Context Vs Co-text

11 Comments

Halliday (2007 [1991]: 271):
Originally, the context meant the accompanying text, the wording that came before and after whatever was under attention. In the nineteenth century it was extended to things other than language, both concrete and abstract: the context of the building, the moral context of the day; but if you were talking about language, then it still referred to the surrounding words, and it was only in modern linguistics that it came to refer to the non-verbal environment in which language was used. When that had happened, it was Catford, I think, who suggested that we now needed another term to refer explicitly to the verbal environment; and he proposed the term “co-text”.

Are register and genre, modelled as strata, theorised on the notion of context or co-text?

11 Comments (+add yours?)

  1. ThE CLOwN
    Sep 21, 2010 @ 08:45:21

    Note that, in Halliday’s model, context is ‘outside of language itself’.

    Halliday (2007 [1991]: 271):
    What this means is that language considered as a system — its lexical items and grammatical categories — is to be related to its context of culture; while instances of language in use — specific texts and their component parts — are to be related to their context of situation. Both these contexts are of course outside of language itself.

    • ThE CLOwN
      Sep 23, 2010 @ 06:39:57

      Here are the proportions.

      INSTANTIATION
      context of culture : context of situation ::
      language as system : language as instance

      REALISATION
      context of culture : language as system ::
      context of situation : language as instance

      • eldon
        Sep 23, 2010 @ 09:42:21

        yes…

        From the point of view of instantiation, situation is to culture as text is to language; the first term of each proportion instantiates the second:

        situation: culture :: text: language

        From the point of view of realisation, language is to situation; the first term of each proportion realises the second:

        language: culture :: text: situation

        Current SFL models possess no satisfactory means of contextual and/ or registral changes which do not disturb the unity of the text, nor can they specify where i.e., in what kind(s) of social situation, such changes are most at risk

        [“speaking with reference to context” in Ghadessy 1999: 225]

        but what does this all MEAN with reference to text-context?
        for me, this points to a different set of focuses for those who study the general grammatical patterns of language as system, to those who are interested in applying an analysis of the use of language in context to produce a slice-o-system if you will.

        the competing motivations and then consequences for theoretical projection for each view of context is worth pursuing – if only for getting at the “tautologies” pertinent to each view.. i.e. what consistencies each view clings to, as explanatory.

        • ThE CLOwN
          Sep 24, 2010 @ 09:11:28

          For me it provides a theoretical map, systematically organised, that allows us to know where we are when we use theoretical terms.
          eg when we use ‘text’ with regard to instantiation, we know that we are viewing language as instance; and when we use ‘context’ we know that we are talking about what is realised by language; and when we use ‘text’ and ‘context’, we know that we are talking about language as instance (text) realising context as instance (context of situation).

  2. eldon
    Sep 21, 2010 @ 16:48:20

    i do not think instances can be outside of language itself. thus context of situation, and hasan’s CC (contextual configuration) is considered a phasing together of elements of language… and thus also, a text is also considered to be within language when it is a combination of lexico-grammatical elements…

    in some ways too, context of culture cannot be understood outside of language. i.e. the very notion, the description of it, the communication which embodies it, is a function of language, or at least phylogenetically-developed ways of meaning…

    • ThE CLOwN
      Sep 22, 2010 @ 09:38:28

      What Halliday is saying is that his ‘context’ — not instances — is outside of language itself.

      On this model, context is not language. Context is realised by language.
      Context and language are different levels of symbolic abstraction.

      There is no implication here that text is not within language. Text is language — as instance.

      There is also no implication that context of culture can be understood outside of language, since it is language (as system) — inter alia — that realises it.

  3. eldon
    Sep 22, 2010 @ 23:21:19

    one must always be careful of one’s words…

    i read the Both these contexts are of course outside of language itself at the end of the previous note, to imply just that.

    realisation may be another matter, but the phrase “outside of language itself” did not give (me at least) any hint of exceptions regarding realisation…

    i may have quotations to post as well, but i search for short pithy ones. hasan – whose endeavours to deal with matters contextual are legion – has not written texts from which short pithy quotations may be easily lifted… as usual, we have longer stretches of argument for meaning-making there.

    one thing that kept her occupied in 1999 was the influence of mode as a contextual variable. she argued that rhetorical mode (e.g. explaining, informing, describing, etc) should better be seen as pertaining to field, i.e. what was going on, rather than viewed as pertaining to mode – in which the ideas of ancilliary versus constitutive held sway. it seemed as if she believed that rhetorical mode had been seen as part of mode by the SFL community.. at that stage, i was unsure what was at stake… but needed to at least theorise the nature of context a bit more delicately than i was familiar with at that time.

    anyway, i think theorising context interesting enough to try to dig up some more…
    [but it will have to be done in breaks between preparation cycles]

    • ThE CLOwN
      Sep 24, 2010 @ 09:22:23

      Yes ‘both these contexts are of course outside of language itself’ means that context of culture and context of situation are outside of language: they are two angles on a higher level of symbolic abstraction that is realised by language.
      An instance of context (ie context of situation) is outside language in the sense that it is realised by an instance of language (ie text) — (an instance of) language is the expression plane of (an instance of) context.

      Not sure what you mean by “exceptions regarding realisation”.

  4. eldon
    Sep 24, 2010 @ 15:19:22

    “is outside of language” does not mean
    “realised by language” to me.

    or,
    they are not co-terminous to me, so this statement (both these contexts are of course outside of language itself) was confusing.

    • ThE CLOwN
      Sep 25, 2010 @ 09:00:42

      “is outside of language” in the sense that context and language are different levels of symbolic abstraction.
      ie context is not a level of abstraction within language in Halliday’s model.

  5. eldon
    Sep 25, 2010 @ 11:27:19

    c’est mieux

    [….more later, after the rush]

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