LOCAL CONTEXT AS SYSTEMIC INNER FORMATION THROUGHOUT ACADEMIC DISCOURSE

Abstract

In contemporary linguistics two contextual structures have been singled out:
horizontal context (supplying the necessary semantic environment for a word in
its word distribution) and vertical context (supplying the necessary semantic
environment for a text in its discourse distribution). Both the contexts are
automatically realized and distinguished through the sentence or text analysis
independent on any particular type of text. However, the constant spreading of the
investigatory base of the present linguistic research involves the spheres and
communicative registers where the context itself becomes a functional category
and might be regarded as dependent on the author of the text. This dependence
realizes through particular textual structures quite consciously inserted into the
text by its author in the function of presuppositional elements necessary for the
adequate understanding of the text as a whole. This way of explicit context
actualization is rather productive and common in academic writing. These
structures are borrowed from convergent disciplinary texts and designed as
integrated intertextual elements of various semantic and syntactic completeness.
We think it proper to identify these stereotypical structures as “Local Contextâ€
(LC) and define it as a part of disciplinary dialogue (or vertical context)
consciously chosen by the author in order to be used in the text as a complex of
particular preliminary information necessary for understanding the text
effectively.