they refer to the people, this sentence means “People are entertaining themselves by throwing a kind of plates”, and flying here is the present continuous tense of verb “fly”. If they refer to objects, this sentence means “used by people for entertainment, these plates can fly away by throwing”, and flying here is the present participle of verb “fly”, modifying plates. Assume before the sentence, there is another sentence “where are Mary and Jones?” With the help of this co-text, we will eliminate this sentence ambiguity and translate it naturally into他们在玩飞盘。

2. Indicating Reference

Every language in the world has DEICTICS, which identify objects, persons and events in terms of their relations to the speaker in the space and time. Much of the

meaning of deictic terms depends on the specific context of situation in which they are used. For example: John hurriedly left her house. He hoped never to return to it. The door slamm ed behind him. In this example, “He” and “it” in the second sentence refer to “John” and “her house” respectively. Without context, it remains unclear what they refer to in a sentence.

3. Supplying Information Omitted

In daily language use, we usually omit some information instead of explicitly indicating everything. Still, we can pretty well understand each other and communicate well with each other, with the help of actual context. Here are some examples.

(1) Janet! Wine, please!

(2) A: One to London, please, second class.

B: Single or return?

A: Return, please.

B: Second return, London. One twenty, please.

All these examples are not complete sentences, but the specific occasions on which these utterances take place can help supply the information omitted. If the utterance in example (1) is produced during dinner time, then it means “Janet! Bring the wine here” or “pour me a glass of wine!”; if the dialogue in example (2) is carried out in a booking-office, then A must be buying train ticket. With the help of actual context, the following TL versions could be proposed:

(1) 珍妮特，把酒拿来！

(2) A:一张去伦敦的车票，二等车厢。

B:单程票还是往返票？

A:要往返票。

B:去伦敦的往返票，二等车票。一张二十英镑。

1.3.2 Interpretative Function

The explanatory function played by context on language form denotes that diverse environments attach language forms with different contextual meanings. For years, the study of the explanatory function by context has always been one of the

focuses of linguistics. It refers to the ability of context to explain and illustrate some linguistic phenomena in linguistic activities. A translator should be able to convey the implied meanings. Context helps to determine the implied meanings of the original.

2. Classification of Context and its influence on the meaning of words 2.1 Linguistic Context

Linguistic context comprises (1) command of the both source and target language and (2) co-text accompanying the linguistic sign in question. As far as the former one is concerned, we acknowledge that the languages in which various people think and express their thoughts have quite different characteristics and usages. As an illustration of this, we may make a comparison between the English and Chinese language. English has articles “a, an, the”, the Chinese does not have any such things. Take a simple one as an example:

(1) The horse is a useful animal.

Many beginners of English often, to our disappointment, translate the sentence like this:

(1)这马是一个有用的动物。

At first sight, the translation seems to be very faithful. Every word is translated in Chinese, but in fact it fails to convey the intrinsic sense of the original. No Chinese would say so in general circumstances. It ought to be handled as 马是有用的动物. This shows that in accordance with the usage of Chinese both the definite and indefinite article had better be omitted in the translation. On the other hand, in very specific conditions, for example, if the speaker says “The horse is a useful animal ” while pointing at a real horse, the utterance may be translated as 这匹马是有用的. By the same token, if we translate the sentence马是有用的动物. Back into English, it will never do for us to render it word for word. But on the contrary, we are obliged to add the two articles required by the English usage. Of course the English translation may also go without articles on condition that we use the two nouns in the plural form as in “Horses are useful animals”. Another basic difference existing between the two languages lies in the fact that generally more verbs and fewer nouns and prepositions

are used in Chinese than in English while more nouns and prepositions and fewer verbs are used in English than in Chinese. This phenomenon appears to be just a difference in the use of different parts of speech. As in the case of English, words in noun or adjective forms are often used to express the idea of action, thus serving as verbs. Furthermore, collocations with such words, which bear the meaning and character of a verb, are to be found at every turn. Here an example runs as follows: （2）Gates Avenue families carried their pail to the hydrant at the curb.

（2）(住在)盖茨街的家家户户都得提着桶到街边水龙头去打水。

In the English sentence, there is only one verb, but in the Chinese there appears as many as four or five. Out of this comparative study, we can find another important method of translation—conversion of parts of speech. Another example is given here.

（3）The use of bacteriological weapons is a clear violation of the international law.

（3）使用细菌武器显然违反国际法。

The English nouns …use? and …violation? are converted into the Chinese verbs 使用and 违反，and as a result the English objective …clear? is converted into the Chinese adverb“显然”。Of course, the sentence is still intelligible if we render it word for word without conversion of parts of speech like this 细菌武器的使用是对国际法的明显违反。But anyhow it does not sound as natural as the previous translation. We often have to rearrange the word order in C-E and E-C translation because the two languages have each their own characteristics. For instance, attributive phrases and clauses usually follow the modified words in English whereas they usually precede the modified words in Chinese. Britons and Americans prefer to put the adverbial of time and of space at the end of a sentence while we Chinese often have them at the beginning. If these two kinds of adverbial coexist in a single sentence, the adverbial of time usually follow those of place in English, but they are exactly in the reverse order in Chinese. In English sentences, the possessive noun often goes before the noun it stands for and the personal pronoun appears in the subordinate clause previous to the main clause. However, nouns are always mentioned first in Chinese sentences.

Different ways of thinking between the English and the Chinese lead to different

sentence order and voice. English people are used to placing major points of the utterance at the beginning and then other subordinate information is attached; while Chinese people first put forward subordinate information, and lastly the focus of utterance. Because of this difference, we need to make some changes in sentence order during the process of translating. For example:

(4) I met with my middle school classmate at the entrance of the theatre at 7:30 yesterday evening, whom I haven?t seen for years.

(4)昨天晚上七点半在剧院门口，我遇到了我多年未见面的中学同学。

Both the English and Chinese sentence s aim to introduce the information that “I met my former classmate”, but this topic is placed differently in the two sentences. The English prefer to put the new topic exactly at the beginning, while in translating into Chinese, an idiomatic way is to place it at the end, with all the subordinate information mentioned first. It is universally acknowledged that there are two kinds of voices: active and passive. The passive voice is much less used in Chinese than in English. Let?s make a comparison and analys is of following original text and its translation.

（5）It is reported that more than eight hundred thousand children are hired on plantations and farms. They are cruelly exploited by the monopoly capitalists.… in recent years monopoly capitalism has been hit harder and harder by economic crisis. ……

（5）据说有八十多万儿童受雇于种植园和农场，受着垄断资本家的残酷剥削。……近年来，垄断资本主义已经遭到经济危机的越来越严重的打击。……

In the cited translation the translator overcomes the awkwardness if still using the passive voice“被…”，by means of (1) the idiomatic expression 据说（equivalent to “be”＋said or reported）and (2) the alternative form of passive voice 受着or 遭到. The author is usually frustrated while coming across passive voice in language teaching and failing to translate it to the students as natural as possible. So the proper treatment of passive voice is helpful not only to translation but also to language teaching.

Apart from the mentioned differences above between English and Chinese

languages, many others, for example, different tenses, word usage, and repetition, remain to be discussed due to the shortage of space.

2.2Physical Context

Physical context means the actual or situational context in which an utterance happens. It includes the time, place, and topic of the utterance, personal information or background of the speaker/writer and the listener/reader (i.e. their profession, gender, age, social status, educational background, life experience, and state of mind, etc), and lastly writing style of the original. Different time, place, topic and personal information of the speaker/ writer and listener/reader contribute to the information of different style. It is known that Halliday also gives a description to the context of situation in terms of a framework of three headings: field, tenor, and mode. Field means what is happening or the nature of the social action that is taking place; tenor consists of who is taking part, the nature of the participants, and their status and roles ;mode refers to what symbolic or rhetorical devices are employed, and in what language form the utterance is conveyed —spoken or written, monologue or dialogue.

The place of utterance may affect translation. The same utterance meaning may be expressed differently on different occasions, thus different translation is resulted.

For example:

( 6 ) a. Run along now, children, I?m busy now.

b. The audience is requested to kindly leave the room for a few moments.

( 6 ) a.走开吧，孩子们，我正忙着呢。

b. 请观众朋友先回避一会儿。

Bearing the same utterance meaning 要人离开，the original (a) and (b) are rendered differently because they take place in different occasions. Utterance (a) is produced at home and between adult and children, so it is casually treated as 走开吧. While utterance (b) is produced in the public place, and the listener is “the audience”, so respectful expression 请and 回避are used here instead of somewhat impolite 走开.

To sum up, in order to achieve the aim of communication, we usually express the same sentence meaning in different language styles according to different contexts.

2.3Cultural Context

We are now in a position to see language and culture in a dialectical relationship. Language and culture are two symbolic system. Everything we say in language has some meanings. Every language form we use has meanings, carries meanings that are not in the same sense because it is associated with culture and culture is more extensive than language. A language is always a part of a culture and the meaning of any text refers directly or indirectly to the corresponding culture. Ultimately words only have meaning in terms of the corresponding culture. Without the knowledge of the belief and practices of other cultures, a translator?s perspective of the world is tragically restricted. And it is not surprising that the most serious mistakes in translation are made because of ignorance about the views and values of other cultures. Differences in culture almost automatically mean difference in language. Language represents the culture because the words refer to the culture, as the beliefs and practices of a society, but the representation is never complete or perfect. Changes in language inevitably tend to lay behind change in culture. The term “cultural context” was originally coined by Malinowski to describe the institutional and ideological background knowledge shared by participants in speech events.

In the following, I will illustrate how different cultural context affect C-E and E-C translation. It is evident that China and English-speaking countries are different ecologically and geographically, each having its own features, occasionally, the names of places may be used to convey meanings in one language that have no equivalent in the other. For example, in the well known English usage “to carry coals to Newcastle” (to perform a superfluous action), “Newcastle”, a city in En gland, near coalmines, is a unique entity and any connotation it may have one applied to English. In translation, we can not translate it literally as 把煤运到纽卡斯尔which can evoke no response on the Chinese reader, nor can we render it as 把槟榔运到广州which is , although familiar to the Chinese, a mere Chinese peculiarity to English speakers. Pragmatically, it should be rendered as something like to make an unnecessary move according to the actual context. Courtesy expressions immediately reflect the social-behaviorial patterns of a culture, the notion of courtesy seems to be something universal, but

people from different cultures might have different ideas as to what courtesy expressions are. For example, when meeting a friend who just arrived from a long journey, t he Chinese would conventionally say: “you must have had a tired journey.” The Westerner would ask instead: “did you have a nice trip?” or “did you enjoy you trip?” Different nation has its relatively fixed social rules and customs. If the translator is in complete ignorance of these rules and customs, a pragmatic translation will never be reached.

Accordingly, the subject in a Chinese sentence is usually omitted since it can be figured out with the help of context; but if it is rendered into English, the subject must be supplied because the English sentence with both subject and predicate can be assumed to be a complete one. The following example will illustrate this point.

(7)黑漆漆的，不知是日是夜。

(7) Pitch dark. I don?t know whether it is day or night.

Culture presuppositions may sometimes be traced to the linguistic, especially semantic structures of a language. The most typical case is one where in comparable words in different languages may carry strickingly different associations. In Chinese, for example,“vinegar”is often another name for jealousy, e.g.吃醋(to be jealous) . In English, however, the word is connotative of ill-tempered speech, character, etc.

3. Context and English Teaching

How to set the language context correctly and flexibly becomes a problem which teachers are concerned about．

3.1 The language context must be real

Situational teaching and meaning teaching both mean that the teaching materials should be those normal utterance made in real-life situations and be practiced in authentic everyday situations．

3.2 The language context must be relevant

Situations set for practice should be those which the students are likely to encounter in their present and future communication．It is a waste of time to ask them to discuss problems beyond their level of maturity and knowledge of the world．

3.3 The language context must be definite

When we set a language context，we should take all the factors of language context into account．For example，in a shop，we can start a conversation between shopkeepers and customers，and we can also start the conversation between the customers．Then what is the objective of the conversation？What kind of language form can be used in the language context？It requires that the teachers must give some clear or definite explanation to the students．Only when the students know what kind of roles they will play and what the objective of the talking is，they can avoid mechanical memorization and be able to start a free conversation in the language context．

3.4 The language context must be helpful in developing the students'creativity

In the process of English teaching，teachers should not remain satisfied with the memorization of the language，but should extend the development of language skills through language study and proceed from the manipulated practice to the communicative use of the language．After the students have learned some language points in a dialogue，they may be asked to create a new dialogue by giving them some new ideas and lines，which could，of course be in conformity with the original dialogue．

4.Conclusion

Context is not simply referred to the preceding linguistic text, or the environment in which the utterance takes place, but the set of assumptions brought to bear at the intended interpretation. Meaning is not seen as a stable property of texts, but as a shifting, variable phenomenon.

All the above can be achieved through context analysis, which exposes how context develops from its earliest day to the present, how linguists define and divide it from different perspectives, and how context functions in actual language use. In other words, contexts play an important role in the constructing of meaning and English teaching.

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附件1：

学院外国语

专业英语

年级 2 0 1 1 级

姓名张娟

论文题目Analysis of Scarlett in

Gone With the Wind

指导教师汪凡凡职称讲师

2012年 12 月 27 日学年论文（设计）成绩评定表

级学院专业班学年论文（设计）统计表