The Word as a Unit of Meaning. The Role of Context

‘When I use a word, ’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’ Some linguists, in their eagerness to underline the impor­tance of context and to demolish the belief that there is a ‘proper’ meaning inherent in each word, go almost as far as Humpty Dumpty in their dogmatic utterances. State­ments like ‘le mot n'est que par le contexte et n’est rien par lui-meme’, which are frequently heard nowadays, are neither accurate nor realistic. While it is perfectly true, and even a truism, that words are almost always found embedded in specific contexts, there are cases when a term stands entirely by itself, without any contextual support, and will still make sense. A one-word title such as Tolstoy’s Resurrection, Ibsen’s Ghosts or Jane Austen’s Persua­sion can be heavily charged with meaning, and even such elliptical titles as Kipling’s and Henry Green’s Nothing will conjure up some sort of idea. In everyday life one is often asked: ‘What does word so-and-so mean? ’ or ‘How would you say word so-and-so in French? ’, and while in some cases it is difficult or even impossible to answer, in others one can do so without, a moment’s hesi­tation; no one knowing French would have any difficulty, in giving the equivalent of an adjective like yellow, a verb like write, a concrete noun like pencil, or an abstract noun like equality. If words had no meaning outside contexts it would be impossible to compile a dictionary. ‘There is no getting away from the fact, ’ writes an eminent semanticist, ‘that single words have more or less permanent mean­ings, that they actually do refer to certain referents, and not to others, and that this characteristic is the indispen­sable basis of all communications.’ This is only common sense, and it has recently been confirmed by experimental data. A series of tests designed to study the influence of context has shown that there is usually in each word a hard core of meaning which is relatively stable and can only be modified by the context within certain limits.

At the same time no one would deny the crucial impor­tance of context in the determination of word-meanings. As far as the role of verbal context is concerned, this was already recognized as fundamental by some of the pioneers of modern semantics. Modern linguists, however, have not only placed greater emphasis on context but have consid­erably broadened its scope and have also probed more deeply into its influence on word-meanings.

The range of the term ‘context’ has been widened in several directions. Even the strictly verbal context is no longer restricted to what immediately precedes and follows, but may cover the whole passage, and sometimes the whole book, in which the word occurs. This tendency is particularly noticeable in stylistic criticism where it has often been found that the complete significance of an important term can be grasped only in the light of the work as a whole. [...]

In addition to the verbal context, the linguist must also pay attention to the so-called context of situation... [...]It means in the first place the actual situation in which an utterance occurs, but leads on to an even broad­er view of context embracing the entire cultural back­ground against which a speech-event has to be set. ‘The conception of context, ’ writes Malinowski, ‘must burst the bonds of mere linguistics and be carried over into the analysis of the general conditions under which a language is 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 environment.’

This widening of contexts, linguistic and non-linguistic, has opened new horizons for the study of meaning. [...]

[...] Broadly speaking there are two kinds of contextual influences: those which affect any word, and those which affect some words more than others. Every word, no mat­ter how precise and unambiguous, will derive from the context a certain determinateness which, by the very nature of things, can arise only in specific utterances. Even prop­er names, the most concrete of all words, have a variety of aspects only one of which will be relevant to a partic­ular situation; only the context will show whether when speaking of Queen Victoria, we are referring to the young Queen advised by Lord Melbourne, to the aged, monarch reigning at the time of the Boer War, or to any other stage in the 82 years of her life. Another factor which depends largely on the context is the emotive side of word-meaning. In principle, practically any term may ac­quire emotive overtones in a suitable context; conversely, even words with a strong emotional charge may on occa­sion be employed in a purely objective manner. Home, for example, is one of the great emotional words of the lan­guage, and is used that way in many contexts (‘Home, sweet home ’; ‘England, home and beauty’; ‘ Home is the sailor, home from the sea’, etc.), but it is stripped of all emotion in Home Office or В.В.С. Home Service.

Apart from this general influence, context may also play a vital part in fixing the meaning of words which are too vague or too ambiguous to make sense by them­selves. To take an extreme case, the verb do has such a wide variety of uses that it is virtually meaningless in itself. It is interesting to note, however, that in less advanced cases of ambiguity there is sometimes a kind of hierarchy between the various meanings, which is largely independent of context. Recent experiments have shown, for example, that when German speakers were asked to make up a sentence containing the word Nagel, all the subjects automatically took it in the sense of ‘metal nail’; apparently it did not even occur to them that it also means ‘finger-nail, toe-nail’.

Another type of ambiguity which only the context will dispel is found in words belonging to more than one word-class. This is particularly common in English where words can pass freely — by a process known as ‘conversion’ — from one class to another. [...] Here too there is no doubt a hierarchy of functions: fire is primarily a noun, though it can be used as a verb; have is first and foremost a verb though it becomes a noun in ‘the haves and the have-nots’... The role of context is even more essential in the case of homonyms. It would obviously be meaningless to ask someone to find the equivalent of the English word sole in a foreign language; one would first have to specify which of the three soles is meant — the adjective, the fish, or the bottom of the foot — not to mention soul which, though spelt differently, is pronounced in the same way. The Shakespearean pun:

Not on thy sole, but on thy soul, harsh Jew,

Thou mak’st thy knife keen.

The Merchant of Venice, Act IV, scene 1,

is based on this ambiguity. [...]