It is a common phenomenon that context determines the meaning of words, that is to say, the meaning of words will change with different contexts.
The concept of context originated from human linguist Malinowski. He believes that language is not a complete system, and the meaning of language cannot be completely determined by the language itself, but by the context. Context can be divided into narrow sense and broad sense. In a narrow sense, it refers to various events at that time and before and after the discourse, which can be called "situational context", including the context of written language or the context formed after the preface and spoken language, also called small context; Context in a broad sense includes the whole background of discourse, which can be called "cultural context", including not only narrow language, but also time, place, character identity, atmosphere and background related to people's speech expression behavior, so it is also called macro context. John Rupert Firth, the founder of London School, absorbed Malinowski's concept of context, arguing that there are two kinds of contexts: one comes from within the language, that is, the combination of components in a structure and a system; Another kind of context comes from outside the language, that is, language cannot be separated from context. The elaboration of context theory by western linguists plays an important role in our understanding of context and word meaning today.
The meaning of a word is not only the meaning expressed by the combination, but also the supplement and decision of the environment. Therefore, the application of word meaning, the environment of understanding and communication, the professional identity, mood and life experience of both sides are closely related. What does a sentence mean? People who participate in communication often need to supplement themselves. Communicative language environment can make words have more exact meanings. Specifically, context is the environment in which language is used, which is composed of objective factors and subjective factors of people who use language. Context has two functions: one is to explain and the other is to filter. Context not only helps us to infer the meaning of words, but also helps us to prevent the emergence of irregular language phenomena. Therefore, it is necessary to study the influence of context on word meaning in our study and work. Let's discuss it with * * *:
(A) social context determines the meaning of words.
(1) social environment
Different times, different social environments, and certainly different language environments. We must pay attention to this difference when studying, so as to better understand the meaning of words and the main idea of the article. For example:
In the novel Sixty Years' Change, Fang asks, "Do you know the news?" Fang: "What news?" Ji: "Chiang Kai-shek has already operated!" Fang: "What's wrong with surgery?" Ji: "You are still sleeping! Kill! Obviously, Fang didn't involve the change of social revolutionary situation in 1927, so he didn't understand the meaning of the word "operation" and asked others for further explanation.
(2) a pragmatic social environment
The "combined meaning" of a word studies some variations of its meaning under the influence of pragmatic social environment, that is, cross-variation, which is the result of the internal factors of the whole social language, mainly a new meaning obtained by the overflow of a sememe from its neighboring or distant neighbors. For example:
A.this little thing is really cute!
B.what are these things!
The same thing, but because of the different tone of the speaker, the basic meaning and additional meaning of the two are also different. "Things" have such a meaning in modern dictionaries: concrete or abstract things. The "thing" in the first sentence refers to the small animal or child that the speaker likes, which narrows the basic meaning and has the emotional additional meaning of love. In the second sentence, "thing" refers to something that the speaker hates, and it has an emotional additional meaning of disgust.
(2) Context determines the meaning of words.
The Variation of Linguistic Meaning of (1) Word —— Verb Meaning
Linguistic meaning refers to the lexical units or members of the lexical system of a language. The basic meaning or conceptual meaning of a word. "Speech meaning" refers to the actual meaning of words after they enter a specific context or speech fragment. Modern semantics is called combinatorial meaning, that is, the variation of sememe in speech combination. Some linguists call this sememe variant "meaning" rather than "meaning" of words. The meanings listed in the dictionary are all the linguistic meanings of words, so it is impossible and unnecessary to list all the linguistic meanings of words in different contexts, that is, sememe variants. For example:
A. Scene: Outside the operating room, anxiously waiting for the family members of patients with hysteromyoma resection, the door opened and the doctor came out.
The patient's family asked, "Did you cut it?"
The doctor replied, "Cut."
According to the prompts in the upper and lower scenes, the question and answer of "cut" refers to "myomectomy".
B. scene: a year later, the doctor came to a group of old ladies to exercise.
Everyone asked, "Did you cut it?"
The doctor replied: "Cut. Everyone is the same. Who can be an exception when you reach retirement age? " According to the tips of the upper and lower scenes, the "cut" here means that retirement procedures can only be "one size fits all" according to age.
C. Scene: After exercise, the doctor goes home. Seeing my daughter reading a book reminds me of asking her to cut ribs when I go out.
The doctor asked, "Did you cut it?"
The daughter replied, "I cut it long ago."
According to the tips of the upper and lower scenes, the word "cut" here refers to cutting ribs.
Look, the symbols of "cut", "le" and "horse" were originally abstracted from the communication scene. In the dictionary, all people have the same understanding to determine the meaning, that is, the linguistic meaning, and the way words are combined into sentences also conforms to the highly abstract Chinese grammar rules. But the composition is "cut?" After the two non-subject-predicate sentences of "qie le" enter different communication scenes, whether they are used as interrogative sentences or declarative sentences, their discourse meanings are different, but they can communicate smoothly. In the dialogue between hospital and home, the meaning of words is the same as the literal meaning, but the specific object of "cutting" is different, that is, the communication scene concretizes the abstract semantics; Moreover, the dialogue during exercise obviously contains meanings other than literal meanings. This is the meaning given to the discourse by the communicative scene. In the past, the word "retrenchment" did not exist in the dictionary, and the meaning of "retirement" will not be added in the future. This is the variation of language meaning-verb meaning.
(2) the extension of specific context
Many words need to be related to specific language environment to understand their exact meaning. Similarly, two people in different situations may have diametrically opposite understandings. For example:
Yang Zirong was ecstatic to get the contact map presented by Yang Zirong in the play "Taking Tiger Mountain Outward". He choked back his anger and said to the bandits who were about to be wiped out: "As soon as we get the contact map, Mudanjiang area will be ours." In this context, "we" here has two opposite meanings of "tolerance" and "exclusion". Hearing this, the gangsters thought that the word "we" included them, but the word "we" mentioned by Yang Zirong excluded them. The audience understood the mystery of this language as soon as they heard it. Humorous and implicit language will make the audience feel relaxed, but if it is not in this context, but this sentence that Yang Zirong said to his comrades-in-arms, "we" can only have one meaning.
(3) the change of semantic scope-combined meaning
In the process of communication, the context has a strong influence on the meaning of words at any time, increasing or decreasing and changing the scope of the meaning of words to meet the wide needs of communication, such as:
"Vegetable", in isolation, is "vegetable, a plant that can be used as a non-staple food." Once in the context, changes between sememes and within sememes are possible. The combination of the two sememes of "buying vegetables" and "eating vegetables" expands the sememe of "vegetables", which refers to non-staple foods including "eggs, meat and vegetables", indicating that the sememe of "vegetables" has been broadened due to the combination. "Picking vegetables", "Picking pickles" and "Picking vegetables" all reduce the sememe of "vegetables" to varying degrees, and are limited to Chinese cabbage, radish and so on. Picking vegetables has two meanings: one is to pick the fruits or leaves of plants that can be cooked. The second is to remove the yellow and rotten leaves. This actually limits the scope of "dish" from another angle, so we can see that these three combinations narrow the meaning of "dish".
(C) Situational context determines the meaning of words
(1) implicit semantics
In real life, people's speech activities are always carried out in certain situations. The same word combination may have different meanings in different situations, such as "I've been waiting for you for half a day." Such combined words, when spoken by different people, have very different meanings. If lovers say such a sentence, it often means coquetry. When two people with a general relationship meet and say such a sentence, it may be a general statement and accusation, but the public security personnel will have a deterrent effect if they tell the criminals. Another example is in a car with a window open. A said to B sitting by the window, "It's really cold today." Literally, this statement may only state a natural phenomenon, but if it is understood in combination with specific circumstances, the implication of A's statement may be to ask B to close the window. For example, on weekends, children say to their parents, "Tomorrow is Sunday." When the child says this, he is not stating a fact, but may be reminding his parents not to forget to take him to play or do other things.
(2) Situational Semantics
Two poems by Zhu Qingyu and Zhang Ji in Tang Dynasty can illustrate this problem very well. Zhu Qingyu's poem "Boudoir Offering Water Department" said: "Last night, the bridal chamber stopped burning red candles to pay homage to my aunt and uncle in front of the court. After putting on makeup, I whispered to my husband, is thrush deep and fashionable? " Zhang Ji's poem "Reward Zhu Qingyu" is: "Yue Nv's new makeup is reflected in the mirror, and he knows that he is more thoughtful. When Wan Qi was young, people were expensive, and a lingge was an enemy. " Literally, these two poems both describe the dress and beauty of a lady, but in fact they are an interesting answer that one borrows poems from the examiner and the other gives a satisfactory answer before responding. The answers of these two poems are in perfect harmony, and both sides understand the meaning of the poems in euphemism and implication. It can be seen that situational context often leads to the implication of words, and readers often have to understand the true meaning of words in a certain context. Only in this way can we achieve a better exchange of thoughts and feelings with each other.
Because situational context can often make words have meanings, in people's daily verbal communication activities, in order to pursue a special expression effect, communicators sometimes keep some blank words, such as euphemism, implicit emotional expression, spicy irony and so on. And leave some implication for the listener to supplement and understand.
(3) Temporary semantics
Under the influence of special situational context, the meaning of words often changes in many ways. The most common thing is to change the meaning of words in the opposite direction to produce temporary semantics, and the most common thing is the change of emotional color of words. For example, in Sun Li's Lotus Lake, he wrote about the feeling when his wife and others on the water went to find her husband and couldn't come back: "Several women are a little disappointed, a little disappointed. Everyone is cursing their cruel thief in their hearts. " Here, "ruthless thief" has become the nickname of several women for their husbands. Another example is the word "enemy", which originally refers to people with deep hatred, but in many classical operas in China, it often becomes a nickname for women to love men. Examples like this are endless. Irony in language is mostly formed by changing the meaning of words.
Situational context changes semantics, but not always in the direction of antonyms. In some contexts, semantics will change in other ways, which will make words have new temporary meanings different from the original meanings. For example, as the saying goes, "There is a sky beyond the sky, and there are people on the ground". The words "sky" and "people" here are no longer the original meaning, but actually do not refer to the sky in a certain place and a specific person, but have added a new meaning: "sky" refers to a higher realm, and "people" refers to more capable people.
(D) Personal context determines the meaning of words.
We can't ignore the influence of personal context, that is, in a specific article, the influence of the speaker's own situation, personality, temperament, knowledge and thinking habits on the meaning of words. The same is "I'm going to class", the teacher said it was going to give a lecture, and the students said it was going to class. Similarly, the doctor said "I want to see a doctor" and the patient said "I want to see a doctor", which means different things. Similarly, because people's status and situation are different, there may be opposite interpretations.
At the happy party, someone exclaimed, "Fire"! At this time, adults suddenly became afraid. Because they have directly or indirectly experienced the fire, they have many terrible psychological associations. However, at the same time and in the same environment, a person who has never seen, heard or experienced a fire has a completely different semantic understanding of the fire.
The word "cow" may have the same meaning for ordinary people, but its associative meaning is different. China people think of hard work, Indians think of holiness, and Europeans and Americans think of meat and milk devotees. The Chinese word "vinegar" often reminds people of the connotation of "jealousy", but its corresponding word "vinegar" is associated with "unpleasantness, bitterness and bad temper". This is caused by people's different thinking habits.
From the above analysis, we can see that the meaning of a word is closely related to the context, which has many influences on the meaning of a word, and the meaning of a word will change differently in the context. Context directly or indirectly affects language activities, whether explicit or implicit, and restricts the emergence of word meanings. Studying the changes of word meaning in context is helpful to further study the topic of language use in lexical semantics, as well as to choose appropriate and accurate words and improve communication level.
I hope I can help you, and I hope I can adopt it satisfactorily.