Context and Contexts: Parts meet whole?(209 Pragmatics & Beyond New Series)

This book departs from the premise that context represents a complex relational configuration which can no longer be conceived as an analytic prime but rather requires a parts-whole perspective to capture its inherent dynamism. The edited volume presents a collection of papers which examine the connectedness between context, contextualization and entextualization. They address the questions how meaning and speech acts are situated in context, how both are influenced by context, how context influences speech acts and meaning, how context is imported into the discourse, and how context is entextualized in discourse. The papers cover institutional and non-institutional contexts, the language of Greek laws, political discourse, confrontational media discourse and task-oriented face-to-face and back-to-back interactions. They reflect current moves in pragmatics and discourse analysis to cross disciplinary and methodological boundaries by integrating relevant premises and insights, in particular cognition, adaptive action, negotiation of meaning, sequentiality, recipient design and genre.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgements; 2. Introduction (by Fetzer, Anita); 3. Situated meaning in context; 4. Why a mother's rule is not a law: The role of context in the interpretation of Greek laws (by Moser, Amalia); 5. Fighting words: Hybrid discourse and discourse processes (by Berlin, Lawrence N.); 6. Context and talk in confrontational discourses (by Granato, Luisa); 7. Deixis in context; 8. This? No, that! Constructing shared contexts in the conversational dyad (by Jungbluth, Konstanze); 9. "Here is the difference, here is the passion, here is the chance to be part of great change": Strategic context importation in political discourse (by Fetzer, Anita); 10. Context, contrast, and the structure of discourse in Turkish (by Turan, Umit Deniz); 11. Communicative action in context; 12. Speech acts in context (by Mey, Jacob L.); 13. How are speech acts situated in context? (by Oishi, Etsuko); 14. Context: An adaptive perspective (by Nyan, Thanh); 15. Subject index; 16. Author index

Review :
Context and Contexts: Parts meet whole? is a fine collection with a great potential for many audiences, from individually focused research beginners to experts with the highest level of expertise in the field. The volume covers diverse theoretical commitments, but eventually, partly due to its ‘‘part/whole’’ perspective (acknowledged in the subtitle), offers a consistent picture of context as a reliable, coherent and theoretically sound phenomenon with its own field of study. It reconfirms that context can no longer be seen as an analytic prime, but rather as a dynamic and relational phenomenon. Naturally, the book does not exhaust the topic, but enriches the field and documents the need for methodological compositionality and interdisciplinary. In summary, Context and Contexts, edited by Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi, is a book recommended to all readers interested in discourse studies and pragmatics. Context and Contexts develops a long tradition of books published on context, but at the same time, opens up new horizons for future researchers by posing questions that require further investigations. Some of these horizons include: the characteristics of law as a genre and how far it differs from everyday conversation; the advantages of using a Multilayered Model of context (MMC) in the analysis of texts; and the contextual characteristics of confrontational interviews. These avenues are valuable because they consider older problems from new perspectives. Overall, the selection of contributions results in an informative volume that is a must read for any scholar interested in perceiving context and discourse analysis from a fresh perspective. From this collection of essays a complex, multi-layered picture of context emerges, shedding new light on both its static and dynamic aspects and on its role as regards deixis, situated meaning and communicative action. New perspectives on discourse, dialogue and speech acts that highlight their situatedness are put forward and exemplified by fresh research on written and oral texts representative of various genres and functions in different languages, according to the best trans-linguistic and intercultural style of pragmatic research. The nature and role of context has been the subject of linguistic inquiry for decades. The complexity of the target has resulted in a variety of different approaches. Anita Fetzer and Etsuko Oishi’s new edited volume Context and contexts: parts meet whole? claims that because of its multifaceted nature and inherent complexity, context is no longer considered an analytic prime but rather seen from a parts-whole perspective as an entity containing sub-entities (or sub-contexts). The editors produced an excellent book whose contributors provide intriguing ideas, and new insights in the dynamic, relational, and heterogeneous nature of context and context-based analysis. This volume is highly recommended for all researchers and graduate students who do any language-oriented research.