Context of situation is the expression that sums up Malinowski's basic insight into how the meanings of language should be stated. It was this idea that Firth took up and developed. This view is not unlike the behavioristic formula since it claims tha...
Context of situation is the expression that sums up Malinowski's basic insight into how the meanings of language should be stated. It was this idea that Firth took up and developed. This view is not unlike the behavioristic formula since it claims that the meaning of any utterance is what it does in some context of situation. This is readily translated into the practical events which follow, a linguistic utterance, in Bloomfield's system. Behaviorism, a scientific fad in the United States during the 1930s, so that Malinowsk's work is not simply to be equated with the behavioristic approach. It dose bear out. The main objection of Firth and the prosodists to phonemically based linguistics seams to have stemmed more from their interest in making an over-rall statement of the nature of linguistic relations than their particular preference for one kind of phonology over another. In putting the issue squarely in the realm of meaning, Firth appears to have pointed out one of the weaknesses of the Bloomfieldian approach, which worked basically with the differential function of linguistic signals, both phonological and grammatical.