Brazil wins World Cup ['co-text' or 'context'?]
- Thread starter Gisty
- Start date
It's context. Most people who know about football (or soccer to Americans) will know the World Cup refers to football, like the World Series refers to baseball. So with that knowledge the statement is put in to context.
Boy, after speaking English for nearly 50 years there's always more to learn--what the heck is a "co-text"?
The term "cotext" refers to the text that surrounds a passage, i.e. the words or sentences coming before and after it.
It's very similar to context, trying to explain the difference can be difficult, I guess context has a wider meaning in that it's not limitted to text or speach but can include the social situation in which a statement is said.
For example if someone is reading the sports section of a newspaper during the worldcup period you could ask them "How did Brazil do yesterday?" and it would make sense in context, but if you ask that same question in a different situation the context would change and it may not make sense. However there's no "cotext" in this situation as the question is stand alone.
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You took the words right out of my mouth!
But look what I found context. co-text and context of situation
It's all irrelevant anyway because it should read "England wins World Cup".
"co-text is just a linguistic part of the environment in which a referring expression is used." (H.G Widdowson, Pragmatics: 1996:21)
Thank you for the explanation. Anyway, I was at a Ladysmith Black Mambazo concert last month, and they say South Africa will win. If the U.S. ever won, that would be a miracle on grass!
I would advise anybody to forget about co-text.
I'd never heard of it, and whilst I'm always prepared to learn useful new words, this is one I've already forgotten.
Rover
I'd never heard of it, and whilst I'm always prepared to learn useful new words, this is one I've already forgotten.
Rover