Context in the System and Process of Language - The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan Vol 4 - Ruqaiya Hasan†
8. Towards a paradigmatic description of context: systems, metafunctions and semantics [2014]
Context in the System and Process of Language - The Collected Works of Ruqaiya Hasan Vol 4 - Ruqaiya Hasan†
Ruqaiya Hasan† [+]
Macquarie University
Ruqaiya Hasan, who died in 2015, was a professor of linguistics who taught and held visiting positions at various universities in England. Her last appointment was at Macquarie University, Australia, from where she retired as Emeritus Professor in 1994. Throughout her career she researched and published widely in the areas of verbal art, culture, context and text, text and texture, lexicogrammar and semantic variation.
Read her obituary here
Description
In Towards a Paradigmatic Description of Context: Systems, Metafunctions, and Semantics (2014), Hasan illustrates how a paradigmatic description of context can be accomplished using a system network, i.e. sys-net. Sys-nets, which have successfully been used to account for variant possibilities, i.e. choices, specific to parameters in other strata, e.g semantics and lexicogrammar, may also be applied to the stratum of context. As Hasan points out, however, ‘The problem is to establish their calibration in a way that the realized actuals agree with the experience of the community whose language and culture are under description.’