3/.The problem of context in stylistics. Types of context. Contextual meaning.

Context means the words that surround another word and impact its meaning or the setting in which something occurs. Context - the minimum stretch of speech necessary and sufficient to determine which of the possible meaning of the word is used. Context can be defined as an environment of a linguistic unit that facilitates the realization of certain properties of this unit.

Two types of context are generally differentiated: LINGUISTIC – a set of conditions in which the meaning of language unit is unambiguously realized: e.g. the hand of the clock (стрілка годинника), a piece for four hands. Its main function is to eliminate the polysemi of the word. EXTRALINGUISTIC – context being understood as a situation of communication. Situational context can be:

Single: some utterances are meaningful only in one single context and meaningless in the other.

Typical: some utterances that may even violate the norms of the literary language can be meaningful only under certain conditions

In the context is born a contextual meaning Contextual environment of a l-ge unit may change its initial meaning.

Contextual meaning has to do with the recognition of the meaning of a word using the context where the word is. This is why the knowledge of the word order and context is helpful to support word identification and confirm word meaning. For example: Sweet! Depending on the context could mean: 1. A lovely way to address someone. (Sweet! Please come.) 2. To show you are approve of something.( Free tickets? Sweet! ) 3. The taste of a food. (What do you prefer, a sweet or savoury snack? Sweet!)

4. Meaning from stylistic point of view. Stylistic devices based on the polysemantic effect.

Meaning is what is intended to be or actually is expressed or indicated.

In stylistics it is important to discriminate shades of meaning, to atomize the meaning, the component parts of which are called the semes (the smallest units of which meaning of a word consists). A crucial issue for stylistic studies is the ability of a word to be polysemantic, i.e. to comprise several lexical meanings.

Contextual meaning is born in the context and disappear if the context is altered.

Grammatical meaning refers our mind to relations between words or to some forms of words or constructions bearing upon their structural functions in the language-as-a-system.

Lexical meaning is a means by which a word-form is made to express a definite concept.

Stylistic devices based on the polysemantic effect.

The problem of polysemy is one of the vexed questions of lexicology. It is sometimes impossible to draw a line of demarcation between a derivative meaning of a polysemantic word and a separate word, i.e. a word that has broken its semantic ties with the head word and has become a homonym to the word it was derived from.

Polysemy is a category of lexicology and as such belongs to language-as-a-system. In actual everyday speech polуsemy vanishes unless it is deliberately retained for certain stylistic purposes. A context that does not seek to produce any particular stylistic effect generally materializes 'but one definite meaning.

The polysemantic effect is a very subtle and sometimes hardly perceptible stylistic device. But it is impossible to underrate its significance "in discovering the aesthetically pragmatic function of the utterance.