Context of situation, texts and languages
Language is related to the social structure.
Halliday says that Semiotics is the study of meaning in its most general sense.
Meaning has many modes which include language but also art forms (painting,
sculpture, …) and cultural behaviour (such as mode of dress; structure of the family,
…). All these modes are system of meaning that all together constitute the human
culture.
In Hallidayan sense, the term “social” refers to the relationship between language and
the social structure so that language is related to one particular aspect of human
experience, the social dimension.
This social dimension involves the transmission of knowledge in social contexts
where social activities with social goals are performed.
The social system may be studied from different points of view and our focus, in this
case, is mainly linguistic.
Context and text
Context -> verbal and non-verbal environment of a functional language exchange.
The context of situation is the situation in which linguistic interaction takes place and
in which a lot of information about the meanings being exchanged are revealed.
The success of communication strictly depends on the knowledge of the context of
situation that interlocutors of that situation have.
Firth says that all linguistics is the study of meaning and all meaning is function in
context so, if we consider this definition, the determination of the environment where
the text unfolds is prior to any other activity in the study of texts.
Halliday defines the text as language that is functional that is to say language that is
playing a role in a context of situation.
The text is a product, an output that can be recorded and studied, which has a
certain construction that can be represented in systematic terms. It is a
continuous process of semantic choice, a movement through the network of
meaning potential, with each set of choices constituting the environment for a further
set.
We know that the context of situation (so the social environment) is formed by:
- Field: that is to say what is going on, the nature of the social action;
- Tenor: which refers to the participants, their statues and roles, their permanent
and temporary relationships;
- Mode: that is to say the role language is playing, the symbolic organisation of
the text, its status, its function in the context, the channel and the rhetorical
mode.
Halliday argues that such an analysis of the context helps us represent the system
that lies behind the unconscious process of producing and understanding texts in
some context of situation.
