speech context meaning

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Speech Context Meaning, Different Types, and Examples

What is speech context meaning and its different types..

SPEECH CONTEXT MEANING – Defining speech context and determining the different types of speech context with examples.

Communication does not only happens between two people. It can be between a person and a group or two groups of people exchanging ideas and thoughts. And speech context is about where the communication happens and how is the message relayed in the whole communication process.

Here are the types of speech context:

• Intrapersonal The communication that happens within oneself. This appears that the source and the receiver of the message is the speaker himself. Often times, this is done when a person does self-reflection and analyzing his own feelings and thoughts. This is also one way in assessing yourself. Example: When choosing what course in college you would want to take. Before coming up with a decision, you’d have to assess your interests, talents, strengths, and weaknesses.
• Interpersonal The communication happens between two or more persons. Depending on the relationship of these people, the communication can be formal, casual, informal, or intimate. 2 types of interpersonal communication: – dyad communication that happens between two people. Example: You and your doctor during consultation. – small group where three or more people are involved but not over 12. Example: You and your groupmates in research sharing ideas.
• Public Communication This happens when a person delivers a message or talks in front of bigger number of people or listeners. Example: A politician presenting his platforms in a grand rally.
• Mass Communication This happens when television, social media, newspaper, magazines, and the likes were used as channels to relay the message. Example: A weatherman discussing the path of the strong typhoon in television.
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Types of Speech Context | Oral Communication in Context

Every day we deal with various kinds of conversations. Many of us wake up checking our phones if there are new messages in chat groups and email apps. Some have the confidence to take photos of themselves and posting them on their Facebook or Instagram accounts with the caption “Woke up like this” which surely gain reacts and comments from their friends. I bet many of us look in the mirror when we leave our bed and check our faces. If you are living with your family, mornings are filled with greetings and talks about food and activities for the day. When eating breakfast, some prefer to watch the morning news program while chewing the sumptuous meal.

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During the pre- pandemic time, you engage with your classmates in group works and reporting. You answer your teacher’s questions and you inquire for the things unclear to you. During break time, you exchange stories with your friends while enjoying your snacks. In eight hours you stay in the school, you communicate multiple times with various people. When you home, you talk with your family and narrate what happened the whole day. Before sleeping, some of you have activities like writing a diary, meditation or prayer, writing to-do list and the like.

Now that we are in the pandemic, physical interaction became limited. We miss going out with our friends and relatives and share moments with them. Good thing that there are social media platforms we use to reach out and enjoy things even we are confined to our houses. With the advancement of technology, we can connect to thousands of people wherever we are and in real time. Thus, communication is diverse in terms of the situations or environment we are in. This is speech context comes in.

Speech context is about the environment where the communication happens and how the message is relayed during the process. By knowing the speech context of a conversation, we can easily understand the message and we can make feedback clearly and appropriately.

There are four types of speech context: intrapersonal, interpersonal, public, and mass communication.

Intrapersonal - this communication happens within oneself. This means that the speaker acts as the source and the receiver of the message. When you do self- reflection, you analyze your thoughts and feelings. By knowing what you feel, you can assess yourself on how to react on it.

When you are asked what degree program you want to pursue in the college, you think of your interests and talents, and your strengths and weaknesses before answering.

You make yourself calm after realizing that you lost the food container while you are on your way back home.

Interpersonal - this communication involves two or more people. The conversation can be formal or informal, intimate or casual depending on the relationship people involved have.

There are two types of interpersonal communication: dyad and small group.

Dyad communication - two people are involved in this communication.

You talked to your mother that you need an illustration board for your activity tomorrow.

Your doctor asks about what you want to consult it.

Small group - three but not more than twelve people are part of the conversation. This type of communication is present during brainstorming or collaborating with other people.

Your group is pitching ideas for the research title to be presented.

Your father told the whole family that the trip to Hundred Islands will not push through because of the tropical depression.

Public - in this type of communication, you can deliver a message to bigger number people in a venue. When someone is giving a message to the public, he/ she usually inform or persuade people.

You express your message of thanks during the commencement exercises in the school.

A candidate tells his/ her platform in a grand rally.

Mass communication - this communication has television, social media, newspaper, magazines, and the like as channels. This type of communication reaches millions of people.

A weather forecaster informs the audiences about the location of the typhoon.

A blog entry about the Tondol White Sand Beach became trending on social media.

Now that you learned about the different types of speech context, it is time to take this short test to know how much you learned from this lesson.

Direction: Identify the type of speech context in the following situations.

• The town doctor does a live broadcast on Facebook about the latest COVID-19 update.
• Your parents are talking about the monthly bills.
• A pastor gives his sermon to the attendees.
• You exclaimed “I can do this” before your turn to sing on the stage.
• DepEd TV airs TV lesson.

Sources: 

Domingo, M. & Liboon, K. (2020). Oral communication in context quarter 1- module 5: types of speech context . Department of Education- Region IV-A CALABARZON: Rizal

Sipacio, P. J. & Balgos, A. R. (2016). Oral communication in context for senior high school . C & E Publishing, Inc.: Quezon City

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1 Introduction to the Public Speaking Context

Learning objectives.

• Identify the three components of getting your message across to others.
• Describe elements in the transactional model of communication.

Communication is a Process

Communication is a process, not a singular event. A basic definition of communication is “sharing meaning between two or more people.” By definition of a process, we must take a series of actions or steps in order to reach a defined end goal. When we follow this process, we carefully consider how to best present information to reach our goals in a given context. When we do not follow the process, we leave our speaking success up to chance.

How do you get your message heard?

We live in a world with a lot of noise. Getting your message heard above others depends on three fundamental components: message, skill, and passion .

Message: When what you are saying is clear and coherent, people are more likely to pay attention to it. On the other hand, when a message is ambiguous, people will often stop paying attention. Working through the speechmaking process in the next chapter will help us to create clear and coherent messages.

Effective communication skills:  You may have the best ideas in the world, but if you do not possess the skills to communicate those ideas effectively, you’re going to have a problem getting anyone to listen. In this book, we will address the skills you must possess to effectively communicate your ideas to others.

Passion: One mistake that novice public speakers make is picking topics in which they have no emotional investment. If you are not interested in your message, you cannot expect others to be. Passion is the extra spark that draws people’s attention and makes them want to listen to your message. Your audience can tell if you don’t really care about your topic, and they will just tune you out. We will explore how to choose topics in the next chapter.

Public Speaking Elements

Most who study the speech communication process agree that there are several critical components present in nearly every speech. Understanding these elements can provide us with information that will help us to navigate any speaking context successfully.

All communication is a process composed of certain necessary elements:

• Senders (encoders)
• Receivers (decoders)
• feedback; and

With all these elements working together, the act of communication can be very complex. Let’s examine each element.

Sender: The sender creates a message through the process of encoding. Encoding entails putting thoughts and feelings into words or other symbols to share with the audience.

Receiver: The receiver decodes by listening and understanding those words and symbols and making meaning of them personally.

Context : There are four major types of context happening simultaneously in any communication act.

• Historical: What has gone on between the sender(s) and receiver(s) before the speech. The historical elements can be positive or negative, recent or further back in time. These contexts can influence the speaker’s credibility with the audience, as well as their understanding.
• Cultural: This may be ethnic, racial, religious, and/or regional cultures or co-cultures. Culture is defined (Floyd, 2017) as “the system of learned and shared symbols, language, values, and norms that distinguish one group of people from another.”
• Social: The kind of relationship the sender(s) and receiver(s) are involved in, such as teacher-student, co-workers, employer-employee, or members of the same civic organization, faith, profession, or community.
• Physical: Where the communication is taking place and the attributes of that location. The physical context can have cultural meaning (a famous shrine or monument) that influences the form and purpose of the communication or attributes that influence audience attention (temperature, seating arrangements, or external noise).

Message: Messages are the content of what you are communicating. They may be informal and spontaneous, such as small talk, or formal, intentional, and planned, such as a commencement address. In public speaking, we focus on the creation of formal and deliberate messages.

Channel: The channel is the means through which the message travels. In face-to-face communication the channel involves all of our senses, so the channel is what we see, hear, touch, smell and perhaps what we taste. When we’re communicating with someone online, the channel is the computer; when texting the channel is the cell phone; and when watching a movie on cable, the channel is the TV.

Noise: Noise refers to anything that interferes with message transmission or reception (i.e., getting the image from your head into others’ heads). There are four types of noise.

• Physiological noise : Physiological processes and states that interfere with a message. For instance, if a speaker has a headache or the flu, or if audience members are hot or they’re hungry, these conditions may interfere with message accuracy.
• Psychological noise: This refers to the mental states or emotional states that impede message transmission or reception. For example, audience members may be thinking about what they want to eat for lunch, or about a date they had last night. Or a speaker may be anxious about the speech.
• Physical noise : This is the actual sound level in a room. There may be noise from the air conditioner or the projector. Or maybe the person next to you clicking their pen.
• Cultural: Message interference that results from differences in people’s worldviews is cultural noise. The greater the difference in worldview, the more difficult it is to understand one another and communicate effectively.

Feedback: This is the message sent from the receiver back to the sender. Feedback in public speaking is usually nonverbal, such as head movement, facial expressions, laughter, eye contact, posture, and other behaviors that we use to judge audience involvement, understanding, and approval. These types of feedback can be positive (nodding, sitting up, leaning forward, smiling) or less than positive (tapping fingers, fidgeting, lack of eye contact, checking devices). There are times when verbal feedback from the audience is appropriate. You may stop and entertain questions about your content, or the audience may fill out a comment card at the end of the speech.

Outcome: The outcome is the result of the public speaking situation. For example, if you ask an audience to consider becoming bone marrow donors, there are certain outcomes. They will either have more information about the subject and feel more informed; they will disagree with you; they will take in the information but do nothing about the topic; and/or they will decide it’s a good idea to become a donor and go through the steps to do so. If they become potential donors, they will add to the pool of existing donors and perhaps save a life. Thus, either they have changed or the social context has changed, or both.

Now that we have looked at the process of communication, let’s apply it to public speaking. The speaker originates and creates a structured message and sends it through the visual/oral channel using symbols and nonverbal means to the audience members as a group, who provide (mostly nonverbal) feedback. The speaker and audience may or may not be aware of the types of interference or noise that exist, and the speaker may try to deal with them. As a result of public speaking, the audience’s minds, emotions, and/or actions are affected.

The Transactional Model of Public Speaking

The transactional model of communication illustrates the elements in public speaking visually so we can understand how meaning is co-crated. Transactional communication means that there is a continuous and simultaneous exchange of information between people. The process of encoding and decoding is an important consideration because it takes into account misunderstandings. How often have you had a message that you thought you shared effectively only for the receiving party to completely misinterpret your meaning? Although interpreting a speaker’s message may sound easy in theory, in practice many problems can arise. A speaker’s verbal message, nonverbal communication, and mediated presentation aids can make a message either clearer or harder to understand. For example, unfamiliar vocabulary, speaking too fast or too softly, or small print on presentation aids may make it difficult for you to figure out what the speaker means. Conversely, by providing definitions of complex terms, using well-timed gestures, or displaying graphs of quantitative information, the speaker can help you interpret his or her meaning. Once you have interpreted what the speaker is communicating, you then evaluate the message. Was it good? Do you agree or disagree with the speaker? Is a speaker’s argument logical? These are all questions that you may ask yourself when listening to a speech.

The idea that meanings are cocreated between people is based on a concept called the “field of experience.” According to West and Turner, a field of experience involves “how a person’s culture, experiences, and heredity influence his or her ability to communicate with another” (West & Turner, 2010). Our education, race, gender, ethnicity, religion, personality, beliefs, actions, attitudes, languages, social status, past experiences, and customs are all aspects of our field of experience, which we bring to every interaction. For meaning to occur, we must have some shared experiences with our audience; this makes it challenging to speak effectively to audiences with very different experiences from our own. Our goal as public speakers is to build upon shared fields of experience so that we can help audience members interpret our message.

Key Takeaways

• Getting your message across to others effectively requires attention to message content, skill in communicating content, and your passion for the information presented.
• The interactional models of communication provide a useful foundation for understanding communication and outline basic concepts such as sender, receiver, context noise, message, channel, feedback, and outcomes.
• Examining each public speaking situation using the elements of public speaking will help us to create more effective messages for our audience.

Arnett, R. C., & Arneson, P. (1999).  Dialogic civility in a cynical age: Community, hope, and interpersonal relationships . Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Bakhtin, M. (2001a). The problem of speech genres. (V. W. McGee, Trans., 1986). In P. Bizzell & B. Herzberg (Eds.),  The rhetorical tradition  (pp. 1227–1245). Boston, MA: Bedford/St. Martin’s. (Original work published in 1953.).

Bakhtin, M. (2001b). Marxism and the philosophy of language. (L. Matejka & I. R. Titunik, Trans., 1973). In P. Bizzell & B. Herzberg (Eds.),  The rhetorical tradition  (pp. 1210–1226). Boston, MA: Medford/St. Martin’s. (Original work published in 1953).

Barnlund, D. C. (2008). A transactional model of communication. In C. D. Mortensen (Ed.),  Communication theory  (2nd ed., pp. 47–57). New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction.

DeVito, J. A. (2009).  The interpersonal communication book  (12th ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Geissner, H., & Slembek, E. (1986).  Miteinander sprechen und handeln  [Speak and act: Living and working together]. Frankfurt, Germany: Scriptor.

Mortenson, C. D. (1972).  Communication: The study of human communication . New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Schramm, W. (1954). How communication works. In W. Schramm (Ed.),  The process and effects of communication  (pp. 3–26). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Shannon, C. E., & Weaver, W. (1949).  The mathematical theory of communication . Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

Understanding the Process of Public Speaking. (2021, February 20). https://socialsci.libretexts.org/@go/page/17728

West, R., & Turner, L. H. (2010).  Introducing communication theory: Analysis and application  (4th ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, p. 13.

Wrench, J. S., McCroskey, J. C., & Richmond, V. P. (2008).  Human communication in everyday life: Explanations and applications . Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, p. 17.

Yakubinsky, L. P. (1997). On dialogic speech. (M. Eskin, Trans.).  PMLA ,  112 (2), 249–256. (Original work published in 1923).

Public Speaking Copyright © by Dr. Layne Goodman; Amber Green, M.A.; and Various is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Context in Communication: 10 Important Types with Examples

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Context in communication refers to the environment or setting in which communication takes place, which includes elements like the participants, the physical setting, the psychological environment, and the cultural backdrop.

The context of a communication process shapes the meaning, interpretation, and effectiveness of the encoded messages transmitted between the sender and the receiver.

For example, we can use context to infer whether a phrase is literal or sarcastic, whether we should be communicating formally (e.g. in a job interview) or informally (e.g. among old friends) , and so on.

Contexts we can consider when interpreting messages can include: physical, temporal, situational, historical, socio-cultural, and social-psychological contexts. Each is explored, with examples, below.

Context in Communication

Note that many of these contexts overlap and aren’t completely different to one another.

1. Temporal Context

The concept of temporal context encompasses the timing of the message delivery and the sequence of events.

For instance, a message delivered at the wrong time might not receive the intended reaction, and can lead to misunderstanding or confusion. Just ask a comedian – timing is everything!

Likewise, understanding the chronology or sequence of communicated messages helps in deriving their contextual meaning, preserving the flow and coherence of the communication.

• Daily Briefings: Holding a morning briefing at the start of a workday sets employees up with essential information and tasks needed for that day’s operations, thus harnessing the temporal context.
• Seasonal Product Launch: A company launching a winter clothing line in autumn uses the temporal context to appeal to customers preparing for the colder season.
• Socio-political Announcements: A politician announcing campaign strategies right before election season capitalizes on the temporal context, as the timing of the announcement can garner more attention and potential voting support.

2. Social-Psychological Context

Social-psychological context refers to the climate and environment of a communication interaction shaped by interpersonal communication, relationships, status distinctions, norms, and roles.

The social status , power dynamics, and general sentiments between communicators influence their message delivery, reception, and interpretation.

Respect towards authority, friendliness between friends, adherence to societal norms and values, consideration of gender roles—all of these shape this context.

• Business Communication: The power hierarchy and professional norms affect how messages are interpreted and delivered. A CEO’s message holds different weight and interpretation than a message from an intern.
• Family Conversations: The interplay of roles (parents, children, siblings etc.) and emotions affect the communication within a family. Conversations have different dynamics based on the affection, understanding, or conflicts among family members.
• Online Platforms: In the cyber world, anonymity influences users’ behavior and responses. This new form of social-psychological context leads to distinct communication patterns like trolling, flamewars, etc.

3. Cultural Context

Cultural context refers to the shared beliefs, values, norms, and behaviors of the people within the communicating group. The dominant cultural context in the situation will impact the communication styles expected in the situation.

This context carries substantial weight because people from different cultures often carry different communication etiquettes, norms, and interpretations. Therefore, if there are multiple different cultures at play, there can often be miscommunication due to cultural differences .

Each culture have their own gestures, pauses, conversational distance, eye contact, and many more unspoken rules, which greatly vary from one culture to another.

One key distinction is between high-context and low-context cultures:

• High Context Culture : High-context culture relies heavily on implicit communication and non-verbal cues, with meaning often embedded in the social context.
• Low Context Culture : Low-context culture emphasizes explicit communication, where meaning is primarily derived from the spoken or written word.
• International Diplomacy: In international diplomacy, understanding cultural context is vital. The way one country’s diplomats greet another, symbolize respect, or argue their viewpoints all stem from their own cultural backgrounds , affecting communication outcomes.
• Multicultural Workplaces: In diverse workplaces, cultural context influences how employees interact, negotiate, and collaborate with peers from different cultural backgrounds. Misunderstandings may occur when cultural communication styles clash.
• Global Marketing: Businesses creating global marketing strategies must account for cultural differences. Advertisements must respect cultural norms and use idioms, humor, and references that resonate with the targeted audience’s culture.

4. Physical Context

Physical context refers to the actual location and environment where communication takes place, and includes the presence or absence of physical stimuli.

This type of context has a significant influence on the communication process as certain environments and surroundings can directly impact how messages are sent, received, and interpreted.

The architecture, furniture arrangement, noise levels, level of privacy, temperature, lighting: each of these aspects shape the communication environment and its dynamics.

• Business Meetings: The settings of business meetings, like a formal boardroom versus a casual coffee shop, significantly influence the group communication flow. Boardrooms might encourage more formal and structured conversations, while informal settings might foster free-flowing, creative discussions.
• Social Gatherings: The ambiance, noise level, and size of a gathering can affect interaction. A quiet intimate dinner party might facilitate deep, personal conversations, whereas a loud, crowded party might limit communication to short, superficial exchanges.
• Online Spaces: The physical context also applies to virtual environments. The design and features of an online platform (like a professional webinar room or a relaxed group chat) shape the communication dynamics considering the physical environment of the participants, the efficiency of their electronic devices, and the robustness of their internet connections.

5. Social Context

hge social context refers to the societal structures and systems within which the communication occurs. This isn’t about cultural values but social rules, but the concepts are interlinked .

Society’s structures and systems could include family units, peer groups, organizations, societies, and even broader social-economic systems. The social context provides insight into the social roles and norms that shape the implicit rules of communication.

• Classroom Setting: In an educational institution, students and teachers engage in conversations adhering to the social context of the classroom. Teachers lead, instruct, and discipline, while students follow, learn, and interact within defined norms.
• Corporate Environments: The organizational structure dictates communication within a company. The way a manager communicates with an employee is distinct from the way two colleagues or two executives communicate.
• Digital Platforms: On social media platforms , distinct social contexts emerge. The way users interact on LinkedIn (a professional networking site) vastly differs from interactions on Instagram (a casual, visual-sharing platform). So, understanding the nature of the platform, its audience, and behavior standards is important.

6. Historical Context

Historical context in communication refers to the background, circumstances, or events in the past that influence the understanding and interpretation of the present communication.

Messages are often interpreted through the lens of prior events and experiences, which impact the views and reception of the receiver. Historical context helps in understanding the origins and development of current communication and literature.

Without considering the historical context, communication risks misinterpretation, as messages can be tied to past time frames with distinct norms, societal behaviors, and expected reactions.

• News Stories: When covering ongoing events, news outlets often reference previous happenings to provide their audience with a broader understanding of the issue. Such aliasing to historical context helps make sense of current events.
• Academic Studies: Scholars often delve into the historical context when studying literature, philosophy, or sociology to precisely decipher the intended meanings, allusions, and metaphors rooted in the time when a work was created.
• Political Speeches: Politicians regularly draw on historical events in their speeches to set their agenda, invoke shared sentiments, or justify their policies. Understanding this historical context helps constituents to appreciate and critically analyze their messages.

Read More: 21 Historical Context Examples

7. Relational Context

Relational context in communication refers to the established relationship and shared history between the communicators.

The history of interactions and the nature of the relationship between the communicators significantly affect the meaning extracted from their communication. In fact, the established rapport, goodwill, and trustworthiness based on prior interactions often dictate the manner of current and future interactions.

Relational context also affects how messages are presented. Friends will communicate differently than strangers, and long-term colleagues will communicate differently than newly-introduced workmates.

• Friends’ Gatherings: At a friends’ gathering, individuals speak openly, use inside jokes, and demonstrate behaviors governed by their established relational context.
• Teacher-Student Interaction: In an academic setting, the teacher-student relationship—shaped by perceived roles, past encounters, and established rapport—affects how they communicate, impacting the learning experience .
• Negotiations: During business negotiations, the history of business dealings sets a relational context influencing the trust levels, negotiation techniques, and potential outcomes of the negotiation. Understanding this relational context is crucial for successful negotiations.

8. Functional Context

Functional context refers to the intended goal or function of communication.

The function can vary from giving or receiving information, problem-solving, decision-making, persuading, entertaining, expressing feelings, and so forth. This context will affect the method of communication used and the kind of content that’s conducive to achieving the intended goal.

Understanding the function of communication can lead to selecting the right communication practices to facilitate the desired outcomes.

• Educational Courses: In a classroom setting, the functional context is to transfer knowledge and skills from the teacher to the students, shaping the communication forms like lectures, discussions, and evaluations.
• Business Meetings: Business meetings serve multiple functions such as information exchange, decision-making, problem-solving, which govern the meeting’s agenda, protocols, and the participants’ communication.
• Social Media Platforms: The functional context varies across different social media platforms. Platforms like Twitter are more news-centric and involve information sharing, while Instagram focuses more on visual experiences and personal sharing. Each one’s functional context shapes user behavior, communication, and engagement.

9. Situational Context

Situational context refers to the specific circumstances or events that surround a communication act.

These circumstances can include factors like the event that led to this communication, the reason for communicating, and the immediate reactions required by the situation. It shapes the communication and its urgency, formality, and style.

Situational context is important in understanding the nuances of messages that can be lost without understanding the specific circumstances of the situation.

• Emergency Services: In emergencies like natural disasters, the situational context necessitates immediate, clear, and precise communication to coordinate rescue efforts.
• Job Interviews: The situational context of a job interview involves formal communication focusing on the candidate’s qualifications, experience, and fit for a job.
• Wedding Toasts: At a wedding, speeches and toasts are guided by the situational context. They focus on celebrating the couple, sharing anecdotes , expressing well wishes, and maintaining a festive atmosphere.

10. Environmental Context

Environmental context in communication encompasses the broader physical, social, and cultural environment impacting the communication process.

This can include the geographical location, cultural norms, societal structures, climatic conditions, and the available communication infrastructure of this environment.

Often, environmental context creates potential barriers or facilitators to effective communication, and understanding it can enhance the adaptation and effectiveness of communication strategies.

• Rural vs. Urban Settings: In a rural setting, limited technological infrastructure can affect the mode and speed of communication compared with an urban context equipped with advanced technology.
• Cross-Cultural Communication: Understanding the cultural and social norms of the environment is crucial in cross-cultural communication to ensure respect and effective communication.
• Climate Communication: In areas prone to natural disasters, communication often involves preparedness measures, safety procedures, and updates about climate conditions, reflecting the environmental context’s influence on communication.

Before you Go

• To learn how to understand context in communication, visit my guide on context clues .
• To learn more about context, visit my guide to the different types of context .
• To learn more about communication, visit my guide to the different communication styles .

• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 101 Hidden Talents Examples
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Green Flags in a Relationship
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Signs you're Burnt Out, Not Lazy
• Chris Drew (PhD) https://helpfulprofessor.com/author/chris-drew-phd/ 15 Toxic Things Parents Say to their Children

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Context in Language

Glossary of Grammatical and Rhetorical Terms

Jim Purdum / Getty Images

• An Introduction to Punctuation
• Ph.D., Rhetoric and English, University of Georgia
• M.A., Modern English and American Literature, University of Leicester
• B.A., English, State University of New York

Pronunciation: KON-text

Adjective: contextual .

Etymology: From the Latin, "join" + "weave"

In communication and composition , context refers to the words and sentences that surround any part of a discourse and that helps to determine its meaning . Sometimes called linguistic context .

In a broader sense, context may refer to any aspects of an occasion in which a speech-act takes place, including the social setting and the status of both the speaker and the person who's addressed. Sometimes called social context .

"Our choice of words is constrained by the context in which we use the language . Our personal thoughts are shaped by those of others," says author Claire Kramsch.

Observations

"In common use, almost every word has many shades of meaning, and therefore needs to be interpreted by the context," says textbook writer Alfred Marshall.

"The mistake is to think of words as entities. They depend for their force, and also for their meaning, on emotional associations and historical overtones, and derive much of their effect from the impact of the whole passage in which they occur. Taken out of their context, they are falsified. I have suffered a great deal from writers who have quoted this or that sentence of mine either out of its context or in juxtaposition to some incongruous matter which quite distorted my meaning, or destroyed it altogether," says Alfred North Whitehead, British mathematician, and philosopher.

Text and Context

"[British linguist M.A.K. Halliday ] maintains that meaning should be analyzed not only within the linguistic system but also taking into account the social system in which it occurs. In order to accomplish this task, both text and context must be considered. Context is a crucial ingredient in Halliday's framework: Based on the context, people make predictions about the meanings of utterances ," says Patricia Mayes, Ph.D., an associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The Linguistic and Nonlinguistic Dimensions of Context

According to the book, "Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon," "Recent work in a number of different fields has called into question the adequacy of earlier definitions of context in favor of a more dynamic view of the relationship between linguistic and non-linguistic dimensions of communicative events. Instead of viewing context as a set of variables that statically surround strips of talk, context and talk are now argued to stand in a mutually reflexive relationship to each other, with talk, and the interpretive work it generates, shaping context as much as context shapes talk."

" Language is not merely a set of unrelated sounds, clauses, rules, and meanings; it is a total coherent system of these integrating with each other, and with behavior, context, universe of discourse, and observer perspective," says American linguist and anthropologist Kenneth L. Pike.

Vygotsky's Influence on Studies of Context in Language Use

According to writer, Larry W. Smith, "Although [Belarusian psychologist Lev] Vygotsky did not write extensively specifically about the concept of context, all of his work implies the importance of context both at the level of individual speech acts (whether in inner speech or social dialogue ) and at the level of historical and cultural patterns of language use. Vygotsky's work (as well as that of others) has been an impetus in the development of the recognition of the need to pay close attention to context in studies of language use. For example, an interactionist approach following Vygotsky is readily compatible with recent developments in such linguistics- and language-associated fields as sociolinguistics , discourse analysis , pragmatics , and the ethnography of communication precisely because Vygotsky recognized the importance of both immediate contextual constraints and the wider social, historical, and cultural conditions of language use."

Goodwin, Charles and Alessandro Duranti. "Rethinking Context: An Introduction," in Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Kramsch, Claire. Context and Culture in Language Teaching . Oxford University Press, 1993.

Marshall, Alfred. Principles of Economics . Rev. ed, Prometheus Books, 1997.

Mayes, Patricia.  Language, Social Structure, and Culture . John Benjamins, 2003.

Pike, Kenneth L. Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics . University of Nebraska Press, 1982.

Smith, Larry W. "Context." Sociocultural Approaches to Language and Literacy: An Interactionist Perspective . Edited by Vera John-Steiner, Carolyn P. Panofsky, and Larry W. Smith. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Whitehead, Alfred North. "Philosophers Do Not Think in a Vacuum." Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead . Recorded by Lucien Price. David R. Godine, 2001.

• Definition and Examples of Text Linguistics
• Appropriateness in Communication
• What Is Linguistic Functionalism?
• Communicative Competence Definition, Examples, and Glossary
• Colligation
• Information Content (Language)
• What Is Koineization (or Dialect Mixing)?
• Meaning Semantics
• Definition of Usage Labels and Notes in English Dictionaries
• Definition and Examples of Linguistic Prestige
• Pragmatics Gives Context to Language
• Diglossia in Sociolinguistics
• Definition and Examples of Dialect in Linguistics
• What Is Lexical Diffusion?
• Linguistic Ecology

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Chapter 8: Pragmatics

8.11 What is a context?

In the previous section, we gave an informal description of what force operators like ASSERT and INTERR contribute to an utterance. To get a more concrete picture of what illocutionary force operators do with a proposition, it will help to think about why we have conversations in the first place. The “big” question that we are always trying to answer in a conversation is ‘what is the state of affairs in our world?’ . In a conversation, you are in a collaborative game with the other discourse participants, trying to figure out which propositions are true, and which ones are false.

We can think of this game as each “player” (discourse participants) updating the context each time they make an utterance. What is a context? You may already have a loose understanding of what a context is, and in fact, we’ve already mentioned the notion when we introduced implicatures earlier in this chapter. Informally, the context of an utterance is the state of affairs in the discourse when the utterance is made: what the topic is, who is a part of the conversation, what things have been said already, etc. More formally, we can characterise the context as a collection of sets that keep track of information in the discourse. This idea is illustrated in Figure 8.5 below.

One of these sets in the context is called the Common Ground (CG). The Common Ground is the set of propositions that all discourse participants in that conversation agree to be true. We can think of the goal of the game of discourse as increasing the common ground: to add as many propositions as possible to this set so that we have as many facts about our world as possible.

Because discourse is a collaborative game, normally, one does not simply get to add propositions to the Common Ground singlehandedly. In other words, you can’t just add a proposition to the Common Ground just because you think it’s true; you have to get the agreement of other discourse participants first. This means that there is another place (set) in the context, separate from the common ground, where this negotiation takes place. This set is called the Question Under Discussion (QUD) set . As the name suggests, the QUD set contains the questions (or topics) that are being discussed in the discourse. The QUD set is a special kind of set that is a stack. Usually, a set is just a collection of things: there is no order to the members in the set. A stack is a special kind of set that has more internal structure than a regular set. Let’s explain this metaphorically first. Think of the QUD stack as a stack of papers, where each paper has a question written on it. Every time you ask a question in a conversation, a “paper” (an issue ) gets added to this stack.

The top-most issue in the stack is the issue currently being discussed in the discourse. Sometimes the top-most issue is called the QUD , although it should be noted that the QUD stack itself is also often called “ the QUD”. F or clarity, we will call the stack the QUD stack in this textbook. Once that top-most issue has been resolved (i.e., someone answered that question), then that issue gets removed from the stack. We of course don’t mean that you literally have a stack of papers during conversations! This is just a metaphor to help you understand this theory of discourse, and to better visualise what we mean when we say that illocutionary meaning “does” something with a proposition.

Sometimes, we can’t come to an agreement in a conversation and the Common Ground doesn’t get increased. Perhaps the QUD is “Is coffee better than tea?” and the discourse participants can’t come to an agreement about it. This means that neither “Coffee is better than tea” nor “Tea is better than coffee” gets added to the CG. But of course, each participant is entitled to their own belief. This suggests that there is another kind of set that is specific to each discourse participant’s beliefs. We can call this kind of set the Discourse Commitment (DC) set of each discourse participant (sometimes also called their Public Belief set). Let’s say that there are two people having a conversation: Aya and Bo. The Discourse Commitment set of Aya is the set of propositions that Aya has publicly committed to as being true. The Discourse Commitment set of Bo is the set of propositions that Bo has publicly committed to as being true. There are as many Discourse Commitment sets as are there are discourse participants. If each Discourse Commitment set is the set of things that each discourse participant believes to be true, then the Common Ground can actually be thought of as the intersection of all of the Discourse Commitment sets in the context ( set theory strikes again!). For example, in Aya and Bo’s conversation, there are things that Aya believes to be true, and things that Bo believes to be true: call these sets DC A  and DC B  , respectively. Take the intersection of DC A  and DC B : that’s the stuff the both of them believe to be true, or the Common Ground.

In summary, the context is the collection of all of these sets that we just mentioned: the Common Ground, the QUD stack, and each discourse participant’s Discourse Commitment set.

Now we have a set of tools to talk about what illocutionary meaning is, and what we mean by you “do” something when you make an utterance. What illocutionary meaning does is take a proposition, and place it somewhere in one or more of these sets in the context: the Common Ground, the Question Under Discussion stack, or a Discourse Commitment set. The relevant question then, is where the ASSERT morpheme places a proposition in the context vs. where the INTERR morpheme places it in the context. This will be addressed in the next two sections.

Check your understanding

Farkas, D. F., & Bruce, K. B. (2010). On reacting to assertions and polar questions.  Journal of semantics ,  27 (1), 81-118.

Ginzburg, J. (1996). Dynamics and the semantics of dialogue.  Seligman, Jerry, & Westerst ahl, Dag (eds), Logic, language and computation ,  1 .

Groenendijk, J., & Stokhof, M. (1991). Dynamic predicate logic.  Linguistics and philosophy , 39-100.

Gunlogson, C. (2004).  True to form: Rising and falling declaratives as questions in English . Routledge.

Hamblin, C. L. (1971). Mathematical models of dialogue. Theoria ,  37 (2), 130-155.

Hamblin, C. L. (1973). Questions in Montague English. Foundations of Language , 10(1). 41–53.

Heim, I. (1982). The semantics of definite and indefinite noun phrases. University of Massachusetts, Amherst dissertation.

Heim, I. (2002). File change semantics and the familiarity theory of definiteness.  Formal Semantics: The Essential Readings , 223-248.

Kamp, H. (1981). A theory of truth and semantic representation. Truth, Interpretation and Information , 1–41.

Kamp, H., Genabith, J. V., & Reyle, U. (2011). Discourse Representation Theory. In Handbook of Philosophical Logic  (pp. 125-394). Springer, Dordrecht.

Roberts, C. (2012). Information structure: Towards an integrated formal theory of pragmatics.  Semantics and Pragmatics ,  5 , 6-1.

Stalnaker, R. C. (1978). Assertion. In  Pragmatics  (pp. 315-332). Brill.

Taniguchi, A. (2017).  The formal pragmatics of non-at-issue intensification in English and Japanese . Michigan State University dissertation.

Essentials of Linguistics, 2nd edition Copyright © 2022 by Catherine Anderson; Bronwyn Bjorkman; Derek Denis; Julianne Doner; Margaret Grant; Nathan Sanders; and Ai Taniguchi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How Context Helps Us Understand the Meaning of Words

"you shall know a word by the company it keeps.".

Posted June 1, 2021 | Reviewed by Chloe Williams

• Humans often rely on cognitive shortcuts. These shortcuts can sometimes fool us, but they generally help people make sense of the world.
• Cognitive shortcuts are useful in language processing. People can get a good sense of the meaning of a word by looking at its context.
• This helps explain why humans are so good at language processing, which relies on both the human mind and the organization of language itself.

The human mind is astonishing. We can think through the toughest problems and find the smartest solutions. We can compute answers to the toughest mathematical questions. And we can apply our creative skills to produce wonderful pieces of art.

When it comes to processing language, things are equally impressive. We have little difficulty extracting words and sentences out of a long stream of sound bursts, called speech. When it comes to reading, we are able to read some 200 to 250 words per minute, and a skilled reader is able to boost that number to some 300 words per minute. When it comes to the sentence structure, we have little difficulty understanding that the sentence “colorless green ideas sleep furiously” is grammatical (whereas “furiously ideas colorless sleep green” is not).

We are avid language users. We can keep tens of thousands of words in mind and know the relations between them. We understand their meaning and can flawlessly place them in a sentence. And talking about sentences, we can recognize as many sentences as there are grains of sand in the Sahara desert. We are true geniuses.

The scientific literature has shown countless examples of our mental depths. Human cognition is simply so advanced that we would like to place ourselves on top of the hierarchy of species when it comes to intelligence . In fact, we are convinced that we are so smart that we would readily claim we are smarter than all other species. We may not run as fast as a cheetah, swim as fast as a black marlin, be as loud as the sperm whale, or have a sense of smell as strong as the African elephant, but we are certainly smarter. We’re the smartest of all, we think…

When Context Tricks Us

But recent studies show we may overestimate our thinking skills. It turns out that when we make decisions, our thinking is in fact rather sloppy. Let me give a few examples. In the picture below, it is obvious that you see a grey bar in a grey background. The bar starts with light grey on the left and turns to darker grey on the right. Except that what you really see is one single shade of grey in the bar. The context has fooled you in seeing a spectrum of grey in the bar.

And this is not just true for color perception. In the picture below, you may think you see a giant runner on the left, a tiny runner on the right and a medium-sized runner in the middle. Instead, however, you actually see three runners of identical size. The context of the perspective has fooled you and likely convinces you that the three runners must be of different sizes.

Before you conclude being fooled is reserved for optical illusions, let me give another example by introducing Belinda.

Belinda is 25 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majors in philosophy . She is deeply concerned with issues regarding sustainability, biodiversity and global warming .

What is most likely:

a) Belinda is on the Dean’s list.

b) Belinda is on the Dean’s list and a waitress in a vegan restaurant.

Many will fall for the second answer. The vegan restaurant is obvious. However, in this so-called conjunction fallacy, the context in which the answer could be placed so heavily rests on your mental shoulders that you may choose for the second answer, even though the first answer is simply most likely, always. There are simply more students on the Dean’s list in this world than ones that are both on the Dean’s list and also work in a vegan restaurant.

The grey does not look like a solid grey because of the context; the runners do not look to be the same size because of the context; and the likelihood of Belinda’s activities were tainted by the context. In most cases, however, it is not at all a bad thing that we are fooled by optical illusions in which the context leads us astray. In fact, we are fooled in a small number of cases, whereas context generally helps us to understand the world around us. When it comes to cognition, context matters a lot. And by relying on context, we can allow ourselves to take cognitive shortcuts.

How We Use Cognitive Shortcuts to Understand Language

This brings me to my favorite topic of language processing. We could ask ourselves the question of how we are able to keep the meanings of those 60,000 words in mind and how we are able to recognize sextillion sentences. Is it because we have such incredible memory storage? We have such incredible brain power? Or might there be something more trivial? Might it be that we take cognitive shortcuts relying on context?

When it comes to the meaning of the word, we may be able to guess it purely on the basis of content. J.R. Firth in the 1950s stated, “you shall know [the meaning of] a word by the company it keeps.” What he meant was that by taking into account the neighbors of a word, we can get a good estimate of what the word means, even though we may have never heard the word before. When I say “my daughter was ferliamated when she heard she would get a puppy,” you get a pretty good sense of the word “ferliamated,” despite never having heard the word before (to my knowledge it does not occur in any English dictionary). Yet you do know what grammatical class “ferliamated” belongs to and can guess its meaning. When we look further into the question of how we are able to keep 60,000 words in mind and can recognize some sextillion sentences, as many sentences as there are grains of sand in the Sahara desert, the answer probably lies in the context.

In a way, we could then argue that language creates meaning. Language provides us with a convenient cognitive shortcut so that we do not have to hold the 60,000 meanings and sextillion sentences in mind. All we need to do is understand some words and the context helps us out with the rest. Even though language users can talk about anything at any time in any context, it seems more likely that they talk about the things whose meaning lies in the same context. This offers exciting avenues for our understanding of the human mind and the way we understand language for it does not only place the burden on the human mind, but also on the organization of the language system itself.

Chater, N. (2018). The mind is flat: The illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind . Penguin UK.

De Waal, F. (2016). Are we smart enough to know how smart animals are? WW Norton & Company.

Firth, J. R. (1957). Papers in linguistics 1934–1951 . Oxford University Press

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow . Macmillan.

Louwerse, M. (2021). Keeping those words in mind: How language creates meaning. Prometheus Books.

Max Louwerse, Ph.D., is a linguist, cognitive psychologist, and artificial intelligence researcher. He is currently Professor of Cognitive Psychology and Artificial Intelligence at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.

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Chapter 1: The Speech Communication Process

The Speech Communication Process

• Listener(s)

Interference

As you might imagine, the speaker is the crucial first element within the speech communication process. Without a speaker, there is no process.  The  speaker  is simply the person who is delivering, or presenting, the speech.  A speaker might be someone who is training employees in your workplace. Your professor is another example of a public speaker as s/he gives a lecture. Even a stand-up comedian can be considered a public speaker. After all, each of these people is presenting an oral message to an audience in a public setting. Most speakers, however, would agree that the listener is one of the primary reasons that they speak.

The listener is just as important as the speaker; neither one is effective without the other.  The  listener  is the person or persons who have assembled to hear the oral message.  Some texts might even call several listeners an “audience. ” The listener generally forms an opinion as to the effectiveness of the speaker and the validity of the speaker’s message based on what they see and hear during the presentation. The listener’s job sometimes includes critiquing, or evaluating, the speaker’s style and message. You might be asked to critique your classmates as they speak or to complete an evaluation of a public speaker in another setting. That makes the job of the listener extremely important. Providing constructive feedback to speakers often helps the speaker improve her/his speech tremendously.

Another crucial element in the speech process is the message.  The  message  is what the speaker is discussing or the ideas that s/he is presenting to you as s/he covers a particular topic.  The important chapter concepts presented by your professor become the message during a lecture. The commands and steps you need to use, the new software at work, are the message of the trainer as s/he presents the information to your department. The message might be lengthy, such as the President’s State of the Union address, or fairly brief, as in a five-minute presentation given in class.

The  channel  is the means by which the message is sent or transmitted.  Different channels are used to deliver the message, depending on the communication type or context. For instance, in mass communication, the channel utilized might be a television or radio broadcast. The use of a cell phone is an example of a channel that you might use to send a friend a message in interpersonal communication. However, the channel typically used within public speaking is the speaker’s voice, or more specifically, the sound waves used to carry the voice to those listening. You could watch a prerecorded speech or one accessible on YouTube, and you might now say the channel is the television or your computer. This is partially true. However, the speech would still have no value if the speaker’s voice was not present, so in reality, the channel is now a combination of the two -the speaker’s voice broadcast through an electronic source.

The context is a bit more complicated than the other elements we have discussed so far. The context is more than one specific component. For example, when you give a speech in your classroom, the classroom, or  the physical location of your speech, is part of the context  . That’s probably the easiest part of context to grasp.

But you should also consider that the  people in your audience expect you to behave in a certain manner, depending on the physical location or the occasion of the presentation  . If you gave a toast at a wedding, the audience wouldn’t be surprised if you told a funny story about the couple or used informal gestures such as a high-five or a slap on the groom’s back. That would be acceptable within the expectations of your audience, given the occasion. However, what if the reason for your speech was the presentation of a eulogy at a loved one’s funeral? Would the audience still find a high-five or humor as acceptable in that setting? Probably not. So the expectations of your audience must be factored into context as well.

The cultural rules -often unwritten and sometimes never formally communicated to us -are also a part of the context. Depending on your culture, you would probably agree that there are some “rules ” typically adhered to by those attending a funeral. In some cultures, mourners wear dark colors and are somber and quiet. In other cultures, grieving out loud or beating one’s chest to show extreme grief is traditional. Therefore,  the rules from our culture  -no matter what they are -play a part in the context as well.

Every speaker hopes that her/his speech is clearly understood by the audience. However, there are times when some obstacle gets in the way of the message and interferes with the listener’s ability to hear what’s being said.  This is  interference  , or you might have heard it referred to as “noise. ”  Every speaker must prepare and present with the assumption that interference is likely to be present in the speaking environment.

Interference can be mental, physical, or physiological.  Mental interference  occurs when the listener is not fully focused on what s/he is hearing due to her/his own thoughts.  If you’ve ever caught yourself daydreaming in class during a lecture, you’re experiencing mental interference. Your own thoughts are getting in the way of the message.

A second form of interference is  physical interference  . This is noise in the literal sense -someone coughing behind you during a speech or the sound of a mower outside the classroom window. You may be unable to hear the speaker because of the surrounding environmental noises.

The last form of interference is  physiological  . This type of interference occurs when your body is responsible for the blocked signals. A deaf person, for example, has the truest form of physiological interference; s/he may have varying degrees of difficulty hearing the message. If you’ve ever been in a room that was too cold or too hot and found yourself not paying attention, you’re experiencing physiological interference. Your bodily discomfort distracts from what is happening around you.

The final component within the speech process is feedback. While some might assume that the speaker is the only one who sends a message during a speech, the reality is that the  listeners in the audience are sending a message of their own, called  feedback  .  Often this is how the speaker knows if s/he is sending an effective message. Occasionally the feedback from listeners comes in verbal form – questions from the audience or an angry response from a listener about a key point presented. However, in general, feedback during a presentation is typically non-verbal -a student nodding her/his head in agreement or a confused look from an audience member. An observant speaker will scan the audience for these forms of feedback, but keep in mind that non-verbal feedback is often more difficult to spot and to decipher. For example, is a yawn a sign of boredom, or is it simply a tired audience member?

Generally, all of the above elements are present during a speech. However, you might wonder what the process would look like if we used a diagram to illustrate it. Initially, some students think of public speaking as a linear process -the speaker sending a message to the listener -a simple, straight line. But if you’ll think about the components we’ve just covered, you begin to see that a straight line cannot adequately represent the process, when we add listener feedback into the process. The listener is sending her/his own message back to the speaker, so perhaps the process might better be represented as circular. Add in some interference and place the example in context, and you have a more complete idea of the speech process.

Fundamentals of Public Speaking Copyright © by Lumen Learning is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Editorial: Context in Communication: A Cognitive View

Gabriella airenti.

1 Department of Psychology, Center for Cognitive Science, University of Torino, Torino, Italy

Alessio Plebe

2 Department of Cognitive Science, University of Messina, Messina, Italy

Context is a controversial concept. Research in philosophy of language, linguistics and cognitive science has shown that the communicative content of an utterance is not limited to the conventional content of what is said. The notion of context has been introduced in semantics and has assumed a central role in language studies with the pragmatic turn that has shifted the focus from meaning to speaker's meaning, a change of paradigm that can be traced back to Wittgenstein's conception of language use (Wittgenstein, 1953 ) and to the work of philosophers of language like Austin ( 1962 ), Grice ( 1975 , 1978 ), and Searle ( 1969 ). In this framework pragmatics deals with the intentional aspects of language use. The notion of context is then no more restricted to the interpretation of indexicals and demonstratives (Kaplan, 1989 ). More generally, it applies to what is presupposed as common ground among the participants in a conversation (Stalnaker, 2002 , 2014 ).

From a cognitive perspective communication is an inferential process based on mental states and shared knowledge (Clark, 1996 ). What contributes to interpret a communicative act beyond the spoken words may, broadly speaking, be included. Intuitively, context is the background for comprehension, what makes communication possible. This is a critical point. In fact, context both is an inescapable concept in the study of communication and eludes univocal definition. There is no one context but many.

In launching this Research Topic we did not expect to find a final definition or to have the last say. We were interested in singling out the present lines of research in this field. The papers we have collected attack the problem from different perspectives and using different research methodologies.

The paper by Faber and León-Araúz is aimed at, if not final, a comprehensive and detailed definition of context. They propose a taxonomy based on scope: local, spanning typically five items before or after the term occurrence; and global, such as a whole text or all that goes beyond the text such as the communicative situation. They apply this distinction to syntax, semantics, and pragmatics even if, as they note, at this level the boundaries are fuzzy. The challenging enterprise of detailing what context is, becomes mandatory in formalizing specialized knowledge resources, but the results shed light on the structure of context in general language.

On the way of clarifying what context constitutively is, García-Carpintero addresses Stalnaker's notion of context as common ground, mentioned above, showing certain weaknesses. The Stalnakerian view of common ground as sets of propositions reveals unsatisfying in cases of expressions with rich illocutionary features. The most convincing cases are those of slurs and pejoratives, where attempts to flatten the content into declarative form, will deprive context of important dimensions of expressive meaning. Therefore, context, in addition to sets of propositions, should be extended to include shared propositional commitments. Although the case of pejoratives and slurs is the most convincing, the requirement for shared commitments appears in other cases examined by Garcia-Carpintero as well: directives, questions, predicates of taste, pretense.

Notably, the set of shared commitments proposed by Garcia-Carpintero includes aspects of the emotional state of the speaker. A step further inside the personal and interpersonal spheres is taken by Marques , investigating predicates of personal taste, aesthetic or moral values. A well known drawback afflicting contextual explanations is disagreement. If two conflicting judgments can be explained by simply augmenting the original sentences with propositions about the context of the two speakers, disagreement should disappear. Marques argues for contextualism, suggesting that disagreement can be addressed by taking into account differences in non-doxastic attitudes, and is enhanced by the evolutionary reinforcement of certain personal dispositions in social coordination.

The main contender to the contextualist strategy defended by Marques is relativism, which is contrasted with expressivism in the paper by Frápolli and Villanueva . The idea is that there are two main ways to accommodate context dependence, by what they call building-block or organic models . The former, that gives prominence to the principle of compositionality over the principle of context, is proper to relativism, while the latter, that privileges context over compositionality, belongs to expressivism.

While in the group of papers described so far, the main perspective under which context is studied is semantic, enriched with insights on mental phenomena, in the next group the cognitive perspective prevails, asking questions about how context is structured and accessed in the mind. Mazzone builds upon one of the most developed theories in cognitive pragmatics, Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1986 ) and discusses how this theory succeeds in explaining the way relevant context is constructed during utterance understanding. He identifies a weakness in spelling out the mechanisms in place during the process of selecting the context, which, suggests Mazzone , can instead be identified in the combination of a bottom-up activation of schemata, especially goal-directed schemata, with a top-down activation of contextual information. This sort of mechanism is supported by what is currently known about the hierarchical structure of the frontal cortex.

Relevance Theory is the starting assumption also for Attardo , in the search for a satisfactory context to explain utterances. He stresses how the exploration of relevance is largely abductive in nature, and remarks that the derivation of context requires additional mechanisms that counteract the expansive tendencies of relevance and abduction. Such bonding mechanisms, argues Attardo , can be construed under the principles of satisfaction and charity .

Paradigmatic in a cognitive perspective on context is the discussion about the so-called Theory of Mind (ToM), the set of skills that allow to attribute beliefs, goals, and percepts to other people: how essential is this ability in constructing the context necessary to understand utterances? The two contributions by Kissine and Cummings provide two contrasting answers. For Kissine there are grades of interpretative strategies to derive relevant implicatures of an utterance, and the lower levels, like the egocentric relevance , do not require any ToM. For Cummings utterance interpretation is highly dependent on attributing cognitive and affective mental states to the minds of language users, and she proposes that for the purpose of context derivation the best notion of ToM should encompass the rational, intentional, holistic character of interpretation. Both papers draw on studies with ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) subjects to support their arguments. Kissine reports of subjects with ASD able to correctly discriminate between “ironical” and “literal” interpretations. Cummings reports clinical cases where ASD subjects exhibit deficits covering the three cornerstones of ToM she identified: rationality, intentionality, and holism.

Airenti investigates young children's ability to produce and understand different forms of humor. In particular she focuses on teasing, a form of humor already present in preverbal infants that is also considered a typical feature of irony. She proposes that the acquisition of specific communicative contexts enable children to engage in humorous interactions before they possess the capacity to analyze them in the terms afforded by a full-fledged ToM.

In addition to increase our understanding, the cognitive perspective on context has important practical implications, as in the divergent interpretations of numeric quantities reported by Mandel . Subjects tend to assume large numerical quantities not as exact values, rather adopting a lower-bound at least or an upper-bound at most interpretation, depending on the context.

Several papers fall within the domain of experimental pragmatics.

Filippi et al. explore the role of prosodic cues in word learning. In natural situations learners have to identify words within a sequence of sounds and to relate them to specific referents extracted by the visual scene. Developmental research has suggested that adults' use of exaggerated pitch might direct infants' attention to specific elements in the context and guide learning. In their study the authors show that also adults exposed to an artificial language in different experimental conditions exploit pitch enhancement as a pragmatic cue.

The role of intonation employed as an indicator of focus in pragmatic interpretation is treated in Cummins and Rohde . In Gricean pragmatics the interpretation of an utterance is based on the relation between what has been said and the potential utterances that would have been relevant to the current discourse purpose, had it been uttered. This set of relevant alternatives is defined in the notion of Question Under Discussion (Roberts, 1996/2012 ). The three experiments reported in this study showed that hearers used the intonation as an indication of which QUD is currently in play in the interpretation of scalar implicatures, presuppositions, and coreference.

Domaneschi et al. maintain that for the analysis of context an important role is played by cognitive load. In fact, cognitive effort might have an effect on which presuppositions are activated. In their study they show this effect with presupposition selection in conditional sentences with a trigger in the consequent. The effect of cognitive effort in interpreting communicative utterances involving pragmatic enrichment is also the subject of Janssens and Schaeken 's paper. However, their study showed no influence of the working memory load on the performance in the task of inferring the implicatures from but, so and nevertheless . They also found that a major role in interpretation is played by the content of the arguments suggesting that context and content are fundamental in the interpretation process.

In their paper Dupuy et al. discuss how the context affects the interpretation of scalar implicatures. In particular, they focus on the pragmatic interpretation of some . They test two factors, the existence of factual information that facilitates the computation of pragmatic interpretations in the context, i.e., the cardinality of the domain of quantification, and the fact that the context makes the difference between the semantic and the pragmatic interpretations relevant. Their results suggest that the main factor that enhances pragmatic interpretation is the relevance of the contrast that in turn increases the salience of the cardinality.

Two papers use event-related potential (ERP) electrophysiological technique to analyze the role of context in the comprehension of two important pragmatic phenomena, metaphor and referential ambiguity. Bambini et al. conducted two experiments in which EEG activity was recorded when participants were presented with metaphors in two different context situations, a minimal vs. a supportive context. Their results suggest the presence of two dissociable ERP signatures in the processing of metaphors. In fact, the N400 effect was visible only in minimal context, whereas the P600 was visible both in the absence and in the presence of contextual cues. From these data the authors argue that linguistic context reduces the effort in retrieving lexical aspects of metaphors but does not suppress later pragmatic interpretation efforts needed in order to derive the speaker's intended meaning. Jiang and Zhou investigate how a comprehender resolves referential ambiguity in a conversation by using information concerning the social status of communicators in the context, and how empathic sensitivity to the social status information modulates ambiguity perception and the underlying neural activity. Electrophysiologically, they show the existence of differential neurocognitive processes underlying ambiguity resolution with different contextual cues.

Two papers analyze communication in context as a diagnostic and clinical resource.

Arcara and Bambini propose a test (APACS) to evaluate pragmatic abilities in clinical populations with acquired communicative deficits, ranging from schizophrenia to neurodegenerative diseases. The test consists of six tasks devoted to assess different pragmatic abilities in the domains of discourse and nonliteral communication. Their assumption is that while globally depending on context, different pragmatic aspects might involve different cognitive skills.

Stahl and Van Lancker Sidtis analyze the contribution of formulaic expressions in clinical rehabilitation from speech and language disorders after stroke. For these patients formulaic expressions frequently remain one of the few resources available for communication. Therapy may support them in including these expressions within language games, i.e., communicative exchanges based on turn-taking. In this way the conversational context allows patients to exploit their residual resources in order to reestablish social interactions.

Edwards deals with an extreme case of communication reporting her fieldwork with a community of deaf-blind people in Seattle. Edwards via the analysis of interactional sequences and subjects' metapragmatic commentary shows how deaf-blind people use tactile-kinesthetic channels to overcome the difficulty to converge on objects of reference. She discusses two mechanisms that can account for this process: embedding in the social field and deictic integration. She argues that together they yield a deictic system set to retrieve a restricted range of values from the extra-linguistic context, thereby attenuating the cognitive demands of intention attribution.

In summary, this research topic is a sampling of innovative efforts to address challenging issues on context, involving complex questions spanning from brain processes to social interactions and pragmatics. This sampling witnesses a growing, vibrant community of researchers attempting to integrate the knowledge, the methods, and the theory-building tools from philosophy of language, linguistics, cognitive science, and cognitive neuroscience.

Author contributions

Both authors contributed to the editorial and approved it.

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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Definition of context

Did you know.

Context , in Context

In its earliest uses (documented in the 15th century), context meant "the weaving together of words in language." This sense, now obsolete, developed logically from the word's source in Latin, contexere "to weave or join together." Context now most commonly refers to the environment or setting in which something (whether words or events) exists. When we say that something is contextualized , we mean that it is placed in an appropriate setting, one in which it may be properly considered.

• environment
• mise-en-scène
• surroundings

Examples of context in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'context.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Middle English contexte "text, composition," borrowed from Medieval Latin contextus "sequence, connection, setting," going back to Latin, "action of weaving, connection, coherence, ordered scheme, structure," from contexere "to weave together, connect (words), compose, combine" (from con- con- + texere "to weave, construct") + -tus, suffix of action nouns — more at technical entry 1

circa 1568, in the meaning defined at sense 1

Phrases Containing context

• context - free

Dictionary Entries Near context

context-free

Cite this Entry

“Context.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/context. Accessed 25 Aug. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of context, more from merriam-webster on context.

Nglish: Translation of context for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of context for Arabic Speakers

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Module 1: Introduction to Public Speaking

Elements in a speech, learning objectives.

• Describe the fundamental elements in a speech.
• Identify the main differences between writing a paper and delivering a speech.

Most college students are familiar with writing research papers or perhaps engaging in class discussions. Preparing and delivering a speech, however, differs from these activities in fundamental ways. All these elements will be covered in more detail elsewhere in the course.

• You can’t really adapt an essay to the context in which it is received. Is the reader (your professor) at home or in their office? Are they reading at night or in the morning?
• Because a speech is delivered at a particular moment in time, you need to adapt its content to the speaking context. Great speeches fit the moment. Reflect on the purpose of your speech, the amount of time you’ll have, and the speaking environment. These elements will influence what you can realistically hope to accomplish with your audience. Consider the differences you might make to a presentation if you are delivering it first thing in the morning, just after lunch, or late Friday afternoon. The context of your speech can also help you determine which delivery type to use: impromptu, speaking notes, memorized, or a manuscript. If you are speaking for an hour, it may not be realistic to memorize a speech, but speaking notes or a manuscript can be very helpful. If your context will be highly emotional or require careful wording, then using a manuscript may be the best delivery type.
• In writing , your audience has the benefit of reading at their own pace, visually grasping your organization through paragraphs or headings, looking up definitions for unfamiliar terms, and looping over detailed information.
• In a speech, your audience doesn’t have any visual guideposts about the organization of the material. To adjust, you must provide clear, audible, organizational indicators or signposts. It helps to use language that is relatable, simple, and familiar, and to include vivid imagery and anecdotes.
• In a research paper , your credibility is established through research, which is cited in the text as well and with a bibliography or footnote.
• In a speech, citations are a bit more tricky. If your speech uses researched support, you must properly attribute your sources.  Although they may be included in your written outline, stating a full-source citation when delivering your speech can quickly lose your audience. Therefore, you will instead use abbreviated source citations, often with just the publication and date, or the author and title when citing a book.
• Especially when they rely on complex data or visual information, essays can include graphs, charts, and illustrations.
• In a speech, visual aids are often used to illustrate an idea, evoke emotion, summarize data, or draw attention to an important concept. A visual aid adds interest, can refocus your audience, and can help them remember an important aspect of your speech. If you use a visual aid, consider when to use it in your speech and what type of visual aid would best illustrate what you’ve chosen to highlight. The most common visual aid is PowerPoint, but visual aids can also be objects or any sort of pictorial representation. For example, a speech about a guitar could use a PowerPoint with pictures of various parts of a guitar—or an actual guitar.
• In the case of an essay, we only perceive the writer through the style of their writing. Unless we have seen them in person, or look them up on the internet, we probably know very little about how they look, what they sound like, or how they carry themselves.
• Unlike the invisible author of an essay, the speaker is physically or virtually present to deliver the speech. Their appearance, dress, posture, confidence, delivery style, and energy level will have profound effects on the audience’s experience of the event.

Ready to present? Maybe not so much…

• When turning in a paper, it doesn’t matter if you finished well in advance or the night before. Whether you wore yourself out finishing it or cruised to completion, the paper will be judged on its quality rather than your emotional and physical state at its completion.
• In a speech, the quality of delivery will impact how well it is received, regardless of how carefully it was written and prepared. Verbal and nonverbal cues set the tone and engage your audience. Even when using speaking notes or a manuscript, you must be familiar enough with your speech that you avoid simply reading it. Therefore, you must build in plenty of time to practice.

To Watch: John McWhorter

In this TED talk, linguist John McWhorter discusses some of the differences between speaking and writing. For our purposes, the first five minutes will be the most informative, but the latter half is very interesting as well, particularly if you’re curious about the linguistic changes brought about by texting.

You can view the transcript for “John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!” here (opens in new window) .

What to watch for:

Notice how McWhorter starts his speech: “We always hear that texting is a scourge.” This statement sets up his thesis, which is that texting isn’t the downfall of language, but rather a “miraculous thing.” This style of opening, sometimes called “stabilization-destabilization,” can be a great way to get a speech off the ground. First you state the  stable  condition, the thing that everyone thinks is true. Then you  destabilize this idea by showing how it’s  not  true, or at least more complicated than the listener might think. The destabilizing move says “yet . . .” or “however. . . .” (McWhorter says “The fact of the matter is that it just isn’t true.”)

Note as well how McWhorter uses visual aids in this presentation. Even though he puts a lot of words on the screen, he is not expecting the audience to read and engage with the meaning of these passages. Instead, the words are there to say something about language style. When you really want your audience to engage with the meaning of words on a slide, you should keep the text as minimal and concise as possible. We’ll cover this concept in more detail when we learn about visual aids.

• Tired. Authored by : Shanghai killer whale. Located at : https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Chronic_fatigue_syndrome.JPG . License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike
• Teacher in office. Authored by : jsoto. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/woman-office-teacher-613309/ . License : Other . License Terms : Pixabay License
• John McWhorter: Txtng is killing language. JK!!!. Provided by : TED. Located at : https://youtu.be/UmvOgW6iV2s . License : Other . License Terms : Standard YouTube License
• Elements in a Speech. Authored by : Anne Fleischer with Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

BUS210: Business Communication

Interpersonal Communication

Read this article, which explains interpersonal communication. Consider the ways in which you can apply this knowledge in your own interactions.

Understanding the context of a situation may lead to an awareness of necessary precautions. Context refers to environmental factors that influence the outcomes of communication. These include time and place, as well as factors like family relationships, gender, culture, personal interest and the environment. Any given situation may involve many interacting contexts, including the retrospective context and the emergent context. The retrospective context is everything that comes before a particular behavior that might help understand and interpret that behavior, while the emergent context refers to relevant events that come after the behavior. Context can include all aspects of social channels and situational milieu, the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the participants, and the developmental stage or maturity of the participants.

Situational milieu

Situational milieu can be defined as the combination of the social and physical environments in which something takes place. For example, a classroom, a military conflict, a supermarket checkout, and a hospital would be considered situational milieus. The season, weather, current physical location and environment are also milieus. To understand the meaning of what is being communicated, context must be considered. Internal and external noise can have a profound effect on interpersonal communication. External noise consists of outside influences that distract from the communication. Internal noise is described as cognitive causes of interference in a communication transaction. In the hospital setting, for example, external noise can include the sound made by medical equipment or conversations had by team members outside of patient's rooms, and internal noise could be a health care professional's thoughts about other issues that distract them from the current conversation with a client. Channels of communication also affect the effectiveness of interpersonal communication. Communication channels may be either synchronous or asynchronous. Synchronous communication takes place in real time, for example face-to-face discussions and telephone conversations. Asynchronous communications can be sent and received at different times, as with text messages and e-mails. In a hospital environment, for example, urgent situations may require the immediacy of communication through synchronous channels. Benefits of synchronous communication include immediate message delivery, and fewer chances of misunderstandings and miscommunications. A disadvantage of synchronous communication is that it can be difficult to retain, recall, and organize the information that has been given in a verbal message, especially when copious amounts of data have been communicated in a short amount of time. Asynchronous messages can serve as reminders of what has been done and what needs to be done, which can prove beneficial in a fast-paced health care setting. However, the sender does not know when the other person will receive the message. When used appropriately, synchronous and asynchronous communication channels are both efficient ways to communicate. Mistakes in hospital contexts are often a result of communication problems.

Cultural and linguistic backgrounds

Linguistics is the study of language, and is divided into three broad aspects: the form of language, the meaning of language, and the context or function of language. Form refers to the words and sounds of language and how the words are used to make sentences. Meaning focuses on the significance of the words and sentences that human beings have put together. Function , or context , interprets the meaning of the words and sentences being said to understand why a person is communicating. Culture is a human concept that encompasses the beliefs, values, attitudes, and customs of groups of people. It is important in communication because of the help it provides in transmitting complex ideas, feelings, and specific situations from one person to another. Culture influences an individual's thoughts, feelings and actions, and therefore affects communication. The more difference there is between the cultural backgrounds of two people, the more different their styles of communication will be. Therefore, it is important to be aware of a person's background, ideas and beliefs and consider their social, economic and political positions before attempting to decode the message accurately and respond appropriately. Five major elements related to culture affect the communication process:

Communication diagram showing types of communication between cultures, including verbal and non-verbal communication.

• Cultural history
• Value (personal and cultural)
• Social organization

Communication between cultures may occur through verbal communication or nonverbal communication. Culture influences verbal communication in a variety of ways, particularly by imposing language barriers. Each individual has their own languages, beliefs and values that must be considered. Factors influencing nonverbal communication include the different roles of eye contact in different cultures. Touching as a form of greeting may be perceived as impolite in some cultures, but normal in others. Acknowledging and understanding these cultural differences improves communication. In the health professions, communication is an important part of the quality of care and strongly influences client and resident satisfaction; it is a core element of care and is a fundamentally required skill. For example, the nurse-patient relationship is mediated by both verbal and nonverbal communication, and both aspects need to be understood.

Developmental Progress (maturity)

Pie chart of verbal (20%) and non-verbal (80%) communication in infants. Communication skills develop throughout one's lifetime. The majority of language development happens during infancy and early childhood. The attributes for each level of development can be used to improve communication with individuals of these ages.

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[ kon -tekst ]

You have misinterpreted my remark because you took it out of context.

Synonyms: climate , milieu , background

• Mycology. the fleshy fibrous body of the pileus in mushrooms.

/ ˈkɒntɛkst /

it is unfair to quote out of context

• the conditions and circumstances that are relevant to an event, fact, etc

Other Words From

• context·less adjective

Word History and Origins

Origin of context 1

Example Sentences

Learning is best when it is built around doing, and when the context is practical, allowing students to try their hand at solving problems even as they’re still learning.

It’s hard not to look at today’s announcement in the context of the overall challenges that Mozilla is going through.

Unicef now plans to run a series of pilot programs with various partner countries to observe how practical and effective their guidelines are in different contexts.

The video above also provides the missing context from the clips.

Now, the spirit of the Bauhaus has been invoked once more, in the context of Europe’s grand plan to go green.

In that context, Sotto Sotto was one of the all-out survivors.

Prevalence depends on context, and sometimes unique advantages outweigh the genetic costs.

I recognize my inability to truly understand these events in the same context or view these events through exactly the same prism.

Just wanted to place it in the context of slates needing picture choices that throw off revenue to make the numbers work.

Clearly the liberation of Gross took place in the context of what might be called a “grand bargain.”

She held it while the trooper bent over the strange scrawl, and ran his eyes along it to learn the context.

If the context makes an otherwise indefinite thing definite, it is sufficient.

The context in Chaucer does not seem to warrant the interpretation given by Tyrwhit.

I alter pleyneth in l. 2302 to pleyeth, to suit the context more closely.

The translator could think of no better word, because the context is jocular.

Related Words

More about context, what is  context .

Context is a noun that means the parts of a statement that immediately precede or follow a specific section of the statement and help explain that section. 

The context of a specific text clarifies the meaning of that text, as in When the politician was asked to apologize for lying, he claimed that he had been quoted out of context and that he wasn’t actually lying. 

Context is also the conditions related to an event or situation that helps a person understand the event or situation. Conditions can include surroundings (where something took place), circumstances (what else was happening at the time), and background (such as events that happened before). For example, the context of a historical event, such as what else was happening at the time and how people understood their environment, can help us better understand the event itself.

One common expression that uses word context is context clues . Context clues are hints within a piece of writing that help us understand something unfamiliar, such as a word. For example, if you came across the word ethereal in a text, context clues could help you figure out that it means “delicate” and “beautiful.” 

Another common expression that includes the word context is out of context . This expression is used to explain that the reason people understood a statement or text incorrectly was because the statement was removed from its surrounding text, which distorted its meaning. 

Example: Understanding the historical and scientific contexts of the Romantic period are essential to understanding Mary Shelley’s “Frankenstein.”

Where does  context  come from?

The first records of the term context come from around the late 1300s to early 1400s. It comes from the Latin word contextus , meaning “a joining together, scheme, or structure.” 

Did you know ... ?

What are some other forms of context ?

• contextless (adjective)
• contextual (adjective)
• contexture (noun)
• contextomy (noun)

What are some synonyms for context ?

• circumstances

What are some words that share a root or word element with context ? 

• contextualize
• contextualism
• context of situation

What are some words that often get used in discussing context ?

How is  context  used in real life?

The word context is a fairly common word used to refer to conditions or situations that give meaning to an event or behavior. It’s also commonly used to refer to the words surrounding a specific word or words in a text that give the text its meaning.

The best feeling in language learning is when you learn a new word, and then immediately see it again in an unrelated context. And you think, ‘I would have had no idea what this word meant if I had seen it last week, but now I do. I’m learning!’ — Fingtam Languages (@fingtamLangs) January 15, 2021

I think my favorite part about tweeting is that you don’t have to provide any context. You just say. — C (@Frm79th) January 17, 2021

Please read this thread if you are considering tweeting offensive or otherwise problematic things you believe are self-evidently “irony” or “sarcasm” It will not work. It will not land. It will not matter years later when people see those tweets “out of context.” This is why. — Catherynne M. Valente (@catvalente) January 5, 2021

Try using  context !

True or False?

The context of a situation is what results from the situation.

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'Very mindful, very demure': The hysterical new TikTok trend, explained

See how we're explaining a TikTok trend kindly with context? Very mindful, very demure.

The phrase "very mindful, very demure" has gone viral after TikTok user  Jools Lebron  popularized the phrase in a series of videos. The TikToker uses the terms to describe the level of appropriateness for makeup and fashion choices in a variety of settings.

Since then, the audio clip has taken on a life of its own across social media.

Here's what to know about the trend:

What does demure mean?

Traditionally, the term " demure " was used to describe a woman who was quiet, reserved, or modest, contrasting sharply with qualities like racy, standout, or loud.

Jools Lebron use of the word demure

Lebron redefines "demure" and "mindful" to refer to a refined, subtle elegance in various contexts—whether at work, on a plane, or in personal appearance.

In her viral TikTok video from August 2 titled "How to Be Demure at Work," Lebron demonstrates her interpretation of the term as choosing simple makeup and hairstyles for the workplace, rather than a green cut-crease as an eye makeup choice, for example.

Her video, which includes phrases like “very demure, very mindful,” garnered millions of likes and inspired a series of similar videos on her account. She covers topics such as dressing demurely for work, flying, and even interacting with hotel staff.

Lebron's TikTok video  about how to be demure in the workplace has over 22 million views so far.

Demure TikTok trend

After Jools Lebron's TikTok video  went viral, other users began creating videos using the sound to demonstrate their "very mindful, very demure" behaviors.

Some videos show users demonstrating etiquette at businesses, but most demonstrate ironic usage of "demure," such as overlaying the audio on a dog misbehaving or a college student having a complicated route up a bunk bed.

Over 24,100 TikToks have been created using the audio so far.

Who is Jools Lebron

Beyond her TikTok success, Lebron, a makeup artist and influencer, has used her platform to discuss her experiences as a self-described "plus-sized trans woman," reflecting on her lifelong passion for feminine interests and her identity.

In a more  recent TikTok video , Lebron posted in tears, how the "demure" trend has changed her life.

"Maybe you should make the videos because one day I was playing cashier and making videos on my break and now I’m flying across the country to host events, and I’m going to be able to finance the rest of my transition," she said.

Kamala Harris’ ‘Coconut Tree’ Quote, Explained: What She Meant And Why It’s Going Viral As She Launches Campaign

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A bizarre quote by Vice President Kamala Harris—“You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?”—is going viral once again as she mounts her presidential campaign after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race following his rough debate performance, with supporters and even other politicians adopting coconut emojis and memes inspired by the quote on social media to demonstrate support for Harris.

A bizarre Harris quote from 2023—"You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?"—is going viral on ... [+] social media. (Bizuayehu Tesfaye/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Harris’ quote: “You think you just fell out of a coconut tree? You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you,” which she said at a White House event last year, has become an ironic slogan in support of the vice president as she campaigns for the presidency.

Some supporting Harris have referred to her candidacy as “Operation Coconut Tree,” said they’re “ coconut-pilled ” and have used the coconut emoji in social media posts or their display names on X, formerly known as Twitter, to demonstrate support for the vice president.

Gov. Jared Polis, D-Colo., used a coconut emoji on X in his endorsement of Harris, and Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, posted a picture of himself climbing a coconut tree to announce his support for the vice president.

The official campaign account on X, Kamala HQ , which has embraced various memes of Harris as she launches her campaign, updated its bio in an apparent nod to the quote: “Providing context.”

Chi Ossé, a Democratic member of the New York City Council, posted a video edit of various clips of Harris, captioned: “Coconut tree summer.”

Several users used the meme to defend Harris as their pick to replace Biden, instead of a different candidate at a possible open convention , pointing out another candidate “can't just fall out of a coconut tree.”

In an unprecedented move, Biden dropped his 2024 bid on Sunday and endorsed Harris as his successor, ending more than three weeks of chaos as Democrats urged Biden to step aside due to his rocky debate performance and worries about his age. Harris had remained publicly supportive of Biden before he bowed out of the race, but some Democrats still argued Harris should replace Biden. Harris has since earned many key endorsements , including from Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and many Democrats in Congress.

Why Did Harris Say The “coconut Tree” Quote?

Harris made her “coconut tree” remarks on May 10, 2023 at the White House while swearing in the President’s Advisory Commission on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics. Harris spoke about the importance of equity in education policy, noting that not all students are offered the same opportunities to succeed, depending on financial resources and the environments they are raised in. She said “none of us just live in a silo” and “everything is in context,” adding that creating educational equity also depends on providing for the needs of parents, grandparents and communities, before telling a personal anecdote near the conclusion of her speech. “My mother used to — she would give us a hard time sometimes, and she would say to us, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with you young people. You think you just fell out of a coconut tree?’” Harris said, while laughing. “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you.”

Key Background

The “coconut tree” quote had already gone viral on social media, particularly TikTok, on which thousands of users have posted videos using Harris’ remarks as the audio. Users made jokes about Harris’ change in tone from lighthearted to serious before and after the “coconut tree” sentence and how the quote makes little sense out of context. “How I feel putting my glasses on in the middle of a conversation,” one TikTok user joked, putting on her glasses as Harris adopts a more serious tone after the “coconut tree” sentence. Another user joked the quote sounds like “when you and your friends are in bed after going out and you’re still drunk.” One user said the clip sounds like “me and my friend having two separate conversations on two different apps at the same time,” poking fun at how the quote is seemingly nonsensical out of context. Rapper Doja Cat tweeted part of Harris’ quote last month. The quote has also been used by Republicans and Harris’ detractors as a point of criticism. The GOP War Room YouTube account, which posts clips of Democratic politicians appearing to make gaffes or slip-ups, posted a video of Harris’ “coconut tree” quote on the day she made the remarks, which has since garnered more than 137,000 views.

Surprising Fact

Before the “coconut tree” quote became a rallying cry in support of Harris, Republicans had attempted to use it as a dig at the vice president. The RNC Research X account, which is managed by Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, and the GOP War Room YouTube account both posted short clips of Harris saying the “coconut tree” quote on May 10, 2023, the day she made the remarks.

Further Reading

Here’s How Kamala Harris Is Embracing Memes Like Charli XCX’s ‘Brat Summer’ And ‘Project Coconut Tree’ (Forbes)

Biden Outcry Grows: Key Dem Governors Sought Meeting Today—As Pritzker Says Biden Hasn’t Communicated Enough (Forbes)

Biden In Salvage Mode: Tells Campaign Staff ‘I’m In This Race To The End’ After Rallying Congressional Allies (Forbes)

Here’s Who Is Calling On Joe Biden To Drop Out—A Democratic Lawmaker, Pundits And A Former Staffer (Forbes)

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Video Showing Harris Saying She Will 'Snatch' Patents Lacks Context

A remark made by then-u.s. sen. kamala harris in november 2019 about "snatching" patents resurfaced weeks before the 2024 presidential election., jordan liles, published aug. 20, 2024.

A rumor circulating online in August 2024 claimed U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris once said she desired to "snatch" up patents so that the U.S. government could take them over.

The rumor spread on X in an 18-second video clip showing Harris speaking to voters on C-SPAN in Muscatine, Iowa, on Nov. 22, 2019. At the time, Harris — then a U.S. senator from California — was campaigning for the Democratic Party's 2020 presidential nomination.

In the brief video clip posted ( archived ) by an X user on Aug. 16, Harris said, "I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over." Looking toward the crowd, she continued, "And yes, we can do that. Yes. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. The question is, do you have the will to do it? I have the will to do it." That X post received millions of views and tens of thousands of reposts and likes.

As Mediaite reported in its own article about this rumor, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was among the thousands of users to repost the clip, captioning his post ( archived ) with, "Well, this is crazy."

It's true Harris said the words, "I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over." However, the 18-second video clip users shared omitted some context from her remarks.

The longer video hosted by C-SPAN showed Harris was speaking about patents for prescription drugs, specifically for drugs created by pharmaceutical companies that had received federal funding and, in the future, would refuse to lower consumers' costs to equal amounts charged in other countries. (The bolded words below indicate the only part of Harris' comments included in the brief video clip users shared on X.)

My plan as a candidate for president on the issue of drug prices is as follows: We are going to set drug prices based on fair market. So, essentially what we're going to do, and, you know, visit the website if you will, and if not, I can get you some documents. But, essentially what we're going to do is set drug prices so that American consumers are charged a price for drugs that is the average price that's being charged around the globe. [applause] And you're gonna… and there's a huge difference, insulin being an example. The other thing is this. If people don't want to cooperate with that, I'm also going to do the next thing, which is this. A lot of drugs, prescription medication, was born out of federal funding for the research and development of that drug. Your taxpayer dollars. So, for any drug where they failed to play by our rules, and if that drug came about because of federal funding for what's called R&D, research and development, I will snatch their patent, so that we will take over. Yes, we can do that. Yes. Yes, we can do that. Yes, we can do that. The question is, do you have the will to do it? I have the will to do it.

Nearly five years after Harris made these remarks, The Associated Press reported on Aug. 15, 2024, that American taxpayers were expected to save billions of dollars after President Joe Biden's administration "inked deals with pharmaceutical companies to knock down the lists prices for 10 of Medicare's costliest drugs ." Those drugs include Januvia, Jardiance, Xarelto, Entresto and others. The reporting also added, "But how much older Americans can expect to save when they fill a prescription at their local pharmacy remains unclear, since the list cost isn't the final price people pay."

Further, the Biden-Harris administration's Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 also lowered the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare.

"Campaign 2020: Kamala Harris Meets with Voters in Muscatine, Iowa." C-SPAN , 22 Nov. 2019, https://www.c-span.org/video/?466668-1/kamala-harris-meets-voters-muscatine-iowa.

Leeman, Zachary. "'Is This Even Legal?!' Critics Slam Kamala Harris Over Vow to 'Snatch' Patents After Resurfaced Vid Goes Viral." Mediaite , 17 Aug. 2024, https://www.mediaite.com/politics/is-this-even-legal-critics-slam-kamala-harris-over-vow-to-snatch-patents-after-resurfaced-vid-goes-viral/.

Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program: Negotiated Prices for Initial Price Applicability Year 2026 . Aug. 2024, https://www.cms.gov/files/document/fact-sheet-negotiated-prices-initial-price-applicability-year-2026.pdf.

PerryCook, Taija. "Biden Brought Down Insulin Costs to $15 Per Shot?" Snopes , 2 July 2024, https://www.snopes.com//fact-check/biden-insulin-price/.

Seitz, Amanda, and Zeke Miller. "White House Says Prescription Drug Deals Will Produce Billions in Savings for Taxpayers, Seniors." The Associated Press , 15 Aug. 2024, https://apnews.com/article/biden-drug-prices-medicare-prescriptions-34886d6f362c242be268c05d5efd5411.

By Jordan Liles

Jordan Liles is a Senior Reporter who has been with Snopes since 2016.

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Fact-checking Democrats’ claims at the 2024 Democratic National Convention

Geoff Bennett Geoff Bennett

Ali Schmitz Ali Schmitz

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• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/fact-checking-democrats-claims-at-the-2024-democratic-national-convention

In dozens of speeches this week, Democratic leaders have drawn a sharp contrast between how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump would govern. For context to some of what’s been said at the party’s convention in Chicago, Geoff Bennett speaks with PolitiFact’s Katie Sanders.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Geoff Bennett:

In dozens of speeches, Democratic leaders have drawn a sharp contrast between how Kamala Harris and Donald Trump would govern.

We're going to add context to some of what we have heard in Chicago.

And for that, we're joined by political editor in chief Katie Sanders. Thanks so much for being here.

Katie Sanders, Editor in Chief, PolitiFact: Happy to do it. Thanks for having me.

So let's start with what we heard from former President Bill Clinton.

Last night, he said that Democrats have created 50 times more jobs than Republicans.

Bill Clinton, Former President of the United States: Since the end of the Cold War in 1989, America has created about 51 million new jobs.

Bill Clinton:

I swear I checked this three times. Even I couldn't believe it. What's the score? Democrats 50, Republicans one.

So he says he checked it three times. Was he right?

Katie Sanders:

He is right on the numbers, but there's extra context that's needed.

So we rated this mostly true. So the numbers are accurate. Democratic presidents have benefited from significantly more job gains going back to that precise 1989 starting point. You have to listen to that. That omits the — any job gains that we're seeing during the Reagan years, right?

But I think the extra context is that we would want viewers to know presidents are not all-powerful. It's not as if it's all the work. President — former President Clinton might want to share some of that credit with the Republican-led Congress that governed legislatively while he was in office.

So there's some squishiness there. If you go back even further, the Democrats still have a jobs gain. It's about 70 percent going back to the Eisenhower years until now. Republicans have a smaller gain. But I think the big thing to know is that Democratic presidents have overseen economic recoveries.

And that's really just a stroke of bad luck in some cases for the Republican presidents who lost jobs.

All right, let's fact-check what we heard from Pete Buttigieg about crime numbers under the Trump administration.

Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Secretary of Transportation: Donald Trump rants about law and order, as if he wasn't a convicted criminal running against a prosecutor.

Pete Buttigieg:

As if we were going to forget that crime was higher on his watch.

All right, so was crime higher during the Trump era?

This is one of those quintessential lines that is very broad that we have been hearing from speakers this week. We rated this claim half-true.

So violent crime did spike in 2020. That coincided with the pandemic, with George Floyd protests, but it was a very notable spike for violent crime. But Pete Buttigieg was being broad here. He said crime. And if you look at property crime, it actually went up in 2022 under President Biden.

So it's more complex than he's letting on. But, generally, it did see an increase during the Trump years compared to now.

Another key issue has been the conservative Heritage Foundation's policy road map known as Project 2025. And among the claims, speakers have said that Project 2025 would increase taxes on the middle class, eliminate the Department of Education, require reporting of miscarriages to the government, and make it easier to fire civil service employees.

What did your fact-check find?

We have heard those again and again this week. I think the ones that are more straightforward are about civil servants and about closing the Department of Education.

Project 2025 does say that. We would say that's true. And more or less, President — former President Trump shares the perspective. That's also what he wants to see, which isn't always the case when you have heard these speakers warn about Project 2025.

As far as like the broad tax increase, I thought that was interesting. We heard Kamala Harris on the campaign trail talk about how this plan would increase taxes on middle-class families by $3,900. People might hear that and be like, oh, no.

It's not a tax increase. It correlates with Trump's 10 percent tariff idea that he's been proposing, which would have an effect and raise the cost of a lot of everyday items. But $3,900 is very specific. It's also higher than any other estimate we have seen from groups that study this kind of thing. So I would say that seems exaggerated for now.

As far as counting miscarriages, the plan does call out current abortion data collection practices. It's voluntary. Some states like California don't participate. And Project 2025 says they want to know more about the number of spontaneous miscarriages that are happening in state hospitals, in addition to abortions and other types of data.

So it does call for that data collection, but that is not exactly what we heard on stage.

You were with us at the Republican National Convention as well. When you compare the RNC to the DNC, which gathering has shown the greatest fidelity to the facts?

Certainly, there's been some exaggerations this week about — or maybe really broad claims.

But I think it's hard to compare anyone with the amount of falsehoods that you hear at a campaign rally from former President Trump. If you remember his speech, we were doing a lot of fact-checking in the moment of things we have heard again and again and again. So I think that is challenging to stack up against any other gathering really for the facts.

With Kamala Harris' speech tonight, I'm curious if she's going to continue a trend to stay broad, stay a little vague, narrow — focus more on her biography, versus going into specific claims. We will just have to see. Her campaign speeches have not had a similar style, to say the least, as former President Trump.

OK, Katie Sanders of PolitiFact, thanks so much.

And you can see more fact-checks from this week's Democratic National Convention and from the ongoing presidential race online at PBS.org/NewsHour.

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Fact checking DNC 2024 Day One speeches from Biden, Hillary Clinton and other Democrats

By Laura Doan , Amelia Donhauser

Updated on: August 20, 2024 / 9:54 AM EDT / CBS News

CBS News is fact checking some of the statements made by  speakers  during the 2024 Democratic National Convention, which is taking place in Chicago from Monday, Aug. 19 through Thursday, Aug. 22. 

The convention began with unity as the theme, and the featured speakers Monday were President Biden and 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, as well as a host of others.

Some of the comments that CBS News' Confirmed team fact checked involved Democrats' comments about GOP nominee Donald Trump's record as president, as well as the Biden administration's record.

CBS News is covering the DNC live. 

Fact check on Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Sara Rodriguez's claim that Trump promises "to terminate the Affordable Care Act": Misleading

Details:  In 2016, former President Donald Trump promised to repeal and replace the nation's health care law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), if elected. During his presidency, he backed attempts by Republicans to repeal parts of the law while carrying over other parts.

In this election cycle, Trump has continued to criticize the law but has said he doesn't support terminating all of its policies outright. In November, Trump said he intends to  "replace"  the Affordable Care Act with another package of health reforms. 

In March, he  said  that he was "not running to terminate the ACA" but instead to make it better and cheaper.

By Alexander Tin, Amelia Donhauser 

Fact check on California Rep. Robert Garcia's claim that Trump "told us to inject bleach into our bodies": False

Details:  In an April 2020 White House  news briefing  with members of the government's coronavirus task force, Trump, who was then president, speculated about combating COVID-19 by injecting disinfectant into the body. He suggested doctors should study this possibility, but he did not tell people to inject bleach into their bodies.

"I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute," Trump said. "And is there a way we can do something like that — by injection inside or almost a cleaning — because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it'd be interesting to check that, so that you're going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me." 

The Trump White House later offered differing excuses for the remark. It first  said  Trump's comments were taken out of context. A day later, Trump  told  reporters that he was being sarcastic when he raised the possibility of injecting disinfectants.

"I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you just to see what would happen," he said.

By Amelia Donhauser

Fact check on Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin's claim that the U.S. economy added 16 million jobs during the Biden administration: True, but needs context

Details:  Under President Biden, the U.S. economy has added more than 15.8 million jobs, according to July data from  the Bureau of Labor Statistics . 

However, it's important to note that the number includes roughly 9 million jobs that were lost during the COVID-19 pandemic. The U.S. economy under Mr. Biden has seen an increase of approximately 6.4 million jobs above February 2020 levels, according to  the Bureau of Labor Statistics . 

By comparison, 6.7 million jobs were created in the first three years of former President Donald Trump's term between January 2017 and February 2020, before the pandemic left Trump with record job losses. 

By Laura Doan

Fact checking Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's claim that Vance thinks women should stay in violent marriages, and pregnancies from rape are "inconvenient": Misleading

Beshear: "JD Vance says women should stay in violent marriages and that pregnancies resulting from rape are simply inconvenient."

Details:  Before he was a Republican Ohio senator,   JD Vance spoke of being raised by his grandparents and their relationship at an  event  in 2021. He contrasted their commitment to each other during an "incredibly chaotic" marriage with modern divorce rates.

"I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that, like, 'Well, okay, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy," he said. "And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that's going to make people happier in the long term." 

"And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I'm skeptical," Vance added. "But it really didn't work out for the kids of those marriages." 

Vance has repeatedly said these remarks were taken out of context. In a  statement  to VICE News in 2022 he said, "In my life, I have seen siblings, wives, daughters, and myself abused by men. It's disgusting for you to argue that I was defending those men."

In 2021, Vance was  asked  if anti-abortion laws should include exceptions for rape or incest. He replied: "It's not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it's whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society. The question really, to me, is about the baby," he continued. "We want women to have opportunities, we want women to have choices, but above all, we want women— and young boys in the womb — to have the right to life." 

In July, Vance  told  Fox News, "The Democrats have completely twisted my words. What I did say is that we sometimes in this society see babies as inconveniences, and I absolutely want us to change that." 

By Amelia Donhauser 

Fact checking Biden's claim there are fewer border crossings today than when Trump left office: True, needs context

President Biden : "There are fewer border crossings today than when Donald Trump left office." 

Details:  In July, migrant apprehensions along the U.S. southern border dropped to  56,408 , the lowest level since September 2020, according to  U.S. Customs and Border Protection  data. When Trump left office in January 2021, the number of apprehensions was around 75,000. 

The decline in illegal border crossings had been dropping steadily since the spring and accelerated after Mr. Biden issued a  proclamation  on June 4 banning most migrants from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. Officials have also said scorching summer temperatures and Mexico's efforts to stop migrants have contributed to the drop.

Yearly apprehensions at the U.S. southern border also reached record highs during Mr. Biden's term, according to the  data . In fiscal year 2023, the number reached 2.2 million. The number of yearly apprehensions under Trump peaked at around 852,000 in the fiscal year 2019. 

By Camilo Montoya-Galvez,   Laura Doan    

Alexander Tin contributed to this report.

• Hillary Clinton
• Kamala Harris

Laura Doan is a fact checker for CBS News Confirmed. She covers misinformation, AI and social media.

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