利用语境理解词汇意义

利用语境理解词汇意义（Context in Interpretation of Word Meaning）湖北省荆门市掇刀石中学刘艳红何庆华AbstractThis paper makes a brief introduction to the theory of context. A number of typical examples are cited to demonstrate the role of context in eliminating ambiguities, removing vagueness, indicating referring meanings. The mastery of contextual knowledge and the analysis of the stylistic features are proposed as the keys to the correct interpretation of word meaning.Key words: context linguistic context non-linguistic context word meaningI IntroductionThe interpretation of word meaning is of paramount importance for a non-native learner both in reading and communication. The meanings of most words are dependent on context because the meanings are influenced immediately by the linguistic environment, and in many cases by the whole speech situation as well. Without context, there is no way to determine the meaning that the speaker intends to convey, whereas with the context there is generally no danger of misinterpretation, for meaning lives in context and the context throws light on meaning (Zhang, 1997, P:210). In order to interpret meaning correctly, it is necessary to study context and research on the importance of context. The emphasis of this paper focuses on the role of context in the interpretation of meaning.II Context and Its DefinitionThe anthropologist Bronislow Malinowski first raised “Context of situation” in the 1920s. According to him, the meaning of an utterance does not come from the idea of the words comprising it but from its relation to the situational context in which the utterance occurs. He (1923) writes, “When we pass from a modern civilized language…to a primitive tongue… there it should be clear at once that conception of meaning as contained in utterance is false and futile …, utterances and situation are bound up inextricably with each other and the contest of situation is indispensable for the understanding of the words.” In the 1930s,J.R.Firth advanced the theory of context. According to J.R.Firth, context consists of two parts; one is inter-language, the other is extra-language, namely, the special situation and condition in which the speech occurs. After 1970s, as many new linguistic branches such as semantics and pragmatics appeared, more and more linguists realize the importance of context. J. Lyons holds that context is a notion of theory. J.Lyons interprets context according to knowledge. He concludes that contest is composed of the knowledge of the following aspects:⑴Each of the participants must know his role and status.⑵The participants must know where they are in space and time.⑶The participants must be able to categorize the situation in terms of its degree of formality.⑷The participants must know what medium is appropriate to the situation.⑸The participants must know how to make their utterances appropriate to the subject-matters, and the importance of subject-matter as a determinant in the selection of one dialect or one language rather than another in bilingual or multilingual communities has beenstressed by such writers as Haugen (1953), Weinreich (1953) and Fishman(1965).⑹The participants must know how to make their utterance appropriate to the province or domain to which the situation belongs. (Lyons, 1977.P: 574)These expositions are given by foreign linguists. Chinese linguists also give us some definitions about context. Mr. Zhang Yunfei makes a conclusion about context that can make us understand it better. Context refers to the lexical items that precede or follow a given word in its traditional sense. Modern linguistic have broaden its scope to include both linguistic and extra-linguistic contexts. Linguistic context is composed of lexical, grammatical and verbal context in its broad sense. Extra-linguistic context refers not only to the actual speech situation in which a word (or an utterance or a speech event) is used but also to the entire cultural background against which a word or an utterance or a speech event is set.The definitions about context are given from different perspectives, but they are related to each other. In a word, meaning is closely tied to context.III The Role of Context in the Interpretation of Meaning“No context, no meaning”, “You know a word by the company it keeps”. These two sentences have been chosen as the mottos by people when they read or communicate. Maybe we can’t completely take them for granted. But we must agree that meaning lives in context and the context throws light on meaning. The following aspects will show the role of context.3.1 Eliminating ambiguitiesAmbiguity refers to a word, phrase, sentence or group of sentences with more than one possible interpretation or meaning. (ZhangYunfei and Zhou Xiqing, 1986,P:241). There are several types of ambiguities. Here we mainly talk about two types of them from the perspectives of linguistic context and non-linguistic context. One is lexical ambiguity due to the multiple meanings of words or homonym. A word that has multiple meanings will be discussed. Only when a word is used in an adequate context, people can understand its real meaning, For example:（1）John did not turn up because he was engaged.The word engaged in this context can mean both “(of a person) busy; occupied” and “to be married”. The context fails to narrow down the meaning so that the reader may find it difficult to decide what exactly the speaker means. But there would be no misunderstanding if the original sentence is changed as “John did not turn up because he was engaged in his office”.The non-linguistic context---the actual speech situation also plays a role in eliminating ambiguities. People can easily understand the different meaning of a word when it is used in different time or place. Take the sentence “Pass the port” for example, pass can mean “go across” or “give by hand”, port has the meaning “harbor” or “a kind of wine”, So what is the real meaning is difficult to determine. But in our daily life, this kind of sentence does not create any misunderstanding because the word can be interpreted by the place. If we say it at table, it obviously means “Hand me the wine”. If the captain orders to the navigator in the process of navigation, it mu st mean “Go across the harbor”.Another type is structural ambiguity that arises from grammatical analysis of a sentence or a phrase. For example：（2）“I am an associate editor and professor”. After the addressee hears this sentence, he can’t make sure whether he is an associate and professor or associate editor and professor.3.2 Removing vaguenessVagueness refers to the meaning of a word that is not clear. Whether a word is vague or not isrelative. For example:(3) It is a beast.(4) This is a good strawberry.(5) This is a good lemon.In Sentence (3), beast is a vague notion. It is vaguer than elephant, but it is more concrete than animal. Nevertheless, people have no idea of what kind of beast it is. But in Sentence (4) and (5),although good is a vague word, its meaning is clear in a definite context. In Sentence (4), strawberry determines the meaning of good. As the sweeter the strawberry is, the better it is. So good must be “sweet” not “sour”. By the same token the sourer the lemon is, the better it is. So “a good lemon” means “a sour lemon”.3.3 Indicating referentsThe mastery of deictic information is the key to the interpretation of meaning. Deixis is dependent on context and its reference lies in context. Deictic expressions are pronouns, demonstratives (this/that, these/those), certain time and place adverbs (e,g. here and now), some verbs of motion (e.g. come /go ) and even tenses. In order to avoid repletion, deixis is widely used in books and in communication. If we are not familiar with the context, there is no way to understand the referents. The following dialogue is written by the well-known linguist, Firth:(6)Do you think he will ?I do not know. He might.I suppose he ought to, but perhaps he feels he can’t.Well, his brothers have. They perhaps think he needn’t.Perhaps eventually he may. I think he should, and I very much hope he will.Because there is no context, it is difficult to guess what the participants are talking. In fact, the modal verb will, might and ought to in the above dialogue are used in place of the verb phrase “join the army,”Person deixis is frequently used in a speech event. In communication, the addressee must change certain person deixis which is used by the addressers Here is a humor about the false use of person deixis.(7) Voice on phone:“ John Smith is sick and can not attend class today. He requested me to notify you.”Professor: All right, who is this speaking?”V oice on the phone:“ This is my roommate.”If the student pays attention to the use of person deixis and uses “his” instead of “my ”, then he will successfully play truant. Other deixis also plays important roles in the interpretation of meaning. There is no need to repeat,3.4 Supplying information omitted through ellipsisEllipsis is a kind of rhetorical features. It is also a kind of tendencies of Modern English, For example:(8)John drinks far too much.(9) When shall we eat?(10) Bacon’s figures of speech are forensic, intend to convince and confound.(11) Janet! Donkeys!(12) Janet! Wine!In these five sentences, (8)—(10) omit the objects. The conventional grammarians call it “deletion”. In fact, if we are familiar with the collocation of English words, we can determine theomitted words: drink refers to “drink wine”, eat means “have the meal”, convince means “make people believe”, confound means “defeat the opponent”. Sentence (11) and (12) omit verbs, but we can infer the predicates from its objects. Donkeys means ‘”Drive away donkeys” or “”be careful of donkeys”, wine means “bring wine or “Pour wine.”3.5 Inferring meaningsOne of the most important roles of context is provision of clues for inference of meaning. As words are always used in a definite context, there must be some hints. So we can infer their meanings. The following paragraphs will indicate how context influences the meaning of words.(13) Unlike her gregarious sister, Jane is a shy, unsociable person.(14) Europe, an ice-covered moon of the planet Jupitor, may be able to support life, spaceagency scientists believe.In Sentence （13）, the meaning of gregarious is reflected exactly by the antonym unsociable.In Sentence （14）, Europa is a new word, but we can infer its meaning from its appositive “an ice-covered moon of the planet Jupitor”. Hence Europ a must be “a satellite belonging to Jupitor”.The above example show that we can determine the word meaning from the word meaning from the words or sentences which precede or follow.IV Knowledge of Context in Interpretation of Word MeaningHaving specifying the role of context in the determination of word meaning, the next paragraphs will emphasize the knowledge of context in interpretation of word meaning.4.1 The mastery of linguistic knowledge and the analysis of the contextIn order to understand word meaning in context, first of all, one must grasp the basic knowledge of vocabulary in the target language such as word structure, word formation, word collocation and types of meaning, etc. What’s more, he must remem ber the common meanings of words. All these are essential in the interpretation. In addition to the vocabulary knowledge, one has to analyze the context which refers to analyze the context which refers to the linguistic context and context, word-meaning can be understood from relative words, sentences, passage or even the whole book, In the light of the context of situation, one has to make sure of the role and status of the participants, time and place of the speech and the situation (formal or informal).4.2 Analyzing the stylistic featuresThe context can eliminate ambiguities, but in some articles, the writer intentionally devices certain context to create ambiguity so as to achieve humor. So it is necessary to analyze the stylistic features. The next example is a good illustration.(15) The clerk (entering): Are you engaged?Augustus: What business is that of yours? However, if you will take the trouble to read the society papers for this week, you will see that I am engaged to the Honorable LucyPopham, youngest daughter of.The Clerk: That is not what I mean. Can you see a female?Augustus: Of course I can see a female as easily as a male. Do you suppose I am blind?The Clerk: You do not seem to follow me, somehow. There is a female downstairs: What you might call a lady. She wants to know can you see her if I let her up.The humor comes from the polysemants engaged and see. Engaged means “busy” when it is used by the clerk, while it refers to “to be married” when A ugustus says it. See is also a pun. What the clerk means is “v i sit somebody”, but what Augustus understands is “become aware of (sb/sth)by using the eyes”.4.3 The understanding of background knowledgeBackground knowledge mentioned in this article is confined to the cultural background. Every language is part of a culture and also the carrier of culture, so language must serve and reflect culture. Since words are the main part of language, most of them must be strongly tied to culture. Then, the correct interpretation of words presupposes a good knowledge of the culture of the target language, The cultural background is a broad view of context. Malinowski, a well-known anthropologist, writes;“The conception of context must burst the bonds of mere linguis tics and be carried over into the analysis of the general conditions under which a language id spoken… The study of any language, spoken by a people who live under conditions different from our own and possess a different culture, must be carried out in conjunction with the study of their culture and of their environ ment.”The same lexical item may have the same designative meaning in different countries. But because of cultural differences, their connotative meaning is quite different. Take the common word dog for example. Dog in English is associated with “loyalty”, “faithfulness”, “a close companion” and all pos itive qualities. It is a favorable word. If you call an Englishman “old dog” or “lucky dog”, he will be glad; whereas to Chinese, dog takes on neg ative associations such as wicked” or “disgusting”. If a person is compared to a dog, he must be looked down on by others.V ConclusionTo sum up, the contents of the context are abundant. Context not only refers to the linguistic context which is lexical, grammatical and verbal context in its broad sense, but also the non0linguistic context which covers the actual speech situation and the entire cultural background. As non-native speaker, one has to remember the basic meaning of words. The most important thing is to understand and use them in concrete context. The context can eliminate ambiguities, remove vagueness, indicate referents, supply information omitted through ellipsis and infer meanings in the process of word-understanding. According to the theory of context and its role, the mastery of linguistic knowledge, the analysis of stylistic features, the grasping of cultural background are essential factors in the interpretation of word meaning.BibliographyHatch, Evelyn. (1992 ) D iscouse and Language Education .Cambridge University Press. Lyons, J（1977）Semantics Vo1.2. Cambridge University Press.Leech, GN.（1983 ）Principles of Pragmatics. LongmanHopper, Jane, et al. （1988）The Language of Learning: Vocabulary for College Success. Wadsworth Publishing Company张维友（1997）《英语词汇学教程》,华中师范大学出版社。