Results 1 to 2 of 2

Thread: Another question concerning understanding the context of a message

  1. #1
    Be. white camellia's Avatar
    Join Date
    Aug 2005
    Location
    Chengdu
    Posts
    885

    Another question concerning understanding the context of a message

    How do you understand the word "indexed" in the first sentence of the following passage? If asked to replace it with a word or some words, what could it be?

    Understanding a message requires the receiver to possess a sensitivity, which is “…indexed at a particular moment according to the context of an utterance and the specific goals they are trying to achieve.” (Giampapa 2001) For communication to be successful, all contextual information related to the message must be shared knowledge between the sender and receiver. As Halliday (XXX) notes the context involves distinct linguistic, physical and cultural contexts, and different combinations of these various contexts create different messages with varying pragmatic force (Halliday, 1978: 48). As such, the same word or combination of words can carry a very different message in different contexts. Context is thus crucial for clarifying ambiguities, and taking the various contextual variables (time, place, environment, etc.) into consideration (Flores, 2001) is vital to process meaning accurately.
    There is no polite way
    of being happy

  2. #2
    Tu le connais, lecteur... Kafka's Crow's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    ...the timekept City
    Posts
    847
    Blog Entries
    2
    Contextual knowledge has to be "deployed" at the given moment in order to understand the communication. Since this knowledge is linguistic, it has to be shared between the sender and receiver in order for it to work. The rest seems to be clear enough, i-e the definition of context as linguistic, cultural and physical aspects of the message.
    "The farther he goes the more good it does me. I don’t want philosophies, tracts, dogmas, creeds, ways out, truths, answers, nothing from the bargain basement. He is the most courageous, remorseless writer going and the more he grinds my nose in the sh1t the more I am grateful to him..."
    -- Harold Pinter on Samuel Beckett

Similar Threads

  1. Private messages: question.
    By IrishCanadian in forum The Literature Network
    Replies: 33
    Last Post: 09-14-2007, 07:21 PM
  2. Help with "To Kill A Mockingbird"
    By bookworm77 in forum General Literature
    Replies: 81
    Last Post: 06-25-2007, 01:46 AM
  3. medium = message
    By Jon in forum Siddhartha
    Replies: 1
    Last Post: 08-29-2005, 03:04 AM

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •