Towards a sociocognitive theory of context

In my book Discourse and Context it is shown that the concept of “context” is fundamental in the study of language, discourse and cognition. In the present volume my multidisciplinary theory of context is extended to include the social sciences: social psychology, sociology and anthropology. And at the end of the present book I apply the theory in the domain of politics, namely the Iraq debate in the British House of Commons, whose first speech, by Tony Blair, serves as example throughout both books.

In order to fully understand the broader, social scientific, framework of the general theory of context developed in the present monograph, it is useful to begin this chapter with a summary of the major results of Discourse and Context.

The importance of context

It is generally agreed that in order to fully understand discourse we need to understand it in its “context.” Yet, whereas linguistics, discourse studies, conversation analysis, psychology and the social sciences have for decades paid detailed attention to the properties of talk or text (Van Dijk, 1985, 1997), the contexts of language use have usually been ignored, taken for granted or studied as isolated “variables” of the social situation. It is therefore the main aim of this book – as well as of Discourse and Context (Van Dijk, 2008a) – to develop a multidisciplinary theory of context as a basis for the theory of discourse, interaction and communication.