Lecture 10-《英语词汇学》第10章教案

  • 格式:doc
  • 大小:57.00 KB
  • 文档页数:8

Lecture 10 讲授题目: Word Meaning and Context 所属章节:《现代英语词汇学概论》之第10章 计划学时:2 periods 教学方法:传统讲授法 参考资料:《英语词汇学教程》、《英语词汇学》 教学目的和要求:通过本单元的学习,学生应对词义与语境,语境的种类和语境的作用有 较好学习掌握。  教学重点: 1) Types of context; 2) The role of context.

 教学难点: The role of context.

As most words have more than one meaning, it is often impossible to tell the meaning of a word before it is used in context. Context is very important for the understanding of word-meaning because the meaning is influenced immediately by the linguistic context, and in many cases by the whole speech situation as well. When a writer or speaker uses a word, she makes it ‘mean just what he chooses it to mean — neither more or less’. Without context, there is no way to determine the very sense of the word that the speaker intended to convey; whereas with context there is generally no danger of misinterpretation, for meaning lives in context and the context defines the meaning. 由于词义受语境的影响较大,语境在词义的理解上起到很大作用。当作者或说话者用词时,他/她要使这个词表达确定的意思。没有语境,就无法确定说话者想要表达的意思。有了语境,就没有了误解的危险。因为意义存在于语境之中,语境决定词义。本讲将讨论词义和语境的关系,以及语境是如何影响词义的。 This lecture will discuss the relationship between meaning and context and the way in which context affects the meaning of words.

1. Types of Context Context is used in different ways. In a narrow sense, it refers to the words, clauses, sentences in which a word appears. This is known as linguistic context which may cover a paragraph, a whole chapter and even the entire book. In a broad sense, it includes the physical situation as well. This is called extra-linguistic context, which embraces the people, time, place, and even the whole cultural background. ※ 语境的含义有多种。狭义地讲,语境是指一个词在词群、从句和句群出现的环境。这叫语言语境。语言语境可以包换一段、一章,甚至整个一本书。广义地讲,语境还包括物理环境。这叫非语言语境。非语言语境包括人物、时间、地点,甚至整个文化背景。

1).Extra-linguistic context / Non-linguistic context When we talk about context, we usually think of linguistic context, hardly aware of the non-linguistic situation, which can often exercise greater influence on the meaning of words than we realize. Brown and Yule (Discourse Analysis) Cambridge university Press. 1983:36 ) invented two situations to illustrate the effect of the extra-context on the meaning of the word quick. ① speaker: a young mother

 hearer: her mother-in-law (婆婆)

 place: park, by a duckpond (鸭池边)  time: sunny afternoon in September in 1962. They are watching the young mother’s two-year-old son chasing ducks and the father, was rather backward at this age. The young mother says: I do think Adam’s quick. ② speaker: a student  hearer: a group of students

 place: sitting around a coffee table in the refectory(食堂,餐厅)  time: evening in March 1980 John, one of the group, has just told a joke. Everyone laughs except Adam. Then Adam laughs. One of the students says: I do think Adam’s quick. In both cases, the speaker says that Adam is quick. It is clear, however, that the utterance in the contexts of situation would be taken to convey very different messages. In ①, Adam is compared-favorably with his father. Quick can be interpreted as meaning quick in developing. It is used in contrast to backward. In ②, ‘Adam’ is compared unfavorably with the group of other students. Therefore, quick must be interpreted as meaning ‘quick to understand the joke’. In this case, quick is used ironically to mean the opposite ‘slow’. The extra-linguistic context may extend to embrace the entire cultural background, which may also affect the meaning of words. ① Take the term trade union for example. In western countries, trade union is an ‘organization of worker, esp. in a particular trade or profession, formed to represent their interests and deal as a group with employer’. Against this cultural background, trade union have strong political overtones. The organizations, which are established purposefully in opposition to the management, struggling for shorter working hours, better working conditions and higher pay. In China, however, the term has quite a different meaning. It is simply an organization of masses under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party in each working unit,